#very bipoc focused too

[femmesweetheart]

Y’all should go on Freddie!!! It’s like lex but no paywalls ^_^

every day that we don’t have lesbian grindr is a day that’s been wasted

[httpsserene]

Hi!! Congrats on 3K and Happy Valentine's!!!! Can you write Franco Colapinto with estbalished relationship #20??? I love your writing sm. Ty!!!

🛞  tread’s uneven: time for a tire rotation! — send me a driver and a prompt from this list of pre-relationship prompts, or these established relationship prompts, or these hurt/comfort prompts, and i’ll write a blurb or drabble for you xxx (prompt lists are made by me!)

༊࿐ ⊹ ˚. accepting the last requests for this celebration on valentine's day !!! don't miss out :) happy 3k🤍 my love :) thank you for requesting xxx

⌕ 3k v-day celly nav | all 3k requests | main nav | table of contents ↻

#𝟐𝟎. speaking to you in a softer tone of voice. fem!bipoc!reader x franco colapinto

You can hear Franco yelling at his friends in his headset in the living room from the bathroom over your headphones.

It sounds like he’s being targeted in a very intense tournament of Mario Kart 8—you know what the rage of being screwed over by a blue shell on the final lap sounds like, even if it’s in heated screams of incoherent Spanish. Unfortunately, you need to interrupt his race for vengeance to ask if he needs anything from the store before you head out—you’re craving something sweet and there’s nothing in the pantry or fridge to satisfy you.

You grab your things, making your way toward him and he’s so focused on fighting his way up to first place that he doesn’t even register you coming up to stand behind him on the couch. Franco automatically starts talking shit when he crosses the line first, his voice loud as he reminds his friends who’s the best driver in their group, and he startles like a cat at the sound of you cheering behind him. 

You giggle at him jumping in surprise, his shocked expression shifting into a wide smile when turns to see you.

Leaning down to peck him on the lips, you ask, “I’m about to run out for snacks—do you want me to get you anything?”

His earlier boisterous energy is forgotten as he pouts his lips for a few kisses, his wrath dwindling with each press of your mouth to his.

Franco sounds noticeably sweeter when he answers you, “No, bebé. Do you want me to go with you? I’m not doing anything important, I can come.”

There’s a rush of sound you can hear coming from his headphones, the voices of his friends overlapping as they harass him for being so soft—you don’t have to be able to make out their words to know it. He winces and clicks his mic to mute it, even though it’s too late for that to erase what they’ve already heard.

Patting him consolingly on the shoulder, you shake your head, “It’s okay, I’ll only be a few minutes. You can stay and make them rage quit when you embarrass them on Rainbow Road.”

His eyes twinkle at the idea, “You know me so well, mi amor. I love you, be safe.”

You kiss him again, it lasts for a few seconds longer this time, “I love you too.” 

Franco would tell you to be safe even if you were just going to take two steps outside before walking right back in—it’s the most adorable thing he does besides speaking to you in the softest tone of voice he can manage.

From outside the door, you can hear his volume rise again as he responds to the heckling of his friends, “¡Aye—you idiots need to remember which one of us is the man with a girlfriend before you try and make fun of me! The only one of us who has plans for Valentine’s Day is me!”

© httpsserene — do not reupload. photos in header from pinterest. divider by @cafekitsune.

[goodluckclove]

You Don't Need an Agent! Publishers That Accept Unsolicited Submissions

I see a few people sayin that you definitely need an agent to get published traditionally. Guess what? That's not remotely true. While an agent can be a very useful tool in finding and negotiating with publishers, going without is not as large of a hurdle as people might make it out to be!

Below is a list of some of the traditional publishers that offer reading periods for agent-less manuscripts. There might be more! Try looking for yourself - I promise it's not that scary!

Albert Whitman & Company: for picture books, middle-grade, and young adult fiction (edit: this source has been reported to be pretty predatory)

Hydra (Part of Random House): for mainly LitRPG

Kensington Publishing: for a range of fiction and nonfiction

NCM Publishing: for all genres of fiction (YA included) and nonfiction

Pants of Fire Press: for middle-grade, YA, and adult fiction

Tin House Books: very limited submission period, but a good avenue for fiction, literary fiction, and poetry written by underrepresented communities

Quirk Fiction: offers odd-genre rep for represented and unagented authors. Unsolicited submissions inbox is closed at the moment but this is the page that'll update when it's open, and they produced some pretty big books so I'd keep an eye on this

Persea Books: for lit fiction, creative nonfiction, YA novels, and books focusing on contemporary issues

Baen: considered one of the best known publishers of sci-fi and fantasy. They don't need a history of publication.

Chicago Review Press: only accepting nonfiction at the moment, but maybe someone here writes nonfiction

Acre: for poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Special interest in underrepresented authors. Submission period just passed but for next year!

Coffeehouse Press: for lit fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translation. Reading period closed at time of posting, but keep an eye out

Ig: for queries on literary fiction and political/cultural nonfiction

Schaffner Press: for lit fiction, historical/crime fiction, or short fiction collections (cool)

Feminist Press: for international lit, hybrid memoirs, sci-fi and fantasy fiction especially from BIPOC, queer and trans voices

Evernight Publishing: for erotica. Royalties seem good and their response time is solid

Felony & Mayhem: for literary mystery fiction. Not currently looking for new work, but check back later

This is all what I could find in an hour. And it's not even everything, because I sifted out the expired links, the repeat genres (there are a lot of options for YA and children's authors), and I didn't even include a majority of smaller indie pubs where you can really do that weird shit.

A lot of them want you to query, but that's easy stuff once you figure it out. Lots of guides, and some even say how they want you to do it for them.

Not submitting to a Big 5 Trad Pub House does not make you any less of a writer. If you choose to work with any publishing house it can take a fair bit of weight off your shoulders in terms of design and distribution. You don't have to do it - I'm not - but if that's the way you want to go it's very, very, very possible.

Have a weirder manuscript that you don't think fits? Here's a list of 50 Indie Publishers looking for more experimental works to showcase and sell!

If Random House won't take your work - guess what? Maybe you're too cool for Random House.

