geargoyle

[geargoyle]

every new preview for the next part of the current quest arc makes me think we're going to tau. the relay is on a murex? that can't be for no reason

and Albrecht's "tau awaits" stuck out like a sore thumb to me as foreshadowing cause he hasn't mentioned Tau so directly before

pleaaaase I want aliens in warframe ;-; even Eleanor asked about it

also I need that piano song in the end of this year's tennocon trailer

[geargoyle]

[ 𝐈𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐱 𝐐𝐨𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐱 ]

After years of alone on his Martian throne, the king of sands himself finds someone worthy of his attention. Worthy of…his companionship. With armor as firm as sarcophagus, there is no other like Qorvex!

I'm still writing Part 2 of the Inaros x Qorvex fan fic @ w @''

[geargoyle]

It's here, our Pride 2025 bundle! $30 for sixty-six works, from 38 transfem-majority creators--books, music, artwork from queer creatives from India, the Philippines, Thailand, and more. It's a fantastic deal, and we have SO many great lesbian books.

https://itch.io/b/3065/queer-lights-in-the-darkness

And yes, to confirm since I'm posting this up, both of the Ravenswood Institute novels that are currently out are in this, along with stuff from a TON of awesome writers. You should definitely grab it.

[geargoyle]

what a legend

[geargoyle]

I made this out of the rage I felt from seeing transphobic, butchphobic and enbyphobic comments in my tl.

Being a lesbian is part of my identity too and I refuse to let other people tell me I am not a lesbian just because I don't fit their binary perception of things. It's so sad to see other lesbians shitting on butches and gender non-conforming or non-binary lesbians.

But hey, we are here and we're not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere. I've always been a loud lesbian and I'll always be.

Keep being loud, proud and gentle with other lesbians and be fierce with the ones who try to erase us.

[geargoyle]

I Know I'm Late As Fuck To The Party, But Hunger Pangs By Joy Demorra Is Genuinely SO GOOD

GODDAMN

This book breaks ALL the rules and it's still one of the most entertaining things I've read all year!

Hunger Pangs is shamelessly self-indulgent in the very best of ways. There were multiple times where I swear I heard an echo of the author laughing to herself as she wrote.

And I don't know what I should call it, but the closest thing is fanservice I guess? Butter? Whimsy? Well, what ever it is, Hunger Pangs is chockfull of it and here's a non-exhaustive list:

An cunty autistic vampire called Vlad fucking Blutstein

A disabled werewolf beefcake sweetheart

A woman so powerful she could kill you with her pinky (Can I get a Hell Yeah to that?)

the vampire is such a giant fucking nerd like peak blorbo material fucking hell I want to chew on him

BOTANY SAVES THE DAY

somehow slice of life, epic quest to save the world and political intrigue all at once? HOW?

OH and the smut is SCRUMPTIOUS

BALLS

LIKE THE SOCIAL FUNCTION NOT THE BODY PART

Galadriel doesn't have shit on Ursula, beautiful, ancient, powerful Ursula, I love her, I love her so much, my only complaint is that there was so little of her

🌟Absinthe🌟

HOT SPRING HOT SPRING HOT SPRING HOT SPRING HOT

I take back the previous point, there was no on screen hot spring and I am STILL mad about that (in the sequel perhaps? (pretty please?))

Beautiful carnivorous plant children

The universal autistic experience of needing the flirting equivalent of a sledgehammer to the face to be sure what's going on

Political commentary with all the subtlety of Mickey 17, case in point:

"It was all just so frustratingly simple. The government needed to stop levying crippling taxes on the lower classes, they needed to stop waging wars they couldn’t win, and they needed to focus their efforts on relief aid. It was plain as day. They needed to just… do the right thing. The problem was, they just kept choosing to do the wrong thing, over and over, and then they had the audacity to act surprised when the working classes kept finding novel ways to liberate the ruling classes of their heads."

Okay, this list is getting long and I could go on and on and on, but I think we're reaching the point of the review where I put it down and wait for the energy drink to wear off, see you in two hours. Toodles!

Whelp, okay.

Hunger Pangs is an ode to people that refuse to give up their gentleness in face of the world's atrocities and great personal hardship and make a hell of a lot of difference doing so. It's a reminder that even if the world is on fire, there is still love and joy to be found.

Nathan, a werewolf veteran whose decades long deployment ended when he was shot in the shoulder with a silver bullet, should be dead according to all doctors. And he's not alive either, he's just dying very very slowly, poisoned by fragments of the silver bullet no doctor bothered to look for. As a result he's deaf and has lost much of the function of his shoulder. And even after the fragments are removed, while he gets better, he still is disabled.

And where a lesser author would have come up with some magical cure for his illness, made him "whole" again, Demorra gives him hearing aides.

