Synthesis Collective

There are more of us than you think

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

the supreme court says that republicans get to draw electoral maps entirely in their favor and disenfranchise most of the country in enormously racist and partisan ways. we do not live in a democracy at all and yet people here are still going to spend their time screaming and crying at people for criticizing biden and whinging vote blue no matter who as if the problem is with people pulling farther to the left and not with the entire broken system.

but this election isn’t going to be won or lost because of the critiques of those who are tired of centrist politics it is going to be won or lost by an enormous and extremely targeted campaign of corruption and disenfranchisement and that should be where the priority is for those who actually care about it.

[synthesystem]

And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost

But we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost

We won't take our place on the shelves

'It's better to fly and it's better to die'

Say the wicked girls saving ourselves

Seanan McGuire, 'Wicked Girls'

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

i am going to take this minute to make my monthly plug (i’m being good and resisting the urge to spam you with this more than monthly! but you should just know i love marvel and love roleplaying and love collaborative writing with other people so so much and an enormous chunk of my brainspace that is not taken up with work and other work and other work and getting het up about racism is taken up with getting overjoyed about characters and their relationships.) for the marvel roleplaying game i play at.

it is on discord (the server is here) and it is one of the nicest rp communities i have been part of (and i’ve been part of A Lot.) the vast majority of our players are qtpoc, we do our best to shut down ooc bigotry with a quickness, and the people there are some of the most engaging storytellers i have had the pleasure of writing with.

it’s a laidback environment (centered more on movieverse than comics; you don’t need to know comic lore to join) and if you enjoy roleplaying, creative writing, superhero character exploration that actually pays attention to how identities would intersect rather than just ignoring that characters are still black/jewish/trans/muslim/etc just because they’re also mutants, come join us!

[shiraglassman]

Spirits Abroad: 15 short stories of Malaysian fantasy (REVIEW)

Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad Malaysian and Malaysian-diaspora fantasy shorts collection brings extremely intimate and personal concepts into the sphere of fantasy fiction–like unexpected difficulty in schoolwork or performing arts after being at the top of your class, or blooming into your suppressed bisexuality. Far from being the fantasy of broad, sweeping, epic stories about clashes between dynasties or magical orders, this is the fantasy about household magic, about supernatural creatures that have the same feelings and hopes and family structures we mortals do, and about one-on-one friendships and relationships. They even enjoy the simple, hedonic pleasure of food.

Other key themes of the book’s fifteen stories include Malaysia’s multiculturalism, with Chinese traditions coexisting alongside Christianity and Islam plus all the legends and fantasy creatures that are uniquely Malaysian, and women, both mortal and supernatural, interacting with their female family members, especially across the generations. I was fascinated, incidentally, by the variety of undead within Malaysian mythology, with the type of ghost varying by gender, manner of death, etc.

Some of my favorite moments:

“The House of Aunts”, which is available to read for free here, is a sweet YA paranormal romance starring a teenage vampire who lives with all the protective, overbearing yet nurturing female relatives of her family who share her condition while posing as a living student at school. At one point in the story she won’t let the Muslim boy she has a crush on share her lunch, telling him that it’s pork. (Readers: it’s not pork.) This is just so goddamn cute and grisly at the same time that it made me smile, and also is a model way to recognize ethnoreligious diversity in a spec fic setting.

“The Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life”, also available free, is about a young woman who suddenly acquires a supernatural shadow: her own self, as a teenager. Through a series of amusing or poignant moments she interacts with her old self as she travels to Japan to teach English and learn Japanese, until finally the two selves merge again and she becomes the whole person she was meant to be from the beginning. This is one of the anthology’s two stories about women who like women.

The other one is:“The Mystery of the Suet Swain”, in which a lesbian fights a demon Nice Guy. I mean all of that literally, including the demon part! The story leaves it unclear whether or not she and the “I said no to the last eleven guys who asked me out” best friend will date after the main character rescues her, but I think it’s a good story either way (and I say yes, sure, they date.)

This one is a darker moment, but there’s a part in the self-harm/self-destructive metaphor story “The Fish Bowl” where the MC is struggling with performing music she hasn’t practiced, so as a price for the magic to make her get through the piece, the titular magic fish drains blood from her in a way that shows up as four angry red streaks down her arm representing the four strings running down our fingerboards. As a violinist, this is a sharp and accurate piece of imagery. In fact when I read that line I immediately fired off a tweet to the author saying “you get us.”

There are so many other creative ideas in this book that I could go on and on — including the old favorite fantasy setting of an English boarding school but still populated by Malaysian diaspora characters, and another one where a troupe of Chinese dancers in England are secretly ghostbusters also, but hopefully by now I’ve convinced whoever’s reading this to give the book a whirl. Every once in a while I add a line to my reviews to the effect of “if you like my books, try–” and this is one of them.