[luxiomahariel]

Remembering the victims: Torrence Hill

Torrence Hill, 35, was the founder and owner of Evollusion, a hairstyling and beauty salon in Atlanta. “Hill’s salon offered a much-needed safe space for the Black, LGBTQIA+ residents of Atlanta and its surrounding areas,” Gaye Magazine reports. Hill “wanted to cultivate a space of safety where you can also get the affirming look and style you want, and he did exactly that,” Mathieu-East wrote on Instagram, noting that Black barbershop culture can sometimes be homophobic, and Hill provided an alternative. And his friend Derek Baugh told the Human Rights Campaign, "The loss of Chevy is devastating to not only the Atlanta trans community and his family but to the world. Chevy was a bright light whose mission it was to help others shine on their own. I met Chevy when I founded my organization Ubuntu that focuses on serving Black transgender men. Chevy was one of the first people to ever support me and the organization. He faithfully attended our group, even on weeks when there were two participants-he always showed up. He was well known for his skill as a barber and for welcoming people of all genders and sexual orientations into his barbershop, Evollusion. He was such a good guy with a big heart and he deserved better than this. I will miss seeing him. I want people to understand that gender-based violence affects trans men in a despairing way too. Although he is now a risen ancestor, we must continue to lift his name & others in the struggle against gender-based violence." Another friend, Sylvester XX, told HRC, "Chevy’s memory will be forever etched in my mind, heart and spirit. I met this amazingly caring and head strong human many years ago on his search for affirming resources. His ability to motivate, protect and take care of those he loved was evident from the first time we spoke. Familial support was so paramount to Chevy. So for his life to be taken this way is very disheartening. Some of the larger conversations we have to have are about mental health in Black communities, how rampant gun violence is in this nation, the heightened violence BIPOC TGNC (transgender and gender nonconforming) masculine people endure and how Black communities of marginalized people face overlapping social and economic determinants that no other communities have to navigate. Society learns to devalue Black and trans people’s lives through the many false narratives that have been created and spread by those who oppose LGBTQ+ equality. So, it is important to remind society that we all are human, we all deserve protection and policies in place to keep us safe. Chevy may not have known his true impact, but his legacy and the way he showed up for his community will continue to inspire and change the lives of people who look like him."

https://www.advocate.com/crime/black-trans-man-killed-atlanta

Verna Hill Wilcox, Chevy's mother, told GLAAD her son had let his cousin Jaylen, who was going through some difficulties, stay at his home but that Jaylen had begun to abuse Chevy's generosity. “TK had apparently purchased him uniforms and shoes to start another job,” Wilcox said. “TK had finally reached a point where it was like, no matter what we do for you, you still have a sense of entitlement, and you’re not showing us the respect and love we’re showing you.” “TK got into a verbal altercation with Jaylen,” she continued. “He was chastising him for using their stuff. Terri let them use their vehicle, and he stayed gone for four hours. When he came back, he had an attitude about somebody else’s merchandise, and TK reprimanded him for that and told him to leave.” She believes that led to the shooting.

[sillysoliloquyshits]

I really really need to get this out of my chest now but before I even watched Ne Zha 2 I had a feeling that the reason why it's exploding is because so many people resonate with the messages of the movie and by God it obviously did. I did talk about healthy masculinity and all but what I feel the movie really resonates more strongly is this:

Resisting against evil will always win.

(More Ne Zha 2 spoilers and believe me when I say Lu Tong's many arrows remind me of missiles and drone attacks by God it was terrifying seeing and hearing them at first)

But while it's a movie of all ages mainly targeted to kids, Ne Zha 2 is extremely relevant in reflecting this current hunger-games world where the working class marmots are like innocents dragged into ICE camps because they don't fit the green card standard, spirits who still side the green card assholes because out of survival and hypocrisy with internalized racism, and the petrifying censorships and arrests we face that reduce our numbers in resistance. Maybe it's just me overthinking the parallels but come on, China won't know much about American struggles but maybe it's fate that Ne Zha 2 really came at the right time to remind us what's most important in this time. We are surrounded by too many Wuliangs in the world.

When I first watched the movie I really felt that moment to my bones when all the sea creature spirits and Ao Guang and Li Jing gathered their strength to push Ne Zha and Ao Bing up to break the cooking cauldron. The strong collectivism is very symbolic of China's collectivism and teamwork in times of hardship which makes them a more unified country, and suffice to say maybe this was what the creative team really felt when they put their soul in animating and voicing and playing the music for this movie, to break their cauldron of limits and burst into the box office realm for China.

But as a Pro-Palestinian myself, I see this not just as a loose reference as China vs America's and the western oppression, of we see the enemy as US and other f@scist/zi0nist oppressors. The trappings of the cauldron to anyone who resits or doesn't obey by the oppressors' rule really remind me of the Palestinian resistance and so many other resistance movements in the world, like the LGBTQIA+ resistance and Black people and Latin Americans and Indigenous peoples and Asian Americans (BIPOC in general) in US and around the world, and the Lebanese and the Ukrainians and Sudanese and South Sudanese and Yemeni and Haitian and DRC people and Ugyhers and so many more-

The director Jiao Zi once said that he believes there is a rebellious and righteous Ne Zha in all of us, and he's right. This world is dystopian already and it's very normal to be overwhelmed and melt in the pressure, but the movie still provides us the hope we all need for our freedoms. And it's not just refreshing, it's extremely invigorating to the soul. (That's why people keep coming back to cinemas to watch-)

If we keep at it despite the heat, the cauldron will break. The Wuliangs of the world will have their skulls and stupid ass green cards cracked under our kicks. I've also recently read somewhere that fascism relies on forced compliance, and whether you're out protesting or quietly doing something to help out of self preservation, as long as you're focused on our common enemy and don't back down, our efforts will come to fruition somehow. The Wuliangs obviously can't fall immediately, but we can keep kicking cracks.

Tldr: if you see the breaking cauldron as a symbol of china starting to win US and the west, might as well see it as a strong symbol of resistance against worsening oppression in the world.

No one is free until everyone is free.

[fandomshatewomen]

Re: Making fun of booktok, I feel like the post you rebooted is missing a vital piece of information, anti-intellectualism amongst book readers has been growing especially amongst the people that read these romance novels…

So I just found this video on my youtube and I think it partially addresses what you're saying.

I personally don't follow many booktokkers, the majority of those I follow are bipoc. I know that there's a lot of booktokkers like the ones at the beginning of her video do exist (0:30ish mark) but like you gotta realize that there's two different sides of booktok. There's the anti intellectualists that got into reading because of books like 50 shades of grey, colleen hoover, and sarah j maas (so ww books).

And then there's booktokkers like tomes and textiles (latina booktokker that focuses on latine books always and is very political) there's others too if you want recommendations.

there are smart and politically progressive romance writers out there like natalie cana, alyssa cole and talia hibbert (here's a review I did on one of Natalie Cana's)

you can't lump all romance readers/writers all together.

[reasonsforhope]

One of the things that I really appreciate about this blog is that now, every now and then, when I hear about some new awful thing in the world, it will be in the context of "and this is what people are doing to fight it". That's so much less paralyzing.

(If you have any sources to recommend for experiencing more of that, me and my mental health would be further indebted.)

Ahhh, I forgot about this message, sorry! Been a hectic couple of months.

I absolutely have more sources!

One of the biggest is the media collaboration The Solutions Journalism Network, which focuses on just that: closing the massive gap between people reporting on problems and people reporting solutions.

I have a giant bookmark list of sources for this blog, for good news stories and hope, so here's a bunch of links! Roughly in order of how good I think they are (in terms of size of stories, previously uncovered stories, good editorial standards, accuracy, detail, number of stories, etc. etc.)

We're gonna start with the ones that do good news ONLY, because sometimes you fucking need that, and then below I'll link some excellent sources that have a higher than average number of quality pieces on good news, even though they also publish other stuff too.

