Rhosyn Goodfellow

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

If anyone has any recommendations give them to me please!

Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am

Don't forget Aliette de Bodard! Especially her Xuya and Dominion of the Fallen series.

Zen Cho is my other favorite - Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, and also Black Water Sister.

When you finally won the battle of opening up your WIP to edit but your brain is fighting you on touching the document so you’re in paralysis like

three stages of life:

1. there are monsters under my bed.

2. there are monsters in my head.

3. i am the monster now.

"We'll fix it in post" is a phrase from the film industry, but it is inherently funnier when it's spoken by a writer because--tragic--you are also the post-production team.

tag the oc who would make somebody those breakfast plates where the eggs and bacon form a smiley face

☽ 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔠 𝔞𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔠 (x) ☾

I am going to take a deep breath and just remind you:

Writing is messy, even for the best authors. It's supposed to feel a little uncomfortable, exhilarating, freeing, natural, and terrifying.

It's supposed to inspire you and feel like a too-heavy backpack.

Sometimes, you're going to love being a writer and sometimes, you'll feel so disconnected, you'll wonder if you were ever a writer to begin with.

Give yourself room to make mistakes and hate your work and return to it with renewed confidence that yes, you will get 1% better next time.

It's what we're all going through. Let's speed up the growing process a little by accepting the entirety of it.

"Why did you stop writing this story"

Because my focus is a very heavy irregular boulder rolling down a uncharted hill and when it comes to a stop I got a snowball's chance in hell of shifting it at will.

"When/will I continue that story?"

Ask the boulder, it's down a ravine somewhere down thataway.

What I really want is a bait-and-switch "ancient aliens" documentary that starts generically with the narrator ponderously asking questions out loud over pictures of hieroglyphs with filters then the rest of the documentary is entirely intricately tracing out the racist roots of the conspiracy theory.

the woman who holds the moon

prints available here. my cover for this month's issue of baffling magazine.