melodytaylorauthor

[melodytaylorauthor]

Reasons I think I could be your new favorite author:

I wear red Chucks.

I drink good coffee.

I love cats, perhaps to an unhealthy degree.

I am Goddess, older than time, Mother of All Creation, She who set the stars in the Darkness and breathed life into the Void.

I say "fuck" pretty regularly.

[melodytaylorauthor]

People are neither inherently good, nor are they inherently evil. Rather, people are inherently people. -- Terry Pratchett, paraphrased.

Not "humans are inherently good" or "humans are inherently evil" but a secret third thing (humans are inherently social animals which means that we're very good at cooperating and being compassionate towards those we perceive as being part of our community but we're also very good at being tribal and violent towards those we perceive as threats to our community and everyone defines their community differently)

[melodytaylorauthor]

Kitty!

[melodytaylorauthor]

🔥 The beacons are lit; the library calls for aid

The Trump administration has issued an executive order aimed at dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services - the ONLY federal agency for America's libraries.

Using just 0.003% of the federal budget, the IMLS funds services at libraries across the country; services like Braille and talking books for the visually impaired, high-speed internet access, and early literacy programs.

Libraries are known for doing more with less, but even we can't work with nothing.

How You Can Help:

🔥 Call your congressperson!

Use the app of your choice or look 'em up here: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Pro tip: If your phone anxiety is high, call at night and leave a voicemail. You can even write yourself a script in advance and read it off. Heck, read them this post if you want to.

Phones a total no-go? The American Library Association has a form for you: https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=23577

🔥Tell your friends!

Tell strangers, for that matter. People in line at the check out, your elderly neighbor, the mail carrier - no one is safe from your library advocacy. Libraries are for everyone and we need all the help we can get.

...Wait, why do we need this IMLS thing again?

The ALA says it best in their official statement and lists some ways libraries across the country use IMLS funding:

But if you want a really specific answer, here at LCPL we use IMLS funding to provide our amazing interlibrary loan service. If we can't purchase an item you request (out of print books, for example) this service lets us borrow it from another library and check it out to you.

IMLS also funds the statewide Indiana Digital Library and Evergreen Indiana, which gives patrons of smaller Indiana libraries access to collections just as large and varied as the big libraries' collections.

As usual, cutting this funding will hurt rural communities the most - but every library user will feel it one way or another. Let's let Congress know that's unacceptable.

[melodytaylorauthor]

[melodytaylorauthor]

Big fish dream

A few months ago, I had a huge confidence boost to my writing.

Then I had this dream.

My writer friend James and I (in the dream) were out fishing. We waded into a waist-high stream out to a platform in the middle of the water. We both put our lines in and sat in the sun. We talked about this and that, nothing really in particular. We caught no fish. We were thinking of giving up for the day.

I said, "I'm going to the car to get another bottle of water. Let's stay for just a little longer, then give up." James agreed. I went back to the car, and by the time I started to wade back out to the platform, the sun began to go down.

As I waded back out to the platform, I suddenly started to see all sorts of fish in the water. Big ones, little ones, colorful, muddy brown, swimming fast, swimming slow. I started laughing there were so many swimming all around me as I went. I got back to the platform and pulled myself out of the water.

"Look!" I said to James. He looked. "Wow!" he said.

We both dropped our lines back in, and in only a few minutes, my rod bent at a sharp angle. I started pulling the fish in, but it was soooo heavy and big, James ran over to help me. Between the two of us, we pulled in a huge, rainbow-colored fish, almost as big as me. Just looking at it, I knew it would be delicious and that we were in for a nice supper after that long day.

When I talked James about it the next day, he said, "Did I catch a fish?"

I had to inform him that he did not. He seemed upset.

I looked up the meaning of catching a big fish in a dream, and every dream dictionary I looked at said the same thing: "great fortune coming your way!"

Well. I can see why James would like to catch a fish. But he's going to have to dream that one himself.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Beautiful.

The night sky on Mars

[melodytaylorauthor]

As the Ides of March approaches, let us all remember it not as the day Caesar was stabbed a whole bunch, but for what it truly was: the day a group of organized elected representatives killed a sitting unelected dictator.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Fuck Trump.

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.

[melodytaylorauthor]

LOL not inaccurate

"I love your personality" Thanks, I've stolen the ones from every character I've loved since I was a kid and now I have a weird mix of personalities as my own

[melodytaylorauthor]

Just tried these. They helped.

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Oh hey!

Your success is not defined by your job title or your degree or your salary.

Your success is defined by whether or not you are a happy human who is good to other humans and plants and animals.

Happiness and connection are what humans need to thrive.

Salary, degree, job title -- those are inventions that mean nothing to your human soul. No wonder so many people in this late-stage capitalist hellscape are depressed.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Found it on my phone. This is insane.

hey folks if you have an android phone: google shadow installed a "security app".

I had to go and delete it myself this morning.

[melodytaylorauthor]

As has been stated many a time, no one believes they are the villain in their own story. Everyone is the hero in their own mind.

I don't trust anyone who hasn't acknowledged their capacity for evil.

[melodytaylorauthor]

write weird shit. Write indulgent au fanfiction and self insert fics. Write creepy horror scenes and random character crossover dialogue. Write in a different genre. Write that sex scene that you know won’t make the cut. Write about sentient furniture turning into werewolves that try to date your MC. Write whump or hero/villain fic. Write your kink. Write your worst nightmare. Write your delusions of power and fantasies of control. Write whatever the fuck you feel like. Write whatever comes to mind. You don’t have to share it with anyone (but you can). Your writing impulses don’t define your morality anymore than your reading preferences, and actually going outside your comfort zone will improve your writing skills (making a horrifying villain sympathetic requires good characterization). Even if it doesn’t improve your skills, that’s still something you created out of nothing. It’s still valuable. Don’t let purity culture kill your creativity. That’s how culture stagnates. That’s how writing stops being fun.

[melodytaylorauthor]

At a vendor show a few years ago, I had a friend help me booth. Not because book sales were so busy, but because between talking to folks it gets boring and there's no one to get lunch and no one to watch things while I run to pee.

So this teenager comes to my booth and gets all excited to see books, especially fantasy novels, and starts telling me how she's writing a comic book. I made encouraging noises, I do like to see other writers and give the young ones a smile and a nod, but then my booth buddy says:

"What is your book about?"

with a big, customer-service smile on her face.

I almost punched her.

Because then we got treated to a disjointed, too-excited thirty-minute info-dump on all the crazy details of this kid's book (bless her), with no actual plot premise or put-together thought of who or what the story was actually about.

I knew that was going to happen, because that's how I used to explain my stories when I was that age. It's awful. If you're doing that, please stop. I learned better, you can learn better.

I watched my booth buddy's eyes slowly get wider and wider, and her customer-service smile slowly grow more manic as this kid just kept rambling on and on. I didn't even have to keep encouraging her, my booth buddy had put a quarter in the kid and couldn't get off until the ride wound down.

When the kid finally left (didn't buy a book, but hey, that's the name of the game), my friend looked at me and said, "holy shit."

"Never ask a neophyte what their book is about," I said. "They have no elevator pitch."

She didn't know what either of those things were, so I got to give a little lecture on the definition of neophytes and elevator pitches. Being a nerd, I liked that.

She has not asked ANYONE what their book is about since.

She's been a great booth buddy.

[melodytaylorauthor]

I hate that we need this, but here it is.

Adult Transgender Legislative Risk Map, November 2024