Good and hopeful news sources:

Future Crunch - If you only read one of these sites, read this one!!! It's a MASSIVE biweekly roundup of international good news stories with really high quality reporting--a lot of UN and WHO and major NGO reports as their sources. I cry from hope at LEAST 30% of the times I read this, and tbh it used to be like 100%, about a year ago when I started realizing that hope for the planet and for humanity was something that was REASONABLE TO HAVE.

Reasons to Be Cheerful - Fewer stories, but FANTASTIC quality of reporting, especially on fantastic local stories, many of them in international communities, that you've definitely never heard of before

Positive.News - Good coverage and especially roundups, mostly Europe-focused.

Good News Network - This one is awesome for the high number and approachability of its stories, but unfortunately also includes more "That's not news that's just a heartwarming anecdote" and "That's not good news it's actually dystopian" pieces than I'd like.

Jane Goodall's Good For All News - Really awesome focus on international issues, a lot of news from Africa, a lot of news about youth organizers and youth-led projects, and a lot of focus on how helping the environment and helping communities are inextricably connected. Yall Jane Goodall is doing SO MUCH amazing work out there even at her age, and most people also have no idea.

Good Black News - Mostly posts on music and entertainment, and doesn't post all that often, but they're great.

Good Good Good

The Good News Hub

Only Good News Daily

( ) for Tomorrow - Directory of grassroots solutions to all types of issues and "proof that no solution is too small to have an impact"

A Plus - Dedicated to uplifting stories in video form. I'm sure they're awesome, I just don't rly use them bc videos can set off my sensory issues

The Happy Broadcast - Illustrated good news tidbits! I haven't been using them much but it looks like they've (recently?) added more text and sources to each image, so I might change that. Illustrations are pretty cute tbh

Sources that publish a lot of good news, but also other not good stuff:

Euronews.Green - Environmental section of European news org

Yes! Magazine - Excellent solutions-focused journalism, excellent focus on BIPOC content and underrepresented communities

TheMayor.EU - EU-focused, discusses a lot of good projects and cool local developments/programs

Grist - Solutions journalism, fantastic corage especially on environmental issues

Mongabay - Billed as "News & Inspiration from Nature's Frontline," they are amazing and have some of the best goddamn reporting I've ever seen. They mean "frontline" very literally: there's a TON of pieces about and by and interviewing communities on the front lines of environmental conflict, especially developing nations and Indigenous communities world wide. That said there's also a lot of bad news on nature's frontline still, while they report a lot of amazing and powerful good news, make sure you're in a resilient mood when you visit this site, because some of the stories are also pretty upsetting.

Indian Country Today and Native News Online - two of the leading news orgs for Indigenous communities in the United States. Kind of like Mongabay in that they have a lot of good news stories from Indigenous communities that often no one else is reporting on, but also plenty of coverage of things that are definitely not good, so better to read when you're in a resilient mood.

If you have any good news sites/sources you'd like to add, please drop them in the replies or comments! I'm always looking for new good news sources (though I def don't always have time to use all of them, rip!). Plus, let's support these sites by giving them some traffic!

We could all use more ways to get some more good news.

[nailamoonsi]

Writeblr intro (open to mutuals)

Hello again @ writeblr...! I'm Naila--Bangladeshi-Am (South Asian), sapphic, neurodivergent, they/them, incredibly nerdy about certain media like Revolutionary Girl Utena, and someone who has been very, very focused on their LGBT epic science fantasy for several years.

Fun fact is that for 5 years as a child I lived in Japan and only spoke Bangla and Japanese. I forgot both by the time I was 6 to 11, though I can understand spoken Bangla (and am fluent in English). 💦💦

I'm pretty much in love with my LGBT epic and multimedia science fantasy verse, once called Another Sky WIP and now called Blue Horizon! It's about three generations of alchemy-oriented mages upon a faraway planet obsessed with ancient Earth (our era) and their troubles across thousands of years!

I'm planning on releasing the first epic science fantasy novel (and side light novel/novella) at some point in the next months!

I'm both an artist and a writer, so you'll get art and writing topics from me! A lot of it is in my Blue Horizon tag.

Despite that, I feel like I haven't gone all-out to make mutuals here on Tumblr. I'd love to make more mutuals who are 20 and older and interested in fantasy fiction (especially featuring BIPOC and LGBT characters)! 18 and older is fine too, but I won't mutual people who are younger than 18. (I'm 32.)

My main warning is that my novels are aimed for adult demographic and even my art can contain blood TW and cursing. Sometimes older Blue Horizon characters will have sultry/sexual implications, too, and not just romantic! (However, despite the main novel being an epic science fantasy and very romance-oriented--as far as I understand, it doesn't perfectly fit people's idea of Romantasy due to particularly intense and serious topics at times. I think of it as a epic science fantasy with a lot of gay, sapphic and LGBT romances and implied romances.)

I'm open to tag games. ^^ If people are open to being tagged, feel free to mention it in this post, my pinned, or message/ask box me!

Hope to connect with more people here! 💗

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

It’s not been a good summer to be a Beowulf scholar, let alone one focusing on Grendel’s Mother

Mariah Dahvana Headley’s “feminist” translation, and later full retelling of, Beowulf are at their best consistently cringeworthy (“Cheugy” being an extremely accurate term here) and at their worst stroll all-too-comfortably into racialized narratives that a white woman (or in at least one especially egregious case, any decent person) should not be writing at all. However, she brought progress to the field, centering the narrative on feminist voices. I myself am white, and having seen BIPOC reviewers adore her books, I previously felt able, if not obliged, to put my personal misgivings aside and appreciate imperfect progress.

Headley, who also published several other successful “feminist re-interpretations” of classical works, has worked closely with Neil Gaiman often over the past year, including co-leading writing classes with him and having him as the lead voice in a mid-quarantine celebrity performance of her Beowulf translation.

She has been silent.

Comic artist and amateur-yet-devoted Beowulf Scholar Zach Weinersmith (he taught his then eight year old daughter to read the original text in Old English) wrote Bea Wolf, a take on Beowulf that was re-imagined for and about modern children, replacing 5th c. mead hall culture with tree houses and nerf battles, Grendel with an angry, rule-obsessed adult neighbor, and most interestingly, death with the inevitable transition out of childhood. In addition, Weinersmith took advantage of the (obviously) non-exact and non-culturally-accurate translation to perfectly preserve the original Old English poetic meter present in the piece. Bea Wolf is a masterclass in creative adaptation, that I recommend to friends and fellow academics alike. At some point within the next year, Weinersmith will publish Bea Wolf’s next installment, continuing the adaptation to cover the conflict with Grendel’s Mother.

Weinersmith also works in speculative sci-fi and futurism. A vocal proponent for the (at the very least) cautious acceptance of AI “as a creative tool”, this summer he shared on social media that he was using AI to “help him” write Bea Wolf pt. 2 - generating lists of alliterations and synonyms when adapting a certain passage of Old English was “too hard”. “To speed things up”, he said. I don’t mean to self-promo here but I gladly would have dropped everything to help. I’m confident in my abilities there. He showed a sample passage that AI “helped” with. It’s bad.

