I am tumbling on and still I am singing my song

Writer, Belgium, 30+, xe/xem/xyr or she/her.

[minervacerridwen]

Welcome!

I'm Minerva Cerridwen, a neurodivergent aromantic asexual genderfluid author from Belgium.

My queer fairy tale novella The Dragon of Ynys is out with Atthis Arts in ebook, paperback, and audiobook format.

Every time something goes missing from the village, Sir Violet, the local knight, makes his way to the dragon’s cave and negotiates the item’s return. It’s annoying, but at least the dragon is polite.

But when the dragon hoards a person, that’s a step too far. Sir Violet storms off to the mountainside to escort the baker home, only to find a more complex mystery—a quest that leads him far beyond the cave. Accompanied by the missing baker’s wife and the dragon himself, the dutiful village knight embarks on his greatest adventure yet.

The Dragon of Ynys is an inclusive fairy tale for all ages.

—

The Dragon of Ynys has an aromantic asexual main character (own voices), and trans and lesbian supporting characters. And, of course, a dragon!

If you're looking for a positive story with a gentle plot, are into fairy tales, dragons, and/or cinnamon rolls, then this is the story for you!

The wonderful cover was created by @ullathynell​.

—

One of my most recent short stories is “The Space Between Stitches” in The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters, a collection of short stories, poetry, and art focused on neurodivergent characters.

—

I'm also the main writer of Paranatellonta, a project combining photography and flash fiction. The concept is that @fie takes a picture which will inspire my story, and we post a new edition on the 1st and 15th day of the month. Having started in 2013, there are over 380 editions at the time I'm writing this, and all of them are available to read for free over at @paranatellonta.

—

You'll find a complete list of my writing and information on upcoming projects on my website. I also try to share the important updates here on Tumblr.

Thank you for being here!

[paranatellonta]

Escape from Heaven

Tiny footsteps echoed loudly through the church until the child kneeled on the floor and looked up, aiming words directly at God, or at least at the high ceiling. As luck would have it, the child caught a glimpse of a figure in red and black with a long forked tail.

“No panic,” the Devil urged from where he was clinging to a thick, slanted wooden beam. “I’m only a minstrel still in my stage garb after thinking it would be safe to speak my own mind during a performance for the city’s nobility. I had to run and hide, and they did search for me, but not this high up—which I think is ironic, in the house of God.”

The child was still staring, and after a moment of silence asked: “Are you trying to break into Heaven, using the beams of the church as a ladder?”

“Actually,” the minstrel replied, remembering how much more effective than the truth stories can be, “I’ve only just become a demon after breaking out of Heaven. Would you be a dear and check whether there aren’t any humans outside, guarding the church? You’ll understand it’s only safe for me to go out if there aren’t, otherwise I’d terribly tempted to corrupt them.”

As the minstrel slipped away into freedom, he said a grateful prayer to his young lookout and promised himself never to waste his talents on an unworthy audience again.

—

[Image description: Photo of a high, triangular ceiling of a cloister building. The ceiling is made up of wooden beams, and there’s a white wall in the background. Lines of bright light line the ceiling on both sides.]

[paranatellonta]

Somehow I haven't gotten over the subject of heatwaves yet...

This 15th episode of Paranatellonta on YouTube takes us back to the 232nd edition, Wasteland, from April 2018.

Also want to hear it in Dutch? All my translations come out of my own brain and are read into a microphone by my own voice, no AI involved. Watch the Dutch video here.

Paranatellonta on YouTube is taking a summer break now, but do keep an eye on my channel, as I have some special ideas I want to try out!

[paranatellonta]

Lack of Attack

For so long, a holiday in Oz had been a dream, but now Melia was finally here, happy to check off every tourist trap on the list.

