madi-konrad

[madi-konrad]

you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them,'

[madi-konrad]

my love for you was like an open wound

yucky and gross 😖

- i've been practicing my poetry if you think i should blaze this one let me know

[madi-konrad]

Tumblr inventing the smol bean and/or genderwoke pedophile has to be one of the worst things to come out of the website

[madi-konrad]

"Stop saying LLMs / Generative AIs are evil, they're just unthinking machine algorithms!" okay, the companies that promulgate them are evil, and they engaged in a cavalcade of evil, manipulative, foolish practices to build and maintain them. Happy now?

[madi-konrad]

something about how censorship and capitalism are so closely intertwined. that the slow push of right-wing conservative ideals are closely mirrored by corporate rebranding. how fast fashion restyles "femininity" into ever-more-modest aesthetics. how sydney sweeney can say my jeans are blue in a re-formatting of an advertisement that originally featured a child; but meanwhile corporations are halting DEI initiatives in their tracks.

but okay. i can't say fuck in my instagram poetry, that's fine. it always bothers me when a content creator changes their closed captions to a different word - HOH/deaf communities aren't composed of infants, and can read a swear word without fainting. but you have to censor if you don't want to get shadowbanned.

can't make a video about a person who is being violent, abusive. but the president of the united states can literally say whatever he wants, forever. you can't even really say that you think the president is a pedophile - pedophile is a word that the AI will flag.

marx wrote about how capitalism alienates us from ourselves and from others. social media continues to enhance that alienation, and now there is another layer happening - one where The Corporation gets to decide how we talk/think/interact. (don't even fucking get me started on how tumblr loves to see trans people as a threat.)

books are getting published that include the "word" unalive. this gives you a strange disassociation for a moment; feeling like 1984 exists in the real life. is this for maximum profit? but also - who could possibly be seeking out a book where violence takes place but is also the type of person who does not want to name the violence? is that even a significant portion of society - someone who wants to read the hunger games but, like, without all the child killing and anti-capitalist critique. or maybe, who knows. that fucking post about how disco elysium should be about a witch.

you watch as the late night show gets cancelled because god forbid anyone critique The Corporation. in the past year, you've watched media slowly back down from "making a stand" into bland everybody-wins gruel. you've watched plenty of corporations switch from saying (in rainbow font) "we'll always protect our FAMILY" to saying, "we value differences, but you're not a right fit for our team". in job interviews, HR is forced to talk around their policy, not wanting to specifically say identity. it's eerie.

one of the first rules of resisting fascism is "do not obey in advance."

and what is the next step anyway? will ticketmaster stop selling tickets for concerts that use swear words? will mastercard no longer cover art sales for any form of nudity, regardless of the context? god forbid there be violence in your violent video games. god forbid a person interacts with anything, ever, that might make them uncomfortable in any small way.

it reminds me of how the rest of life has also become less colorful (literally). how you need to keep your car pristine and undamaged with no bumper stickers, what if you resell it. how you'll never afford a house, so your apartment is a palatable resell-value grey. how you don't even own the tv you enjoy.

it's just - it's not enough that capitalism controls what i eat and where i go and what i do. these days, the terrible white & bloated body of capitalism is shoving his hands down my throat and holding my tongue. i need to be a brand, somehow. i, as a person existing on this site, need to reflect the brand ideals of this site.

they need to make a buck off of me, somehow.

[madi-konrad]

im about to kill someone or myself i just saw someone on the dnd subreddit say "rules are for gameplay, not narrative" (which in all fairness is not a take i should be surprised by) but like THE GAMEPLAY CREATES THE FUCKING NARRATIVE THATS HOW RPGS WORK

[madi-konrad]

Even if you're just looking in pure economic terms, immigrants create as many jobs as they fill, since (shocker!) immigrants are people who spend money to secure the necessities of life , and luxuries when they can afford them. The whole "Immigrants steal jobs!" canard is simply wrong; it looks at only one side of the equation.

A large immigrant population can drive down wages, but only in situations where worker protections (like a minimum wage) aren't enforced to protect immigrant populations -- something that would be dramatically easier to address if movement across borders wasn't punished as illegal.

The right to free movement is a fucking joke. Cool, all these new wealth people moved in and made my hometown inaccessible to everyone who was born there. Cool, all these no-wealth people are coming in and taking jobs meant for kids, driving down the value of labor.

Like cool, great job removing youth, talent, and progressives from small towns, surely there will be no problems there.

I’m sick of everyone feeling like they have a right to move into my home, just because I don’t have a piece of paper from the federal government to show that it is.