I advise buying the eBook so that you can stay abreast of trigger warnings without my help, since the author has commendably included a lot of warnings and clicky-things that go to her notes and “skip this story if you don’t want to read about X” and other helpful tidbits. Obviously stay out of “House of Aunts” if cannibalism is a major squick, although I found myself craving gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat) after I read it because I am, truly, a trash can.

[writingwithcolor]

Review by Jewish mod. Note from author that the eBook contains more stories than the print edition, so you probably want that.

[al-numbers]

As a Malaysian, ooooooh….

*saves this*

[shiraglassman]

I’m so glad I was able to help you find it! Author Zen Cho is diaspora Malaysian and has written other books, so you might want to check out her whole body of work. Sorcerer to the Crown may not look like it has Malaysian characters since it’s set in Regency Britain with a Black hero and a biracial Indian heroine, but they’re in there.

But anyway yeah, Spirits Abroad is in my top favorite reads of 2016–and I read a lot.

[fireandwonder]

Sorcerer to the Crown contains a badass elderly Malaysian lady who takes no shit from white ppl and I <3 her

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

Sorcerer to the Crown is one of my favorite books I have read in recent years, and I am definitely going to check out this book of short stories soon!

[synthesystem]

What a delight! I have been impatiently awaiting A True Queen, the sequel to Sorcerer to the Crown, which comes out in March. Now I'll have something to tide me over!

[cityelf]

Concept: fantasy world where dragons are A Thing™ but instead of them being these rare, semi-legendary creatures who exist solely to terrorise and wreak havoc and mayhem and burn inconveniences to a crisp they’re like… dogs… vaguely domesticated cats…

They come in loads of sizes and it’s a common thing to hear them scritching across your roof or rummaging in your garbage. You pass by like four every time you go to the market.

There’s even some snoozing at market stalls and strays playing with children and stealing scraps of food that fall in the street, with mottled scales and mixed textures of feathers and mismatched jewel colours.

Your favourite baker has three tiny western diamondtips who are in charge of keeping the ovens fired up and don’t always eat all of the bread. Sometimes.

Linda Bagshot on the corner has a ground rooster who can’t fly but always reaches up and stretches her neck out as far as she can to try and scrounge pets as you pass her garden wall.

A local inn is named after its summer aura who is the length of the room, all careful length and soft scales, with breath perfumed like spring breeze and scales that emanate just enough warmth to comfort, just enough that you won’t fall asleep, just enough that it’s tempting nonetheless.

The school you went to has a forest guardian older than the town itself who spends all his time slowly ambling down the corridors, and his favourites are the kids learning their first letters who like to read to him, sound out letters and marks that don’t have any correlation just yet, and you know that nobody has conclusively proven that dragons understand human tongues but you also know that if anyone understands, it’s him.

There’s a festival of dragons, a public holiday where banners are strewn and candles glow even into the wee hours and rainbow confetti and paint clogs the streets and maybe some overexcited babies set things alight but that’s ok, the town prepared better this year, far fewer people will lose their gardens and eyebrows this time, they promise.

And yes ok, there are big dragons. Ferocious dragons. Dragons that only come out once every ten years to feed and pillage. Dragons who rule the seas and shake mountains, who take flight and block out the stars. There are reasons you don’t go into the woods at night, reasons some wells are avoided, reasons entire villages up and vanished without a trace.

But there are also dragons who curl up with your children to rock them to sleep, and ward off nightmares. There are dragons who open doors and fetch supplies and guide those without sight. There are dragons who mimic words and whistles and delight in your joy when they get them just right.

There are dragons who adopt orphaned piglets, kittens, lambs, calves, puppies, ducklings. There are dragons who sunbathe and dragons who need kept on ice and dragons who climb atop weather vanes in storms to conduct electricity. Dragons who sparkle like jewels in the light and dragons who glow in the dark and dragons with flora creeping in and around their scales and dragons who sound like windchimes when they fold their wings.

Concept: there are dragons.

There are so many dragons.

[lizawithazed]

[synthesystem]

[Image Description: an animated clip from How To Train Your Dragon, a long shot zooming in on Toothless, a sleek black dragon, napping on a moss-covered rock field and perking up abruptly as if hearing something. Black-bordered white text captioning on the image reads ‘DID SOMEBODY SAY...’ across the top for the first half of the animation cycle, and ‘“DRAGONS”?’ for the second half.]