Over a century after Dorothy Gale’s adventure in Oz, many of the places she’d visited were admired daily by streams of people both from Oz and from Melia’s world, celebrating how Dorothy had initiated open contact between both realms. The main attractions were the orchards and flower fields near the spot where Dorothy’s house had landed and the Great Wizard’s palace in the Emerald City, but Melia wanted to have an authentic experience first, and that was exactly what the Deadly Poppy Field offered. Here, both Dorothy and the Lion had fallen asleep, and they might never have woken up if it wasn’t for their friends the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, who’d been unaffected by the poppies’ somniferous scent because they weren’t made of flesh. These days, a team of synthetic staff was always on hand to carry the tourists out to safety, where they’d soon wake up from a refreshing nap.

Melia had been looking forward to that nap for years, and so she was skipping merrily amongst the rows of colourful poppies, waiting for sleep to catch her. She reached the other side of the poppy field and turned back, still waiting, while other humans and animals around her had dropped down fast asleep before they were even halfway through. When she arrived at the start of the track again, she wasn’t feeling sleepy in the slightest, and her skipping faltered. She held up her arm in the Ozian sunlight, studying the glittering of her skin, so similar to the synthetics’ polymer exoskeletons. In thirty-five years she’d never been made aware that she wasn’t an organic life form, so what else was she going to discover about herself during this trip?

—

[Image description: Statue of a naked person reaching up with their right arm and leaning their left elbow onto a Corinthian column about half as tall as the person. Large pink, yellow, and orange poppies surround the statue, set up from round, metal disks on the floor. Behind it, a glass structure is set up, marking a large, wooden door as the exit of the museum. The white walls are decorated with elegant black writing resembling Persian script: the artwork Written Room by Parastou Forouhar.]

[unhappytogekiss]

a new reality tv show called So you think you can write Doctor Who

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

this is how you find the new doctor who showrunner

[lilithsaintcrow]

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — Th

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t

[jenroses]

pretty sure I did the chrome//flags thing a while ago, but also i switched to firefox, which is not without the occasional bullshit, but is vastly less bullshitty than chrome. This is why I treat genai "features" like the invasive blackberry bushes they are: cut, root, burn, and vigilantly watch for new shoots to uproot. I'm 54 years old and the world got by fine without genai for most of my lifetime.

[sniperct]

tags via@KKglinka #psa#having read the article#it's not clickbait#chrome is reaching#across all chromium browsers#to link a prepatory structure#this malware packet#will therefore occur#with all chromium browsers#it has nothing to do#with the actual ai interface#instead chrome is either#using your personal computer#as part of a cloud server#the way bitcoin malware works#or it's recording your own#actions on the computer#with a continuously active#background module#either way#that's malware#a 4gig trojan virus

[minervacerridwen]

I went to look into this and apparently it's more efficient to disable the function in the Chrome browser than to try and delete the file directly, because it may download itself again.

To disable it, open Chrome - click the dots at the top right - Settings - System - disable "On-device AI". This should remove the file automatically without any re-downloads. It's probably a good idea to check every now and then whether it stays disabled...

[paranatellonta]

King Par’s Party

It had taken a very, very long drive for Ruby to escape the overwhelming city. Ironically, now that she’d finally arrived in the long stretches of greenery where she intended to hike, she’d give anything to find a car park. Finally, a sign pointed her to where these tiny, winding roads had been hiding one of them. As she got out, she realised that she was standing in the middle of a perfect circle of buttercups…and then the ground gave way beneath her.

Par, the fairy king, threw the very best kind of parties: dancing was, of course, encouraged, but there were also cakes, the freshest mixed juices, and boardgames of all types. King Par—short for Paranatellonta, not because these fairies were particularly into astrology but because he was named after their favourite source of short stories inspired by photos—danced and played with Ruby all night, and she forgot all about the worries in her concrete life. By sunrise, she decided to leave, and the fairy king merely smiled and let her. Oddly enough, the sign pointing to the car park looked very different in the daylight: it hadn’t been so bent before, so worn, so overgrown with moss; the houses shining their lights in the distance had changed their shapes, and the trees and flowers looked untouched by a human hand. Those of you familiar with fairy stories will know that time passes differently in the fairy realm, and that it only ever moves forward, no matter how hard Ruby tried to walk backwards into the circle of buttercups.

