praeobscura
praeobscura
Prae Obscura
134 posts
Prae Obscura is an independent author of speculative fiction and surreal horror. His work focuses on cruelty, madness, plurality. praeobscura.com/
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praeobscura · 23 days ago
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There's a book that we had in our house growing up that I was obsessed with as a kid. It was just called "PAKISTAN: PAINTINGS BY LIN YONG AND SU HUA" and it was an art book of 100+ paintings/sketches by two Chinese artists who travelled thru Pakistan in 1978 and 1981, a sort of travelogue of their trip, and to little-kid me, it was some of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I have no idea why we had that book, but I would stare at it for hours, and it made me wish I could draw/paint/do whatever it was that these artists had managed to do.
Anyway, we've moved house a bunch of times and I lost track of the book and haven't seen it for probably two decades now. But I think about it now and again, and had struggled to find it over the years, but I finally, finally got my hands on a copy of my own and i want to cry haha
I was afraid that maybe the art isn't as good as I remembered, being just a kid and all, but I cracked it open and nope, it hits me just the way it used to. Maybe even more now. It's so fucking pretty. Have some random pages:
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praeobscura · 24 days ago
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Lines of thought that seem Normal but are actually rooted in extreme puritanism:
-Seeing the nude human body is inherently traumatic -Sex scenes in art are pointless -Wearing kink-related clothing in public is the similar to performing a sex scene in front of unwilling participants -Depicting female characters expressing sexuality is always degrading -People's sexual fantasies are always an endorsement of the behavior they want to see in real life -Sex work is more traumatic and coercive than other types of work The goal is to treat sex as just another thing people do. That is a much healthier attitude than hiding it! It's not uniquely traumatic, it's not weird to talk about it or include it in society.
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praeobscura · 25 days ago
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The Smell of Flowers is a short story that was created for the 2025 Hot Wet Queer Summer Jam.
It depicts a small group of followers who travel across regional lines in search of the dead. It is about bodily dysphoria, and visions, and recreating yourself, and baggage from the past. It is also about being stranded at a motel in the middle of the summer.
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praeobscura · 1 month ago
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praeobscura · 1 month ago
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praeobscura · 1 month ago
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As Pride month rolls into Disability Pride month, An Intersex Jam 2025 has concluded with 21 joined participants and 9 completed submissions. The list of submissions is as follows:
Bare It All by Nick Tarras
Intersex Inclusive Language by Verse Atoui
Amalgamation by JeWLW
Assigned [] At Birth by Verse Atoui
Nothing Like You by Pride
Tēafres Burh by Prae Obscura
Parallel Hybrid by Shagoli
At odds. by InstantOats
LLWYNOG by Cadnomori
You are free to continue to use the #intersexjam2025 tag, if so desired, and I encourage you to continue to make intersex art throughout the year. Everyone has done such a wonderful job this year, and I will be looking forward to the next immensely. <3
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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There are ten days left in An Intersex Jam!
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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it is funny when people act as though no transitional program for family abolition exists when cuba’s family code is right there
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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Litany against doomscrolling and overstimulating yourself immediately upon waking up.
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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Submissions are open! This event will run from today (May 31st, 2025) until June 30th, 2025.
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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T-Minus five days (at the time of posting) until the start of An Intersex Jam.
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praeobscura · 2 months ago
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I made this comic bc I’ve been seeing way too many people say bad stuff about amab/afab trans people lately and I hope this helps some of you who didn’t understand understand so we can get back to trying to help eachother and not tear eachother down.
Intersex folks feel free to add onto this however you see fit you all are wonderful people and I love you!
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praeobscura · 3 months ago
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Laws and property
So this is something I've seen a lot in more left leaning hippy sort of groups, but I think it's important to recognize it. There's this idea that native tribes didn't have concepts of property or authority/laws. It's always been odd to me this picture some people have of native communities being without strife or conflict entirely. I suppose it's a form of fetishization. It's frankly just untrue. Now, these concepts were different from the colonial concepts, but they did still exist. I can't speak for every tribe but I'm decently educated on Muscogee history, and we for sure had both.
