sunshine 'n sparks

THE BLUE SWELL  

the woman who holds the moon

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

Widows.

Fiona Wachter/Lydia Petrovna from Curse of Strahd

it's kinda comforting to me when my friends are a little annoying or longwinded or abrasive or tired and inarticulate, or they don't do the exact politest thing in every interaction, and stuff, because I know I'm sometimes annoying, or take up a more than my share of conversational space, or forget to ask them questions, etc etc, and... like, I'm always working to be nice to my friends and to get better and better at friend-ing, but it just makes me feel more human about it :}

anyway I love you friends plz know I'm not counting, in fact I feel great affection toward you even (especially) when conversations go less than Perfectly Ideal

I'm not proud to say it but this line from a 60 year old detective novel made me re-think some things about friendship

third fairy in my fairy series 🥹🎀🩵

mandatory nozoeli drawing for my birthday (05.05) !! my yearly tradition 💜💙

Kent State University

“The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]”

“There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students,[10] and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[11]”

Student strike of 4 million students! Let’s do that again lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Don’t forget that basically half the country thought the students deserved it…

Another picture from Kent State.

But it was not just Kent State, eleven days later Mississippi Police fired 150 rounds into a dormitory at Jackson State College, killing 2 and wounding 15 black protesters.

Btw half of the students killed at Kent State weren’t even protesting, they were just there

What in the absolute fuck

When the Irish guy has known about this since he was like 8, but it’s suspiciously hard for Americans to learn about…

Some of the most famous musicians in the country wrote songs about it, and it’s still obscure.

https://youtu.be/6FpakQiF2Jk?si=1m7oJRgVaTmUYm9N

My great uncle was going to school at Kent State when this happened. He told me that he woke up to a tank outside his dorm and called his parents to take him home. He also knew one of the people who was killed.

It’s not really something you forget if you’re from that area in Ohio. My high school had band camp at the Kent State campus and we would walk by the memorial showing where the students were murdered everyday. We even practiced on the field where the shooting took place one year.

The fact that this is not taught to everyone in school is vile and shows just how badly our government does not want us to remember that they murdered their own citizens while participating in something that is a human right.

we ask that the defense not say "me when i lie" while the witness testifies

I honestly cannot believe how far T(W)ERF rhetoric has spread on this site. They used to be the ONLY ones I saw openly mocking the concept of identifying as queer, the ONLY ones I saw referring to people as ‘kweer’ in a mocking way.

You all are so 100% certain you know how to identify radfem and T(W)ERF rhetoric and can’t possibly fall victim to it but guess what.

They are nowhere near above pulling this shit. And you all are falling for it.

And if you think that screenshot is an isolated incident, think again!

There are countless radfem and T(W)ERF blogs that I’ve blocked that said ‘secret radfem sideblog’ in the description.

Like, it’s great that we’ve made being a T(W)ERF so unaccepted on this site that they can only be open about the most toxic of their views in secret side blogs rather than on their main, but it’s time to accept that they’re taking advantage of that in a really fucking insidious way.

Just a tip on how to recognize these blogs. If you follow someone and you start getting suggested t*rf blogs that’s a good sign the person has sideblog for that stuff. There was some cowboy blog I followed a while ago and I used to get follow suggestions saying “this blog is similar to cowboy whatever” and it was a ton of t*rf shit and low and behold they ended up outing themselves

This is why we learn about what actual TERF ideology is. Saying “trans women are women” and “TERFS not allowed” and putting “TERF destroyer” or whatever in your bio is not enough. Learn how TERFs actually work, and what they believe, and where it stems from, and how they express diluted versions in order to warm up non-TERFs to their ideas.

Do the fucking work. Unfollow/block people who express TERF ideas even if they don’t label themselves as TERFs, challenge those ideas in your community, and you won’t have to worry about secret TERF blogs anymore.

Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

The following are some red flags I’ve seen:

And also, just so we’re clear, if YOU, the person reading this, are looking at that list and thinking “what’s so bad about ___? That’s not terfy that’s just feminism!” then congratulations, you are dipping your foot in the well, and you have some shit to unlearn before you jump in whole hog.

Learn how to fucking recognize radfem and terf rhetoric even when it’s supposedly welcoming trans women, and do your part to oust them from the queer community.

Really important and I think I missed it on the list:

This doesn’t mean “ace lesbians are TERFs.” It means that if someone’s idea of lesbianism excludes kinky lesbians or the idea that a lesbian can be abusive in a relationship or… doesn’t encompass the idea that women can sometimes be fucking horndogs? It’s leaning on some very radfem ideas about women and their sexuality, ideas that infantilize women and flatten their lives down to “innocent cherubs.”

And it’s fucking weird.

Everything everywhere all at once is a film about a girl ripping the entire universe apart just to find a part of her mother that she feels understands her. And everything everywhere all at once is a film about a mother ripping the entire universe apart just to understand her daughter. And my chest feels like it’s caving in when I think about it too long

Poll: if your mom remarries when you’re 26 years old is that guy still your stepdad or is he just your mom’s husband.

The poll winner seems to be “depends on whether you like him” which is super valid.

Mine watches fox news so “mom’s husband” it is!

My family has a great way of distinguishing between a new spouse you like and new spouse you disdain!

Your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are actually a cool person, you use their first name. So if you were to introduce them they would be: Aunt Jane and Bob.

If your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are a fuckwad you introduce them as: this is Aunt Jane and her second husband. The implication being that they are very replaceable and that we’re all just waiting for her to wise up to the situation and serve you divorce papers, she did it once, she can do it again.

MAGNIFICENT

Alright, but what if my mom on her third marriage found a decent man, but my mother herself is shitty

"my stepdad's wife"

@sapphic-sargent your tags omg

You are doing God’s work