Bones Reblogs

[creatingblackcharacters]

On that anon asking about Black music artists and bands I have a few reccommendations!

- O. Children: really amazing goth music, Black lead singer, they aren’t making music anymore but what they’ve put out is amazing

- Overthrust: a death metal band from Botswana (Botswana has a real cool metal and rock culture, just real fun to look into outside of listening to it)

- Jhariah: an amazing Black alternative artist, I love all of their music, I grew up listening to them to be honest

- Sepultura: Brazilian heavy metal band, one of the main singers is Black, their music is epic

- Filth: another amazing metal band, I believe from somewhere in America, one of the singers is Black, and they’ve got a real cool album called “Southern Hostility”

- Loathe: yet another metal band, but they’re actually metalcore band I’m pretty sure, one of the main singers is Black and their music is less headbangy and more smooth and sad

- Zulu: an all Black metal band, their music very cool, I personally like their song “Protest Song ‘68”

- Move BHC: really epic metal, main singer is Black and their music is very political (in a good way) it really helps when the world feels like it sucks to put them on and just feel the anger

- Living Colour: of course! We have to include them, my favorite band of all time, I got to see them live recently actually :D their music is funk metal- just so amazing

- Public Enemy: for people who aren’t as into metal but still are into political and well worded music, their music is great (I’m sure everyone knows since they’re so popular lol but I felt like I needed to include them)

- Mon Rovia: really great folk music that still has a political undertone, I especially like his song “Heavyfoot” it addresses a lot of current issues in a tactful and beautiful way

- This isn’t a specific artist but “Dinner Party: Dessert” is an amazing album that has so many talented Black artists on it, my favorite song is “From My Heart and My Soul”

- Also not a specific artist but the whole Sinners album (both theatrical soundtrack and score)

- Also not an artist but the “Summer of Soul” documentary’s album, just chefs kiss

- Meshell Ndegeochello: AMAZING MUSIC, my favorite album is “The Omnichord Real Book”

- Burna Boy: need I say more? I will, his music is absolutely beautiful and I’d recommend it to anyone who asked

- 24-7 Spyz: funky heavy metal, their music is amazing, I so recommend!!!

- Tyler, the Creator: just an amazing artist! Recommend his music lots!!!!

- Stevie Wonder: obviously! He got so popular for a reason! His music is amazing

- Vieux Farka Touré: Amazing music, my favorite song of his is “Diaraby Magni”

- Soul Glo: an all Black hardcore band from Philadelphia!! My favorite song of theirs is “Gold Chain Punk”

Ok so I may have written way too much I apologize

Hope this helps anyone trying to diversify their music tastes, ESPECIALLY metal fans, there are always Black people in all music forms, stop saying “oh there’s no Black people in metal” YES there is!!! And their music is amazing!

Thank you for the recs!

[orpheuslament]

i will personally never understand that thing people do when theyre like "i thought this was a good piece of art until i realised its fetish/pornographic" like why does art lose value if the artist was a little horny when they made it. why is that so scary. im sure a lot of the old masters were doing portraits of their lovers slightly bricked up & theyre still displayed in museums. why is sexual arousal not an acceptable source of inspiration when like every other emotion is. well i mean i know why sadly but i do not like it so i'll continue to complain about it

[reblogsforthebones]

Also the idea that people can only react to fetish/porn art with arousal, the idea that something made from horny will perpetuate horny forever, is so annoying (especially as someone who does not experience the horny). Like First of all "I like this because it makes me horny" is a perfectly valid reaction to art. But even more so, you cannot tell me that the only way to react to horny art is with horny.

I am looking at the picture of the shirtless trans man because his pose is powerful. I'm looking at the trans woman with a prominent bulge because the shading in her face is transcendent. I'm looking at the sexily posed plus sized model because whoever drew her put so much thought and effort into making sure the gravity and the rolls fell exactly like they would for a real person and that's so impressive. Hell I'm looking at any hand fetish art because god damn they can draw hands and that's hard.