“Ah well,” the fairies said, holding out their hands to invite her to another dance, “what would be the point in returning to a time when ‘parking’ had to do with concrete rather than trees?”

—

[Image description: A blue traffic sign pointing to the left, saying “parking”, set up on two grey poles. The sign is looking the worse for wear, overgrown by green moss and taped back together at the top. Around it, there’s a growth of buttercups, long grass, and an overgrown pollard willow. Behind it there’s a meadow, a horse in front of a shelter, and a row of houses, some of them with the lights on.]

[paranormal-taters]

"i feel besquintled", said no one ever. because that's not a word.

[paranormal-taters]

okay nevermind it IS a word now and this is exactly what it means.

[paranormal-taters]

EVERYONE SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THIS NEW AND BETTER WORD

[keresacheron]

Dinosaur cartoon.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

Important reminder

[geeky-fuckery]

This reminds me of the fact that "Ancient Egypt" goes back so many thousands of years, that the most recent "Ancient Egyptians" were already studying (even more) Ancient Egypt.

[charlesoberonn]

Not even the most recent ones. It was an Egyptian prince from the 13th century BCE studying and restoring artifacts from the 26th century BCE.

[charlesoberonn]

For context, the last Pharaoh, Cleopatra VII, lived in the 1st century BCE. Prince Khaemweset, known as "the first egyptologist", was as ancient to her as the pyramids and tombs he was studying were ancient to him.

[theaudientvoid]

I remember having me mind completely blown when I learned that the "New Kingdom" was pre-Bronze Age Collapse.

[oxeanic]

This has totally be mentioned in another fork of this post, but it reminds me quite a bit of Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, a museum in Ur, c. 530 BC, which housed mesopotamian artifacts dating back in some cases to the 20th century BC

[venndaai]

have you guys heard about the greenland shark. some crazy shit happening there.

[venndaai]

they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you

[fluorescentbrains]

this post prompted me to refresh my memory on Greenland Shark Facts and this detail about how they feed goes so hard

just vacuuming up their unsuspecting prey. whole !

[muffinlance]

Good news good news good news! Recent research suggests the eye parasites do NOT blind them!

Eye-opening research: Greenland sharks maintain vision for centuries through DNA repair mechanism

Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk sits in her office, eyes fixed on the computer monitor in front of her. "You see it move its eye," says the UC Ir

I <3 you a normal amount Greenland sharks

[paranatellonta]

It's 32°C today, so have a refreshing new Paranatellonta video!

Rabbit's Restaurant was the 152nd edition from July 2016. Almost 10 years old!

Rather read it in text form? Find the original Tumblr post here.

Also want to hear it in Dutch? All my translations come out of my own brain and are read into a microphone by my own voice, no AI involved. Watch the Dutch video here.

[16tinyfrogs]

on watching a parent age

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

[theriu]

OP, this is genuinely a masterpiece, three poems in one, moving and well crafted. Please tell me you have submitted it to at least some poetry contests, and if not, please do so.

[shap3shifter-witch]

Just wanna say how much I LOVE being asexual. Theres so much joy and whimsy to find in life when not worrying about the confines of relationship expectations.I literally cannot imagine myself any other way. I would not be the same person at all if I were not asexual. I understand that a lot of people accept and acknowledge their queerness while not considering it be a core part of their personality, but for me it is So Integral to how I operate as a human being that i consider it a huge part of my personality. Which is a good thing for me!! Just thinking about my asexuality and being confident in who I am brings me such euphoria. I love love love being asexual. I love that this is the way I am. I love existing sometimes it is so great 10/10 would recommend. Asexuals of the world, you are loved.

[mervynbunter]

You said something in “Smith” which I hope I grasped, and there was a feeling almost of recognition. An odd feeling of grief overcame me when I read it. I cannot explain my feelings any clearer. It was like hearing a piece of music from way back, except that it was nearer poetry by Graves’ definition. Thank you very much for writing it.

