For context: this came out in 2011 in Australia. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized until December 2017.
It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.
It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)
As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.
For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:
Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3
Post it to AO3
And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.
Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count?
A: Yes!
Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely?
A: Okay!
Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small?
A: Sure!
Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else?
A: Wherever!
Q: What if--
A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.
And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:
So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.
There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.
It's Pride month! If you're a new follower and aren't familiar with my work yet, or are looking for comics to read, check out...
O Human Star: my 2012-2020 webcomic about an inventor who wakes up in a robot body after being dead for 16 years and seeks out his former partner and the young android who shares a copy of his mind.
Meal: an aspiring chef moves to town, meets a cute girl, and tries to get hired at a restaurant that specializes in insect cuisine. Written with my friend Soleil Ho.
Across a Field of Starlight: two nonbinary teens from two very different spacefaring societies meet by chance and stay in touch even as a galaxy-spanning war threatens them both.
Adversary: A former women's self defense instructor stumbles into a messy relationship with a former student who has since transitioned. My covid-era feel-bad book. Adults only.
I also have digital versions of comics I've made over the years at my itch.io and Patreon, and signed books in my store. Thanks for your support, and happy Pride!
I'm Juan Santapau (he/him), and I make THE SECRET KNOTS, which is a series of short stories in comic form. I live in Chile. Hola.
If you've been on Tumblr for some time maybe you've seen some of these comics: the one about a city of secret names; the one with a misunderstood cryptid; the one about enshittification.
The full web archive is here: The Secret Knots.
If you'd like to support me with a few dollars every month (which helps me enormously to pay bills and keep making art), you can subscribe to my Patreon, where I post updates about every comic in progress and different extras. You can also follow for free and get notifications for new things.
Here’s the Newsletter, where I send reminders about new stories, and miscellaneous art.
I’m on Bsky and Reddit.
Here’s the PDF store, with some E-comics. Finally, here’s an invitation to the Secret Knots Discord, a community server that always brings nice recommendations, and regular sightings of the weird in the world. Feel free to drop by and say hello.
If you don't want LinkTree putting your imagery into AI... get out now
Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:
IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.
I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was
I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was
How do you do so much with three children? I have one (admittedly very, very young) child and I feel like I'm caring for him actively at all times and scrambling to do anything else. What is your secret??
There are a few!
Some are my deepest secrets, so please be kind, okay?
1. You're in the trenches - don't judge yourself right now. Caring for your first very young kid is a massive expansion of capacity/capability and represents a learning curve in which you are scrambling to level up while the game constantly changes parameters. It's tiring. However, you ARE levelling up - and as you do so, your kid will be levelling up too. You can and will be clever and energetic again. I wanted you to know this. The secret: you have to level up fast and hard when your first kid is very young.
2. I do a lot of things, but you don't always know the quality to which I do them! While people on the internet DEFINITELY expect EVERYTHING that YOU do must be of the ABSOLUTE HIGHEST STANDARD, most people on the internet are very unclear about the standards to which they hold themselves! I recently finished a quilt for a child - it is a delightful quilt that makes the child happy, but no two edges are square! I'm a poor-quality quilter. Sure, I am a working parent who finished a quilt - but it doesn't mean it's a show-quality quilt. The Secret: most people don’t share the quality of their endeavours - anyone can appear to do a lot of things if they do them all badly! - so don't judge yourself by standards of people who aren’t sharing theirs. The converse of this is: If you are overwhelmed, you can usually drop quantity or quality.
3. Okay, so some things are stacked against me: my spouse is disabled, I don’t live on the same continent as my birth family, my in-laws are in their 80s, and I never have any bloody money. But i do have a decent serious day job and some support networks. I can often ask local people for in-person help that I need, like walking my kids to school, and I have just enough money to pay for things that help me, like #4. Secret: money and friendship can tape over a lot of small cracks that would otherwise lead to big cracks. Most people NEVER admit to having EITHER… but most parents have one or the other.
4. We do have various avenues of help, ranging from paid childcare to flexible working, and even paying professionals for things around the home and garden, even if I can technically do a lot of things myself. Even though I'm strong and skilled and physically able, I don't spend all my days chopping wood and carrying water. I own a robot vacuum and an air fryer. The secret: Where possible, we spend money to buy free time.
5. People who are legitimately entitled to my attention never feel they get quite enough of it. Probably the only ones who do are Dr Glass (for whom I stay up late every night so he feels he gets time with me; see 6) and Mouse (for whom I get up early, ditto.) my older children would definitely love it if I spent more time attentively lying on the floor playing Playmobil with them. Work would quite like me to consistently Exceed Expectations. EVERYONE IN THE FUCKING WORLD WISHES I WAS MORE RESPONSIVE TO MESSAGES (take a number! No, literally, please take a number.) secret: I am definitely not doing everything. and everyone I have ever interacted with would probably prefer if I gave more attention to their priorities.
