Bear Blog

Hi, I'm Sasha Hanton (She/Her). I'm a writer and woman of colour (Eurasian heritage). I have a Bachelor in Journalism from Bond University but I'm not a practicing journalist, I write predominately Urban Fantasy though I dabble across genres. I like a lot of things and different mediums for storytelling including Comics, TV shows, Cartoons, Books, History, Mythology, Video Games, and Ice Coffee! Here on tumblr you can expect to see a lot of reblogging of things from fandoms I love... and about things I find interesting, along with short stories and blog posts from my main website. My nickname to family and friends is bear. Author of It's All Magic To Me

[thebearthatreads]

Writeblr Intro

Hi, so I've been a part of tumblr for quite some time but I've only really begun to be active again in the last month or so. I figured given my long absence perhaps it was time to introduce myself and open up to connecting with other writers here.

So who am I?

My name is Sasha Hanton (She/Her), I'm the author of It's All Magic To Me which was originally released in May 2022 (Re-releasing as Polishing Magic in May 2025). For a long time, I struggled with openly describing myself as a person of colour, coming from a mixed-race background it's always been a bit strange figuring out how to define myself. However I now feel more confident in how I describe and define myself.

I'm Australian but I have Eurasian heritage, meaning my family come from a combination of Asian and European backgrounds. I know some people don't like the term Eurasian, and that's perfectly fine you don't have to label yourself with something you don't identify with but for me, I'm proud to call myself Eurasian. My family have identified as Eurasian for more than three generations now, and we've always been proud of our mixed ancestry (feel free to ask me more about this if you're interested).

Coming from a mixed background I like to bring that mix into my writing, injecting influences from a variety of cultures and mythologies. Whilst I'm a cis, heterosexual, neurotypical woman I try my best to be an ally and am always happy to bring more diversity into my writing and to read more diverse stories (if you know any good books by diverse authors please send me your recommendations I'm always happy to build up my tbr).

My writing

Currently, I'm in the limbo of waiting for feedback on projects and I generally try to stick to having one WIP on the go at a time (as otherwise I'm prone to overwhelm) . Predominately I write urban fantasy, generally with new adult-aged characters but written to be middle-grade and up friendly. Here's a quick breakdown of my works:

It's All Magic To Me - This is my novel, originally published under contract in 2022 but now out of contract and out of print but I will be re-releasing it in May 2025 under the new title Polishing Magic. It follows Willow, a university student, who discovers she has magical powers and goes on to be taught how to use them by Sphynx, a cat. Urban Fantasy inspired by the likes of Buffy, Charmed, Sailor Moon, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Themes involve family, responsibilities, and friendship. Venatores de Mythos Trilogy - My major WIP at the moment, I've written drafts for all three books but am waiting on feedback for book 1 before continuing editing. Urban Fantasy, follows three different characters who are all recruited by a mysterious agency that hunts and tracks down mythological creatures and artifacts. Globetrotting features a mixture of languages (Arabic, French, and Spanish with the main composition being in English). The main characters are from varying cultural backgrounds, each wildly different from the other with their own reasons for agreeing to join the agency. Percy Jackson kind of vibes. Chimera - Currently in the process of writing the first draft. Inspired by a short story I wrote for a recent competition following a mixed race, mixed species, witch and her family who are being hunted for parts. Dark Urban fantasy based in Australia, will feature lots of mythological influences. Adult because there's body horror, probably going to be some explicit sex scenes (not sure yet), and just generally dealing with heavier/darker themes. The Short Story Press Collection - A collection of short stories, currently available as an e-book on Amazon or in print (the print edition is newer and contains more stories than the e-book). Stories cover a range of genres from sci-fi, fantasy, gothic horror and more. Customerpocalypse - My first novel, currently available as an e-book on Amazon. Post-apocalyptic fantasy, written during a time when I was struggling with my mental health and it shows. If you've ever wondered why in post-apocalyptic video games there are NPCs who work in what's basically customer service then this might be for you.

Please shoot me an ask if you'd like to know more about any of my writing projects or about me. I'm hoping to share more on my WIPs here and to engage more, so please feel free to tag me in tag games!

You'll also see plenty of shares from fandoms I'm part of here, I have no intention of segmenting my Tumblr into two separate accounts so my apologies if you get spammed with Fairy Tail posts or DnD stuff (or anything else).

If you'd like to follow me on other social media or want to find my books here's a link you can follow for all of that: https://bit.ly/m/SashaHanton-Links

[thememedaddy]

[the-final-sif]

So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or

Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.

