#Black Centre)

[isaacbookclub]

Huge thanks to my friend who attended the Alice Oseman Pop Up Shop this weekend for their photo of Alice’s reasons for each recommendation

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE BY JD SALINGER

This was one of the books that made me want to write SOLITAIRE. Essential reading for any fans of snarky narrators.

SUMMER BIRD BLUE BY AKEMI DAWN BOWMAN

It's hard to find aromantic/asexual representation infiction, but this is one of my favourites.

CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN BY SAYAKA MURATA, TRANSLATED BY GINNY TAPLEY TAKEMORI

One of my favourite novels of the past few years, perfect for SOLITAIRE and LOVELESS fans. A story about one woman's alienation with modern society.

THE BLACK FLAMINGO BY DEAN ATTA

A beautiful and hopeful story about a teenage drag queen, written in verse.

HERE THE WHOLE TIME BY VITOR MARTINS

An adorable queer teen romance. HEARTSTOPPER fans will love this.

HOMEBODY BY THEO PARISH

This trans coming out story is so uplifting and affirming.

LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME BY MARIKO TAMAKI

I loved the complexity of the toxic relationship at the heart of this stunningly illustrated graphic novel.

IT'S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH BY ZOE THOROGOOD

This graphic novel features a hard-hitting and honest portrayal of depression. A great choice for those who are drawn to the mental health themes in my works.

[nothingtoseeherebyeexx]

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER!

i’m so depressed i act like it’s my birthday…every day!! 🥳

i’m so obsessed with him but he avoids me…like the plague!! 😆

i cry a lot but i am so productive…it’s an art!! 🥰

close ups under the cut <3

[simulatedtrait]

sojuchella with friends + met with a boy from cupid's corner 💞

lot by @sojutrait

[reineydraws]

same ship, different font ☠️🔥

[jumpingpuddles]

Farscape: Aeryn Sun in every episode — Rhapsody In Blue

[sihtryggr]

[synthetic-rust]

Doing some thinking about how I want to draw Skarloey n Rheneas

Rheneas… he’s so goddamn difficult to get right for me but I will figure it out

I want them both to look similar but still distinct (I am thinking too hard about this probably)

The culprit of all this (ignore the guy to the left he’s for perspective reference)

the above image is still a wip

[buffetlicious]

One good thing about going to Sembawang Shopping Centre is that the shopping mall provides free shuttle bus to fetch passengers to and fro along certain bus stops. And one of those bus stop happened to be right in front of my place so it is very convenient for us. Tonight me and mum are eating at Saizeriya (サイゼリヤ). Flipping through the menu, I saw that they have a new Seasonal Menu with Creamy Pesto Chicken but I don’t feel like eating pasta today. Mum is picky on what she likes so that means she is ordering the Black Pepper Chicken Spaghetti (S$5.90) again.

As for me, I am eyeing the Hamburger & Sausage (S$7.90) which looks yummy on the menu. It came served on a sizzling hotplate with a beef patty and bubbling brown sauce over and around it. There was also sausage, fried egg, potato wedges and corn kernels to round up the dish. Love the juicy beef patty with the savoury sauce and the pork sausage too. Mixed the corns with the sauce before sending them into my mouth. Yum…

[cleverreports]

We report in the dead of night: there are too many stars. It has been weeks since we saw more than a handful at once. The sky has been overcast and opaque most nights. So it is late, we are in the middle of nowhere, and we think we woke up because there are too many stars.

[mattsmemes]

[fidjiefidjie]

Bonjour, bonne journée ☕️ 🖼

Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg)

"Un jour au musée"🗼Paris

Photo de © Gérard Uféras 2017

[here-for-a-good-time-hopefully]

I honestly have so much respect for Andromeda it’s insane

Because I don’t think I could keep living if most of my family was dead and my daughter and husband both died fighting in a war they have no business being in

And then having to survive to raise your grandchild alone because the only other parental figure in his life is an 18 year old kid who just came back from the dead and clearly has unprocessed trauma

[lestatdelioncoeur]

Robert Doisneau, Les Vingt Ans de Josette, 1945

[whinlatter]

That brings up an interesting point. Since you seen to be a canon girlie, do you think/feel that Hermione DOES become Minister?