Beowulf studies is a small field. Grendel studies is smaller. Grendel’s Mother studies is, without Headley, virtually nonexistent in terms of published, easily accessible media. Losing two authors, to hypocrisy of values and hypocrisy of art, is devastating. I genuinely do not want to be the only person willing to get creative with this story without bowing to AI, problematic stereotypes and Creepy Old White Men In Power. I know these authors made their own choices, and those choices weren’t good. But this field is too small, too closed-off and non diverse, and too hemmed in by lack of historical context on one side and the alt-right on the other, to afford “bad choices”. This field is starving for young, creative minds, new approaches and diversity of experience. What these authors have done will only isolate us further.

What I feel from this is grief.

[mariacallous]

In early September, Warner Bros. released a teaser for A Minecraft Movie, the studio’s new film based on Mojang’s nearly 15-year-old sandbox game. Directed by Napoleon Dynamite helmer Jared Hess, it was, frankly, very goofy. Jack Black was Steve; Jason Momoa was sporting maybe the worst hairdo he’s ever had. Everyone involved, even the animated creatures, seemed to think they were in a different movie.

But that wasn’t what the trolls latched onto. Instead, they fixed on the fact that a Black woman—Orange Is the New Black’s Danielle Brooks—was in the Overworld.

As the trailer racked up dislikes, right-wing influencers like Elijah Schaffer and Nick Fuentes posted Brooks’ image next to disparaging comments and made references to “forced diversity” and “woke” Hollywood. It was Gamergate 2.0—a reimagining of the decade-old harassment campaign aimed at rallying against diversity, equity, and inclusion—but aimed at a kids’ movie, rather than a video game.

According to Wendy Via, cofounder and CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which just published a report looking at the far right’s racist comments about the trailer, the response comes from a new, and also quite old, playbook. “Large-scale campaigns against trailers specifically are a relatively new phenomenon, but attempting to frame ‘wokeness’ as an invisible enemy infiltrating the entertainment industry is not,” Via says.

Via points out that back in spring of 2023, the far-right X account End Wokeness made similar noise about a “Protect Trans Kids” flag that appeared briefly in the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The goal of these campaigns is to target “spaces where young, white men are influenced,” like sci-fi movies and video games, which appeal to younger audiences, Via adds. “Providing racist and homophobic commentary on popular franchises through large social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube serves as an effective means to propagandize and recruit young people to hate movements.”

Take, for example, The Acolyte. Earlier this year, the Disney+ show found itself the target of fan backlash while star Amandla Stenberg was subjected to racist comments online. So, too, was Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the most recent Star Wars movie trilogy. The minimizing of her role in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalker, perhaps emboldened diversity detractors further.

Reception of The Acolyte seemed, almost, to be a solidification. Fan unrest in the Star Wars universe is a cousin to, if not a direct descendant of, Gamergate, and since former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon harnessed the energy of that movement and used it to fuel the then burgeoning so-called alt-right, influencers have used similar tactics to convince aggrieved men that their games, their shows and movies, and their country are somehow being taken from them.

By the time the Minecraft Movie trailer dropped, the script was already set. Influencers just had to pick which lines to say.

Whereas 2014’s rallying cry was a more broadly misogynistic, racist one, the Gamergate of 2024 seems focused on the idea of the “DEI hire”—a woman, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC person who ends up blamed for “ruining” something. Pundits used this language to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Right-wing talking heads pointed the finger at female Secret Service agents for not fully protecting Trump during the July attempt on his life. Fans have lobbed it at the inclusion of a Black samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Campaigning against diversity in games came into particular focus earlier this year when Sweet Baby Inc., a Canadian consultancy, became the focus of a group of players upset at what they viewed as the “wokeification” of video games. Online harassment of the company’s employees hit new heights last winter when a Steam curation group called Sweet Baby Inc Detected popped up purporting to list all the games the company had advised on, giving people an easy way to boycott certain titles or post bad reviews of them. Even though the company hadn’t touched several of the games, and as founder Kim Belair told WIRED this winter, the company “[doesn’t] want forced diversification either,” the harassing comments continued for months.

On September 4, the same day the Minecraft Movie trailer went up, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two employees of the state-backed Russian news network RT, in which it alleged that they had secretly funded the right-wing influencer network Tenet Media. The DOJ accused the company of posting content full of Kremlin-approved talking points, though individual influencers working for Tenet say they knew nothing about the ties to Russia and are not accused of wrongdoing. A WIRED analysis of Tenet’s videos, since taken down by YouTube, found several frequently used three-word phrases. Among them: “Black Lives Matter,” “diversity equity inclusion,” and “Sweet Baby Inc.”

Into this firestorm landed Minecraft. As Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor at American University’s school of communications and author of the forthcoming book Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, points out, Minecraft (the gaming platform), already had some right-leaning fans. Its creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, who sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, has sent some dumb tweets about race, and Minecraft “has a reputation for being connected to the far-right pipeline,” Massanari says. Being based on a game connects the Minecraft Movie to Gamergate-like responses in some ways, but it’s also possible that a movie based on “this particular game,” she adds, has activated a certain kind of fan.

Back in August, Deadline reported The Acolyte would not be getting a second season. It was, Stenberg would later say, “not a huge shock” considering the response online. Other reports claimed it didn’t get a second season because it was expensive and didn’t attract a huge viewership. Regardless of the reason, Via says the far right saw it as a victory of the “go woke, go broke” narrative they’ve been pushing.

“Going after The Minecraft Movie may be an attempt to recreate this ‘victory’ and provide the far right with the opportunity to craft the narrative about a series or film themselves,” Via says. “If Minecraft were to perform poorly at the box office, they could point to “diversity” as a reason for its failure and justify petitioning for more media that excludes everyone but straight, white men.”

[thealexchen]

hi again - i'm glad you answered my ask and i'd love to discuss more with you after this one, however i'd probably like to move to dms just for the sake of privacy! if you recognized me though that's honestly kind of awesome since i feel like you'd only be able to recognize me through my writing style on twitter as i only really talk on there :'D i'll talk ab one thing for now that i think i completely disagreed with as a whole, which was sean and daniel not discussing anything mexican - i think that for an assimilated immigrant family in the USA, the diaz family was actually a great and fairly accurate representation of one, especially in regards to the cultural aspect. they are a mexican-american family, specifically highlighting american. being raised in america, i don’t expect sean and daniel to know a lot about mexico. their dad is very proudly an immigrant, and he too is fully into american culture when sean and daniel talk ab how much he loves 4th of july and halloween (very ironic). i don't take it as a knock on mexican culture at all, its just that i think DN was more focused on details of the characters as a family and individuals, which is how they chose to decorate the home and it's inhabitants.

even then, it's shown in the game that their dad actually does try to share his culture with his children, at the very least with sean. in the one hour where we get to dig through sean's life, there are a ton of references to it. their dad takes them to lucha libre matches, makes tacos for them, talks about mexican-american music artists that he likes (which apparently sean dislikes), and loves baseball which is a very celebrated sport in mexico. i’d also argue that there isn't really a one size fits all with how much sean and daniel are allowed to talk about mexican culture. it’s all these little things that make the game feel more authentic in its representation. even if some children of immigrants haven’t experienced this themselves, i (and many others) certainly have. these tiny details, down to the chosen sport of choice for the dad, felt very intentional and researched.