[haru-desune]

Some dangerous folk

[synthesystem]

someday it might be nice to have a real date on valentine's day instead of a client

[navyasarchive-deactivated201905]

white fascist: for the glory of the white race…. we must eliminate “white genocide” and extinguish cultural mixing 

white conservative: now now, it’s proven that certain races are smarter than others while other races glorify violence and drug use 

white centrist: i’m an objective egalitarian and i believe we live in a post-racial era

white liberal: i’m an #ally to #poc but if you talk about racism you’re a russian hacker and a trump supporter

white communist: discussing racism is mere identity politics. while we’re at it, nonwhite people should learn english and immigrants need to stop taking away jobs from domestic labor. 

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

for anyone into marvel/x-men & text-based roleplaying, there is a x-men game i have been playing at a long while and we just rebooted and moved to a discord server. the majority of our players are lgbtq+ people of colour and we have an extremely low tolerance for bigotry so i have found it generally to be a Pretty Excellent place to roleplay in a fandom often dominated by terrible nonsense.

our wiki is here and our discord server is here; if you’re into marvel rp come join us!

[synthesystem]

Alright so we finally watched Split (2017 M. Night Shyamalan movie) and I can't get over how fucking awful it was. Like we 100% /expected/ it to be awful but nope it was so much worse and despite the warnings and the booze I was not prepared. I mostly wanted to see it so I could prepare to watch and critique Glass, the next entry in the series, but now I really don't think I have the stomach for that.

Is it, in fact, a steaming heap of sanist garbage that reinforces widespread negative stereotypes about a maligned and misunderstood group of people who receive virtually no positive/accurate representation in media? YEP! Is it also just a shitty film with uneven pacing, stilted dialogue (about half preachy exposition and half eDgY crAZy TalK), and bland, uninspired cinematography? ALSO yep!

I kept seeing reviews praising Shyamalan for 'accurate portrayal of DID'. I guess those reviewers think they're experts cuz they watched a powerpoint on Sybil in Psych 201 or whatever, and probably Shyamalan's 'research' consisted of the same powerpoint. He got /just enough/ right to receive praise for 'realism', when really the only believable part was the condescending, exploitative behavior of the therapist.

As far as I can tell it's not even /scary/, aside from horror from traumas that may get triggered by the content, which includes abduction, captivity, child abuse (sexual and otherwise), death, and some gore. Even the 'OMG this is in the same universe as Unbreakable?!' bit at the end is such a ludicrous stretch, unless I guess you're really into the idea of connecting disability with evil, like M. Night Shyamalan does apparently.

[prokopetz]

My advice when folks are struggling with writing in the third-person omniscient is to Lemony Snicket it up. Give your omniscient narrator strong opinions about what’s going on. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the third-person omniscient perspective must also use the objective voice; those are two separate things, and many of the most popular and successful writers who’ve written in the third-person omniscient do not, in fact, use the objective voice.

[alexandra-erin]

“Willingness to admit the narrative has a voice” is, I think, a big part of what makes young adult literature so much more engaging than a lot of books marketed at adults, particularly adult men.

[nocturnaltherapist]

“Lemony Snicket it up” is a very good phrase and very good advice

[thesylverlining]

I just appreciate seeing third-person omniscient recognized as an actual POV, because people are often dismissive of it (and yes, this is good)

[theoraah]

Understanding The Spectrum

I hear alot of people misinterpreting or misusing the term ‘autism spectrum’. So for Autism Acceptance week, I decided to make a comic to help explain the term and how it affects things. Archie is one of the reasons I became so interested/knowledgeable in autism (I like to go all out in research when I write characters for comics n such) so he’s the one presenting everything! The rest of the comic is under the cut, because I don’t want to spam ^^;

Keep reading

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

i forgot how incredibly atrociously violently shitty of a movie split was and it’s hard to say what part of it i hate the most (demonization of an already heavily stigmatized mental health condition? weirdly pedophilic overtones?) but the perpetually condescending therapist whose face deserves almost as much punching as james mcavoy always does is a Strong Contender

[afrodesiaq-deactivated20250629]

however @synthesystem has correctly pointed out that the therapist is the only believable part of this movie bc when you’re plural 95% of therapists are just complete and utter shitheels just like this.

[synthesystem]

We decided to watch this film /knowing/ it would be terrible, and yet were still vastly underprepared. I see now what other systems meant when they say it got /just enough/ (admittedly, not very much) right to be extra awful.

The therapist reminds me quite a lot of one we had a few years back. Except that ours never actually learned to tell us apart.

Fortunately, Israel mixed me a strong drink in preparation.

[synthesystem]

I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories

I have been profoundly interested in the Sherlock Holmes stories since I was a small boy. I probably could not have told you then precisely what drew me to them--I enjoyed other detective stories from time to time, but nothing else ever compared. It has taken many years, but I think I can finally articulate why those stories felt like home.

