This is why I can't have nice things.

Theo (they/he). I left tumblr for 4 years and now I don't know who anyone is.

[maskedfangirl]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

*leaves explicit Untamed fic on tumblr’s doorstep like a cat with a dead pigeon*

Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, 5,770 words

“This must stop,” Lan Wangji tells him the next day, as they walk a quiet road where no one can hear them except songbirds. “The rumors. I can’t abide it.”

Wei Ying turns to walk backwards, facing him. He twirls his dizi between his fingers as he says, “Would you rather we tell the world the second Twin Jade of Lan is reduced to primal screaming by prostate stimulation?”

Or: Everyone thinks the Yiling Patriarch is haunted by wailing ghosts, but it’s really his shockingly vocal boyfriend.

Or: Lan Wangji comes to a realization about his relationship with the Lan Clan’s rules, by way of loud sex.

[maskedfangirl]

I fell hard into My Hero Academia during quarantine and accidentally wrote a novel-length hurt/comfort and humor fic about Shinsou's scary Quirk, Aizawa's self-sacrificing tendencies, queer identity, healing, and found family.

The Best Worst Case Scenario 

Shinsou is a promising student with a history of trauma, a Quirk that landed him in a residential care facility for dangerous kids, and a perfectly reasonable distrust of adults. Aizawa knows immediately that he's going to get over-invested in this one.

61k words

Pairings: Aizawa/Yamada, Shinsou/Midoriya, everyone/hugs

Content warnings in the notes on AO3. 

[maskedfangirl]

what do you use to color your traditional art? it looks so good!

Most of my traditional art is ink line art and watercolor over it, but sometimes gouache or acrylic ink sneaks in there, too.

[maskedfangirl]

My spouse was like “I’m going to put on this subtitled Chinese fantasy series” and I was like “Go ahead, I probably won’t absorb any of it though” and two weeks later I’m yelling “THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO KISS EACH OTHER!” at these gay sword wizards and making fan art at 2am.

Anyway, in my version Lan Zhan goes with Wei Wuxian to the Burial Mounds and they make out in the Demon Subdue Palace.

[maskedfangirl]

I made a thing! Trans Affirmation Coloring Book is now available!

If you're transgender, non-binary, or another gender under the wide and wonderful trans umbrella, this book is for you. It's also for me. Let's show ourselves a little kindness and celebrate our identities with this coloring book of affirmations!

This book contains ten 8.5x11" coloring pages for you to print out and color on your home printer, plus a worksheet for self-care. It’s priced as pay what you want--if you need it, take a copy and pass the link on! 

[theonicole-blog]

WHY CAT WHY: a coloring book explaining cats is available NOW!

Why do cats do the weird things they do? Why do we let these pointy, inconvenient creatures and their buttholes into our homes? This book explains cats (and why we love them) with 26 fun and informative coloring pages.

I’m awfully fond of this book. And of cats. 

Please enjoy these free coloring pages! (And buy my book if you want more) 

Shiny Actual Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997573848 

Print at home download: https://gumroad.com/l/BcnIY

[theonicole-blog]

IT’S HERE IT’S HERE IT’S HERE!!! And just in time for Halloween!

Making Friends in the Afterworld is a creepy-cute picture book which was written by my dear friend Jonathan, illustrated by me, and colored by our friend Lee at @studiointerrobang. It’s about friendship, finding people who love you for who you are (even if you’re a little bit weird), and cupcakes.

This book is chock full of heart! And also other organs. But mostly heart!

You can find it right here on Amazon or request it from your local bookstore. 

[maskedfangirl]

HEY LOOK IT’S A THING I HELPED MAKE AND NOW IT’S REAL

I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH

[maskedfangirl]

I started this cover art for my Bruce/Clint fic The Care and Feeding of Lost Causes...two years ago? Finally got up the nerve to color it. I also made prints on Society 6 if anyone wants one of those.