regarding dia de muertos, i don’t really see why they would have needed to include it. it’s a very private family holiday that was turned into a public celebration for tourists because of western depictions of it, which is only really popular in big cities within mexico. i doubt sean and daniel would have gotten excited for it since they didn’t have anyone in their family that they knew and would have needed to honor who was dead (yet). halloween, on the other hand, is also heavily celebrated in mexico as well, and is completely different from dia de los muertos despite having similar themes. esteban loving halloween and being really excited for it seems in line with mexican customs.

i see a lot of my family in sean and daniel, especially in the way they were raised - sean being basically fluent in spanish while daniel only understands it when spoken to is a small detail that is very common in bilingual households. through contextual clues, daniel most likely understands a good amt of it because sean and his dad may have spoken it to him in passing conversations. there are small references like him laughing at the idea of some (most likely white) guy teaching the both of them spanish, to which sean promptly says to daniel in spanish that that guy is an idiot. daniel says he can’t speak spanish, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand any of it.

all this to say that i don’t think that DN did a bad job when balancing the racial abuse that the boys faced with racial representation. i think that in a story that critiques both systemic and individualized racism that bipoc face, it’s difficult to write sean and daniel expressing that culture when they aren’t at home, where they’d express much of that culture. however, when they did have the opportunity to showcase it, DN expressed it in a very natural way that felt realistic and understandable, at least to me :)

sorry that this was so long and only touched upon one small part of your argument, it was just something that i felt very strongly about and wanted to say 😅 ik im speaking ab this on anonymous, i just don’t really want my acc to be attached to this specifically but if you wanna talk about the critique as a whole, i’d love to - either way i just wanted to leave it off with this for now!

Oh yes, now I remember details like the Lucha Libre matches and bands- it’s been 5 years since I touched my copy of the game. I didn’t know baseball was a popular sport in Mexico and the cultural context around Dia de los Muertos (I know the same has happened to Cinco de Mayo), so thank you for educating me about that. And Sean making fun of the Spanish flyer in episode 1 with Daniel was definitely a really accurate siblings of color camaraderie moment, like a little inside joke they shared.

I think Daniel not speaking Spanish also had to do with the limitations of working with a white American actor. Alex and Gabe never spoke Mandarin or Vietnamese in True Colors, which I could forgive because Erika Mori and Han Soto aren’t fluent, but it’s something I would’ve liked because besides their last names, it’s easy to miss what ethnicity they’re supposed to be. In a landscape where Asians are constantly mistaken for different ethnicities or conflated as all the same, I was disappointed to see some gamers didn’t know/figure out Alex was Chinese (and Vietnamese, but you’d only know that from one interview with Felice Kuan and Giang “Wendy” Chen’s name only being in the credits).

And yes, if you’d like to keep chatting please feel free to send me a DM! I’ll try to answer when I can but I’ve been really busy recently. Thank you again for your continued respectful conversation and open-mindedness 🙏🏼 I appreciate your patience as I continue to re-examine my own biases.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Tyler Austin Harper

Published: Aug 14, 2023

The hotel was soulless, like all conference hotels. I had arrived a few hours before check-in, hoping to drop off my bags before I met a friend for lunch. The employees were clearly frazzled, overwhelmed by the sudden influx of several hundred impatient academics. When I asked where I could put my luggage, the guy at the front desk simply pointed to a nearby hallway. “Wait over there with her; he’s coming back.”

Who “he” was remained unclear, but I saw the woman he was referring to. She was white and about my age. She had a conference badge and a large suitcase that she was rolling back and forth in obvious exasperation. “Been waiting long?” I asked, taking up a position on the other side of the narrow hallway. “Very,” she replied. For a while, we stood in silence, minding our phones. Eventually, we began chatting.

The conversation was wide-ranging: the papers we were presenting, the bad A/V at the hotel, our favorite things to do in the city. At some point, we began talking about our jobs. She told me that—like so many academics—she was juggling a temporary teaching gig while also looking for a tenure-track position.

“It’s hard,” she said, “too many classes, too many students, too many papers to grade. No time for your own work. Barely any time to apply to real jobs.”

When I nodded sympathetically, she asked about my job and whether it was tenure-track. I admitted, a little sheepishly, that it was.

“I’d love to teach at a small college like that,” she said. “I feel like none of my students wants to learn. It’s exhausting.”

Then, out of nowhere, she said something that caught me completely off guard: “But I shouldn’t be complaining to you about this. I know how hard BIPOC faculty have it. You’re the last person I should be whining to.”

I was taken aback, but I shouldn’t have been. It was the kind of awkward comment I’ve grown used to over the past few years, as “anti-racism” has become the reigning ideology of progressive political culture. Until recently, calling attention to a stranger’s race in such a way would have been considered a social faux pas. That she made the remark without thinking twice—a remark, it should be noted, that assumes being a Black tenure-track professor is worse than being a marginally employed white one—shows how profoundly interracial social etiquette has changed since 2020’s “summer of racial reckoning.” That’s when anti-racism—focused on combating “color-blindness” in both policy and personal conduct—grabbed ahold of the liberal mainstream.

Though this “reckoning” brought increased public attention to the deep embeddedness of racism in supposedly color-blind American institutions, it also made instant celebrities of a number of race experts and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) consultants who believe that being anti-racist means undergoing a “journey” of radical personal transformation. In their righteous crusade against the bad color-blindness of policies such as race-neutral college admissions, these contemporary anti-racists have also jettisoned the kind of good color-blindness that holds that we are more than our race, and that we should conduct our social life according to that idealized principle. Rather than balance a critique of color-blind law and policy with a continuing embrace of interpersonal color-blindness as a social etiquette, contemporary anti-racists throw the baby out with the bathwater. In place of the old color-blind ideal, they have foisted upon well-meaning white liberals a successor social etiquette predicated on the necessity of foregrounding racial difference rather than minimizing it.

As a Black guy who grew up in a politically purple area—where being a good person meant adhering to the kind of civil-rights-era color-blindness that is now passé—I find this emergent anti-racist culture jarring. Many of my liberal friends and acquaintances now seem to believe that being a good person means constantly reminding Black people that you are aware of their Blackness. Difference, no longer to be politely ignored, is insisted upon at all times under the guise of acknowledging “positionality.” Though I am rarely made to feel excessively aware of my race when hanging out with more conservative friends or visiting my hometown, in the more liberal social circles in which I typically travel, my race is constantly invoked—“acknowledged” and “centered”—by well-intentioned anti-racist “allies.”

This “acknowledgement” tends to take one of two forms. The first is the song and dance in which white people not-so-subtly let you know that they know that race and racism exist. This includes finding ways to interject discussion of some (bad) news item about race or racism into casual conversation, apologizing for having problems while white (“You’re the last person I should be whining to”), or inversely, offering “support” by attributing any normal human problem you have to racism.

