I am so excited to push the 3rd part of this series out. More information on the series can be found on this tumblr page or on my website here.
Click below if you'd like to read the blurb!
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
hello vonnie
we're not kids anymore.
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Not today Justin
Three Goblin Art
KIROKAZE
occasionally subtle

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

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Kaledo Art
Cosmic Funnies

if i look back, i am lost

JBB: An Artblog!
Sade Olutola

⁂
almost home
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@valerielillis
I am so excited to push the 3rd part of this series out. More information on the series can be found on this tumblr page or on my website here.
Click below if you'd like to read the blurb!
It's Agender Pride Day, here's some personal art from me
ID in alt text
🧵 THREAD: This #PrideMonth, don’t forget that the fight for queer liberation didn’t start or end with marriage equality.
💪✨ We need to keep fighting for our rights.
Here’s are a few examples:
💋 Before the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, same-smex smexual activity was illegal in fourteen U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military
👶 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t adopt in all 50 states. Before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, laws varied wildly by state.
🏳️🌈 Before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosmexuality as a ‘mental illness.’ In December 1973, a vote was successfully held to remove it.
🗳️ Before 1974, there were no openly gay elected officials. That changed with Kathy Kozachenko, who became the first openly gay American elected to public office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
🎖️ Before 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” banned LGBTQ+ people from serving openly in the military.
💍 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t get married in all 50 states. At the time, laws varied by state, and while many states allowed for civil unions for same-sex couples, it created a separate but equal standard.
💼 Before 2020, employers could legally discriminate against queer and trans employees. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Caretaker Lines!!
✮ "Stop trying to act tough. You're shaking."
✮ "When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
✮ "Hold still--I know it stings, but I have to do this."
✮ "You scared me half to death, you know that?"
✮ "I've got you. You don't have to hold yourself up anymore."
✮ "Just breathe. In and out. I'm right here."
✮ "You're going to need stitches and I swear, if you say you're fine one more time--"
✮ "Don't argue with me right now. Just let me help you."
✮ "I'm not going anywhere, so stop telling me to leave."
✮ "Can you squeeze my hand? I need to know you can hear me."
✮ "You're running a fever on top of everything else. Of course you are."
✮ "I found you on the floor. Do you understand how terrifying that was?"
As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China
cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
I feel that "lawn care" as promoted in the USA can be considered some kind of pseudoscience.
It doesn't have the conspiracy-theory-adjacent qualities of virtually every other "pseudoscience," which makes me hesitant to call it that, but the theory and method of it is still full of totally unsupported junk.
Where do I start?
I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.
Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.
The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.
Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.
Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.
Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.
The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.
Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.
"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.
Let me make this very clear: It is fully impossible to "solve" the problem of plants popping up in your yard that aren't your one favored variety of grass. You will be buying herbicides for the rest of your life, and it will get worse, not better, because willy-nilly use of herbicides is leading to plants developing herbicide resistance faster than we can come up with new herbicides.
@kidpixdeluxe-4
From my limited knowledge of ecology, "but this is what natives have been saying for YEARS" basically sums up literally all work that has been done with ecology in north america
on watching a parent age
i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening
OP, this is genuinely a masterpiece, three poems in one, moving and well crafted. Please tell me you have submitted it to at least some poetry contests, and if not, please do so.
Signs your romance subplot has absolutely no tension (sry)
♡ they meet and immediately like each other (goodbye conflict, we barely knew you)
♡ the only thing keeping them apart is a misunderstanding that one conversation would fix
♡ both characters describe the other as "beautiful" within three pages of meeting
♡ their chemistry is told not shown (the narrator insists they have spark. they don't.)
♡ the love interest has no personality outside of loving the protagonist
♡ they argue once, make up immediately, never argue again
♡ obstacles are external. they always agree with each other about everything.
