don't even worry about it

romance & horror writer; reader of everything

[moonshinemagpie]

how this blog works

unexpectedly got a bunch of new followers by recommending an 1850 autobiography last January (I love you, tumblr), so I thought it was time to pin another introduction post

some housekeeping

I do my best to tag anything I think is kind of a bummer with "#negative," including my random rants, news stories, politics, etc. Hopefully this helps people control the mood of their dash better (so you can block that tag if you want to follow me but not when I'm in a bad mood).

Feeling bored or sad? Try looking up these tags:

#art

#tea art

#Treasure Box

#queue quirks

#Les Animaux

#Bowie the cat

#Hildy aka snugglebird

[chechula]

I visited London last month and I was so overwhelmed by all the people absorbed into this building, that I boarded the wrong train. So I got time to draw this.

[creekfiend]

I'm so glad that that truncated fucking ran-into-a-wall-at-speed tadpole-ass looking squirrel only lives in high altitude forests in Borneo bc this means I am extremely unlikely to encounter one in my day to day life. thank god

[tuftedpygmysquirrel]

Hello.

[creekfiend]

DID YOU MAKE THIS BLOG SIMPLY TO TORMENT ME

[tuftedpygmysquirrel]

I can go upside down.

[creekfiend]

WHERE IS THE REST OF YOU

[moonshinemagpie]

One trivia fact about me is that I had a trip planned to go to Borneo right before Covid happened.

I'll probably never have an opportunity to do that again. It's not important, but like 1–2 times/year I will remember that in a world without the pandemic, I got to meet the sun bears and orangutans and beetles.

Oh also Covid hit Japan before it hit the program coordinators in Indonesia. I remember telling them over Skype (not Zoom) that the trip might not work out because of the new sickness coming from Wuhan. And they were like lolololol the trip is in July we're good. Famous last words.

[madamelesfressange]

Grand staircase of the Casino de Madrid in Spain

[hungry-skeleton]

Fucked up that if you make a minor social blunder you can't ask the person if they hate you forever now because that within itself is another social blunder

[loki-zen]

has anyone considered that it was probably her house too. where else was she supposed to put her chintz?

[paperplateprose]

writing is easy! first you must explain something you do not understand, you must express the turmoil within a person using dots and lines, you must craft a living world using hands that were never made to. and then you die

[pomegranateteeth]

All the people want is vampires and a direct deposit of $5000

[wearethekat]

hii could you please reccomend your all time favourite sff books featuring politics (bonus points for court drama) , delicious worldbuilding and little to no romance (queer romance would be preferred if there is romance)? i just went through your favorite books of 2025 list and now have many new titles in my tbr. i would be really grateful for some more. thank you so much!!

Oh I also have a similar list for 2024! Best of list and hidden gems. I think I've only done a wrap-up post for those two years, though. I only joined tumblr in like 2021. Out of my 2024 list, based on that criteria I'd particularly recommend:

The West Passage, Jared Pechacek

Asunder, Kerstin Hall

Mazes of Power, Juliette Wade

Dark Woods Deep Water, Jelena Dunato

For my all-time favorites, I'm going to include titles that I think are well-known, because if I leave them out and then you hadn't heard of them that would be very sad. I'd recommend:

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine. The classic lesbian space atrocities. Foreign diplomat caught up in imperial politics.

The Warrior's Apprentice, Lois Mcmaster Bujold. Actually the entire series (like seventeen books), but start here. Bujold is on my top five most favorite authors and also criminally underrated on tumblr, probably because the covers are all horrific. I think her publisher was out to get her.

Curse of Chalion, Lois Mcmaster Bujold. Her fantasy trilogy. Also read this.

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie. The one, the only, the classic. Last survivor of a spaceship hivemind overthrows evil space emperor.

Point of Hopes, Melissa Scott. Nice solid fantasy mystery set in a secondary world with an excellent historical feel.

What We Are Seeking, Cameron Reed. Anthropological SF in the line of Le Guin.

The Works of Vermin, Hiron Ennes. Narrowly missed my 2025 list because I thought the characterization was a bit cold but absolutely top-notch baroque worldbuilding.

Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Ginn Hale. Runs a little more to romance but I really like Ginn Hale.

She Who Became the Sun, Shelley Parker Chan. One of my all-time favorites. Nonbinary lesbian seizes control of all of China.

