#covering our bases

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2025: A GRACE PALEY READER: Stories, Essays, and Poetry.

Grace Paley's name came up in one of Ursula Le Guin's writing-adjacent essays about great prose stylists who have been largely omitted from canon and forgotten, probably because they're women. (Le Guin's list also included Patricia Geary, Carolyn See yes Lisa See's mom, and Doris Lessing.) Since I hadn't heard of three-quarters of those writers, I added a few titles to my Goodreads, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Paley had a recently-compiled reader out.

Le Guin was not exaggerating: holy shit, this woman's prose will grab you by the throat--beautifully turned sentences and delightfully turned phrases abound in the short fiction. I admit I didn't understand everything that was happening in all of the short stories (which felt. odd. since usually I have that problem in genre fiction, not in stories set in the mid-1900s in New York), but damn if she couldn't Write About It. Nobody was perfect and everybody felt real, and That Prose wrapped around narrow domestic experiences was invigorating.

The essays were (mostly) more straightforward and less opaque, although it was hard to read ones about feminism and race and war and be nodding along thinking "yeah super relatable right on" only to get to the date stamp at the end and see.....1966. So that was. Sure something. She had a couple about craft and writing, too, which I really enjoyed.

I even liked the poems!! I flagged a couple of them as faves ("News," for instance, took me out), which I wasn't expecting (I'm not practiced at reading poetry) but pleasantly surprised me.

Overall: Glad this is on my shelf, now! I'll probably return to it in small doses, because Holy Prose, Batman.

[unorcadox]

Your world has ended! (repeated)

[buttered-toasty]

The dreaming god of the gardens…

.

.

Quite frankly no one makes him nearly weird enough for my tastes. He should have even more eyes than this I think but there’s already fuckoff huge visual noise so

[greykolla-art]

@pudding28 you are absolutely right!👏🌹

Followup to my last post:😎

[saltpepperbeard]

Ed + ✨Slut Strands✨ For @edsbacktattoo 🎉💖. Happy birthday dearest, sweetest Jams! Babe, just know I am also spiritually injecting this set with eight additional shots of Ed's back tattoo sdjklsds. JUST KNOW I AM SPIRTUALLY SERVING YOU YOUR FAVORITE THINGS AND THEN SOME. You are such an utter delight, and have taken me out numerous times. You're also just so incredibly lovely, and so very near and dear to me! Also, dedicating your url to Ed's back tattoo is Based, so your brain is also so sexy and huge <3 HJSKDLS. Love you so much, and happy birthday once again! 💜💜💜

[accidentally-drank-paintwater]

So this post ended up suddenly getting a bunch of likes and reblogs a couple weeks ago and I thought…well, why not redraw it? So uh. here

the noceda siblings! (feat the squad + camila)

I changed the poses jusstttt a tad (oops) but I think it’s better because it’s more me. Before I was just going off a base as a reference but for this I just went with the flow! Also, it’s nice to see how I’ve improved in two years. (p.s. the tags have easter eggs)

(side by sides under cut)

@d00dlestar @jakeachillesmeow

[notacowfest]

not a cow fest 2025 — an update on our deadline!

we're a day early on the final final results of our poll, but it looks like we have an answer on how most of us want to move forward! originally, fics were due on wednesday, june 18th, so that everything could be ready for fics to be revealed on friday, june 20th, with authors revealed on monday, june 23rd.

this will still be the first deadline & fic reveal period of the fest! everyone who's been hard at work on their fics and prompt fills can still see that hard work shared when originally planned — i am personally super excited to see what everyone has ready to go in two weeks, and i know that so many others are just as hyped!! as long as you get your fic submitted to the collection prior to 12pm central on friday, june 20th, it will be part of this first drop of the fest.

a lot of the fun of participating in a fic fest is the anticipation of sharing and reading new fic on the day of fic & author reveals — so, taking the results of the poll into account, we will also have three more deadlines for fic reveals throughout the rest of the off-season.