Look at fetish art, because the people who love those things often put way more effort into making them real, and because things labeled fetish art are disproportionately about minority/oppressed groups and I will NOT be made to feel ashamed of enjoying good art that centers cool and interesting people instead of random Conventionally Attractive White Person #963794805

[elierlick]

An all-transmasc Ironman trio just won 3rd place in a major men's triathlon, beating over 200 other men's teams. 🏊‍♂️🏃‍🚴‍♂️ Trans men win men's competitions all the time, but nobody pays attention because it doesn't fit the mainstream narrative. I think we should celebrate their victories, too! 🏆

[xfhsfh]

@this-is-trans-joy

[this-is-trans-joy]

This is trans joy!!!

[ariaste]

The Fantasy Romans book, at last

So excited to reveal the cover to my new book today, The Wisdom of Emperors! You can check it out on Kickstarter, along with the full summary!

Inspired by the story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, The Wisdom of Emperors is a second-world adult fantasy novel written in the style of a fictional academic text. It documents the translation and study of a world-changing artifact discovered in an archaeological dig: a manuscript which provides the clues to finally unravel the mysteries surrounding one of the most famous emperors of the ancient world. 

The Kickstarter campaign is for the deluxe collector's edition, but you'll be able to preorder the standard hardback/paperback, PLUS the early-access ebook, available to backers well before general publication to everyone else. And there's going to be some really, REALLY cool merch as well (genuine papyrus bookmarks, designed and blockprinted by my own hands!)

Anyway, the Kickstarter goes live on May 5th at 4:00pm EST, so if you are the sort of person who reads news articles about major new archaeological discoveries and gets SUPER MAD that they don't tell you absolutely everything about why it's important and what it changes about what we thought we knew..... this one's for you, babe. ;)

[ariaste]

Also I was told by a publishing industry insider that this book probably wouldn't sell because publishers are explicitly saying that they don't want "challenging" books, they want books that (and i QUOTE) "aren't necessarily making readers think"

So if that pisses you the FUCK off, sauce me a signal boost.

[clemensmfingbailey]

THEY WHAT NOW??

[reblogsforthebones]

God WHO IS SAYING THAT

[windowz97]

girl who sat next to me at the coffee shop had that Tortured By Computer Work look in her eye so i turned to her and was like Are u doing research? and it turns out she (white) just started working as an indigenous liaison for an ecological wellness surveying company (hired bc she worked with the local nation for a year) so i was like OMG can i share resources with you. and whipped out my 1 million notes and academic papers on ethical Indigenous-settler relations/research and Indigenous perspectives on ecological restoration. she was like omg are u sure this is basically a whole course for free and i wanted to tear my shirt off liek YES!!!! I WANT TO PROMOTE LOW BARRIER EDUCATION TO ADVANCE DECOLONIZATION AND RECONCILIATION!!!!!!!!!!! STEP IN2 MY GOOGLE DOC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[windowz97]

here's a googoodrive folder containing learnings on Experiential Learning in Ecological Restoration annnddd Research Practice in Indigenous Contexts. each course folder contains a "![Course number] Notes" document as well as PDFs of all the text-based readings that the notes draw from :-)

i plan 2 make accessible the learnings from my other classes too but i think ill only have time to do all that anonymizing & reformatting once i graduate in a few months lol

[anthonyhurd]

What’s your number 1 take away from 2025? Mine is clearly this: We’re not going anywhere.

[theelectricdreamsofddx]

Hey, wanna make music? Yeah? Got a buncha money? No? Well that's perfectly fine, check this free stuff out:

Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)

Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.

Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.

Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.

The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).

BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.

Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.

Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.

This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!

sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.

Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.

Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.

Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.

Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.

Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.

Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.

Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.

MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.

Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).

Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.

ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.

UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.

Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.

TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.

Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.

Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.

Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.

fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!

WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!

aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made a while back :P

As for DAWs, it's been a long while since I've used anything other than FL Studio (not counting Audacity, which I still occasionally use for specific purposes), which, while being the only one I can directly recommend, is paid. However, I've heard good things about Reaper which has a "free trial" that you can technically use forever, akin to WinRAR. Additionally, I've also heard some good things about Waveform Free.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hello fellow non-Black tumblr users. welcome to my saw trap. if you'd like to leave, please name one (1) Black woman author who is not Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, or N.K. Jemisin. bonus points if she's published a book in the last five years.