"taking jobs meant for kids" <- what

[madi-konrad]

Stop!! Hibari-Kun! is a really difficult show to watch for a lot of reasons, it's very racist and fatphobic and above all else, incredibly transphobic/homophobic (these are closely linked together in the show), but it's also so hard to watch because at least for me it's incredibly relatable. The scenes where Hibari's father threatens to kill her or hires someone to cut her hair and force her to be a man are very upsetting, even triggering, but they're also very real. That is just the experience of being a trans girl in a transphobic family, of having every little feminine thing you do questioned and ruthlessly put down, of being broken down and beaten to try to force you to fit the mould of masculinity which you so clearly do not fit into. Even while the series is very transphobic, it empathises with her and puts her feelings and experiences and desires at the forefront of these scenes. She's not the POV character but she is the protagonist, and she's repeatedly shown to be a very cool and likeable and desirable person even at the same time as she is punished for being desirable. It unintentionally becomes one of the best depictions of transmisogyny I've seen in any media, much less something written for Weekly Shonen Jump and then adapted for mainstream TV in the 80s. The qualities which make her reviled are the same ones which make her desirable. Kosaku struggles with his attraction to her because on one hand, she's everything he wants and he's attracted to her at first sight, but on the other, in his mind she's a "boy" and he cannot let himself think of himself as gay. Many trans women are caught in this same double-bind, and so her experiences are very relatable. For that reason, I really enjoy it even as I struggle to watch it. This sort of makes the series itself transfeminised - I hate it for the same reasons I love it, its most desirable qualities are also its most painful. It's hard to recommend but I really enjoy it.

[madi-konrad]

Road Mysteries, with my darling, @madi-konrad

[madi-konrad]

"I can't believe you reblogged that. They've been accused, you know."

"Accused of what?"

"I don't understand the question."

[madi-konrad]

list link here

[madi-konrad]

IT IS TIME for your daily four calls! -Mastercard -Swipe -Visa -Paypal

Remember for Mastercard, ask why they felt the need to invoke rule 5.12.7 if they “only oppose illegal content”, and point out that NONE of what they opposed on Steam/Itch was ILLEGAL.

(Rule 5.12.7 is the “we can pull out if you’re bad for our image” rule and is incredible bullshit, please call them on this specifically.)

Mastercard is buckling, but it isn’t there yet. We’ll need AT LEAST one more solid week of constant pressure, likely 2-3.

IN ADDITION, we are adding MAIL BOMBING TO THE LIST.

[madi-konrad]

This is a fucking great book but the cover makes it impossible to carry around in public

[madi-konrad]

This morning, I heard more news about the itch.io / Steam censorship situation. Controversy. Stripping of rights from marginalized creators. Whatever you want to call it.

And then I realized… I sell books on itch. Two books; one novel, one 14k word novelette. Nothing explicit, nothing "objectionable," just unapologetically sapphic.

And yeah. I checked. They're both delisted from itch.io's search all the same.

I don't want to cast this as a case of "I was one of the good ones," or anything like that. My decision to not write pornography is just a case of, well, my lack of interest in that particular genre. Porn deserves to exist just as much as "safe for work" creative outlets. But we knew that the war on porn was really a cardboard disguise for a war on all queerness, whether or not it "qualifies" as being "safe for work". You can't separate the one from the other.

Anyway. This isn't an essay, I'm not a theorist, just a creative writer who really shouldn't be surprised that her work was caught in the latest fascist wave of censorship.

I don't support myself with my writing; I'm a high school substitute teacher, and my partner also works full time to support us. But I'd be lying if I said money hasn't been tight these last few months; subs don't get paid during summer vacation, and also aren't eligible for unemployment since they're just "on break" for those months. I still have a job come September. But this censorship has shone a spotlight on how precarious art really is. I made a deliberate choice to pursue a day job that would allow me to continue my creative writing. And now that writing is, in a small way, being excluded by virtue of its queerness.

And that sucks. Full stop. It just sucks.

Go support your favorite queer artist right now; even if they don't sell through itch (or Steam), I'm betting that they need the support now more than ever.

If you wanted to support me, I'll pull together a list below of links to my work available online below the cut. Thankfully the itch.io links still work; these titles are just not listed through the search, limiting their discoverability, their reach. And thankfully other storefronts still list them, for the moment.

My latest release, a sapphic fantasy novelette (14k words), The Sea:

itch.io (ebook): https://thepinkhydra.itch.io/the-sea

Books2Read aggregate link (paperback and ebook, all major storefronts): https://books2read.com/thesea

For thousands of years, the stars have been fixed in place, separating the sea above from the sea below. Sister Elegy remembers when the star, Ailta, fell to earth decades ago. Back then, things appeared so simple. It was Elegy's duty as Ailta's chosen guardian to ward her path to the tomb of the Queen. For it was foretold that a star would bring the Queen back to life, and usher in the glory of Her renewed reign. But along the journey, both Ailta and Elegy learned things are not so plain as they appear. Together, they faced the dangers of the road, the weight of Sister Elegy's regrets, the all too real shadows of her past, all while silently grappling with the uncertain purpose of their destination… Madeline Konrad's magical novelette, set in her fantasy world of Melodia, is a haunting, bittersweet sapphic romance about a star and the woman who loved her.