[straawberries]

can ppl pls reblog this version

[herssian]

online numbers can really fuck you up when it comes to your creative work because you're sharing something you worked on with all your heart but it's very important to remember there's actual people behind those numbers. even if it's 1. that's one whole actual person. that's a human being who said "haha nice". that's a connection with a REAL person with a REAL life and REAL thoughts and feelings and experiences. like. damn. that should mean something

[thebearthatreads]

May Birthday

Well, it’s that time of year again when I celebrate another revolution around the sun, that is it’s my birthday. As you may have noticed it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update here on the blog, so what better time for it than now? My writing is currently progressing well with Chimera having crossed the 80k words mark, there’s still some plot beats to cover but I think this first draft…

May Birthday

[lost-in-eriador]

in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.

[plotsjotsandespressoshots-deact]

Remember in 1993 when Jurassic Park was like…the end all, be all of special effects?

[suicunesrider]

not gonna lie that still looks intimately real

[drtanner-dickery]

I’m still somewhat convinced that someone sold their soul to create the special effects in Jurassic Park because that shit is over 20 years old and it still really, really holds up, better than the stuff in a lot of current movies, even.

Fucking witchcraft, man. 

[fanboyingoverdemigods]

fucking look at this shit though

[mauridianhallow]

Literally see this post flying around with a few different responses added to the bottom each time so I’ll say it for this one myself:

THEY ACTUALLY BUILT A GIANT MASSIVELY DETAILED FUCKING ANIMATRONIC T-REX FOR ALL OF THIS THAT’S WHY THE EFFECTS ARE SO GOOD. CAUSE IT AIN’T CGI. AND IT AIN’T GUY IN A COSTUME. IT’S A BIG FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR. AND EVERY PART IS DESIGNED TO MOVE. IT COST LIKE HALF THE BUDGET OF THE FILM.

[mizushimo]

amazing

[shadowthorne]

And they had the film it in small increments, especially in the outdoor scenes, because the rain fall kept soaking into the ‘skin’ of the rex and would slow down and mess up its movements. So they would stop filming and have a crew out there drying off this massive, fake dinosaur, and then they’d start filming again until it was too wet. Repeat until the end of the scene.

[mad-dyspunktional]

They used animatronics and detailed costumes for most if not all of the dinosaurs in the first movie.

The triceratops for instance, was also animatronic.

And the raptors were dudes in suits. I shit you not.

[datneeks]

One of my favorite anecdotes I’ve read on tumblr is how the t-rex robot from Jurassic park would malfunction while it was drying out. How did it malfunction, you might wonder?

Motherfucker randomly started moving.

So apparently if you were on the jp set you would sometimes hear people screaming bloody murder even though they were all well aware that it was a giant animatronic puppet and wouldn’t actually, you know, eat them.

[muck-raker-deactivated20181222]

(link to said post about malfunctioning t-rex)

[alessariel]

Did not know this, had to reblog for awesome movie history insights.

[brainsforbabyjesus]

So, I knew about the animatronics bit but I did not know the raptors were guys in suits and the malfunctioning t-rex sounds terrifying.

And i just googled malfunctioning t-rex and was not disappointed. Apparently in order to put the skin on over the steel frame a guy had to crawl inside the t-rex while it was turned on and glue the skin down. And if somebody turned the t-rex off or the power went out the guy in the t-rex stood a very real chance of getting mangled and killed by the hydraulics.

So of course, the power goes out.

And this guy is still in there gluing the skin down.

Apparently the way to survive getting sheered to death by huge sheets of metal while you’re inside a giant t-rex robot is to curl into a ball and hope for the best.

And this guy hoped for the best and got it.

Some other people on stage pried open the t-rex jaws and glue guy crawled out of its mouth and was totally okay.

[alessariel]

This is getting better and better.

[red-dirt-roads-deactivated20161]

I think they only had like 6 minutes of CGI

[teslasturtle-deactivated2023011]

I’m just waiting for the T-Rex to come to life and leave its stand.

[perspectivemax-deactivated20181]

@spinosaurus-the-fisher is this the kind of content you love?

[myloverhammurabi]

Realism comes at a cost, it seems.

[gorsime]

i mean ok but why has nobody posted this:

[myloverhammurabi]

It’s a three piece raptor suit.

[flamingbluepanda]

Old movies had the best special effects

[skafuller-deactivated20180122]

The thing about this that gets my special effects nerd going is the fact that EVERY single dinosaur was sculpted by artists based on the current existent archeological evidence of the time.

[witwitch-deactivated20160508]

@jurassicparkandrecreation

[senkirowolf]

@shepfax

[prettyarb]

Even better than that, this movie ADVANCED our best understanding of dinosaurs at the time.  They were blowing out a budget bigger than anything Hollywood had ever seen, and along with employing almost the last hurrah of incredible physical FX, they had a bank of those newfangled digital SFX computers.  Nobody’d ever really created convincing dinosaurs in a movie before.  It’d all been stop-motion animation, and even when the models were exquisitely crafted, you could just tell there was something OFF about them.  Spielberg wanted THE BEST DINOSAURS EVER, and he figured on using the cutting edge of digital modeling and animation technology to build them for him.

