Yours, Lucy Walter

eternal aesthete, recovering opheliac, pretentious dyke, indie ndn author

[lucillewalterblack]

“Yeah,” Virgo said. “That about sums it up. Want to do something about it?”

BLOOD TIES AND BRICKWAYS, an urban fantasy series coming soon from Lucy Walter.

queer protagonist and majority-queer supporting cast

urban fantasy mystery/adventure

magic school and speculative academia

Charmed meets Buffy meets Modern Tales of Faerie

multigenerational storyline across five books and several prequel novellas

read the first prequel featuring the above-mentioned dead parents FOR FREE here!

[kitsunetsuki-deactivated2026051]

Steve Horn - ELLE Magazine (Nov. 1964)

[contemptible-scoundrel]

knocking fairies out of the air by blasting iron filings out of a desk fan

[rylandsgrace]

AYO EDEBIRI

Before the academy gala by Morgan Maher (October 2024)

[hound-and-bear]

Dress made by me, end of 2025, photographed by Casey Kerr and Rory Casey, early 2026. Modelled by Jay Katherine Amusan.

(Thanks Jay (o: )

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 23/?: Foodtown Market, Troy MI + Festival Marketplace

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 21/?: Cypress Club, San Francisco CA + Nouveau Organic

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 22/?: Skywatching: A Nature Company Guide + Utopian Scholastic

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neverending nineties 20/?: Advertisement in October 1991 issue of Designer's West + Whimsicraft

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neverending nineties 19/?: Advertisements in Designer's West (1991) + Shabby Chic

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neverending nineties 18/?: Jared Galleria (Cuyahoga Falls OH), Karat Gold (North Attleboro MA) + Factory PoMo

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 17/?: Sink by Sherle Wagner (photo taken 1991) + Nouveau Organic

[nathanielthecurious]

i love this description. the ability to bring down the moon is literally so basic to thessalian womanhood that even girls can do it

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 16/?: Tulalip Resort Casino + Nouveau Organic

(This one is kind of an edge case - the construction began in 2001, with design probably finalizing in 1999/2000, but it's such a beautiful example of Nouveau Organic that I can't exclude it. The spiral-backed chairs!! Plus, it's continuing my commitment to finding vintage settings and photographs that don't center whiteness - the casino is owned and operated by the Tulalip Tribes of Washington, incorporating their iconography and preferences and artistic priorities into the design of the structure and the interior. For once, these "global" or "world" aesthetics are serving the communities they're drawing inspiration from.)

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties 15/?: I Spy Spooky Night + Whimsigothic

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neverending nineties 14/?: Walter Wick's I Spy photography + Whimsigothic

[lucillewalterblack]

neverending nineties BONUS: who sees, who crafts?

aestheticism and the study of aesthetics, particularly aesthetics used in a commercial or corporate setting, especially home decor, is not neutral. the question of whose eyes the advertiser or the artist is trying to draw, of which professionals get to sit in positions of power and declare 'this is our target demographic' - it's always loaded and weighty.

I'm a Native woman with white family members, and it was to whiteness that my family on both sides assimilated in many ways while still maintaining some cultural ties. The aesthetics I have nostalgia for - Victorian and Renaissance revival, Global Village Coffeehouse, Whimsigothic - are fundamentally centered around white sensibilities and white perspectives, because they were conceived by white people for white people. Global Village (GVC) in particular has a troubling relationship with the question of cultural appropriation vs appreciation, depending on who drew a corporate mural or designed a dining space's decorations. Many of their 'tribal' or 'world' motifs are imitations of authentic designs with no attribution or credit given. Victorian revival draws on the aesthetics of a brutally imperialist empire that conquered territory all across the world and destabilized regions for decades if not centuries after. I own an antique lamp in that style, inherited from my Native grandmother who saw hyperfeminine Victoriana as a status symbol and an aspirational aesthetic, that is literally called a Gone with the Wind lamp. Decoplex, which hasn't come up yet but will, lionizes and romanticizes the aesthetics of Art Deco and the later 1930s; the United States was segregated at that time and the Hollywood studio system it draws on for inspiration was infamously awful to Black performers and artists. Frasurbane relies on a particular kind of affluent whiteness for its primary inspiration and target demographic. Gothic fashion, especially fashion photography, has had a massive problem with racism for longer than I've been alive.

I don't think anyone who likes or wishes to emulate these aesthetics is racist or problematic solely because they like pretty things. I like them; I'd be awfully hypocritical if I said everybody except me was evil, and I'd be self-hating if I said everybody including me was evil but kept on liking well-constructed photographs from before the advent of generative AI. But it's irresponsible, especially as a Native woman, to act as if everything is completely neutral and the very things I have nostalgia for aren't themselves telling on how my family tried to assimilate into whiteness for the sake of security and social/financial advancement.

My solutions to this are twofold.

First, obviously, is to try and find examples of vintage architecture and fashion and photography and art by and featuring nonwhite people in addition to the overwhelming whiteness of things like Victoria magazine. I've already posted a project by Javier Senosiain, a Mexican architect responsible for the growth of Mexican organic architecture as a style, and I go out of my way to find fashion photography featuring nonwhite people both behind and before the camera. The 1990s, particularly in English, particularly for the aesthetics I'm fondest of, have a whiteness problem, but letting that go by unchallenged contributes to that same problem. I also avoid vintage sources like Southern Living, because I think that glamorizing and romanticizing all-white Southern living is actively participating in Confederate apologia, and I don't fuck with that shit.

Second, when I'm not sourcing exclusively vintage images, I do go out of my way to fill my dash and my Pinterest and other sources of creative inspiration with people of color, more explicitly nonwhite aesthetics, and to celebrate things like Enchanted Living magazine going out of its way to recreate classic 19th century Pre-Raphaelite paintings with Black models or spotlighting Black artists who make fantasy art and Black models and costumers who like the same kinds of fantastical aesthetics that make up the publication's bread and butter. It's really, really easy to follow nonwhite historical costumers and visual artists and photographers and learn about nonwhite models and fashion designers and musicians. If you're someone who's noticing how beige everything is around you, you can and should take action to change that.

I don't think that I'm doing anything wrong by having fondness for these styles. I can't help that my family, particularly my mother's family and maternal grandmother, really aspired to be the kind of people who lived Like That (white-passing/white-assimilated, financially stable, capable of creating homes that were beautiful by white standards). I can't help living as a colonized person and being moved by the culture that swallowed mine whole. But I don't want anyone who's following me and going "ooh pretty pictures!" to lose sight of the fact that nothing here is foreordained to be pleasurable or interesting. We like what we like for institutional and structural reasons. What we do with those likes is up to us.