[evegoldenwoods]

For my own future reference, and for anyone else who wants it, a list of authors mentioned in the notes. (I cannot promise this is comprehensive, there are a lot of reblogs and I might have missed some.) I've included a link for each author, where possible I've tried to find one that leads you to their books, prioritising own websites/publishers, falling back on wikipedia otherwise.

If you find any mistakes in the links let me know and I'll edit. This post will be in two parts, because I literally broke tumblr with how many authors there were. I think it's about a hundred and fifty.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé - speculative fiction

Marguerite Abouet - graphic novels

Elizabeth Acevedo - fiction, poetry

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - fiction

Tomi Adeyemi - young adult fantasy

K Ancrum - speculative contemporary young adult

Lily Anderson - fiction

Ashley Antoinette - fiction

Ama Ata Aidoo - poetry, fiction, plays

Kemi Ashing Giwa - speculative fiction

Kalynn Bayron - young adult, fantasy

Malorie Blackman - childrens' books, young adult

Natasha Bowen - fantasy

Gwendolyn Brooks - poetry

Natasha Brown - fiction

NoViolet Bulawayo - fiction

Constance Burris - speculative fiction

CL Clark - fantasy, speculative fiction

Wahida Clark - urban fiction

Lucille Clifton - poetry, fiction

Alyssa Cole - romance, thrillers, graphic novels

Kamilah Cole - fiction

Claire Coleman - fiction, essays, poetry

Maryse Condé - fiction, non-fiction, plays

Emma Dabiri - non-fiction

Edwidge Danticat - fiction

Angela Davis - philosophy

Carolina Maria De Jesus - memoir

Hayley Dennings - fiction

Tracy Deonn - fiction

Nicky Drayden - speculative fiction

Tananarive Due - horror, comics

Camille Dungy - memoir, poetry

Esi Edugyan - fiction

Zetta Elliot - childrens' books, teen fiction, adult fiction

Bernardine Evaristo - fiction

Conceição Evaristo - fiction, non-fiction

Eve Ewing - poetry, fiction, non-fiction, comics

Radna Fabias - poetry

Namina Forna - young adult fantasy

Latoya Ruby Frazier - non-fiction

Stella Gaitano - fiction

Camryn Garrett - fiction, middle grade

Roxane Gay - fiction, non-fiction, comics

Nicole Glover - fantasy, speculative fiction

Nikki Giovanni - poetry, essays

Jewelle Gomez - fiction, plays

Annette Gordon-Reed - non-fiction (history)

Pumla Dineo Gqola - non-fiction

Deanna Grey - romance

Yaa Gyasi - fiction

Andrea Hairston - fiction

Lorraine Hansberry - plays

Saidiya Hartman - non-fiction, theory

Alexis Henderson - dark speculative fiction

Adriana Herrera - romance

Talia Hibbert - romance

bell hooks - fiction, non-fiction, poetry

Pauline Hopkins - fiction, non-fiction, plays

Nalo Hopkinson - speculative fiction

Jordan Ifueko - comics, fantasy, young adult

Samantha Irby - non-fiction

Justina Ireland - science fiction, fantasy, comics

Meka James - contemporary and erotic romance

Tiffany D Jackson - young adult

Beverly Jenkins - romance

Alaya Dawn Johnson - speculative fiction

Micaiah Johnson - science fiction

Mariame Kaba - non-fiction

Petals Kalulé - fiction, poetry [Petals is noted as using she/they, I'm not 100% sure of their gender identity and past a certain point it feels weird to investigate too much]

Mikki Kendall - fiction, non-fiction

Jamaica Kincaid - fiction, non-fiction

Zaire Krieger - poetry

Nella Larsen - fiction

Karmen Lee - romance

Kirsten R. Lee - young adult

Margot Lee Shetterly - non-fiction

Audre Lourde - poetry, non-fiction

[evegoldenwoods]