I don't know if Vlad is canonically autistic or if I (auDHD and retired theatre kid) am projecting, but he resonated with me deeply. I've never read anything that got masking so right. His opening of the second ball is a brilliant example of how sometimes, in measured dosages, autistic people can and do enjoy being the centre of attention. Sometimes the line between acting and masking blurs in a way that can be really fucking fun.

I wish we saw more of Ursula in this book. Her tragic background and the responsibility she shoulders must be crushing. What Demorra does brilliantly is contrast her bone-deep fatigue to how much energy and vibrance she can exude.

You can get the ebook on payhip or through your local bookstore. (While I'm very much not the target audience for it, there's also a closed doors version.)

I very much recommend getting it local. For reasons.

OH, before I forget, Demorra is an esteemed hellsite member! You can find her right here, she's a joy to have on your dash: @thebibliosphere

<<monster-fuelled book review episode one

[geargoyle]

...you'd give this girl a clean bill of health to go get her surgery, right?

[geargoyle]

Happy Pride Month.

Hi-Res Prints and Editable PSDs: https://ko-fi.com/s/c16fb83091

Prints: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/mxmorgan/

Tees and More: https://mxmorgan.threadless.com

[geargoyle]

PSA: Credit Card Phone Scam

(Or, how Tumblr just saved my ass)

I saw a PSA recently about a scam going around with spoofed official numbers calling and asking for information, and how you should hang up and call back using the correct number rather than just go along with what the caller is telling you. But this is Tumblr, so I'll never be able to find the post again.

I decided to make my own, because this literally just happened to me an hour ago. Hopefully my story can spread some more awareness and save other asses the way mine was saved.

Around 7:30pm tonight (Friday), I got a phone call from a 1-800 number. I almost didn't answer it, then I saw it was 1-800-465-4___, and I recognized that as the start of the CIBC phone number, so I picked up.

Me: Hello?

Guy: Hi, is this [MrsD]?"

Me: Yes.

Guy: Hi, [MrsD], this is _____ from CIBC, how are you tonight?

I thought, okay, this is a sales call. Right before I'm about to sit down for dinner. Typical. Mentally, I'm already putting together an exit strategy, preparing to say no to everything and get off the phone ASAP. But then—

Guy: We've just flagged suspicious activity on your CIBC Visa card. It was an online BestBuy transaction for $980.00. Was that your transaction?

Me, flustered: Uh. What? Sorry, how much?

Guy: $980.00 at BestBuy, was that you?

Me: Oh. At BestBuy?

Guy: Yes, your card was used at a BestBuy in [town nearby]. Was that you? Did you go to [town nearby] today? You don't live in [town nearby], right?

Me: Uh. No?

Guy: Okay, so I need some information to verify this transaction.

By this point, my brain had caught on that something about this was hinky. First of all, I thought he said it was an online purchase, then he said it was in person. But maybe I'd misheard, he was talking fast. My second thought was that every other time there was a suspicious transaction, I got an automated phone call and a text message with instructions to call back. I've never had a person call me directly.

My third thought was, well, the phone number on the caller ID was right....

THEN! I remembered a Tumblr post I saw recently, and I remembered what it told me to do.

Me: I'm skeptical about this call. I'm going to call CIBC myself and look into this.

Guy: What? Ma'am, you can just tell me, I can verify—

Me: No. Thank you, but I'll call the number on the back of my card.

Guy, getting more agitated: Ma'am, if you look at the number on your card, you'll see it's the same number.

Me: You know that can spoofed, right?

Guy: Uh— but ma'am—

Me: Sorry, but I need to make sure. I'm going to call CIBC directly.

The guy kept sputtering, but I hung up on him. In that moment, I really didn't think that he was a scammer. In fact, I thought I was being paranoid and was maybe kinda rude to the guy. I wondered if I was being overcautious, and I felt a bit guilty.

I called the number on the back of my credit card, waited 15 minutes for an agent, and told him what just happened.

IMMEDIATELY—

Agent: You didn't tell him anything, did you?

Me: No. I said I wasn't in [town nearby] today, but that's it.

Agent: Good. You did the right thing by calling us, let me look into the transaction for you.

Then, a minute later:

Agent: I'm not seeing any transaction like that. There's no flags on your card, nothing suspicious at all.

Me: So it was a scam?

Agent: Yep. Entirely fake.

I was honestly surprised. I really thought that there was some kind of mix-up and that I would be apologizing to this guy for being rude to his colleague.

Looking back on it now, I can see all the telltale signs of it being a scam call:

Time of day. Early evening on a Friday, chances are people are either sitting down for dinner or in a hurry to get somewhere. In this situation, a lot people probably wouldn't think twice about giving "the bank" some information just to get off the phone. (Joke's on them, I have no life!) But the way that I reacted to his introduction did evoke the desired reaction of Ugh, what now? Leave me alone! that the scammer was banking on (pun intended).

