The part of us which walks in dreams

Wolfie/Damien ~ 20+ ~ They/he ~ I draw sometimes but mostly I just vibe ~ Book of Hours has me in a chokehold

[castratedvader]

when the unresolved psychosexuality of the relationship is way better than whatever resolution it might hypothetically have and actually its own being unresolved is the crux and the paradigm of what the characters have going on between them:

[jingerpi]

imagine you're a child, you learn your queer and your parents are extremely bigoted. you have some friends on Roblox who are very kind, they're in their early 20s and they sympathize as they went through the same things as a kid. they offer to use your correct name and pronouns, maybe some even offer to buy you a binder or help you find hrt or support groups local to you

roblox rolls out their age group system, and you can no longer talk to any adults on the platform. you can only talk to people in person, i.e. your parents, who are horrid. now you're back at square one, being helplessly abused. to make it worse, you're homeschooled, as I was. you can't reach out to anyone at school for support either.

or maybe you're not homeschooled, and you ask your pronouns to be used at school. it goes well for a while, and you feel some relief.

then your state passes a bill that requires forced outing. your teachers report to your parents that you've been trying out a different name and pronouns.

they pull you from school, send you to boarding school or conversion therapy, and force you to attend private schools in the future that match their values.

you are entirely under their control. you could've made connections with other adults, ones willing to help you out. to treat you like a human, give you access to life saving care. and it's stripped away, you're alone, and everything feels hopeless.

this is the reality for many children. this is almost exactly what I went through as a child. it is not a mere hypothetical, it happens regularly. please stop falling for this moral grandstanding, it's about control- it's always been about control.

[pangur-and-grim]

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

[pangur-and-grim]

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

[pangur-and-grim]

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

[standwithdaanes]

as much as everyone loves "the power of love won't save us, we need the power of incredible violence" i'm sorry to rain on your parade but we've actually tried that about ten million times as a species, and you'll be shocked to hear the power of incredible violence, without the power of love behind it, is just brutality. the power of incredible violence has been ruling (various parts of, and then the entire) world for the past 5,000 years. ours is not that damn special.

like yes use that gun you found but WHY are you using it? on who are you using it? what would make you stop using it? is your goal to live in a world where every problem is solved by violence, or is your goal to do the violence necessary to live in a world where that necessity is unthinkable?

[vexatiousvic]

You cannot "power of love" your way out of a fascist regime 💀

[standwithdaanes]

[rabbitkinglune777]

I think more non binary characters should be fat

[rabbitkinglune777]

fat and black and brown 👍🏾

[rabbitkinglune777]

kinda tired of non binary being tied to skinny androgyny that's mostly white. I say that's as a non binary transmasc/boy thing who's fat and black.

being non binary can look like anything and anyone but especially individuals who have different body types outside of thin. they can have body/facial hair too. show up for all enbies.

[romanceyourdemons]

i’m not going to call myself “the friend who’s too woke” or hedge around my opinion because this is my deeply considered belief: horror literature is the theater of disgust, and the disgust that drives the vast, vast majority of classic horror media from the 1890s-1940s—dracula, jekyll and hyde, king kong, nosferatu, the mummy, universal frankenstein, the wolf man, cthulhu, and more—is the exact disgust that drove the worldwide tide of violence in the 1930s and 40s, a tide that has never fully receded, and you have NO business adapting a piece of classic horror media if you aren’t willing to put in the work to identify what is portrayed as disgusting in that property and enter into some form of dialogue with it. if you don’t want your movie to be “about” race or class or gender or sexuality or ability, you’re free to choose a source material that isn’t already about that, but unluckily for you giant hypersexual apes do not exist in a vacuum

[knucklecurve]

filthy, filthy read

[eruvadhril]

[urie]

stop calling it a girl dinner and call it by its formal name: Fend For Yourself dinner in an ingredients household

[queer-reader-07]

[wagyubeefs]

“the fandom has decided - ” “everyone agrees that - ” “we all know that this is the only right way to - ”

[xxxxactly]

Brutalist maze, Seattle

[3liza]

its called Freeway Park and while it is one of the most interesting single examples of Brutalism in the united states and im proud of it, it is so poorly designed in terms of public safety that it has been renovated twice(?) but continues to be geographically troubling, as its design has facilitated a lot of murders over the years. it was the subject of a funny but gruesome article in the STranger in 2002 called Topography of Terror. the city doesnt keep official tally of how many murders or assaults have happened IN the park but two men in their 30s were stabbed nonfatally during a robbery there earlier this year, for example.

[commiemartyrshighschool]

Suspect that building mazes is perhaps not conducive to public safety, outside of minotaur isolation scenarios.

[strictlyquadrilateral]

okay, like, listen. imagine if animals formed a support group for people who aren't human. and all the resources were like "for creatures with four legs" and the birds went "hey, we don't have four legs? can we be included please?" and the other animals went "oh my GOD stop making things about you. humans have two legs so you can't possibly be oppressed for having two legs." and also no one is even talking about insects or arachnids.