And here's part two:

Terry Macmillen - fiction

Robin Maynard - non-fiction

Amber Mcbride - poetry, young adult

Janet Mock - non-fiction, screenwriting

Brittney Moris - comics, young adult, fantasy

Bethany C Morrow - fiction, science fiction, young adult

Leila Mottley - fiction, poetry

Beatriz Nascimento - non-fiction

Leticia Nascimento - I think non-fiction primarily

Gloria Naylor - fiction

Zora Neale Hurston - fiction, non-fiction

Grace Nichols - poetry

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu - fiction

Trifonia Melibea Obono - fiction

Shirlene Obuobi - comics, fiction

Nnendi Okorafor - science fiction

Melatu Uche Okorie - fiction

Chinelo Okparanta - fiction

Helen Oyeyemi - fiction

Nell Painter - non-fiction

Morgan Parker - poetry, non-fiction

Nikki Payne - romance

Koleka Putuma - plays, poetry

Claudia Rankine - poetry, plays, non-fiction

Sarah Raughley - young adult

Dia Reeves - fantasy, horror, science fiction

Kiley Reid - fiction

Stacy Reid - romance

Djamila Ribero - philosophy

Legacy Russell - fiction, non-fiction, poetry

Layla F. Saad - non-fiction

Sofia Samatar - fiction, non-fiction

Liselle Sambury - fantasy

Analeigh Sbrana - romance, fantasy

Namwali Serpell - fiction

Ntozake Shange - plays, poetry

Christina Sharpe - non-fiction

Nisi Shawl - fiction, alternate history

Jamison Shea - dark fantasy/horror

Patricia Smith - poet

Tracy K Smith - poet

Zadie Smith - fiction

Sister Souljah - fiction

Kiki Swinson - fiction

Mildred D Taylor - young adult/children's lit

Katerina Teaiwa - non-fiction

Teresia Teaiwa - poetry

Angie Thomas - young adult, middle grade

Leah Thomas - non-fiction

Spike Trotman - comics

Tloto Tsamaase - science fiction

Nikki Turner - urban fiction

Maxine Tynes - poetry

Ngozi Ukazu - comics

Shola von Reinhold - fiction

Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ - fiction

Jasmine Walls - graphic novels

Alice Walker - fiction, non-fiction, poetry

Jesmyn Ward - fiction

Monica West - fiction

Phyllis Wheatley-Peters - poetry

Rita Williams-Garcia - young adult, middle grade

Stephanie Williams - comics, non-fiction

Tia Williams - fiction, romance

Raquel Willis - non-fiction

Jamila Woods - poetry

Jacqueline Woodson - childrens' books, young adult, fiction, poetry

Alexis Wright - fiction, non-fiction

Zane - erotic fiction

Fiona Zedde - fiction

[bespectacledbunnys]

Attica Locke - Mystery/Thriller Fiction

Oyinkan Braithwaite - Fiction

Isabel Wilkerson - Non-fiction

[leebrontide]

Hell yeah!!!

[ahundredhundredheartbeats]

Hey non-Black people this is not an ally test! You don’t win an ally badge if you can name another author! It’s a reminder to seek out more diverse reading material AND a reminder to acknowledge the underrepresentation of Black women in the publishing industry!

[musicforyourplants]

[boy-matt-deactivated20181204]

*slams reblog*

[ariesaav]

Klezmer dolphins.

[willcub-deactivated20180521]

I don’t know that I’ve reblogged anything faster in my entire tumblr life.  

[onceuponamirror]

honestly they’re better than the band that played at my bat mitzvah

[bebx]

Reblog if you have contributed to the 17 million fanworks posted on Archive of Our Own ♡

[tidesofsilence]

[exasperatedoctopus]

Blackwork Millenium Puzzle + metallic gold thread, because I apparently love to cause myself as many problems as possible when trying out something new

[superspecial-awesome]

Every instance of yugi saying "Jonouchi-Kun" i could find in s0. Use it wisely

[dragkingsrule]

King of Drag Renewed for Season 2!