♡ the rival love interest exists for two chapters then vanishes without explanation
♡ they almost kiss. something interrupts. this happens four times. on the fifth time they kiss. the end.
♡ the love interest is described as funny, clever, and kind. we see none of this.
♡ their big emotional moment is in the rain. it is always in the rain.
♡ the breakup lasts exactly one chapter before they reconcile
♡ "i've never felt this way before" said by someone with no prior emotional history
♡ both confess feelings at the same time. no awkwardness. no stakes. just synchronized emotion.
♡ their first kiss is perfect. no bumped noses. no wrong angle. cinematic and frictionless.
♡ jealousy subplot introduced and dropped without consequence
♡ they have one shared interest and it is the plot
♡ trauma bonding mistaken for romantic chemistry (these are different things)
♡ the side characters ship them loudly. this is not a substitute for actual tension.
♡ one of them dies temporarily. other is devastated. they come back. no lasting emotional damage.
♡ they end up together because the plot ends, not because they chose each other
♡ epilogue: married with children. every loose end tied. nothing left to feel.
also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.
A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde
Tips for Writing Small Towns!!
⋆˙⟡ Everyone knows everyone and they have for forty years. The history is load-bearing. In a small town, the guy who runs the hardware store and the woman who teaches third grade went to prom together in 1987 and had a falling out over something no one talks about directly. The person behind the diner counter is the cousin of the person who sold you your house. Nothing is without CONTEXT. Every interaction carries a decade of subtext. Writers often write small-town characters like they just met each other. BUT Real small-town social life happens almost entirely in implication, in what you don't say, in who you happen to be standing next to when you say it.
⋆˙⟡ The gossip network is fast, imprecise, and almost impossible to correct. Information in small communities travels faster than in cities because the network is dense, EVERYONE has direct ties to almost everyone else. But it also distorts rapidly. By the time something gets around, it may be only vaguely related to what actually happened. And correcting a rumor is exponentially harder than spreading one, because corrections aren't interesting. If your character does something embarrassing on a Monday, by Thursday half the town has a version of it, and no version is quite right. The original fact may be less damaging than what it became. This is just how information behaves in a closed system.
⋆˙⟡ People who grew up there and people who moved there live in parallel versions of the same town. Longtime residents navigate the town through memory, that means every building has a history and every corner has a former version. The old pharmacy that's now a coffee shop is still "the old pharmacy" to someone who grew up there. New arrivals navigate the town as it exists now, without the palimpsest. These two groups see each other and don't quite connect, and there's a specific low-grade tension in it that isn't unfriendliness exactly, it's more like speaking slightly different dialects. The newcomer who thinks they've been accepted into the community is usually still a newcomer in the eyes of people who've been there for three generations.
⋆˙⟡ There is no anonymity, and some people are destroyed by that. Others thrive. Being known everywhere you go is experienced radically differently depending on who you are and what your history is. For someone who is liked, trusted, in good social standing, it's warm and a safety net. For someone who made a mistake, has a stigmatized identity, or just doesn't fit, it's a trap you cannot escape without physically leaving. The family with the father who was arrested. The person who had a public breakdown. They are permanently known as that thing. The smallness is indifferent to whether it's kind or cruel to you specifically.
⋆˙⟡ People who live rurally organize their lives around weather, seasons, and land in ways that urban writers often don't account for. A bad winter IS A FINANCIAL THREAT. The soil condition matters. What the river is doing matters. Whether the deer are bad this year matters. There's a literacy to the natural environment that rural people have and that outsiders don't (reading the sky, reading the fields, knowing what certain sounds mean, knowing when something is wrong with the land before you can articulate why.) Writing a rural character who doesn't have this relationship to their physical environment makes them feel like a city person who happened to move somewhere with a longer driveway.
⋆˙⟡ There are almost no strangers, which means crime and conflict work differently. When something bad happens in a small town (theft, assault, betrayal etc.) the suspect pool is tiny and largely known. Everyone is someone's cousin or former coworker or neighbor. The person who did the thing is someone whose name you know, whose mother you know, who you've been at the same table with. This is much more psychologically complicated than anonymous crime. It's not just WHO did it, it's the rearrangement of every relationship once you know. And there's immense social pressure to not pursue it, to not break the fabric, to let it go for the sake of everyone having to continue living next to each other.
