#it's not the point

[terriwriting]

(Crossposted from Dreamwidth)

Diane Duane is a vegetarian.

This is a harmless example of the sort of gossip I heard years ago, when I was more involved in volunteering at conventions than I am now. Other non-harmless bits of gossip include: Author A is a mean drunk; Author B and Author C use conventions to hook up away from their respective spouses; Author D hasn't written in years, and all their recent works are ghostwritten; Author E is a dimwit who can't manage their own household accounts.

Neil Gaiman can't be trusted around young women.

This rumour was told to me with the same tone of authority as the rumour about Diane Duane. She had health problems, you see. So if she was ever a guest at a con where I happened to be working, I should make sure to mention to the organizers that she really needed a vegetarian option.

As it turns out, the rumour about Diane Duane is half true. She has written about her IBS at least on Tumblr, possibly in a few other places. Which is why I'm willing to share the rumour. I don't know if the person I got the rumour from years ago had heard it from someone else, or if someone in the chain of rumour-mongering heard part of a slightly different rumour and decided that Diane Duane should be a vegetarian for her own good. Maybe she ate a salad and complained about her stomach in front of the wrong person. It's a harmless example of the sort of gossip you hear when you're an insider, or useful to insiders.

The rumour about Neil Gaiman turned out to be true. By his own statements on the matter, it's true. Neil Gaiman can't be trusted around young women.

I heard the rumour after about five years of work. I'd joined a writing group, volunteered at a couple of local conventions, volunteered at a couple of larger cons, worked my way up from moving tables and chairs to coordinating which room got what audiovisual equipment when. I went from being an outsider to being someone who was invited to hang out with authors and agents at after-parties. And after five years of work, I got to be somebody who could be warned that Neil Gaiman needed to be kept away from young women.

And that you had to provide a vegetarian option for Diane. Poor girl. Sensitive digestion and all.

The rumour about Neil Gaiman turned out to be not harmless. But it was told to me in the exact same tone as Diane Duane is a vegetarian. I heard the rumour about Diane Duane once, and it never came up again. I heard the rumour about Neil Gaiman once, and it never came up again. I heard lots of rumours once.

I don't hear rumours anymore. I haven't volunteered for a convention in decades. I still attend a few, but they're for different blocs of fandom than I used to be in, and I don't see many of the same people at them. I'm sure there are creeps and abusers and predators at these conventions, but I'm not one of the special people who gets to protect myself from them. I'm not an insider anymore.

It took over twenty years for the rumour about Neil Gaiman to turn into a bomb exploding under multiple fandoms and franchises. I can't stop wondering about the next bomb that con organizers are trying to hide.

But at least the next Diane Duane will get their vegetarian option, thanks to the whisper network. If the right person hears the rumour at the right time.

[neversatisfiedwithlife]

It always feels weird when they have moments like this. Because I will always think of the way maya gets her shit brushed under the rug. "No one is alone in it"

[astronnova]

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[charlesoberonn]

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.

[sadclowncentral]

nearly had a medical emergency today because - and i cannot stress enough how little i am making this up - a helicopter landed in front of an open grain silo while i was getting off my ship and i am deathly allergic to the wheat that said helicopters rotor blades proceeded to blast in my face at full force. the cosmic forces are plotting against me ass situation to be in

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[lambergeier]

the real danger of spending too much time with friends is you stumble out of ten days of happiness and good food like oh my god THAT was real life. my job means NOTHING

[beaft]

do genuinely find it fascinating how indeed.com is like the biggest job-hunting website out there and yet manages to be profoundly useless in every possible way

[eagleeyethree]

[skipppppy]

Highkey one of the funniest parts of Gravity Falls is how obnoxiously close they come to revealing Ford’s existence in the early seasons but never do out of just. Cosmic levels of dumb luck

Episode 1 Stan nearly catches Dipper with the journal and it’s passed off as a gag about Gold Chains for Old Men magazine. In Time Travellers Pig they go back to the Shack 30 years in the past and miss Ford opening the door on them by literal seconds. In bottomless pit Mabel gives him a set of truth teeth that make him incapable of lying and he tells the twins TO THEIR FACES that he regularly commits massive tax fraud and if they had asked him to elaborate he would’ve told them who he was impersonating. In one of the shorts Dipper and Soos find a sentient omniscient mailbox that will answer any question in the universe, and right before they can ask it who wrote the journals Mabel shows it a video of herself snorting gummy worms and it kills itself out of disgust. The entirety of Dreamscaperers is them delving into the depths of Stan’s psyche, going through his memories, all while fighting his brother’s ex-boyfriend and it somehow just. Doesn’t come up. Bill never mentions him. Their grandpa Shermie never said anything. Their parents never said anything. Either the universe was conspiring to cover it up or they are genuinely all that oblivious

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[rodrickheffeley]

today I discovered Anne rice’s son’s tweets through twitter. im like this is exactly what I should have expected

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[antlerclxws]

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.