Though it was certainly not Doyle's intention to portray him so, Holmes presents, to some extent, as a queer, neurodivergent man who makes no apologies for being the way he is. I did not consciously identify with him when I was young, but some part of me recognized our kinship and resonated. At a time in my life when I was daily named a weakling, a freak, an idiot, a mongrel, a pansy, and worse by peers and adults alike, it is little wonder I took comfort in reading the adventures of a man secure and even respected in all his glorious peculiarity.

The Sherlock Holmes stories showed me that I don't have to pretend to be "normal". They showed me that I can use my differences to advantage, and indeed to the benefit of others. They showed me I could be compassionate even if I am not kind. They showed me that I can love, and be loved--unconditionally, not just in spite of being different.

[lordmeowdemort]

Tag yourself I’m 5

[deathtokillian]

7

[marlar]

3 only i would do it black line then green

[slightmayhem]

5

[you-had-me-at-hallow]

I have a headcanon that Hermione insists her children attend some primary muggle schooling before Hogwarts, just as she had done. Now, imagine Arthur Weasley attending his grandchild’s science fair, being the ultra proud grandfather….and yet also completely geeking out over absolutely EVERYTHING.

[jamiesshelves]

Canon

[themiscyra1983]

“That is a volcano, that is a VERY SMALL VOLCANO, how - young lady, how did you make this? Baking soda and food coloring? MARVELOUS!”

[worlds-of-ink-and-paper]

the kids would love him.

[bluefirecas]

Never have I ever loved anything more than I love this

[hexcoderose]

All the muggle teachers would think he was being so adorable, “pretending” not to know how potato batteries and mini-volcanoes work, fawning over the hard work the kids did on even the simplest the projects. And he comes every year, because after the kids have aged out (”gone on to some boarding school in Scotland,” the teachers say over bad coffee in the break room, “they didn’t seem the type”), he gets an honorary invitation to the fair every year, because he never stops making the kids feel smart and good. 

[elfwreck]

“And this airy-o-plane, it flies by means of a… rubber band? Did I hear that correctly? No magic at all? Doesn’t flap its wings like a bird? MARVELOUS! What an ingenious method of flight!” *looks around* “You, sir! With the ribbons! This child deserves one of those prizes!”

[hamelin-born]

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

This is so wholesome. 

Arthur Weasley, as the Science Fair attendee we all deserve.

[darthmelyanna]

After a couple years Arthur Weasley brings his own ribbons. They shimmer in a way that makes everyone wonder what kind of ink he uses—“secrets!” he tells anyone who asks—but they’re beautiful. They’re coveted even more than the official ribbons, because they remind you that while he was heaping praise on you, you felt magical.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

:D

I cherish these Wholesome Headcanons!

[darkbookworm13-deactivated20240]

it got better!

[synthesystem]

Every child deserves adults like Arthur and Molly Weasley in their lives.

[theunitofcaring]

I don't get seasonal depression, I just get slightly sleepier and more irritable and mopey when I don’t get any sunlight, but when I said this to my doctor she was like “you should still get a lightbox” and I did and now I have way more energy.  The moral of the story is, if you spend time thinking to yourself “well I don’t actually have [diagnosable problem], I have [milder version that I can just ignore]”, you could instead of just ignoring it get the accommodation for the problem and see if it improves your life. I do not expect to remember this next time I “don’t actually have the real problem”, but maybe eventually I will learn.

[reverieausoleil]

Yes! You don’t need to achieve some threshold of “legitimate” suffering from a problem before you prioritize solving the problem! You don’t need a diagnosis to benefit from treatment! The idea that someone can be sick but not sick enough to try and get better is the most bizarre form of gatekeeping and it’s everywhere. 

[reverieausoleil]

And like, it hurts people who ARE diagnosable, too. I have let multiple health and mental health problems get so bad that I nearly died, because I didn’t want anyone to think I was malingering. 

[reverieausoleil]

Obviously, treatment is inaccessible for lots of people, and diagnosis can sometimes make it more so (getting insurance coverage, doctors taking you more seriously, etc).  But that’s a separate problem from this weird insistence that declining to seek treatment is a moral good.

[synthesystem]

Heavy emphasis on the last addition from @awarmlightforall. I'm sure OP wasn't trying to suggest that acknowledging a health issue or receiving a diagnosis makes it easy to find accomodations/treatments, but that's an extremely common misconception.

Especially with mental illness, a lot of folks seem to simultaneously think A) it's not a /real/ health problem just power through it, B) why didn't you seek help before it got <some arbitrary level of severe>, and C) it's so easy to get treatment, you're just lazy/irresponsible/don't want to get better.