Sense of urgency. The scammer spoke fast, threw details at me quickly, and made sure I knew that I had to give him my information right away. This honestly threw me off. It was overwhelming, and I felt concerned and a bit frantic for a few seconds until I thought about what I know about scams and what I'd just read in that Tumblr PSA.

Complete lack of empathy or understanding about my skepticism/anti-fraud precautions. The last time I had to get a new credit card number due to fraud, the agent I spoke to said things like "I know this is frustrating", "I'm sorry this is a hassle", etc. And of course the CIBC agent I spoke to tonight was immediately grateful that I'd called them directly and reassured me that CIBC would never ask for information. By contrast, the scammer was outright dismissive of my concerns and got agitated when I wouldn't just trust him right off the bat.

Emotional provocation. Similar to #2 & #3 above, the scammer was very good at making me feel things. Worried and fearful at first, then guilty about being suspicious, to the point where I actually apologized to the guy. (Granted, I am Canadian, but still!)

And finally, I cannot stress enough: the spoofed phone number. I am a pretty well-informed person. I keep up with news about scams and whatnot. I know that phone numbers can be spoofed. I've been in front of my phone when it just starts to ring and I can see the auto-dialler number appear briefly before it gets replaced with a number that has my area code. But tonight—early evening on a Friday—I was cooking dinner and my phone was across the room. It had rung several times by the time I got to it. I only picked it up because I recognized the CIBC number. And when the scammer started his spiel, the fact that the number was the same was enough for me to give him just a tiny moment of trust. Had he actually gotten past that first barrier and started requesting my information, I think I would have caught on, because people asking for sensitive information over the phone is a huge obvious red flag. I like to think I would have caught on, anyway. But maybe not! That fake number almost had me.

TL;DR: No matter what the number on your caller ID says—that it's your bank, your energy company, your internet provider, whatever!—if the person on the other end is requesting sensitive information urgently, don't panic. Stop. Think. Then tell them nothing, hang up the phone, and call your service provider yourself using a verified phone number.

[geargoyle]

[geargoyle]

Candles & Cantrips is proudly queer-owned!

Check out our Etsy shop! Our beeswax candles are hand-poured in our kitchen, made of 100% natural, unscented wax. Our dyed candles are made with a blend of beeswax and soy wax, also with no added scents.

Each purchase supports a household of four disabled, trans queers living in Florida, USA!

[geargoyle]

Elo isn't phased by anything it seemed. Doesn't seem to be the case for Arthur. Give the man a break, he's... he's been through some stuff lately.

[geargoyle]

[geargoyle]

"bi pride flag"

Honestly not terrible. Kinda cute, in a way. I'd probably put it in little bitty text up on the edge of my hairline in the bi flag colors:

bi pride flag

I'd need to pick some kinda cool font, too. It's just good economics!

I needed an image to color match for a Warframe outfit, in case anyone was curious. lol

[geargoyle]

🏳️‍🌈

[geargoyle]

Right. https://gofund.me/74494d4f

17 days until I leave town for surgery.

10 days to finish finalizing all the financial end of things.

Oh this has gotten so real in the last week. I thought the anticipation and excitement wouldn't be as big of a deal this time around as last, but I am, well, really bad at calculating that kind of thing. Because oh my god it's almost here and I am SO NOT READY. I have about half the supplies I need and I'm getting the rent prepayment taken care of this weekend, which will pretty much break the bank for me at that point. There's about a third of the fundraising total left to fill, which is the part that covers food and my stay in Spokane, and well, it's not there yet, so here I am again, asking you to help if you can. Please, even if it's just five bucks or a share on social media to your friends, all of it helps, and I am just so close. Anything you can do would be awesome. Thanks.

Also trying to figure out what message to send as a thank you to everyone who helped so far, and um, how do you say "thanks for helping me fix my body, my mind, and my life?" Words don't quite seem to cover it.

[geargoyle]

YARELI PRIME ACCESS G̵I̵V̵E̵A̵W̵A̵Y̵ CONTEST!

Join us on June 8th, 2pm EST/8pm CEST, for a chance to win one of two Yareli PA (highest tier, thank you DE!) or 600 plat!

Dresscode: queer culture (flag colors, pop culture moments, famous people/characters, stereotypes, etc etc have fun with it, we're not made of sugar)

contest will happen live on twitch.tv/tbgkaru where you'll whisper in-game to get invited and then wait for instructions!

For this specific theme you can have 2 fashions if they're related (for queer couple) but it doesn't increase your chances by default!

GLHF!! 💛