[maskedfangirl]

2016 is a garbage fire, so The Aggressive Self-Care Coloring Book is now a thing that exists! It is small, but it is enthusiastic and free (or pay what you want). 

Download it here and print it out yourself.

[chuwenjie]

It’s been an emotional week. I wanted to share this encounter I had with a very hateful man on the Pittsburgh bus because it reminds me that there are brave people in this world. Let’s all do everything we can to stand up for each other.

[neongenesisimpacts]

To all of my friends out there and ESPECIALLY my trans friends, if you hadn’t done so now, PLEASE GET A PASSPORT. President Obama made it VERY easy to get your gender marker changed on your passport. All you need is:

- An ID that resembles your current appearance (just get a new photo taken on a driver’s license or ANY government issued ID) - Passport photo that resembles your current appearance (From any drug store)

- Proof of legal name change (if applicable)

- A physician statement that indicates you have either completed or are in process of treatment for gender transition (the hardest part) No surgeries, no red tape, no bullshit. And when people try to harass you or puush you around because “Hahaha your ID says your x” Whip out your passport and shut them DOWN. I carry mine wherever I go and I know a lot of my friends who live in the south do so as well.  This law could VERY easily change under a Trump presidency and I haven’t been as serious about anything as I am about this. PLEASE GET A PASSPORT. Even the passport card (which is half as expensive as the book is!!!) will do. Just please if you can, get ONE ID that matches who you really are.

And I know to be able to get all of this together is a sign of privilege in the first place, and from one black, trans, queer women to all of my vulnerable siblings I will rot in a jail cell before I let this country harm any of us and I this I swear. I will NOT take this lying down. PLEASE Signal Boost!

[bengesko]

This is legit. My therapist at the VA told me this was the easiest way to get a form of ID with the proper gender marker on it.

[egregiousderp]

I work in a supermarket. Your passport is a picture ID with your birthdate on it. We take it for buying booze. I’ve recommended getting one to more than one nervous person handing over their license. It expires just like your license and there’s some red tape for getting it renewed in a timely manner, but it’s considered as valid as your license even if it’s maybe less easy to carry around.

[kat2107]

AND it’s internationally valid, unlike, say, your driver’s license. 

[egregiousderp]

THAT. Yes. Thank you.

[ihopaddict-deactivated20170521]

If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, and you can’t see yourself voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, then don’t. Vote third party.

Consider the Libertarian or Green Party.

Don’t feed the establishment by voting for Clinton, and don’t feed authoritarian isolationism by voting for Trump.

[provendermalkin]

No. The absolute largest chunk of people considering changing their votes at the moment are disappointed non-conservatives. There was barely any competition among republicans; from the get-go, the voter base united behind Trump. If non-conservatives split their votes across multiple fronts, they WILL lose.

Voting third party in America throws your vote directly into the garbage. Our system does not work like Australia’s. You don’t get a second or third choice, and candidates who win aren’t going to look at the numbers and say “I see 25% of Americans voted Green, I should implement Green policies.” That’s not how it works. Conservative voters overwhelmingly back a single party, the GOP, while non-conservative voters are the ones that scatter across multiple, weak fronts when faced with an unappealing Democratic party nominee. Think about it like this:

The majority of Republican voters support Trump and are not changing their vote even though party leaders and figureheads are universally decrying him. They’ve been groomed for decades by the GOP to be this way, and now party leaders have lost control of the impressionable voter base they created for themselves. There’s nothing they can do about it at this point. While a small number of Republicans can and are switching parties, it’s not very much. Meanwhile, Democrats are floundering, trying to decide which front to unite under. Some of them go to the Green party or Libertarians, sure; the rest stay with the Democratic party in the hopes that even with people leaving, they will have enough to block Trump. But Trump doesn’t need a majority of total Americans to vote for him; he only needs more than the other candidates have. Do you understand what I’m saying? Trump could get 10% of the vote, but as long as no other party has more than 10%, he still wins. The second you split the left and middle across three or four fronts, the right seizes control. This is how it goes down every single fucking time we go through this.

