Calling ALL LGBTQ+ Creatives

I am writing a business plan for a company that I intend to create to benefit the LGBTQ+ Community, particularly those of us who are creative - especially writers and illustrators.

If you would like to help me to help you, please take part in this market research survey (it is very brief) or spread the word around.

At the moment, I cannot go into too much detail about my intentions, except I want to only employ LGBTQ+ workers, train LGBTQ+ people and give a large percentage of profit made to LGBTQ+ charities and causes.

EXCELLENT NEWS!

my redbubble is live! you can buy pins with dinosaur loaves on them!

you can have these little guys in your home! put them on your vest! or on a hat! or maybe a backpack!

Really cute!

New duffle bag with Red Fox illustration by EMStanton Design

Foxes!

I think one of the reasons a lot of cisgender people struggle to relate to transgender people is that transgender people either have been or are under threat of being emotionally and physically deprived of gender identity, gender recognition, and gender expression. That these concepts are so paramount to the human psychology, so necessary to identify a sense of self, that unlike their cisgender peers, transgender peoples recognition that their identity can be removed and forced to be something they're not from everything from appearance to peer recognition drives them to the act of seeking such expression and validation and can come across as incredibly needy, intensely desired, and sought after with such purpose that it seems almost fanatical or one-dimensional. The truth isn't that transgender people are tunnel visioned, or narrow minded, or missinformed to the concept of what a specific gender expression is, but rather hyper-aware of the lack of identity that comes with it's absence. It's for this reason, I believe, that transgender people come across as over-the-top, uniquely fascinated, and fixated to a cisgender observer who's never lacked such access to gender. If what a cisgender person is default given in infinite quantities is actually finite and limited to a transgender person, then the mere act of expression of such identity becomes elevated and cherished for transgender people, and trivial and devalued to cisgender people. This is why, I believe, that only those who've faced the obstacles of being denied fundamental aspects of their being, denied recognition in some way so paramount to personal identity, are the ones who are most capable of understanding the drive behind transgender peoples need to play around and within gender identity, expression, and recognition when offered the opportunity.

To shorten this down: it has been my observation that a major reason many cisgender people struggle to see transgender people as equals and not overly sexualized, simplistic, and one-dimensional (and in a sense "harmful") in their gender identity, expression, and recognition, is simply: privilege.

By extension, I believe this is the reason many other cisgender people find a transgender persons expression of their gender identity, and thus individual identity so charming. To those not within the realm of privilege, and thus facing obstacles in their own lives, the desire and need to flex and take something newly acquired to it's limits, to embrace to it's fullest extent, is often understood because it can be so fleeting. Ie. where a richer person would look down on a dehydrated person from drinking from a garden hose and not a glass, a starving person, though needs are different, would understand the need behind dehydration though having not been in that particular position themselves.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but this perhaps explains why I and my siblings find camraderie more often in those who have struggled to be accepted than those who haven't. Though our experiences differ in nature, they are similar (not identical) in effort and often in goal.

I think this person on reddit summed up the youtube adblocker situation perfectly. my reaction to this is not "oh man guess I'll watch ads." its, "well, I guess I'll just do something more productive with my time." I highly doubt any adblock user is going to willingly go back to watching ads. so what actually happens is youtube loses a functionally tiny amount of its userbase--because adblockers weren't even losing them a significant amount of money in the first place(!)--and a bunch of adblock users move on to something else. what a fantastic waste of time and effort

The thing that sucks about this is that it isn't screwing over the customer-base, it's screwing over the content creators. I already throw a few bucks at the creators I enjoy on Patreon, but I can't possibly do that for everyone I watch, and I can't lift their content in other ways by promoting and sharing it if YouTube makes it impossible to enjoy.

I'm not using adblocker because I hate ads or don't want the video creators to get the revenue, I'm using it because YouTube wants me to watch 30 seconds of unskippable ads just to watch a three-minute music video. There's too many other things I can be doing than putting up with that. This is going to screw a lot of mid-to-small creators, and it really sucks.

I just think that 'animals are living intelligent creatures that have feelings and deserve to be respected' and 'when done properly farming is beneficial to both people and animals and there's nothing wrong with raising and killing animals for food, clothing, and other products' are concepts that very much can and should coexist

Can’t just leave Gresley in the spotlight! Here’s some other photos from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway when I went to their Gala!