Both laws and property were mostly handled within the clan. Ownership of items was less an individual thing and more a family matter. The same is true for laws. Different clans within a village had different rules fellow clan members had to follow and would give out punishments accordingly. To make a more modern comparison, it would be like your great-grandparents and grandparents deciding what you can or can't do and what items you can or can't have. Clans controlled a lot of your life. Normally, the clan you belonged to was in charge of feeding, housing, and arranging marriage for its own members.
Outside the clan, especially between clans, rules still existed. We specifically know of punishments for clan to clan theft and murder. Normally, the victimized clan decided the punishment, but village leadership would mediate. Punishments could include: being tied to a tree for a period of time, giving goods to the wronged family, losing an ear or the tip of your nose, or, normally for murder, being given to the clan for labor that the deceased person originally did.
Indigenous settlements had socially agreed upon customes, hierarchies, and rules, like any human settlement. These were all drastically different from the colonizer equivalents but did so still exist. It's important not to demonize indigenous history but also don't fetishize it as some completely conflict free utopia.
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praeobscura · 3 months ago
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"*X country* should colonize the US! Please nuke the US!"
You all will do anything to not give us our land back huh
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praeobscura · 4 months ago
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Important note about what we allow, to clarify:
Any genre and additional focus is welcome, so long as intersexuality is a core component of your submission. Adventures in a fantasy setting, body horror and gore, poetry, biographical slice-of-life - it will all be accepted. There are no restrictions in this regard! We want anything and everything that you would like to offer.
Hello! An Intersex Jam (focused on works about characters living with the real-life medical variants between dyadic male and female) has been published, and will take place over the month of June.
About the Jam
The aim of this jam is to promote & encourage the creation of art featuring intersex characters (i.e. human or human-adjacent characters with a real-life intersex variation, not futanari characters) or otherwise pertaining to the intersex experience.
Of the 46 total characters recorded on the "List of fictional intersex characters" Wikipedia page, only 10 are realistic or adjacent to realistic. The others were made as mockeries, or are non-human, or fall into the bigenital altersex/futanari category.
The majority of intersex depictions in fiction are jokes, or exoticised, or fantastic. (If you are intersex yourself, you already know this.) It is a disservice to your friends, your family, your colleagues, your neighbors, the strangers you pass on the street, and even you yourself, all of whom may (knowingly or not) fall on the broad scale between the two dyadic positions of "perisex female" and "perisex male". It is more common than you might think.
By building a larger body of works to read and reflect on, intersex people will become better known as real, living, tangible people in the world. This jam hopes to encourage the creation of new works that center intersex people.
Anything that you submit MUST:
Focus on one or more intersex character(s)  AND/OR  prominently focus on intersex topics.
Include the word "intersex" in either the title or the short description.
Include the tag "intersex" in the tags field.
What is allowed?
Any medium that you can think of is good! Consider what is usually hosted on Itch.io: video games, books, short stories, interactive fiction, visual novels, comics, zines, music, etc.
NSFW is allowed. So long as your smut is respectful to real-life intersex people, you can submit it.
While we'd rather all submissions to be made during the jam period, you can absolutely submit stuff that you've made or started prior to the jam beginning.
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praeobscura · 4 months ago
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hi! intersex jam question! are there any restrictions on content unrelated to depictions of intersex characters? i ask this because i am a horror author (specifically, i work in the splatterpunk subgenre, which has its own problems) and wouldn't want to accidentally submit something prohibited
I am a firm adherent of "Create whatever story pleases you forever."
Both Verse and I have written ample body horror. You are absolutely welcome to take part with anything that your heart desires, without fear. <3
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praeobscura · 4 months ago
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hey boy don't kill yourself. green's dictionary of slang is available online and allows you to explore 500 years of english vulgarity. you can search by part of speech, source, time period, etymology, and usage. there's a whole category for gay slang. they even have specific citations listed so you can see the exact context for yourself. boy did you know that in 1927 "to kneel at the altar" was slang for "to sodomize"
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