Just a reminder about fatphotoref.com—it exists!! I'll be updating with new photos next week and hopefully more regularly after that. Request access by going to bit.ly/fpraccess 💙🧜‍♀️ happy mer may!

It is not Mermay anymore, but the moment I saw these mermaid poses, I knew I wanted to paint one of them for exercise :D So last night I finally managed to do that. Colour-wise I wanted to do something inspired by Yuming Li, because their delicate balance of colours is so incredibly fascinating, and I want to understand it.

Fantasy books written by women are often assumed to be young adult, even when those books are written for adults, marketed to adults, and published by adult SFF imprints. And this happens even more frequently to women of color.

This topic’s an ongoing conversation on book Twitter, and I thought it might be worth sharing with Tumblr. And by “ongoing,” I mean that people have been talking about this for years. Last year, there was a big blow up when the author R.F. Kuang said publicly that her book The Poppy War isn’t young adult and that she wished people would stop calling it such. If you’ve read The Poppy War, then you’ll know it’s grimdark fantasy along lines of Game of Thrones… and yet people constantly refer to The Poppy War as young adult – which is one of its popular shelves on Goodreads. To be fair, more people have shelved it as “adult,” but why is anyone shelving it as “young adult” in the first place? Game of Thrones is not at all treated this way…

Rebecca Roanhorse’s book Trail of  Lightning, an urban fantasy with a Dinétah (Navajo) protagonist has “young adult” as its fifth most popular Goodreads shelf. The novel is adult and published by Saga, an adult SFF imprint. 

S.A. Chakraborty’s adult fantasy novel City of Brass has “young adult” as its fourth most popular Goodreads shelf. 

Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, an adult fantasy in a world based on Mughal India, has about equal numbers of people shelving it as “adult” or “young adult.” 

Book Riot wrote an article on this, although they didn’t address how the problem intersects with race. I also did a Twitter thread a while back where I cited these examples and some more as well. 

The topic of diversity in adult SFF is important to me, partly because we need to stop mislabeling the women of color who write it, and also because there’s a lot there that isn’t acknowledged! Besides, sometimes it’s good to see that your stories don’t just end the moment you leave high school and that adults can still have vibrant and interesting futures worth reading about. I feel like this is especially important with queer rep, for a number of reasons. 

Other books and authors in the tweets I screenshot include:

TLDR: Women who write adult fantasy, especially women of color, are presumed to be writing young adult, which is problematic in that it internalizes diversity, dismisses the need and presence of diversity in adult fantasy, and plays into sexist assumptions of women writers. 

Never forget the amount of hate R.F. Kuang got for explicitly stating that The Poppy War, one of the most triggering books I’ve ever read, should never be shelved as YA. She did so out of extreme concern of the content getting into the wrong hands without warning.

And then two days later Jay Kristoff said the same thing about Nevernight…and nothing happened.

I am very explicit about the fact that the protagonists of my urban fantasy romance have *graduated college* and one of them *owns their own business* but I'm still fully expecting some asshat to ask me why I put multiple explicit sex scenes into my 'young adult novel'.

It's because my protagonists are 25 and finding yourself doesn't just happen when you're a teenager, *especially* if you're queer, actually.

Vote like it's 2024, not 1864. #VoteBlue

“feverishly obsessed with hamlet after reading it once in twelfth grade english” is just as important and embarrassing of a phase as emo/scene/anime and should be acknowledged as such

me at age 15 writing fall out boy lyrics in my math notebook is genuinely the exact same as me at age 18 writing hamlet’s final speech in my personal journal

This Week on: Sonic The Hedgehog

Is no one gonna elaborate?

Short explanation: if Sonic's clone is a girl it means that sonic could be afab

Long explanation:

In Sonic The Hedgehog 2 there was a glitch were Sonic's palette would turn green and black, the fans named it evil sonic/ Ashura the hedgehog

Archie's artist Ken Penders turned this concept into a character named Scourge The Hedgehog, aka anti-sonic; a sonic from a parallele universe, bizzarro style

He was a fan favorite but Penders wasnt really the best (Google Ken Penders lawsuits to check) and gived a lot of problems to Sega and in the end the Archie comics had to stop because of him, and now IDW pubblish sonic comics, and due how messy Archie sonic was, now Sonic Team has put a lot of rules of what the writers can or can not put in the comic.

Since they cant use Scourge anymore; IDW made a new character based on the green sonic glitch:

Surge the Tenrec; a clone of sonic made by Dr Starline! And since she is a clone and a girl; accidentally implies that sonic may be afab

Trans Sonic is real. Unleash the memes.

All my mutuals and followers should get to see this

trans sonic? on my dashboard! it's more likely than you think

Okay but the real question here is how the clone of Sonic the very much a hedgehog is A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANIMAL

Plenty of highly intelligent people end up getting sucked in to cults because they just wanted people to hang out with. There are antivaxxer nurses. Your ability to act on empirical reason breaks down fast if your social and emotional needs aren't being met.

Like, I reject this idea that people end up becoming tradwives or antivaxxers or cult members because they were dumb. These groups prey on people by filling the social and emotional needs of vulnerable people. They look for people who need help, and give it to them on predatory conditions.

Fucking around with astrology does not introduce some sort of idealogical poison to your brain. That is ridiculous. Some people turn to astrology because they want a sense of agency in an increasingly atomized world. Some people get into astrology because the night sky is pretty. People /believe/ in astrology because they have some underlying desire to believe in astrology.

High control groups will trawl astrology communities looking for the despondent directionless mfers with few community ties. This trick works even better on college campuses, which are full of despondent directionless mfers with few community ties.