‘King of Drag’ Renewed for Season 2 at Revry (EXCLUSIVE)

Realit competition show "King of Drag" as been renewed for Season 2 at LGBTQ+ streaming service Revry.

[m-kyunie]

A living deity’s unparalleled will

[mastertobunso]

"are we going to have an issue if i am gay or whatever else you're calling me? we're all humans"

[saintemiliosandoz]

y’all really recommend books like: title, there are gay characters, enemies to lovers, young adult, written by poc

not once do i ever see a summary

[mycoolstoryworld]

What more info do you need?

A SUMMARY

WHAT DO U MENA SUMMARY WHAT ELSE MATTERS ITS GAY POC AND ENEMIES TO LOVERS HOW OFTEN DO U CONE ACROSS THAT

i want to know what its about mainly. is it a romance? is there plot besides the romance? is it realistic fiction? sci fi? fantasy? historical? future? alternate history? whats the tone? what are the themes? what are the main characters’ NAMES?

I- it’s gay the gay

i value queer characters too. but i also want to know WHAT THE BOOK I’M READING IS ABOUT.

[marzipanandminutiae]

“GAY AND/OR RACIALLY DIVERSE” IS NOT A GENRE. nor is it an indicator of quality

do you know how many times I’ve been recommended a book solely because “it’s queer fantasy!”

do you know how many times those books have been so poorly written that I couldn’t finish them

[captainlordauditor]

Mostly, I want to know the tone. A 19th century war story isn’t gonna do it for me when I’m in the mood for a lighthearted austenesque romance - and those are both historical. A star warsy space romp isn’t gonna do it if I want to read about interplanetary political negotiations - and those are both sci fi. A fun gratuitious don’t-think-about-it-too-hard action story is not the same as a dark and complicated mob drama. A suspenseful thriller will bore me if I’m looking for a fast paced spy novel.

not providing a summary literally just shows how you treat marginalized people and their representation as this token woke thing that you can show off like a shiny trophy. no, people aren’t going to read something just because it has representation! that’s not how it works!

[the-uncanny-dag]

Artist bio by Anna Daliza

[ariaste]

okay, I’m concerned that maybe folks are using the word “summary” in different ways here and that there might be a misunderstanding what folks are asking for.

For those of you who are in the “????? but why????” camp, let me explain: You are not being asked to write your very own book report. You are being asked to please go to the book’s Goodreads page and copy-paste the Official Description into your post, or copy it out from what is written on the back cover/dust-jacket flap. That’s it! That’s all. The book description (“cover-copy” as it is called in the biz) is a marketing tool, and it’s one of the best marketing tools a book has because it’s been precision-engineered to convince people that it’s a cool and interesting story. Just add that to your posts! It will take an extra 2 seconds.

You don’t have to STOP saying “Here are the tropes, and btw it’s gay”, because yeah, some people DO find that to be the thing that tweaks their interest – but I bet even those people read the official description before they buy the book. So if you actually want people to listen to your recs and be persuaded to read your new favorite book, including the cover-copy when you talk about it saves them a step of having to look it up themselves. You might say, “Oh but they’re just being lazy, why should I do the extra work?” – Because it’s YOUR new favorite book, hon! And because how many times in your life have you heard a book rec and vaguely thought, “Oh, maybe i should look that up later” and then straight up forgot? Trust me, including the cover-copy makes it stick in somebody’s head WAY more than just a list of tropes.

But hey, it’s up to you – maybe you don’t really care about whether or not people listen to you and read your favorite books, and that’s fine! But if you DO want to persuade people, if you DO want to support under-appreciated and/or marginalized authors… This will help. This one little addition will genuinely help.

(For a bonus-level: Include the book cover as well. The book cover is an even more powerful marketing tool!)

[reblogsforthebones]

As an anecdotal example, I recently read the Iron Widow series. It is FANTASTIC. Its premise is largely inspired by a show that the author and I had similar feelings about, and the moment I read the summary I bought it.