[fastestanhinga]

Instead of leeching off all the hard work of the four legged animals, why don't the birds make their own support group? Especially since animals like the mice really don't want to be in the same group as the hawks and eagles and owls.

And if the raptors insist on invading the space that was previously the mice's safe space, it endangers the mice and makes them not come at all to what was their support group.

[strictlyquadrilateral]

hi! i have a couple quick questions. what do you think the birds represent in my post? and which group of creatures do you think i intended to be the central focus of the post?

[bananonbinary]

this is such a fascinating example of just. not understanding how metaphors work. like, yeah, okay, real raptors literally eat real mice. great analysis. do you think intesex or ace or nonbinary people eat other lgbt people. be for fucking real for a second.

i dont know how to explain to you that whichever boogyman you think ISN'T oppressed enough here is not, in fact inherently dangerous to be around. trans men are not endangering cis women, aces are not endangering gays, intersex people who look Scary to you are literally just people. if you think being in the same room as them "endangers" you, i am afraid you are simply a bigot.

[the-real-seebs]

i also note like. if we're gonna run with that analogy: birds are in a lot more danger from quadrupeds than quadrupeds are from birds, in general. the tiny subset of birds that eat some quadrupeds are insignificant compared to even just fucking cats.

i'm reminded of the picture of a cat and some large raptor sitting next to each other, captioned: * i eat things shaped like you, but not that big * i eat things your size, but not shaped like that

[strawberry-crocodile]

personally i believe there are two things you need to be keenly aware of to write an actually good m/f romance. obviously a good writer isnt going to just plainly state them but u should be able to tell.

1. how does the patriarchy and coercion for women to be presentable and marry and be moms and serve men affect each character and this relationship?

2. WHAT DOES THE WOMAN LIKE ABOUT THE MAN

[strawberry-crocodile]

just in general i think straight men... struggle to imagine what exactly the woman is getting out of a relationship. so they gesture at "he's nice" and "he saves her" and "he's dorky" I DONT CARE IF YOURE STRAIGHT, IMAGINE SOMEONE YOU WANT TO SPEND YOUR LIFE WITH!!! also read stories written by women.

[punished-venom-solitair-e]

everyone post your biggest hear me outs my friend just showed me two conventionally attractive white men in a row i need to teach him what a real hear me out is

[gardenofeden5457]

.world's largest excavator- nay, world's largest vehicle- the bagger 288

.also, scale reference! just the wheel is 70 feet in diameter

[bigbigtruck]

quotes taken from the source

(the 4th one is Bumpus wanting dinner, friends can back me up on this)

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

come back to me most perfect of comics

[sollun-tea]

I have come across several blogs of people (especially transfems) who stated that trans men, transmascs or nonbinary people are not disproportionally marked unfriendly with the shinigami eye extension. I've seen someone even say that it's transmisogynistic to call it out.

Yet, I've come across this, side by side in broad daylight. The pink censored name is a random post and I censored the green one because I do not want anyone giving this person anymore attention.

The green "trans-friendly" post was made by a transmedical trans woman who has also made extremely horrible posts on nonbinary people, trans men and transmascs. A large number of her post targets specifically individuals who are AFAB for existing as AFAB trans folks, and she at times uses transmisogyny to excuse her behaviour. Her blog is clearly unsafe to most if not all, yet she was marked trans friendly.

The post on the right was made by a nonbinary person. I left them uncensored because their blog looks really cool and I think people should check them out. Their blog looks safe and alright yet it's marked unsafe.

And this is not the first time I've seen this. I have seen blogs by vile people who have straight up wished death on a whole group of people, talk smack about others in the commuity, and hold very horrible views but are marked trans friendly, and I've seen many get marked unfriendly because they bring up things like transandrophobia, exist as intersex, or heck, they criticized shinigami eye. Actual transphobes and TERFs are marked but then I've seen that most transfemmes I come across are marked green regardless of what they say for the most part, unless they criticize other transfemmes the they're marked red. Meanwhile, a LOT of trans men, intersex, and nonbinary people are marked red, but if they 100% agree at their own expense then they are marked green. This is why I don't trust this extension. Word of advice, rather than assuming right off the bat that the person is safe or not safe, actually check the blog. When I see someone marked red, I check their blog for myself to be sure. And when I see someone marked green, I'm still wary till I check. This extension doesn't help trans people feel safe, it only helps specific transfemmes feel safe from literally everyone else, even when they are unsafe to others.

[checkyourasianbias]

[creatingblackcharacters]

Shit, the way things are going, racial slurs, racist jokes, and the N word have become socially acceptable too. The bar, already in hell, has gone lower and still!

[so-many-ocs]

no dude it's so cool how attached you are to that character who is singled out and ostracized due to the external monstrousness that clashes with their internal spark of humanity. and i love how drawn you are to themes of horror and love, nature versus nurture, otherness, isolation, and the abject. i bet you have normal feelings about your own personhood