Now I know how some people can draw such good Phoenix tails being so real

it drives me crazy how humans are just meant to hold each other. how come when you hold someone's hand, your fingers just perfectly lock with theirs? how is it that when you hug someone, your face fits just right in the crook of their neck? how can your hands cup someone's face like that's their only primary function? it cannot be coincidence that our bodies are fully capable of holding another... we were designed to love

This is WILD.

Studios loooove to film in cities like New Orleans where the studios receive massive tax breaks to film there. Do y'all think any of the actors see that? Nope.

Also, like, if you're renting 2 apartments, 1 in LA and 1 in Vancouver, that's probably about $4,000/mo. right there.

Granny Weatherwax is consistently described as handsome rather than beautiful and always keeps her hair tied up tight under her hat and has no interest in romantic or sexual contact past present or future and drives a janky old car broom which she refuses to let anyone else fix or replace and is deeply practical and self sufficient in her household management and is gruff and compassionate and mentors the younger members of her community and has zero time for bullies or bigots and what I'm Saying is. Stone Butch Granny Esme Weatherwax fucking When

In the early days, though, you have toured with other bands?…

NM: We don’t know any other bands really. The nearest we got to that was The Who, where we did about three gigs with them. It’s a whole area of social life that we’ve missed out on.

RW: I think The Who are still my favourite band to meet on the road, because they’re the same kind of people as we are really. They’re not all smashers. Moony’s a smasher, but he’s a very sophisticated smasher – he’s got it down to a fine art. When he’s not smashing, he’s incredibly amusing.

NM: He’s very good company to have a drink with. A lot of people are just drunken maniacs, just lurching about, being boring.

RW: The Who like a good chat, except for Roger Daltrey.

NM: You’ve never recovered from the time he thought Rick [Wright] was Eric Clapton. It was in a band room somewhere.

RW: At the Fillmore.

NM: He came up to Rick and said, “Hello man, good to see you.” And Rick was thinking, “Shit, that’s funny”.

RW: And when he realised he slunk off, and we’ve never seen him since.

Source

@eurphrasie​  That felt rude.  Since when is fantasy not literature?!

You know, It's kind of fitting that It was Sir Terry Pratchett himself who answered this question in an interview, just going to paste this up real fast:

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

Have to say I agree with the man.

It's the casual death threat for me

Rude ass interviewer who also doesn’t know what they’re talking about: “I mean, you’re obviously a clever man, so why bother with this lowly fantasy drivel.”

Sir Terry Pratchett: “I’ll break you in half like a stick.”

I fucking hate literature snobs. I still remember the rage and heartache, shortly after Sir Terry’s passing when a paid writer for I think the Guardian wrote a piece on Terry’s work. And spend the entire thing dismissing a lifetime of brilliance, scathing commentary and humour, imagination and social issues turned on their heads all because it was fantasy. Obviously, people were pissed. We made it known on social media. The writer kind of apologised and revisited the topic after reading Small Gods and conceded on some things while still being a pugnacious snob about the whole thing. But I also heard similar sentiments while studying creative and professional writing at uni, a dismissal of genre as lesser than “literature”, it’s easy, cheap, pulpy, and even had Terry and Neil dismissed as lesser by the tutor that taught the NOVEL AND GENRE UNIT. His job to teach about genre, and all he focused on was ‘literature’. His example for fantasy was a forgettable unheard of literature bit with some ‘magical realism’ that embodied nothing of the genre itself.

It’s infuriating and heartbreaking as someone that loves genre fiction, that’s dedicated her life to reading and writing all kinds of things to see literal masters of their craft reduced to ‘oh but it’s fantasy’.

But to this day, Sir Terry is right. Think of some of the biggest stories, the most beloved, the cult classics, the biggest cultural phenomenon's, the movies and books that stick with you and still hold magic. What comes to mind? Labyrinth? The Princess Bride? Star Wars? Star trek? Lord of the Rings? HP? The Mummy? Discworld? Coraline? Good Omens? Even if these aren’t on your personal list, I’m sure somewhere is something fantastical. Maybe it’s sci-fi like Dune, or Alien, maybe it’s horror like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, maybe it’s regency romance or modern romance, maybe it’s superhero schlock or gothic tragedy, or even a war movie, but like Sir Terry says, every single one of them is fantastical, has a level of fantasy to them because that’s the nature and power of storytelling.