But my friends had been telling me to read it and sending me reels about how cool it was for literal years and I only read it this month.

Why?

Because they kept saying: non-binary author! Love triangle that ends in an ot3! Setting inspired by ancient China! Best seller!

And NONE of that made me go - aha this is something unique to this book that I personally would enjoy, that tells me about the tone or themes of the book.

Had you asked me before I read the actual summary, I probably would have guessed that it was a realistic historical China setting that was pretty much just intense political maneuvering by a woman who wasn’t allowed to hold on to whatever power she had after her husband died doing anything she needed to keep her social standing and ending up with not one but TWO hot men who thinks she’s super cool.

For those of you who actually know what iron widow is about, please see the problem with using this ao3 tag system for characters I do not know in a setting I have no ideas about.

For those who might not, here is literally only the FIRST SENTENCE of the good reads summary:

“The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall.”

???????

There are giant robots? There are aliens? We’re partaking in a fantasy war?

Setting is VASTLY different from what I assumed, and that changes many of my expectations for the book.

And the second sentence of the summary:

“It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.”

OH

Oh now that’s interesting! We have themes already! This is clearly, being called iron widow and with my knowledge that it resolves with a love triangle with one woman and two men, going to be deeply saturated with feminist ideals and female rage, an idea that is strengthened and expounded upon as the summary goes on.

I won’t put the whole summary here since this is an example and not a pitch, but I hope this explains a bit about how tags and summaries serve different functions.

The summary tells me about what is unique about the book, about why I should read this book over any other book that has the same tags (not that it’s a competition between queer books, but a matter or personal taste and also current mood). Tags only add real value and staying power if I’m already interested in the material—if I’m hesitating to read a book because I’m not sure if the rep will be to my taste and someone says “oh the author is non-binary!” Then that might sway me—but only to read a book that I’m already interested in, NOT to dive in and read every single thing they’ve ever written.

Because it turns out that queer is NOT a genre, and there are so many diverse people under that label and we all have such different tastes, assuming that we should or, worse, have to love something because it’s queer is a dangerous game. Because that leads to people trying to moralize not liking queer rep (“I didn’t like it so it’s not good” instead of “this wasn’t what I was looking for”) or attacking anyone who raises issues with it, personal or otherwise, and dismissing any critique or less than enthralled statement as plain homophobia.

You are allowed to dislike queer books. You are allowed to look for more in your media than simply queer rep. You are ALSO allowed to pick up and read a book just because it has a queer character and that’s the only thing you know—I’ve been there! And sometimes it’s a hidden gem, and sometimes I spend more time complaining about the writing and characters to my friends than I do reading.

In fact you’re allowed to do whatever you want. But be aware that people are looking for different things in media, and a lot of the time “queer”, while a lovely bonus, is not actually the end all be all and people want more before they will look into a specific thing.

[bdalak]

the more i talk w/ leftist friends the more i start to realize that they think culture is only defined by food or "traditional" (i.e. "ethnic") garb and nothing else

mentioned how white americans do in fact have a common culture and they genuinely thought i was joking. culture isnt something only granted to the Cool People of Color. just feels like among progressive groups there's this dichotomy created in which only the virtuous oppressed minorities have culture and anyone who is privileged some sort of void cultureless being

[reblogsforthebones]

Relevant funny story:

My brother (we are all Very White) is currently dating a really cool lady from Tanzania (they literally started talking at an airport because they were wearing the same expensive leather boots, it's ridiculous). When they were first starting to get to know each other she asked about books and stuff that he grew up on, and he told her about this audio series--hank the cowdog.

And her response was "cool, I'll check it out. I want to know more about your culture"

Which led to my brother texting the sibling group chat telling the story and ending with "is hank the cow dog my fucking culture?"

Which has turned into a hilarious phrase we all repeat a lot, but more importantly made us all go. Huh. Yeah, actually. The things we grew up with, the things that shaped us, the things that were produced for us, that we shared... that is our culture. Even if it's sometimes funny to think "wait. Is hank the cowdog our fucking culture?"