The second way good white liberals often “center” racial difference in everyday interactions with minorities is by trying, always clumsily, to ensure that their “marginalized” friends and familiars are “culturally” comfortable. My favorite personal experiences of this include an acquaintance who invariably steers dinner or lunch meetups to Black-owned restaurants, and the time that a friend of a friend invited me over to go swimming in their pool before apologizing for assuming that I know how to swim (“I know that’s a culturally specific thing”). It is a peculiar quirk of the 2020s’ racial discourse that this kind of “acknowledgement” and “centering” is viewed as progress.

My point is not that conservatives have better racial politics—they do not—but rather that something about current progressive racial discourse has become warped and distorted. The anti-racist culture that is ascendant seems to me to have little to do with combatting structural racism or cultivating better relationships between white and Black Americans. And its rejection of color-blindness as a social ethos is not a new frontier of radical political action.

No, at the core of today’s anti-racism is little more than a vibe shift—a soft matrix of conciliatory gestures and hip phraseology that give adherents the feeling that there has been a cultural change, when in fact we have merely put carpet over the rotting floorboards. Although this push to center rather than sidestep racial difference in our interpersonal relationships comes from a good place, it tends to rest on a troubling, even racist subtext: that white and Black Americans are so radically different that interracial relationships require careful management, constant eggshell-walking, and even expert guidance from professional anti-racists. Rather than producing racial harmony, this new ethos frequently has the opposite effect, making white-Black interactions stressful, unpleasant, or, perhaps most often, simply weird.

Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, progressive anti-racism has centered on two concepts that helped Americans make sense of his senseless death: “structural racism” and “implicit bias.” The first of these is a sociopolitical concept that highlights how certain institutions—maternity wards, police barracks, lending companies, housing authorities, etc.—produce and replicate racial inequalities, such as the disproportionate killing of Black men by the cops. The second is a psychologicalconcept that describes the way that all individuals—from bleeding-heart liberals to murderers such as Derek Chauvin—harbor varying degrees of subconscious racial prejudice.

Though “structural racism” and “implicit bias” target different scales of the social order—institutions on the one hand, individuals on the other—underlying both of these ideas is a critique of so-called color-blind ideology, or what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “color-blind racism”: the idea that policies, interactions, and rhetoric can be explicitly race-neutral but implicitly racist. As concepts, both “structural racism” and “implicit bias” rest on the presupposition that racism is an enduring feature of institutional and social life, and that so-called race neutrality is a covertly racist myth that perpetuates inequality. Some anti-racist scholars such as Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi have put this even more bluntly: “‘Race neutral’ is the new “separate but equal.’” Yet, although anti-racist academics and activists are right to argue that race-neutral policies can’t solve racial inequities—that supposedly color-blind laws and policies are often anything but—over the past few years, this line of criticism has also been bizarrely extended to color-blindness as a personal ethos governing behavior at the individual level.

The most famous proponent of dismantling color-blindness in everyday interactions is Robin DiAngelo, who has made an entire (very condescending) career out of asserting that if white people are not uncomfortable, anti-racism is not happening. “White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important,” the corporate anti-racist guru advises. Over the past three years, this kind of anti-color-blind, pro-discomfort rhetoric has become the norm in anti-racist discourse. On the final day of the 28-day challenge in Layla Saad’s viral Me and White Supremacy, budding anti-racists are tasked with taking “out-of-your-comfort-zone actions,” such as apologizing to people of color in their life and having “uncomfortable conversations.” Frederick Joseph’s best-selling book The Black Friend takes a similar tack. The problem with color-blindness, Joseph counsels, is it allows “white people to continue to be comfortable.” The NFL analyst Emmanuel Acho wrote an entire book, simply called Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, that admonishes readers to “stop celebrating color-blindness.” And, of course, there are endless how-to guides for having these “uncomfortable conversations” with your Black friends.

Once the dominant progressive ideology, professing “I don’t see color” is now viewed as a kind of dog whistle that papers over implicit bias. Instead, current anti-racist wisdom holds that we must acknowledge racial difference in our interactions with others, rather than assume that race needn’t be at the center of every interracial conversation or encounter. Coming to grips with the transition we have undergone over the past decade—color-blind etiquette’s swing from de rigueur to racist—requires a longer view of an American cultural transition. Civil-rights-era color-blindness was replaced with an individualistic, corporatized anti-racism, one focused on the purification of white psyches through racial discomfort, guilt, and “doing the work” as a road to self-improvement.

Writing in 1959, the social critic Philip Rieff argued that postwar America was transforming from a religious and economic culture—one oriented around common institutions such as the church and the market—to a psychological culture, one oriented around the self and its emotional fulfillment. By the 1960s, Rieff had given this shift a name: “the triumph of the therapeutic,” which he defined as an emergent worldview according to which the “self, improved, is the ultimate concern of modern culture.” Yet, even as he diagnosed our culture with self-obsession, Rieff also noticed something peculiar and even paradoxical. Therapeutic culture demanded that we reflect our self-actualization outward. Sharing our innermost selves with the world—good, bad, and ugly—became a new social mandate under the guise that authenticity and open self-expression are necessary for social cohesion.

Recent anti-racist mantras like “White silence is violence” reflect this same sentiment: exhibitionist displays of “racist” guilt are viewed as a necessary precursor to racial healing and community building. In this way, today’s attacks on interpersonal color-blindness—and progressives’ growing fixation on implicit bias, public confession, and race-conscious social etiquette—are only the most recent manifestations of the cultural shift Rieff described. Indeed, the seeds of the current backlash against color-blindness began decades ago, with the application of a New Age, therapeutic outlook to race relations: so-called racial-sensitivity training, the forefather of today’s equally spurious DEI programming.

In her 2001 book, Race Experts, the historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn painstakingly details how racial-sensitivity training emerged from the 1960s’ human-potential movement and its infamous “encounter groups.” As she explains, what began as a more or less countercultural phenomenon was later corporatized in the form of the anemic, pointless workshops controversially lampooned on The Office. Not surprisingly, this shift reflected the ebb and flow of corporate interests: Whereas early workplace training emphasized compliance with the newly minted Civil Rights Act of 1964, later incarnations would focus on improving employee relations and, later still, leveraging diversity to secure better business outcomes.

If there is something distinctive about the anti-color-blind racial etiquette that has emerged since George Floyd’s death, it is that these sites of encounter have shifted from official institutional spaces to more intimate ones where white people and minorities interact as friends, neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. Racial-awareness raising is a dynamic no longer quarantined to formalized, compulsory settings like the boardroom or freshman orientation. Instead, every interracial interaction is a potential scene of (one-way) racial edification and supplication, encounters in which good white liberals are expected to be transparent about their “positionality,” confront their “whiteness,” and—if the situation calls for it—confess their “implicit bias.”