Flexible feather armor
🪽 Miscreations_us on IG
@endreal
I was born into a world that loved small things -
tiny waists, tiny bites, tiny voices -
and I arrived too much.
Too loud.
Too soft.
Too hungry.
Too here.
Girlhood was supposed to taste like cotton candy,
light enough to dissolve on your tongue.
But mine tasted like the metal of measuring tapes
and the salt of swallowed shame.
I remember the first comment -
not sharp enough to cut,
but heavy enough to bruise.
“You’d be so pretty if-”
Words shaped like a compliment,
weighted like ankle irons.
I carried them everywhere,
dragging through classrooms and sleepovers,
leaving trails like a wounded animal
pretending it wasn’t hurt.
Every mirror was a funhouse mirror
that wasn’t fun at all.
One stretched my stomach,
another shrank my worth.
I studied reflections like scripture,
searching for forgiveness
in the shape of a jawline
that never came.
Girls around me were petals -
opening, light, effortless -
while I felt like the stem, thick and necessary,
but never the part anyone pinned in their hair.
Even when boys laughed at them,
they still got to be flowers.
When boys laughed at me,
I was the joke.
Food was supposed to be just food,
but for me it was a courtroom.
Every bite called to the witness stand.
Every craving cross-examined.
I learned early how to eat in private -
how to fold hunger into my sleeves,
press appetite between pages like a wildflower
so it looked delicate when found.
There was always someone watching:
a relative with a tilted head
and a too-long gaze at my plate.
A friend’s mom offering salad
before I’d even asked for lunch.
A doctor who didn’t look at my eyes
before blaming my body
for an ache that had nothing to do with it.
I became fluent in the language of shrinking:
No thank you. I’m not hungry. I already ate.
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
A girl learns to lie
when the truth is treated as a crime.
And still-
my body grew like a haunted house,
full of rooms I was afraid to enter.
Hallways echoing with old insults,
attics stuffed with memories of dressing rooms
where nothing fit,
basements flooded with all the times
I pretended I wasn’t starving.
I learned to laugh first
so no one else could use it against me.
I learned to take up less space in conversations
since I could not take up less in the world.
I learned to disappear in photographs -
tilting, twisting, hiding behind friends
as if I could unravel myself
with the right angle.
But girlhood does not pause
for the bodies that weigh more.
I still had crushes,
still wanted to be chosen,
still wanted someone to reach for my hand
without looking both ways first
to see who was watching.
The cruelest thing was this:
people thought they were helping.
Their little nudges,
their light suggestions,
their sideways glances -
they believed they were saving me
from myself.
But all they saved
was a lifetime supply of shame
I never asked for.
But instead I write poems like this,
evidence bags filled with moments
I was told were “no big deal.”
I hold them up to the light -
the comments, the stares, the hunger -
tiny crimes committed casually,
but cumulative enough to constitute a life sentence.
Some days I feel like I’m still on trial,
called to testify against my own body.
The jury is everyone I’ve ever met.
The judge is the voice I inherited -
stern, unblinking,
asking if I’ve tried being less.
The verdict never changes.
It’s always “could be better,”
always “guilty of wanting,”
always “guilty of existing wrong.”
And yet-
when the courtroom clears,
when the gavel stops echoing
against the bones of my ribs,
I gather my hunger,
my softness,
my too-muchness,
and I step out of the witness box.
Not absolved,
not redeemed,
but standing.
Because maybe the truth is this:
I was never the defendant.
I was the crime they invented
so they didn’t have to look at themselves.
The punishment they rehearsed
because it was easier than mercy.
The body they misread
because they never learned
how to read anything with tenderness.
So I rise-
not victorious,
not forgiven-
but refusing to plead guilty
to a body that was only ever trying
to keep me alive.
And if this life is a courtroom,
then let this poem be my deposition,
haunting and unsealed-
a record that outlives the accusations,
a truth sworn under the weight
of every year I spent believing
I had to apologize
for taking up space.
And I grew up.
But the girl inside me didn’t.
She still sits in the dressing room
with fluorescent lights buzzing like flies.
She still flinches at unkind laughter
even when it isn’t meant for her.
She still measures worth in calories,
goodness in hunger,
beauty in the space between her thighs
that she never had.
And yet-
there is something sacred
about surviving this kind of girlhood.
About carrying the weight of a world
that told you your weight was wrong.
About learning to hold hunger
without letting it devour you.
I am older now-
not healed,
not enlightened,
just… aware.
I know now that my body is not an apology,
but a witness.
It remembers every comment,
every silence,
every bite I didn’t take
because someone else was watching.
It remembers,
and still it wakes up with me.
Still it carries me.
Still it tries.
Sometimes, when I’m quiet,
I think of that young girl-
the one who learned to
shrink
long before she learned to speak.
And I wish I could tell her:
You are not too much.
You are only too much
for people who were never enough.