Hello! (Finally getting around to doing this lol.) I’m fairly new to actually using tumblr, and not just viewing other people’s posts, so have mercy on me as I learn what the hell I’m doing lol. DMs, feedback, and advice welcome!
ABOUT ME 🖋
Name: Ren or Rune
Pronouns: They/Them
Age: Physically tired, mentally still kicking (20s)
Hobbies: Writing, reading, drawing, photography, video games, and I’ve dabbled in cosplay. I love crafting things and learning new skills.
Favorite punctuation: Ellipses… [I’m sorry, in advance.]
And I’m aroace as fuh. 💚🤍🖤🤍💜
MY WRITING ⚔
Primarily write new adult or adult fantasy of the character driven variety, and include many human and non-human characters (vampires, demons, fae, and other immortal beings...). [Disclaimer that the demons I write are not of the religious variety, and could just as easily be called fae or aliens. I just chose demon as a catch-all term. They are non-human and quite varied and/or inspired by mythical creatures.]
🏳🌈 Naturally, many of my characters are LGBTQIA+ in some way. And a good number of my non-humans do not necessarily follow human constructs (of sex and gender and all those lovely things).
🔥 I’ve started dabbling in romance and spicy content. I may not be sexual, but some of my characters definitely are, so, y’know. Tumblr of spice: https://www.tumblr.com/runewilde.
Twitter of spice: @RuneWilde. [18+ only, please]
I do try to post content warnings for any potentially sensitive topics. Feel free to let me know if I miss any.
Many of my current WIPs take place within the same universe.
I actually do like poetry in the times when I’ve been forced to write it lol—which might sound strange. It’s not something I typically write in my spare time, but sometimes it just happens…
WIPS
🔥 Playing with Fire
(1st person retrospective, character driven, adult, fantasy) Includes morally grey characters galore, dark themes, and family struggles. Alcander’s younger years as he grows into a notorious killer—with the help of a few bad influences—and digs himself into a deep hole he may never escape.
🐺 The Hunter’s Dog
(1st person retrospective, character driven, adult, fantasy with some slowburn romance) After the events of Playing with Fire. It took nearly 200 years, but Alcander starts to realize how deep of a hole his past self dug. Just when he can no longer see any way out, he meets a Hunter willing to give him a hand [kinda sus]. Can the Hunter pull Alcander out or will Alcander drag the Hunter down with him? [I do have 2 chapters of this posted on Medium, but I plan on majorly reworking it, so… lol.]
🧛♀️💘 Untitled
(3rd person, adult, fantasy, historical romance) How Alcander’s parents, a demon and a vampire, fell in love in the early 1800s despite opposition. Claudia Revell was never one for doing as she was told. So, when her father tell her demons should be avoided, the headstrong vampire waltzes directly into the demon district to find out why. Little did she know she'd find herself entranced by the very beings her father despises and doing everything in her power to keep it a secret.
It can only end well.
Various Shorts:
I have a few different short form projects… Most are character driven, many are episodic, and so far all connect to the same main world (all the main characters tend to know each other in some capacity).
Reluctant Service [18+] (3rd person, M/M, erotic fantasy… I hesitate to say romance for reasons lol) Another spicy short fic, involving Leon (asexual) and Eras (some sort of sexual). There will be other shorts with them, but I haven’t decided a ‘main title’ for the stories involving them. They have a rather dark dynamic at it’s core, so be warned.
Untitled [18+] Tales of an incubus sex worker [Alcander’s uncle, Lysander]. Will be spicy and potentially have dark themes at times. Definitely will be more episodic. [I need more confidence with this genre and subject matter, before I feel capable of writing this lol.]
Definitely some shorts involving Alcander, spicy or not, that aren’t necessarily going to be included in his main WIPs.
One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.
Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.
There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!
the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."
bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.
I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!
Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”
And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.
America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.
basically the best thing any character can do is decide they don't want to be afraid anymore - in fact they never want to be afraid of anything ever again - and take action so drastic they fail to realise that this too is a decision motivated by fear. or to account for the Consequences of that.