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera. Vividly hallucinatory and gorgeously written near-modern fantasy.

Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh. Emily Tesh never misses. Child solider brought up in a space cult.

Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamad. Grimly brutal novel about nonviolence in a vivid secondary fantasy setting.

The Splinter in the Sky, Kemi Ashing-Giwa. Whiffs the ending a bit but handles the space empire colonialism better than Martine.

[romanceyourdemons]

it’s so twisted that you don’t even get a sleep do over if you had bad dreams all night, you just have to get up and go to work same as if you’d had normal dreams. i should be able to call out nightmared

[moonshinemagpie]

i was thinking today that one thing i did not understand about having a full-time job until i entered the workforce is how often you just. Go to work. Like: nightmares? Off to work. Fell into a bush and are now covered in spiders? Figure it out, and then go clock in. Witness a terrible crime on the subway? Process it after work.

And this isn't like a wahhh dystopian capitalism thing either btw. like realistically after something weird happens we should not stay home and stare at the wall for hours. But it still seems weird on many days to go to work.

[lexsreadingcorner]

📚 Library Haul! 📚

I maybe went a little overboard. Oh well!

From top to bottom:

The Black God's Drums - P. Djèlí Clark

The Guest Cat - Takashi Hiraide, trans. Eric Selland

Apartment Women - Gu Byeong-mo, trans. Chi-Young Kim

The Devil She Knows - Alexandria Bellefleur

Guillotine - Delilah S. Dawson

Salt Slow - Julia Armfield

The Midnight Shift - Cheon Seon-ran, trans. Gene Png

Metal From Heaven - August Clarke

House of Hunger - Alexis Henderson (checked out again to finish it)

A Sunny Place for Shady People - Mariana Enriquez

One of Us Knows - Alyssa Cole

The Volcano Daughters - Gina María Balibrera

I told my wife that if I go a few days without reading, they gotta hand me a random book from the stack and made me read a few chapters.

[moonshinemagpie]

me on this little sleep is looking up things like "when will typhoons 7 and 8 happen" because i forgot how weather works

[lesbianboyfriend]

it’s rotten work. to me if it’s me.

[mrkestis]

Recommendations from my favorite genre: Queer horror

The Lamb by Lucy Rose - Margot and Mama live in a cottage in the woods, and they eat ”strays”, lost people who come by their home looking for help. Everything changes when a woman named Eden shows up and mama falls in love.

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - a medieval fortress under siege, a starving people, a woman in a tower trying to create a miracle, a lady knight forced to protect her, a disgraced noblewoman looking for revenge and saints showing up in the flesh. Yep, there’s cannibalism in this one too.

Don’t Let the Forest in by CG Drews - toxic and codependent gays at a boarding school with a forest where the horror creatures they wrote and illustrated might be coming to life.

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veen - Roos lives a dreadful life with her mother, but at least she has Ruth, the ghost and spirit companion only she can see. One day she meets Agnes, a woman like her who has a spirit companion of her own, and she gets whisked away to her haunted manor.

Bunny by Mona Awad - Samantha goes to a literature class with a group of girls who call themselves the bunnies, and one day she gets invited to hang out with them and participate in their ”art”.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield - Miri’s wife has finally come back from a disastrous deep-sea expedition, but she has not come back unchanged.

[moonshinemagpie]

Tokyo is so weird... I just went to a clinic and the first thing they tried to get me to do was (1) sign a form promising not to 1-star them online; (2) sign a form promising not to sue; (3) sign a form promising not to bring my phone into the exam room. ????? Needless to say I left right away. Went to a clinic down the street that was totally normal. But wtf was that.

[moonshinemagpie]

Lying in bed in the afternoon on 3 hrs of sleep because when you work remotely in japan sometimes you work both JST and EST hours and im literally just. Fantasizing. About reading a book. Like my brain is talking to me about reading in the way people who never read sometimes talk about reading. It's going like wow imagine you open up a novel yes like a real novel with pages and everything. ink-black words and your eyes scan them. And the story. maybe it has a castle in it. It could even have kissing or a time machine. There could be a mystery that gets solved or reagan could be assassinated for real in this one. You could get really immersed. The cover might have nice art and pleasing typography. Wouldnt that be so neat