new upcoming schedule:

Fics due: June 18, 2025 July 16, 2025 August 20, 2025 September 17, 2025

Fics go live: June 20, 2025 July 18, 2025 August 22, 2025 September 19, 2025

Authors revealed: June 23, 2025 July 21, 2025 August 25, 2025 September 22, 2025.

this is our first time changing things up this way so if anyone has any questions, i'll be here to answer them to the best of my abilities. and like with last year's fest, following the last drop of fics before the regular season starts in october, the collection will remain open for people to submit prompt fills until prompting & sign-ups open for next year's fest in spring 2026!

happy writing!!

[waitineedaname]

It has been a long time since I've found a single person so infuriating but oh my god I am at my wit's fucking end with this coworker

[mars-ipan]

getting hype for deltarune again and relearning how to draw these damn characters for the first time in years

[livelaughlovepedri]

olmo, pedri and gavi should be our midfield de gala and that’s it

[mucking-faori]

The NZ first party is now not only insisting that Māori people are not indigenous, they are also claiming that the only Māori who believe themselves to be so are "Elites" who need to be exterminated. Their definition of "elites" seems to be Māori who speak the language, are involved with or aware of their culture and history, or are generally not buying white supremacist bullshit.

A Māori party candidate has had her home broken into, her signs smashed down, her fence driven into and terroristic threats made both in these attacks and via mail.

Māori party billboards have been defaced with swastikas and broken down.

There have been two anti-māori marches in the last two weeks.

National, ACT, NZ First and a host of other far right parties are parroting and endorsing extremely racist conspiratorial shit about Maori and others. I am seriously worried that there is going to be a terrorist attack at a māori event at some point soon.

Tatou ma, we HAVE to vote in this election. And especially to pakeha, take further action. Support kaupapa māori, participate in the ongoing protests and counter-protests and educate yourselves. We have protests here supporting primarily American kaupapa that get more turnout than Māori led actions do. We need to change that.

I feel that māori are slowly starting to shift things in our favor, but unfortunately one of the clear symptoms of that is that right-wing extremists are scared enough to be making serious threats to our safety. Fuck them. Fuck them all. It will be a long fight over the next few years, but we /have/ to do it, if we want the best future for our country.

[taldigi]

Do you ever wonder what kind of characters and stories would have entered American Media had we a publication and animation landscape that rewarded artistry and storytellers over views and merch sales

[mabaris]

i refuse to believe that the events of inquisition happened in one year because i’m finally reading tevinter nights and it’s a WEEK’S journey through the mountains to get to skyhold. and that’s not even counting travel time for how long it takes to get from the frostbacks to anywhere else. at LEAST a fortnight’s travel, both ways, any time you want to go somewhere. and we’re making that trip dozens of times

[slythereen]

congratulations to mclaren for its all mclaren top three

[cordycepsbian]

team snakemouth gijinka but more of a Fantasy™️ au than just regular humans. featuring our spin on the concepts of halflings and dwarves where they are creature animal. and leif is uh ??? the horrors

bonus doodle

[cherry-bomb1985]

It's so funny browsing Silent Hill 2 fics now and seeing all the new takes on James Sunderland's backstory. I mean yeah, a lot of that is totally up to interpretation, but I bet most folks don't know that James Sunderland's father, Frank Sunderland, appears in the fourth title Silent Hill 4: The Room!

He's the superintendent of South Ashfield Heights (the apartment complex the game takes place in), and his role in the story is that he found an abandoned newborn baby in one of the apartments, sent him to the hospital that James' wife would spend the last three years of her life in and, for no reason other than he felt it was important, kept that baby's goddamn umbilical in a red box in his own apartment for 34 fucking years.

(Coincidentally this baby also grows up to be the serial killer mentioned in the Woodside Apartments newspaper article but I do not have the time to unpack all that)

anyways for all'a'y'all folks writing James Sunderland for the first time wondering where he got his weirdness from: he gets it from his dad!