My sapphic fantasy novel, A Demon's Name Upon Your Lips:

itch.io (ebook): https://madikonrad.itch.io/a-demons-name

Books2Read aggregate link: (ebook, all major storefronts except Amazon): https://books2read.com/u/3nGjgK

Amazon link (ebook): https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Name-Upon-Your-Melodia-ebook/dp/B0CRNTHC1Y

Lucia is a succubus, a demon with the power to shape the emotions and passions of mortals. Summoned often into the world of Melodia, she takes pride in upholding her demonic contracts to the best of her abilities. She likes to think she does her job well… though a string of recent failures say otherwise. Talia, the recently elevated Duke of Fallmire, summons Lucia for a simple reason: to pose as her wife and fulfill marital obligations to the satisfaction of Parliament. All to say, just a few weeks of walking around the estate and playing nice with the neighbors before a conveniently tragic death. Quick and easy. Immediately, Lucia smells blood in the water. Behind closed doors, the Duke plots vengeance upon those who killed her father—and the demon wants in. Revenge, after all, is much more fun… and more lucrative, to boot. But can Lucia predict how hard she'd fall for the Duke? (Not a chance). And can the Duke find it in her vengeful heart to love?

[madi-konrad]

If you’re having writers block…READ!!!! CONSUME MEDIA

I feel like I don’t hear that given enough as advice for writers block..just read? Watch tv? Movies? Find inspiration in media.

Writers block is a lack of inspiration, so go collect more.

[madi-konrad]

Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

[madi-konrad]

This morning, I heard more news about the itch.io / Steam censorship situation. Controversy. Stripping of rights from marginalized creators. Whatever you want to call it.

And then I realized… I sell books on itch. Two books; one novel, one 14k word novelette. Nothing explicit, nothing "objectionable," just unapologetically sapphic.

And yeah. I checked. They're both delisted from itch.io's search all the same.

I don't want to cast this as a case of "I was one of the good ones," or anything like that. My decision to not write pornography is just a case of, well, my lack of interest in that particular genre. Porn deserves to exist just as much as "safe for work" creative outlets. But we knew that the war on porn was really a cardboard disguise for a war on all queerness, whether or not it "qualifies" as being "safe for work". You can't separate the one from the other.

Anyway. This isn't an essay, I'm not a theorist, just a creative writer who really shouldn't be surprised that her work was caught in the latest fascist wave of censorship.

I don't support myself with my writing; I'm a high school substitute teacher, and my partner also works full time to support us. But I'd be lying if I said money hasn't been tight these last few months; subs don't get paid during summer vacation, and also aren't eligible for unemployment since they're just "on break" for those months. I still have a job come September. But this censorship has shone a spotlight on how precarious art really is. I made a deliberate choice to pursue a day job that would allow me to continue my creative writing. And now that writing is, in a small way, being excluded by virtue of its queerness.

And that sucks. Full stop. It just sucks.

Go support your favorite queer artist right now; even if they don't sell through itch (or Steam), I'm betting that they need the support now more than ever.

If you wanted to support me, I'll pull together a list below of links to my work available online below the cut. Thankfully the itch.io links still work; these titles are just not listed through the search, limiting their discoverability, their reach. And thankfully other storefronts still list them, for the moment.

My latest release, a sapphic fantasy novelette (14k words), The Sea:

itch.io (ebook): https://thepinkhydra.itch.io/the-sea

Books2Read aggregate link (paperback and ebook, all major storefronts): https://books2read.com/thesea

For thousands of years, the stars have been fixed in place, separating the sea above from the sea below. Sister Elegy remembers when the star, Ailta, fell to earth decades ago. Back then, things appeared so simple. It was Elegy's duty as Ailta's chosen guardian to ward her path to the tomb of the Queen. For it was foretold that a star would bring the Queen back to life, and usher in the glory of Her renewed reign. But along the journey, both Ailta and Elegy learned things are not so plain as they appear. Together, they faced the dangers of the road, the weight of Sister Elegy's regrets, the all too real shadows of her past, all while silently grappling with the uncertain purpose of their destination… Madeline Konrad's magical novelette, set in her fantasy world of Melodia, is a haunting, bittersweet sapphic romance about a star and the woman who loved her.

My sapphic fantasy novel, A Demon's Name Upon Your Lips:

itch.io (ebook): https://madikonrad.itch.io/a-demons-name

Books2Read aggregate link: (ebook, all major storefronts except Amazon): https://books2read.com/u/3nGjgK

Amazon link (ebook): https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Name-Upon-Your-Melodia-ebook/dp/B0CRNTHC1Y

Lucia is a succubus, a demon with the power to shape the emotions and passions of mortals. Summoned often into the world of Melodia, she takes pride in upholding her demonic contracts to the best of her abilities. She likes to think she does her job well… though a string of recent failures say otherwise. Talia, the recently elevated Duke of Fallmire, summons Lucia for a simple reason: to pose as her wife and fulfill marital obligations to the satisfaction of Parliament. All to say, just a few weeks of walking around the estate and playing nice with the neighbors before a conveniently tragic death. Quick and easy. Immediately, Lucia smells blood in the water. Behind closed doors, the Duke plots vengeance upon those who killed her father—and the demon wants in. Revenge, after all, is much more fun… and more lucrative, to boot. But can Lucia predict how hard she'd fall for the Duke? (Not a chance). And can the Duke find it in her vengeful heart to love?