fieryaxolotl

[fieryaxolotl]

Elgar'nan at every turn: You would look so good kneeling before me, Rook. Can you picture it. Are you picturing it.

Ghilan'nain, bonking him with a severed darkspawn limb: FOCUS

[fieryaxolotl]

the exile

— (rafayel)

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'o desterrado' by antónio soares dos rei

[fieryaxolotl]

[fieryaxolotl]

quiz: why do lobsters have one claw bigger

[fieryaxolotl]

you're the only one who understands me mr strobbery

[fieryaxolotl]

i’m all sex positive and shit but i’m begging you. do not make your characters over 30 fuck on the floor. please. think of their lower backs. their knees. have some empathy 🙏

[fieryaxolotl]

[fieryaxolotl]

One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.

Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.

But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.

That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.

Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.

Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.

I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.

I want my door guy back.

[fieryaxolotl]

[fieryaxolotl]

Tumblr, I propose a battle of wits!

I have put Iocaine powder in one of these two goblets. You choose, then we both drink.

[fieryaxolotl]

They should invent a method of asking for reassurance that nobody secretly hates you that doesn't make people secretly hate you.

[fieryaxolotl]

still being active on tumblr is camp

[fieryaxolotl]

so my dad's car insurance called me today and was like hey we're trying to get a hold of this dude and found your name and thought y'all might be related (i have an incredibly uncommon surname). so I was like yeah that's my dad. can you tell me what he did this time

and i could tell she wasn't supposed to tell me, but heard the absolute exasperation in my voice and just knew i was his child. she described that there was "a fender bender, and an altercation, in a restaurant parking lot" and that his lawyer was trying to get a hold of him to tell him his court summons had been waived

my parents own a restaurant so I figured it was their parking lot but upon asking my mom i have learned

it was a burger king parking lot. he physically fought a guy in a rural pennsylvania burger king parking lot. love and light ☀️

[fieryaxolotl]

[fieryaxolotl]

That Time a Published Author Told Me to Un-Queer My Novel

So, I don't think I ever shared this story on Tumblr before.

As you may know I've spent the past ten years turning my old Welcome to Night Vale fanfic into a stand alone novel called Echo of the Larkspur. Now, I haven't been working on it ten years straight. I'd pick it up, do a bunch of editing and rewriting, submit it to agents/publishers, get turned down, put the book away, wait 2-3 years, dust off the book, re-edit and rewrite, etc etc. A cycle that repeated itself far too many times that I would like.

Well, during one of these cycles when I was in the 'get rejected by every agent and publisher I submit to' stage I asked the writing group I was in what I was doing wrong. Because at this point I had reached a hundred total rejections and I was starting to suspect that the issue was with me.

One of the members of this writing group, a male author who was traditionally published, offered to read my first chapter and give his advice on how to fix it. This was, in retrospect, a mistake. But I was desperate. I sent him the first chapter and waited for his response.

Folks. The email he sent me changed my life.

First he said that agents wouldn't publish my novel because it was Sci-fi with hardcore gay erotica in it. This is curious because while the book certainly is queer, at no point in the conversation with this man did I say it was hardcore erotica. Nor did the first chapter feature any. It's almost as if he assumed that just because something was gay, it had to be hardcore erotica. Interesting.

He went on to say that a Human/Robot pairing was weird and that there was "No Way" my story could seriously address the issues of a relationship like that. Once again, he only read the first chapter. He just...assumed I wouldn't think of that? And that my book wouldn't cover it?

The author then said “I also felt that the LGBTQ inclusion really seems to cloud things.” Direct Quote.

And then this is when he said my favorite quote of them all:

The idea of a book being a sci-fi with romance AND a mystery is a Modern Art Marzipan Owl. It's just too confusing! No one can handle a story that is a mystery in a sci-fi enviroment AND has a romantic subplot! THEIR BRAINS WOULD LITERALLY EXPLODE!

Thankfully he had a solution to my book problem. His answer? Turn the book into an Action Spy Thriller and turn S.A.G.E., a robot that identies as a gay man, into a sexy lady robot who needs a MAN to teach her what it means to be human.

(I assume the male lead will teach the 'confused' female robot how to be human via his penis.)

Now my favorite part about this advice is that at no point did he outright say "Remove the gay part". No, instead he sneakily changed the robot love interest into a female robot as if I wouldn't notice. Just sort of swept away the gay bits as something totally unneeded and just mucking up the narrative. Also that's not the plot of my story, I have no idea where this virus thing came from.

(Also note that the female robot can't be robotic-like at all. Must preserve the average straight-man sex drive at all costs I guess)

He then finished his email basically saying that I should remove everything that 'traditional publishers' don't like (aka the queer parts) and make it easier for 'your average reader' to digest and my book will be good as published!

When I said this email changed my life I meant it. Because it made me realize I'd rather be self published and unknown than traditionally publish milquetoast trash like he suggested. Like holy fuck. If I removed all of the "Difficult" to digest stories out of Echo of the Larkspur then there wouldn't be a book left!

So here I am. Self publishing my Marzipan Modern Art Owl of a book. I know it'll never see the inside of a bookstore or top the charts on Goodreads but hey, I'd rather it speak to one person than have a thousand people get excited for the part where the male lead teaches the lady robot how to be human (via his penis).

If a Queer Sci-fi/Romance/Mystery novel sounds like your jam then consider preordering it!

Looking for something to read now? Can't afford the book? Willing to read in exchange for an honest review? You can join my ARC book readers here!

[fieryaxolotl]

[fieryaxolotl]

THE SECRET GARDEN (1993)

dir. agnieszka holland