[with obvious perverted intent] hey. don't you want to release the safety catches on that character. don't you want to flip off all the switches holding them back and let the control rods go.
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
I can't access the full paper, but their conclusion is right there in the abstract:
While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds
I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study
after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines
et voila
and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)
my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on
this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏
BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos
the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise
ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!
Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹
we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos
the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you
power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,
the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis
and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.
Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp
thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.
Shout out to my mom who explains my transition as "Having a daughterpillar turn into a Boyterfly". It doesn't erase the fact I was an adorable little girl, and also affirms my gender now. I love my mother.
@everything-you-feel-is-real I know by tumblr tradition that I'm to say "impossible, my posts never blow up like that," or "please don't do this to me."
But I feel in my bones that you are right. If this is to be my wife's moment of glory, I am willing to suffer notification overload, that the world may know she is funny. #MyFunnyWife
Someone on Facebook (redacted for privacy) writes this about the Canvas Shinyhunters hack:
"I know the Canvas ransomware attack is terribly inconvenient for many people, and sorry if that means you. I, however, am finding it farcically amusing.
For years and years faculty have been pushed to use Canvas. All courses get a homogenized and flattened interface and everything is presented as an easy consumer experience in a one-stop shop and it doesn’t matter if you object to any of that or don’t want to spend 50 hours dealing with an annoying tech product that doesn’t fit your pedagogy. Even communicating with students has been shunted through Canvas. And if you resist any of this, woe betide you. In fact you can’t print syllabi any more even if you wanted to—unless you pay for your own paper, ink, and printer (which I do).
Now Canvas has been taken down by ransomware, tomorrow is the last day of finals week, and YOU are supposed to scramble and solve this problem, using magic. That includes adjuncts who are not even paid a livable wage and faculty who might have hundreds of students.
This is a failure of a tech platform that was forced on us, and the university administrations nationwide who expect you to move heaven and earth are the same ones who are actively undermining their own institutions’ degrees by leaping into bed with AI companies before they even get their pants all the way off. These administrations (and this includes almost all of them) are not *ignoring* the destruction of education and academic integrity by AI—they are actively participating in it by forcibly inserting AI into student life, university email systems, etc. They are literally giving students software designed for cheating and cognitive dependency for free and applauding its use. And they think you are supposed to materialize a magical solution to this Canvas mess to ensure grades are in? Like between dinner and breakfast you are supposed to recreate everything you had to put in Camvas for an entire semester in some nonexistent other platform?
We just got an email telling us to “communicate directly with your students via email or other available tools for any immediate course needs.” How? Also, we should “Consider alternate methods of submitting assignments digitally or completing assignments in person on Friday” LOL what? So, individual faculty member, grab some No-Doz from the truck stop because in the next 12 hours or so, you must materialize a way for your students to take an online exam! Hope you own a server! Oh also you will have to rewrite the exam because you wrote it in Canvas and you don’t even have the questions anymore! Or just tell the students show up on campus tomorrow for an in-person exam—I hope you brought your personal printer!—and I hope nobody else scheduled anything at the same time, with no coordination! Then sit back and listen to the students tell you they already went home to Wyoming or Guam two days ago.
This is ludicrous. It is a problem created by overpaid administrators who have never had an idea that wasn’t sold to them by a software company and who now expect you to abracadabra a solution even as they are pushing chatbot accounts onto the same students so they can learn as little as possible through the degree.
Think about it this way: thousands of US colleges and universities with millions of students are paralyzed by this Canvas takedown. That means that the presentation of course material has been homogenized at thousands of universities for millions of students, all by U administrators whose inflated salaries are rationalized by their “leadership” skills despite doggedly insisting on doing everything like everyone else does. And they think the solution to a problem of this scale is for alll the individual instructors involved—some of whom they don’t even provide offices or computers!—to literally overnight recreate 16 weeks of records, rewrite assignments, contact dozens or hundreds of students, and set up on-the-fly alternative examinations. It’s stunning, really. Their judgment about AI is just as solid."