What do you make of Harry being Head of Magical Law Enforcement?

thank you for this question anon! i do think it's very plausible hermione becomes minister of magic. i think it's equally plausible that harry becomes head of magical law enforcement. mostly because, well:

basically: i think both characters' career trajectories are in keeping with the politics of the series as a whole - eg. the goodies are all liberal, pro-state, non-revolutionary moderates who support a gradualist reformist agenda rather than a radical re-imagining of societal organisation. i also think both career options track with who each character is in canon (or rather, who the teenage versions of these characters might become as adults). and i think most of the reasons people are disappointed by either idea, and especially by harry coming 'a cop' then rising up the ranks to run law enforcement, is because they are putting their own more radical ambitions around social justice onto characters that would be poor vehicles for them.

on hermione - i don't know how many people have huge issue with the idea of hermione as minister of magic. i imagine the complaints with this idea come from people who a) like hermione and think hermione's politics as a teenager - identifying systemic injustice and labour exploitation of a subject people - jar with the idea of her settling within a political system that upholds and enforces that structure and others like it, or b) people don't like hermione as much and who think she would be too unpopular to get elected. to the former group, i'd trot out the arguments made far better than people other than me: that hermione's support for the house elves mostly boils down to a bit of a saviour complex and 'be nicer to your slaves', which is not especially radical position, and also point out the ministry's institutional culture seems to reward high-achieving technocrats with establishment credentials (or at least, prior records of academic and professional achievement), and i could see hermione riding that train straight to the top, especially on wave of post-war reformism with diminishing anti-muggleborn prejudice. (the wizarding world also loves a good (and bad) law and is extremely vigilant in enforcing them to a fault. hermione jean granger absolutely loves a rule. it's a match-made in heaven. it is - i fear - giving keir starmer).

to the second point, as i talked a bit about here, the wizarding world does not seem to be a democracy. so hermione wouldn't even need to be especially popular to get the top job. i personally love the idea of hermione quietly parking her commitments to representative democracy to get a bit of good labour legislation passed, or even thinking about wizarding democracy in victorian terms (as long as you're representing what you think the enlightened citizenry want, you're gucci). i mean honestly, what do the masses know! ignore em, queen. they're all kind of pureblood racists anyway!

on harry: i have a feeling it's harry's trajectory that most pisses people off. and i absolutely get it! people hate cops, and harry appears to become one, after spending a lot of the series raging against how shit senior leadership at the ministry of magic tend to be. while i do see the argument that teenage harry has strong criticisms of the ministry for its officials' self-interest, corruption and lack of accountability for their many miscarriages of justice, the truth is that a) harry never really associates being an auror with representing the ministry of magic as an institution, that b) he thinks of lots of characters who work in and around the ministry of magic, including in law enforcement, as agents of good (arthur weasley, kingsley, tonks, mad-eye, amelia bones) and c) harry at no point shows himself interested in thinking about ideology, about political systems, or about a more developed worldview beyond a deep sense of right and wrong and a need for justice. i think harry would like being head of magical law enforcement much less than hermione would like being minister, and i could see him finding the job enormously frustrating both for how much politicking it likely requires and for how little field action it would require. but i don't think that means it's out of character for him to rise up the ranks in pursuit of a more effective justice system and eventually take the top job as a means to an end.

the only other thing i'll say is that i do think there is something a bit culturally specific about imagining these two characters we think of as morally good actors taking up roles within the state to try to work for what they feel to be positive reform and progressive causes. the state appears quite neutrally in the hp series: it's a tool to be picked up and used to affect political change. this reflects its author's worldview, the political moment in which it was written (eg. under blair's new labour), and a longstanding dimension of real-life centre-left social democratic british politics usually expressed, at various times and to varying extents, by the political programme of the labour party throughout its history (to say nothing of a wider european context). it's not an inherently problematic political worldview (it is a core social democratic and socialist principle; it is also my own view of the state...), though ofc it can become so in the wrong hands. for instance, it's a consistent through-line in jkr's political evolution and a staple of her practically single-issue dangerous anti-trans politics even now - terf politics is a lot about wielding the state to remove legal protections from trans people, stop them from accessing health care etc. but the idea of the big state and of laws and government as a positive interventionist tool does colour hp as a text in lots of ways and is reflected in the worldview of many of its characters with which the reader is supposed to side. and i don't think we should overlook that.

conversely, hp is also a series devoid of political movements, and certainly of a meaningful far-left ideology or political sphere. and that's important to remember too if we're interested in canon coherence: hp is a liberal text in that it seemed plausible for its author to vacate a great deal of politics from her world-building. and i think that is, regretfully, worth remembering when we're claiming hermione should have been a trade union agitator or harry should have been an acab abolitionist organiser or whatever.

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

"Whatever are we going to do about this boredom of yours?"

[patrice-bergerons]

I love wounds that run thru narratives, though. Something terrible happened and we won't acknowledge it; in fact we have already moved on, and it's perfectly fine now. Or maybe something happened but we have been thru so much worse and made it out fine and only a coward would crumble now, at something so small, so silly, and whatever we may be, we are not that. Something happened and it was so awful if I stop to acknowledge it I fear I will shatter into a thousand pieces and no one will be able to put me back together then. And yet still the wound runs through the story, like pulsing veins under the skin, it warps time, snags and strangles and bleeds, a black hole at the heart of everything the characters spin and spin around, unable to break free, even as they insist - they are just fine.