In a vacuum, many of the prescriptions advocated by the anti-color-blind crowd are reasonable: We should all think more about our privileges and our place in the world. An uncomfortable conversation or an honest look in the mirror can be precursors to personal growth. We all carry around harmful, implicit biases and we do need to examine the subconscious assumptions and prejudices that underlie the actions we take and the things we say. My objection is not to these ideas themselves, which are sensible enough. No, my objection is that anti-racism offers little more than a Marie Kondo–ism for the white soul, promising to declutter racial baggage and clear a way to white fulfillment without doing anything meaningful to combat structural racism. As Lasch-Quinn correctly foresaw, “Casting interracial problems as issues of etiquette [puts] a premium on superficial symbols of good intentions and good motivations as well as on style and appearance rather than on the substance of change.”

Yet the problem with the therapeutics of contemporary anti-racism is not just that they are politically sterile. When anti-color-blindness and its ideology of insistent “race consciousness” are translated into the sphere of private life—to the domain of friendships, block parties, and backyard barbecues—they assault the very idea of a multiracial society, producing new forms of racism in the process. The fact that our media environment is inundated with an endless stream of books, articles, and social-media tutorials that promise to teach white people how to simply interact with the Black people in their life is not a sign of anti-racist progress, but of profound regression.

The subtext that undergirds this new anti-racist discourse—that Black-white relationships are inherently fraught and must be navigated with the help of professionals and technical experts—testifies to the impoverishment of our interracial imagination, not to its enrichment. More gravely, anti-color-blind etiquette treats Black Americans as exotic others, permanent strangers whose racial difference is so chasmic that it must be continually managed, whose mode of humanness is so foreign that it requires white people to adopt a special set of manners and “race conscious” ritualistic practices to even have a simple conversation.

If we are going to find a way out of the racial discord that has defined American life post-Trump and post-Charlottesville and post-Floyd, we have to begin with a more sophisticated understanding of color-blindness, one that rejects the bad color-blindness on offer from the Republican Party and its partisans, as well as the anti-color-blindness of the anti-racist consultants. Instead, we should embrace the good color-blindness of not too long ago. At the heart of that color-blindness was a radical claim, one imperfectly realized but perfect as an ideal: that despite the weight of a racist past that isn’t even past, we can imagine a world, or at least an interaction between two people, where racial difference doesn’t make a difference.

[ Via: https://archive.today/8zfvc ]

[hearth-and-veil]

hey! I lurk sometimes on your blog and I was wondering what a/your Red Tent is? :)

many well wishes!

I got this right as I logged on to procrastinate finding an opening poem for the RT this week 🤣 Thank you for the assistance.

A Red Tent, Moon Lodge, or Women's Circle, can have a lot of variation based on who's running it. At its most basic level, it is a meeting where women can just exist together, without the expectation to perform for men. Because women act very differently when we are truly outside of men's presence.

Some are just that, without really anything else added. Mine is more spiritual in nature and fairly structured. It's an event, rather than a get together. We have a topic or theme each meeting in which we discuss something important to women's wellbeing. One was on Divine Female Rage. We had one on connecting to your female body through movement and breath. This year is focused on an exploration of the Divine Feminine Archetypes (The Queen is this Sunday!) Future meetings will include the conceptualizion and healing of the womb space, and healing the Mother Wound.

We do things like allow everyone to present art and writing. We sing and chant together. We have a radical listening exercise, which usually results in a lot of tears because it's an incredible release to just be heard - and then we usually hug it out lol! We eat. We laugh. We talk. We challenge each other and debate, and we come to agreements and smile.

Of course, the celebration of and education on the female body are also critical cornerstones! That's the "red" in Red Tent, the "moon" in Moon Lodge. Body shaming is absolutely not allowed and we LOUDLY correct each other over that. No apologies! No shame! We talk about the weird hairs and the bumps and the chunks and the amazing things our bodies can do.

In the future, we may add Women's Rites and Rituals to mark important events in our lives. For example, I did a mothering ceremony for one of our members. New homes, new businesses, degrees...there aren't established Rites for those and I want to start them.

It is a space for women, by women, about women. Often, it's accused of being a man-hating event, but the truth is we rarely talk about men. The patriarchy, yes, but not men. Men just can't fathom we have anything to talk about but them 😉

It's also a place to heal the divisions that are forced on women to keep us from class consciousness. I'm a business-minded childfree woman. I absolutely don't allow pronatalist rhetoric in my Circle. I also absolutely do not allow the denigration of mothers. I (white) am getting a consultant to help me make sure I'm properly supporting BIPOC women in my group. We're GED-PhD (literally). All religions, all cultures, all creeds - I want to tear down the walls and make a road. Lofty ideals, but I mean them sincerely.

So that's probably a bit of a meandering answer but it's an honest one. I can go more into the history and stuff if you want, too.

[rowanmgrey-author]

works in progress

I decided to put up all my wips for writing. I have quite a few, but only some that are very serious and I am focusing on right now. This gets kind of long and rambling so take care to read the bold text, that's where you can find the most important bits.

The Witch in the Ruins

STATUS: Third Draft is 100% complete in the story, however it's being beta read now and will likely have a final revision or two.

GENRE/S: Dark Fantasy

MICRO SYNOPSIS: A nomadic mersinos new to town is hired to kill a ruthless witch terrorizing the town of Atavis.

This is a Sapphic dark fantasy story featuring some horror elements, action, gore and violence. It also has sexual content, though minor and is heavily inspired by things like Dark Souls and The Witcher.

A Night at the Brass Sword (Book 1 of Creatures of the Night)

STATUS: Not complete, I am about 70% through the first draft.

GENRE/S: Paranormal/Supernatural Fantasy

MICRO SYNOPSIS: Kaz, his sister Ziva, and her girlfriend Kat head out for a winter break road-trip to Pike, Massachusetts. When Kat convinces them to stay at the old family resort, they find that the rumors about The Brass Sword being a hotbed for paranormal activity aren't rumors at all.

This one features several queer characters, bipoc and disability rep and is filled with both horror elements and comedy. It will also have a subplot for two romantic relationships. Found family dynamics abound and platonic friendships too. Oh, and these hills and definitely haunted so expect spooky elements and terrifying scenes with ghosts/possession etc. Also this is NOT A SERIES, or rather it's a companion series. I have the first four kind of figured out, generally, and none of them have recurring characters between them.

The Wilds Ones: Bloodlines (Book 1)

STATUS: Draft number 84657 (seriously I don't know, but I have been writing this for like 7 years), this is practically finished, however it needs some serious fucking revision. It is not suitable for beta eyes yet.

GENRE/S: Urban fantasy

THE ACTUAL SYNOPSIS: Ariane and Eron Ward are shapeshifters who work for an age-old Order of Hunters sworn to protect innocents from the supernatural. They work in a modern day New York earning a paycheck to be the most efficient killers they can be, and keep their family’s legacy going, until what they thought was a simple job ends up nearly killing them both. A demon of all things saves their hides and offers them a deal. In exchange for protection against his greatest foe, he will help them find Eron’s father; a man they thought long dead. In their desperate struggle to save him, they collect a pack of wayward allies and get caught up in a war against a coven of blood mages.