Terry Pratchett, in a letter to J. R. R. Tolkien, 22 November 1967

Thank you very much for your letter. The first one that I have received with regard to Smith of Wootton Major. You evidently feel about the story very much as I do myself. I can hardly say more.

J. R. R. Tolkien, in reply to Pratchett’s letter, 24 November 1967

[thesetwoutes]

This is the first I've ever seen this and it makes me wonder if it's why Pratchett was always so conscientious about responding to letters from kids.

[vaspider]

If you were wondering: in November 1967, Terry Pratchett was 19 years old.

[rock-n-roll-fantasy]

And he did in fact say on at least one occasion that it was this that pushed him to always engage with his own fans in the same kind and conscientious manner.

[mechanomorphic]

queer muppet moments i would make happen if i was in charge of the muppets:

the electric mayhem (minus animal bcs hes their kid) arent a polycule, theyre monogamous. but specifically they break up and date each other one at a time. they have a chart.

animal is genderfluid. this is mentioned exactly once bcs kermit calls her he and she starts yelling "SHE/HER!" kermit corrects himself and the show goes on

rizzo made out with gonzo once but he still considers himself straight bcs gonzo is not a guy, he's a whatever. gonzo agrees with this

uncle deadly dated tim curry. it did not end well.

actual emotional scene of gonzo talking about how he feels abt gender. no jokes.

kermit: no matter what, gonzo is still gonzo, and we're always going to support gonzo no matter what gonzo decides- gonzo: kermit. i still use he/him

statler and waldorf wedding episode. theyre divorced by the next

beaker trying to ask bunsen out on a date. in the end it turns out bunsen thought they'd been dating for years.

miss piggy hanging out with drag queens

related, miss piggy starting to present butch and kermit being Really Into It. hes embarassed abt it

pepe begins a story with "when i was a little girl...."

janice decides to start using just she bcs "like, i could never be her"

rowlf mentions having a husband. even kermit is like "??? since when??!"

actually i change my mind. genderfluid animal is mentioned a second time when dr teeth is calling for instrument and mic checks, he turns to animal and yells "animal! pronoun check!" "HE/HIM" "alright!"

[irisbleufic]

Swedish Chef neopronouns: bork/bork/bork

[thisusernameisunique]

Dr. Teeth: mic check

Mike: here

Dr. Teeth: pronoun check

Animal holds up an auction paddle with their pronouns written on

Then everyone else raises their paddles

[paranatellonta]

Grandfather’s Papercut

In the house of Grandfather Mouse hung a colossal picture of a black blossoming tree—colossal, at least, in the eyes of the four little mice.

“I nibbled its shape out of paper myself, every petal and every leaf,” said Grandfather proudly when his grandchildren asked him about it. “It depicts the happiest day of my life, and I would say you are now old enough to hear the story.”

This, of course, is something grandchildren are universally glad to hear, and they gathered around him on plump, velvet cushions and pricked up their tiny, round ears.

“There was a time when there was no greenery to hide in, no grass or dandelions, no food or fair, when fierce winds swept away grey ashes over a plain of emptiness and sorrow.”

“And that was your happiest day?” asked one of the little mice sceptically.

“It became that, when I went exploring and found a young apple tree raising its thin branches on which it was growing small, pink blossoms. I climbed onto one of those branches and suddenly felt filled with hope and joy, because, while it might have been just a single tree growing on its own, it was as if I knew the future: both mice and farmers returning to the land, litters of children and grandchildren born in safety, the farmers’ cats so overfed and lazy we’d never have to fear them.”

“We won’t fear a cat when we know Edgar!” giggled the smallest grandchild, who was thinking of their neighbour, a large tuxedo cat who spent his days either basking in the sun or giving Grandfather and Grandmother rides on his back to the market.

Grandfather smiled, and wished the children would never have to spare a thought to the beginning of his story, or to the reason why the paper was charred.

—

[Image description: Outline of a tree with fruit blossoms, leaves, and a little mouse on a branch on the bottom left, all cut out in black paper on a white background and with a rectangular black paper frame.]

[beardedmrbean]