6. I am not sleeping much at the moment. I sleep about 6 hours a night. Secret: I sleep less than is recommended for health, let alone happiness. That's not good.
7. Threaded through all of this is prioritisation. I certainly sacrifice sleep for “writing.” However, I also don’t do low-priority things AT ALL. I don’t sit down to watch television. I don’t play video games or mobile apps. I don’t wander around in circles. I don’t scroll Instagram or Reddit, and I am not reading books that don’t interest me. I’m usually multitasking, and am usually either doing high-priority tasks or things that are HEALING AND FUN (drawing horsies.) where possible, i offload and delegate, and where not possible, I apologise. Sometimes people kindly recommend me books, films, music, etc - it will literally be a case of, "I can pencil in listening to that on Wednesday." Secret: I don’t do a lot of lowkey “decompression” activities / hobbies. On the one hand, I free up a lot of time by not going on Reddit. On the other, people decompress to relieve pressure, which is a luxury I don't have.
8. I quite likely have crippling ADHD, but I’m also quite high-capacity, so I just run permanently in a really high gear with little downtime or rest as my operational state. Secret: my shoulders are broad, but most people would probably prefer to drop hobbies/standards.
9. Secret: Multiple children can be easier to care for than just one. Just one child wants all your attention. Multiple children play together or can be led through activities. I often offer to have my neighbour kids over because this makes all the children happier and easier to care for (and I receive the reciprocal favour.) note this when you need to take your kid to the park (awful by yourself, lovely with a friend.)
10. Secret: bigger kids honestly do better with certain impressive-sounding activities. It sounds impossible to make jam with three kids, but it’s literally easier than watching TV with them. Making jam is an activity where every child can be given an important task. Mouse (2) washed cherry-plums for a full half-hour. Bug (5) could have pitted cherries all day (the best way to pit large volumes of things like cherry-plums is to squeeze them in your hand and pull out the stone with your fingers.) Bear (8) could sort bad cherry-plums with reasonably good judgment, and could be trusted to stir hot jam, watch the numbers on the scale, and other literate tasks. This is (emotionally, mentally, spiritually) much easier to project manage, even in a cramped little kitchen like ours, than trying to find a television show they all like. Any household task that can include a Kid Job module is gold dust in terms of childcare/entertainment. You can also invent them if you don’t have any. It’s super hard to keep Mouse out of the kitchen when I’m in it, so Mouse does a lot of small invented jobs, like “washing things that don’t need washing” or “chopping cucumber with a butter knife.” Stuff like “doing crafts” or “having an allotment” or “camping” or “visiting attractions” ditto - crafts, travel, and gardening may sound impressive, but are all things that have lots of little tasks that can really absorb kids. Secret 10b: there will be some activities with your kids, especially as they get older, that you quite like doing. Your kid may never exactly become a HELP, and it’s not likely that all of your interests will mesh, but it does count as quality time + hobby time for you.
11. There’s a saying, “With your first kid, you need lots of help. With your second kid, you get by okay. But with your third kid, you help others.” It does get easier with time. But parenting requires skills. It makes a material difference that I’ve already experienced (and learned from) a lot of specific challenges. It would be upsetting if I hadn’t! You would EXPECT someone in their late 30s with 8 years of parenting experience to have some apparently-successful coping mechanisms and a few success markers. The alternative would be unspeakably depressing. We should EXPECT some things to stack, some powers to develop, some skills to grow, and our own characters to deepen, strengthen and evolve. The secret: skills take time to learn, but they do accumulate, and it should be noticeable when someone has spent time collecting them. Parenting may never get easier - life may never get easier - but ideally we will be developing our own character alongside these challenges, and facing them with ever-more maturity! We aren’t done growing yet either.
12. The secret: My kids are pretty easy. I've been lucky. I wouldn't have had any past the first if it had been miserable.
There are a lot of secrets. People don't talk about them. I hope that hearing about my secrets is something of a help, and helps you feel better about yourself. I think you're at a very hard point, and that it will probably be better. You're being very brave, and doing very well. You'll get somewhere good soon.
"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.
The FAA had to explicitly make rules about how long pilots have to have off between shifts, and how far away from their home you can pin their home airport, because it doesn't mean shit that someone has 10 hours between shifts if they have a 2 hour commute each way. They had to make these rules because multiple passenger airplanes crashed because the pilots were exhausted from tight scheduling. Employers won't just work you to death, they'll take a hundred random customers with you.
This is wonderful. Not overdone, not mean, not sarcastic. Just enough hints to really appreciate how wonderful this is. I agree. I want more history told just like this.
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
blakekathryn
jacobvanloon