This one will have loads of queer characters, the MC is asexual/homoromantic with sex repulsion but does like to date. There is a lot of tragedy, some mystery, loads of action, it's urban fantasy but there is not "Secret World" aspect, so the humans know about the supernatural, also the demons are not based on any religion specifically so they don't come from the devil or anything like that. There is some religious aspects, but I personally am not religious so I don't have an emphasis on that. There are a lot of bipoc characters, and I also have some disability and neurodivergent rep. Also lots of mental illness/health rep and metaphors, specifically most of the supernatural creatures represent a mental illness or feeling I have had. (I am mentally ill myself and this series is therapeutic for me) Found family everywhere! Morally grey characters too, literally everybody in this series.

The Shroud (Book 1 of the Edge Series)

STATUS: In progress. I have a lot planned and figured out, but I only have a few chapters done and I have not looked at it in a year or two. Low-priority.

GENRE/S: Science Fiction

Tilurus is the fifth world humanity has claimed in their quest for colonization. Though it’s been anything but smooth. In the last thirty years a recurring, and seemingly random set of environmental hazards have ravaged the planet. These occurrences, most notably the multi-cyclone tornadoes, have been named: The Shroud.

Meanwhile, in the city of Rival, a bounty hunter and his partner are asked to search for the son of a legendary soldier. General Heller’s son is missing, and soon after they start their hunt, Logan Wilder and Darren Gunn quickly realize the ex-Militia soldier they are after has a target on his back, hitched to him by a gang of cannibals.

I don't want to spoil too much since it's still so vague but I will chat more about it later.

Godslayer (not sure if it will be standalone or not)

STATUS: Not even an outline yet, this one will be very complex so I plan on taking my time. This is low-priority.

GENRE/S: Science Fiction Fantasy (SFF)

MICRO SYNOPSIS: Not sure yet still, but let's just say it has godlike creatures in space with dragons and an MC who is half-dragon and hundreds of years old.

taglist: @anonymousfoz​ @schepper-wubs-wips​ @dyrewrites

[coochiequeens]

BIPOC Ladies in Minnesota l here’s something to look into

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. -- A Minnesota woman who grew up in East Africa is trying something new when it comes to mental health. She's found a unique way to help women clear their heads - and free their finances.

It was a rainy Saturday morning at Ainsworth Park in St. Louis Park, but women showed up - to walk. 

Kimberly Steward, who lives in the city, is part of the walking club of women. 

"We're all coming together with same or similar problems that I feel like we don't get to talk about on the daily," Steward said.

Steward is a busy mom who likes to make time for this walking club.

"It's very nice, very intimate, and it just gives us a chance to like let our hair down without the pressure of what it's like to be a woman and a mother and so many titles. We get to just walk and talk [laughs]!" she said.

And they talk about some really heavy stuff, as Yolanda Farris explained. 

"A lot of us are struggling silently," Farris said.

Farris has walked quite a journey in life. She is in long-term recovery and coaches women in sobriety. She is also a newly-elected St. Louis Park Council member - a woman with a powerful story.

It was Muna Ali's story that got the walking club started. The East Africa native recently left her job in finance to start the Minnesota BIPOC Women's Association, hosting programs like a weekly walk and talk about life and money. She explained why walking works wonders.

"You don't have to think about being perfect at it, it's just walking, one of the most mindful exercises that you can do to get our heart healthy," Ali said. "We are incredibly interested not only in the physical well-being of our participants, but their mental health."

She says another important factor is that women of color are freely bonding. 

"A lot of our women, they feel alone, they feel isolated, and lot of them also don't realize that we share traumas, that we do come from a shared background. So it validates their hurt, validates how they have felt for many years. She says it's an activity of comfort. That's why everyone is smiling when they are walking. No one is frowning, I love that," Ali said. 

Steward is smiling about the group, too.

"They've shown me that I'm not alone and that there are other women going through either what I'm going through or something similar," Steward said.

"When I leave, I don't feel the same as I did when I got here," Yolanda said. "I am always focused on other people. When I come here, I get to focus on me and talk about me and how I feel, and so that's been beautiful."

"Walking with Confidence" will be going on the next two Saturday mornings at Ainsworth Park from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

The BIPOC Women's Association has many other resources, with the goal to increase self-worth and net worth.

Please add any women only or women focused groups in other places in the notes or reblogs

[willmarstudios]

Bookworm Will Review 2025 (#14)

Title: 'Kiss & Tell'

Author: Adib Khorram

Rating: 2 / 5

Review: (MILD SPOILERS)

I really liked the intention behind this story!

A somewhat realistic look into the life of what a young boy band (or any musician/celebrity imo) experiences in terms of perceptions. The long hours, the constant traveling, unattainable expectations from both yourself and the public and of course tokenism and capitalism.

Hunter, the essential MC, a white and openly gay musician in the boy group 'Kiss & Tell' is no stranger to how the public/people in the biz view him. And given he's a celebrity, not much is kept private because people talk. Once his ex posts a series of scandalous texts between them, his "stereotypical and clean gay" image is shattered. Props for this book tackling a subject like bottom shaming, you don't see that often. Regardless, everyone is then expecting him to change to "fix" the image. Emotions run high, feelings aren't expressed in a safe manner, and disaster ensues as we watch this meltdown unfolds.

As I mentioned, I appreciated what this story was trying to present and talk about to younger audiences. There is nothing wrong with being queer and passionate about wanting to help, sex isn't something to be ashamed of and how racism/capitalism dictate success. Hunter was the token gay, but the rest of the band has various ethnicities that are exploited, except we really only focus on Hunter which I guess makes sense. I felt like there was more we've could've explored with the rest of the cast instead of everyone (While caring) bending to address the white MC who "has it worse". I may be thinking about this TOO much because friendship as solid as theirs is a wonderful thing to have. Especially when you are struggling with anything.

TLDR; some points it felt like it was comparing oppressions and I didn't enjoy that.

I did enjoy Kaivan's journey with inner homophobia, I felt like that was a very realistic representation of another sad truth about the LGTBQAI+ community. There are a lot of other problems with it too (racism, classism and ableism), but the one we focused on was the closeted gay having to "fit in" by bashing other gays. It tied in with the concept of safety because sometimes not everyone is going to "be ok" or "comfortable" with you outwardly expressing your queerness. Young queers are constantly disowned, abandoned, and potentially lose everything, being forced to start over from scratch. Black and BIPOC trans individuals especially.

In a similar case, we watch Hunter get molested and touched without warrant just because he's A.) a pop star and B.) gay. We are constantly viewed as sexual deviants, which is dumb because if someone wants to have sex in any form, as long as they're safe and everything is consensual, why do shame them? Sex is natural. Though if you do get into a particular kind of club, just really check in with yourself to see if you want to participate in particular activities before hand. Someone people are there for the dancing. Some are there for back rooms. Both are valid reasons to go out and have fun, but shouldn't be exclusively stereotypes for queer people.

LOVED the inclusion about how activism is a MUST, even if its something small. Wasn't a huge fan of either love interests, in fact, was kind of like wth why is there hinting for you going back with your ex?

Past experiences do not excuse current behavior.

Overall, it was silly, fun and a decent starting point for introducing topics that aren't really discussed about in books (at least that I've seen).