So they got hold of some of the best paleontologists they could find and said, “We want you guys to take this tech that your labs could pretty much never afford and use it to build us the most realistic, accurate dinosaur models the world has ever seen.”

The paleontologists knew an opportunity when it bit them in the ass.  They plugged in everything they knew about dinosaurs, all the skeletons and their best guesses about soft tissue and all that.  And when they’d created those dinosaur models, they had the computer start moving them as they realistically would with anatomy like that.  One guy took a look at those walking t-rexes and velociraptors (really utahraptors, but whatevs, fam), and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen movement like that before.”

He called up film of a chicken walking.  Everyone in the room said, “Holy shit.”

Prior to 1989, the idea that birds were descended from dinosaurs existed–we knew about archaeopteryx, we knew there was some minor connection there–but the idea that DINOSAURS LIVE IN THE MODERN WORLD AND THEY ARE CALLED BIRDS was not pre-eminent.  Jurassic Park changed our scientific understanding of dinosaurs.

[thebearthatreads]

Kyoto Summer Days

It’s been a while since I put up a blog post, even longer since I wrote one on travel, but considering I recently got back from my honeymoon in Japan it seemed like the perfect chance to write something. And yes, that’s right this trip was my honeymoon (newsletter subscribers will get a little sneak peek at wedding photos and details of the day). However, this post isn’t about my wedding, it’s…

Kyoto Summer Days

[fluoresensitives]

Personally I hate AI because it uses slave labor, is killing the planet and is making people stupid, but that's just me. The soulless art aspect is just one little piece of my grander disdain.

[vro0m]

My mom has tick-borne encephalitis. She's a shell of herself at the moment.

This is a reminder that there is a vaccine (that she did get and still she's been sleeping about 18 hours a day for a week so far) and you should definitely get it if you live anywhere that's highlighted in red on this map and you go outside and/or have pets that go outside, because this virus is truly terrifying, trust me.

Source : Im, J. H., Baek, J. H., Durey, A., Kwon, H. Y., Chung, M. H., & Lee, J. S. (2020). Geographic distribution of Tick-borne encephalitis virus complex. Journal of vector borne diseases, 57(1), 14–22.

[vro0m]

For the record she's the second person I know who's gotten it this year, against literally zero person in my entire life so far so be careful.

The other person I know who's gotten it has been in the hospital for weeks and he has cognitive issues that might never go away.

I hope my mom won't. But she's not been thinking right, she struggles to write, she loses her balance when she walks, and I have to repeat everything I say to her twice because she doesn't get it the first time.

Get the fucking vaccine. The number of ticks has been increasing steadily due to climate change, and it's truly a public health issue. Protect yourself.

[dogwithablogofficial]

Are you an Australian English speaker?

Yes!

No!

I wish / I'm bald / show results

Voting ended onAug 16, 2025

If you are an Australian English speaker, please consider taking part in this survey for my Linguistics PhD study!

You can also go into the draw to win one of five $50 gift cards :))

[sendhelpthankyou]

I have a message for anyone who uses Ai to generate their writing or uses Ai to edit their work. Your own work is good enough. You are talented enough to do it alone. that one sentence may have been bad or that one section of dialogue may have sounded robotic. But you can fix yourself. I believe in you. You don't need Ai to do great things. you are great all on your own.

[armengoldira]

[creepymutelilbugger]

[stealingpotatoes]

found out i wasn't born with any skills and the things i'm actually good at are the things i do a lot and didn't quit on. this sucks

[beardedmrbean]

[warcrimesimulator]

no actually i don't think antivaxxers' kids should die from a disease. i don't think gun advocates' kids should die in school shooting. children dying is bad actually, even if they're children of people you don't like.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Part of "Children are not the property of their parents" is "Children should not suffer for their parents' decisions."

[bravehyde]

You need to move off of Google Docs!

I know some people have seen the news recently and may be doubtful of it. To the uninformed, Google Docs has started using AI to find "inappropriate" and "problematic" content, scraping your documents and deleting it. I know some people are unsure if this is real or think this is not going to affect them.

I regret to inform you that this is real.

As I was on a call with some writers and we were moving our documents as a precautionary measure, one person discovered entire pages missing that they did not delete themselves. This is happening to us, it's not a hoax or a rumor, it's happening right now. You need to move everything if you want to preserve it.

If you're a writer with writer mutuals, please reblog this so they know. I rarely write on Google Docs anymore, but I started my fanfics on there, and I would be devastated if I lost works more than ten years old because people decided marketing appeal is more important than creative freedom.

EDIT READ THIS: https://www.tumblr.com/bravehyde/790422701153157120/hi-can-we-have-any-sort-of-source-about-the

Post by @bravehyde · 1 image

💬 0  🔁 0  ❤️ 0 · What Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs · hi !! can we have any sort of source about the google d

[55five]

Be a teachable individual YOU DO NOT know everything