The other thing to consider is that the electoral college is NOT going to weigh in favor of a third party. Doing so would be political suicide. They are paid to vote certain ways, and not doing so would fuck up their careers. Even if an entire state votes in favor of a third party, the electoral college is going to vote for whichever primary party matches up the closest, and sometimes not even that. Their votes are counted when making the actual choice of president; ours are not. They proved that with Gore. The majority of Americans voted for him; the electoral college installed Bush anyway and told us to suck it up. The question at this point is whether they’d risk it a second time, and we have to hope that they won’t, which is why we have to unite under a single front to block Trump.

[barefootindecember]

^^^^^^^THIS!!!!!!!!!! People do not understand that under our plurality system, it doesn’t matter if the majority of the population doesn’t vote for Trump. As long as he has more than any of the other candidates, he wins. Splitting up the more liberal voters is now what non-Trump supporters want to do.

[teknon-deactivated20190112]

THESE CHILDREN ARE TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER ROSS PEROT

[merak-zoran]

And Ralph Nader.

[ceallaig1]

DO NOT SPLIT THE VOTE, PLEASE! GOP is gonna vote Trump, they won’t vote for a 3rd party person. That means a solid voting bloc. Dem who split the vote are in essence giving him a free vote. HILARY WITH ALL HER FAULTS IS STILL BETTER THAN TRUMP!

[ameliyaaaa6]

GOD DAMNIT YALL BETTER NOT SPLIT THE DEM VOTES

[fenland-witch-deactivated202005]

This is how the Conservative Party in the UK won the last election with less than 40% of the overall vote!!!! Don’t do it America!

Originally posted by ohmyreactionsgifs

[fangirlscout]

NOT splitting the vote is how Canada snagged this magical unicorn man in the last election.  Basically everyone I know voted strategically, even if it was against their party, to ensure that Harper’s crusty conservative ass was kicked the hell out.  Personally I waffle between the Green Party and the NDP politically, but I sure as heck voted Liberal last election.

[sussexbound]

I am getting really fed up with people saying that they don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils, and so they’re going to follow their conscience and vote for a third party. Well, I hope your conscience is okay with you voting Trump, because if you vote third party at this point, and Trump gets in, then that is exactly what you did, and you’ve been told this repeatedly prior to the election. So, when the whole country goes to shit, I’ll be looking at you as well as the Republicans. Any vote other than a Democratic vote is a Republican one, at this point.

[marsdaydream]

REBLOGGING AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Reblogging again mostly for the “magical unicorn man” comment, but also because it’s really really important.

[shinybluething]

^that

[theultravioletcatastrophe]

That is indeed how we got Trudeau - we swallowed our pride and voted strategically. In Canada, the political right is basically the Conservatives, whereas the left is split between the Liberals, the NDP, and the Green Party. Most of us NDP/Greens switched alliances last October, because for all his faults, Trudeau had the best chance of beating Harper - and TRUST ME, we wanted his ass GONE.

It’ll be the same in the US in November. Clinton isn’t great, but she is unquestionably better than Trump. Please, PLEASE vote strategically! The rest of the world is counting on you!

[christel-thoughts]

How many times must this be said?

[theonicole-blog]

Earlier this year, I sold the coloring books that made up about 95% of my income to a publisher. This was a great move for a lot of reasons – getting my books into brick and mortar stores means more people can pick them up, and those books get better promotion, quality control, and overall awesomeness thanks to Sourcebooks’ fabulous print job.

(Also, I get to visit the Unicorns Are Jerks 3-in-1 book whenever I go to Target. STILL NOT OVER THAT.)

The downsides of moving into traditional publishing are that I get paid less per book and I no longer have a monthly paycheck. I’m living off my advance and savings and crossing my fingers that the royalty report I get every six months will say good things.

This is why I started looking into Patreon.