I am frustrated with this idea that participating in ostensibly silly things somehow lowers your psychic defense stat, as if it's a video game. That's now how indoctrination works. You are mistaking a correlation for a causation.

This is also how sad lonely men become incels. People *need* community. We're literally social animals evolved to rely on others around us.

This is why purity culture actually reinforces the very things it claims to fight against: If we drive people out of leftist spaces because we deem them too flawed, it just takes one fascist saying 'hey *we* won't do that to you so they're obviously the enemy' to turn someone who could have been an imperfect but real ally into the sort of person who would cause violence and harm.

All this about not getting to see John Lennon on twitter but I think the real tragedy is that Freddie Mercury never had an instagram

if you want to actually start to end homelessness, you need to give homeless people unconditional homes, including when we use them to do drugs or sit around drinking. either housing is unconditional or it isn’t

someone sitting at home alone, an active alcoholic, squandering your charity, drinking all day is better situation than a street homeless alcoholic. someone using drugs in your charity house is better than them doing the same w no shelter

most of you would not like most street homeless people, I definitely don’t and didn’t when I was street homeless. for every one person who uses unconditional shelter to turn themselves around, someone else will do jack shit and very slowly, if ever, work through the issues that made them homeless, will maybe never be able to live independently. still better than street homelessness, still worth doing. ultimately either you believe that shelter should be universal or you don’t

homeless people actually can’t be rehabilitated if you want to end homelessness. we either affirm the right to shelter for the worst drunken, lying, filthy, cheating, self destructive homeless people that exist, genuinely irredeemable wankers, or we concede that shelter is not a right

This post is the distilled essence of everything I believe in.

A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

"wow i never knew punk was old time slang for f*g" speak for yourself. some of us were Actually no i can't finish this post. does anyone else remember 2014 pop culture film hit captain america and the winter soldier. from marvel studios.

Truly one of the worst things about punk being distilled into simply a fashion aesthetic is people forgetting that punk was an ideology before it was anything else.

An idealogy born out of a time period where conformity was VIOLENTLY policed to the point where breaking the mold in any way, including gender and sexuality, was genuinely dangerous.

My punk forebears didn't suffer violence and exclusion to become a trending fashion tag on SHIEN.

the older i get and the closer i am to reaching 30, the more the people around me try to deny me my age. it’s a constant ‘oh you’re just turning 29 again teehee 🤭’ or ‘dont tell your SO that, he’ll leave you for a younger model 😉’ and i just???? hate it?????????

i spent my entire teenaged years fighting for my life. i crawled through the deepest pits of my depression to cling to the promise of a life beyond that pain. i was so convinced that i was going to die young, that i would never see the grace of my age starting with a 2, let alone 3.

so im going to turn 30, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop me from loving it.

this post was up for like five minutes and already im being told how wrong i am

fuck you, you can kiss my 30 year old ass

You know what? I needed to read this today

As someone who's going to be turning 34 this year-

Fuck those assholes for age shaming, be Thirty Flirty and Thriving!!

Live it up! Seize your happiness! Love yourself!

FUCK YEAH!

There is not enough money in the universe to make me want to relive my 20s. They started with a severe breakdown that took me a year to even begin to unravel, included 5 years of aimlessly thinking I had failed at life before my trans egg cracked so hard I could no longer ignore my desire to physically transition. 25 got me my formal diagnoses of EDS and autoimmune disease, 26 got my diagnoses of AuDHD, and it was only 2 and a half years ago that I finally got my undergrad degree at 28.

My 30s are shaping up to be the best decade of my life. Heck, I'm celebrating my 31st birthday this year by going to a fucking convention and am already planning 2 cosplays.

If you think your peak ends at 30, what's the remaining 61% of your life????

While we're on the subject of Paris Is Burning...

Y'all should look into the Dorian Corey Project right here on Tumblr.

The Dorian Corey Project is a small online collective dedicated to preserving Black queer history. I found out about them a few years ago and I greatly appreciate the work they put in to honor Dorian Corey's history while so much of the dialogue surrounding her as a person tends to sensationalize her situation. They currently have a campaign running now until June called Gender In Real Life meant to "Highlight the efforts of (hyper) visible Trancestors and Ancestors whose life work inspires Black LGBTQIA people today." (The website will be up soon, too <3) Go over and show them some love and appreciation for the work they do!

"Imagine a world where instead of raindrops falling from the sky, bombs rain down, and instead of soothing lullabies, the sound of warplanes fills the air. This is the harsh reality for my children, Lama (8) and Hussam (5), and their soon-to-be-born sister. We live in Gaza, a place where hope seems to fade away.

I'm Hamdi, their father, and I feel the heavy burden of ensuring a better future for them.

War has taken away my job, our home, and the very essence of our existence. We now live in makeshift tents, sharing what little we have in this besieged land. Yet, amidst all the destruction, my wife's pregnancy brings a glimmer of hope.

Her growing belly symbolizes hope in this bleak environment, but I can't help but worry about the world we're bringing our child into.

Friends in Egypt have offered us a chance to escape this nightmare, but the path to safety is blocked by a daunting barrier: the border crossing demands $5,000 for each life to pass through.

I plead with you, don't let my children become victims of war.

Your contribution, no matter how small, could be the key to unlocking a future free from fear and filled with opportunities.

Your assistance could mean the difference between life and death for my family. With your help, we can secure safe passage out of Gaza and begin the journey toward a better future. A future where peace and prosperity prevail.

Thanks for your support, and I'm grateful for any help you can give me during this difficult time."

Reblog if I can spam you with boops

sweetest post ever??? 😭

I unironically hope that my hubby and I are still cosplaying together in our 60s.

Fandom elders are so precious and important.