Showing other people what I’m working on is a huge motivator for me, so I’m excited to have a new way to do that! If you support me on Patreon, you can look forward to WIP posts about projects I can’t talk about publicly yet, misfit coloring pages that didn’t make it into my books (and maybe Patreon-exclusive coloring pages?), and pictures of my cats, because why not.

My Patreon account is right here. Thanks for reading!

[spicyshimmy-blog]

how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?

like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’ 

was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’ 

sometimes i wonder

[anglofile]

[dressthesavage]

the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print. 

here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.

however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around. 

but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh). 

conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr. 

(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.) 

[sonneillonv-deactivated20220218]

I needed to know this.

[heidi8]

See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.

[aporeticelenchus]

Ancient Iliad fandom is intense

Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).

And then there’s this gem from Plato:

“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium

That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.

[emberkeelty]

More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do

[rapacityinblue]

Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.

Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.

[mademoisellesansa]

Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.

According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone. 

In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of. 

(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)

[jhameia]

the beauty of archival research *sigh*

[ogress]

i went to a building that is a “fan recreation” of one of the buildings from Hongloumeng and my like bitter, angry, never smiled once 78yo male teacher was like squeeing and giggling and kept sitting down and fanning himself and posed dramatically for photos

this guy was like the voldemort of staff, a man of legendary terror-inspiring mien. swooning.

[teashoesandhair]

A more recent example of fandom in history is the original Sherlock Holmes fan base! It’s one of the earliest coherent models we have that closely represents the fandoms of modern media. 

Arthur Conan Doyle’s first two Sherlock Holmes novels weren’t hugely popular, but when he began to write stories for The Strand magazine involving Sherlock Holmes, the public basically went absolutely mental. He used to get fan mail - predominantly from women, apparently - addressed directly to Sherlock Holmes, some women even offering to be his housekeeper. 

He eventually got so fed up of writing stories about a character he didn’t really like (he considered Sherlock Holmes to be an irritating distraction from his ambition to write historical fiction, once saying “he takes my mind from better things”) that he took measures to end the series once and for all. First, he raised his fee for writing the stories to an extortionate amount, hoping that the magazine would refuse to pay it and fire him. However, there was such a demand for new Sherlock Holmes stories that the magazine just agreed to pay his ridiculous fee. So, he killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 in the Reichenbach Falls, and when he did that, shit hit the fan. People reportedly placed Sherlock Holmes obituaries in newspapers. Many of them cancelled their subscription to The Strand, and wrote angry letters to Arthur Conan Doyle explaining how he’d broken their heart. To fill the gap left by the death of their bb, some people wrote fan fiction and shared it in literary groups and book clubs. 

Conan Doyle caved to pressure in 1901 and wrote Hound of the Baskervilles, partly because the fan fervour never really died down, and partly because cash dollah. You know how fans lobbied for the return of Firefly, and ended up getting Serenity made? The original Sherlock Holmes fans totally got there first.

[persian-slipper]

You forgot the bit where Holmes fans wore honest-to-god *mourning* attire after the death of their fave. Men wore crepe armbands in the streets for Holmes. It was redonk.

[adramofpoison]

FANDOM HISTORY Y’ALL

[chase820-deactivated20161117]

Goddamn, we homo sapiens love our stories.

[theonicole-blog]

BIG NEWS: Target is carrying this huge, 3-in-1 edition of my coloring books!!!

It contains full versions of Unicorns Are Jerks, Dinosaurs With Jobs, and Mer World Problems, and it retails for $12.99 but is currently 20% off. (At least at my Target. OMFG A BOOK I MADE IS AT MY TARGET. I WENT GROCERY SHOPPING AND VISITED MY BOOK.)

[theonicole-blog]

Starter Pokekittens!

Drawn wrong-handed because my dominant hand went NOPE five days before the Cat Video Festival’s artist alley. All of these little floofs are available as prints, shirts, and more on my Society 6 page!

[maskedfangirl]

A quick El sketch. I watched Stranger Things in one sitting two weeks ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it.