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Today we have the pleasure of interviewing friend of the site, author @aughtpunk about her upcoming LGBTQIA+ science fiction novel, Echo of the Larkspur! 🐉

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Today a traditionally published author emailed me a list of helpful suggestions about getting published.

Their biggest piece of advice: Remove the main gay romance that is central to the plot.

Thread.

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Okay so just to sum up recent events on the US Right:

• Trump starts a contract with Peter Thiel's Palantir company to create a database of ALL INFORMATION on EVERY LIVING AMERICAN

• Its revealed Stephen Miller and Elon Musk have had a very massive fight, supposedly because Elon Musk is sleeping with Miller's wife

• Trump ousts Elon from the administration, after over five months of being besties. Leaves with Stephen Miller's wife, who he just hired at one of his companies (!?)

• Elon starts saying the Big Beautiful Bill sucks

• A GOP Representative reveals that most of them didnt actually get to read the Big Beautiful Bill, GOP leadership basically made them rubber stamp it and they are pissed to find out it makes them all look horrible. A lot of them are now discussing a shakeup in GOP leadership.

• Trump says Elon has "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (🤮)

• Elon escalates massively, stating that Trump is in the Epstein files and THATS why they havent released them yet

• This comes right as Alex Jones loses a massive chunk of his audience because he's endorsing Trump's Palantir contract, and his fans are basically all very concerned about their privacy. They want a new conspiracy to follow and they just got one

• Trump starts threatening Elon's government contracts

• Ian Miles Cheong calls for Trump to be impeached immediately, and for JD Vance to become President. Elon Musk quote retweets this with "Yes"

• JD Vance was mentored by Peter Thiel

• Steve Bannon takes to Fox calling for the immediate deportation of Musk, and making SpaceX a public company

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Alternate intersex symbols

@lexicalblog recently suggested a new astronomy-inspired symbol for intersex that made me go "oooh!"

I'm personally exited for any alternative to the Mercury symbol 👍️ (Mercury is a reference to the h-slur, and was invented by biologists)

So I made some SVG/PNG symbols based on Lexi's idea! 💜 These are derived from this gender symbol from Wikimedia Commons. ......... intersex .......................... intersex fem ................... intersex masc

.... intersex enby .............. intersex transfem ............ intersex transmasc

SVGs: available here

Copyright: these are all copyright-ineligible (i.e. public domain)

Tagging for archival @interarchive @varsex-pride @liom-archive @radiomogai

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Ten years ago I wrote a Welcome to Night Vale fanfic called 'Welcome to Cyber Vale'. It was the story of Carlos going to the Night Vale space colony to meet C.E.C.I.L., a dangerously sentient robot with dark secret that threatened the whole colony. It was a real hit, despite one very large flaw.

See, I had only just gotten into Welcome to Night Vale when I wrote it. So when I wrote it I got almost all of the characterizations completely wrong. It wasn't until I finished the fic what I was like, oh, oh shit, the WTNV characters aren't like that at all. But I also realized that, hey, I had the bones of a pretty good Sci-fi story here. Time to make some lemonade out of lemons as it were.

Ten years passed. I would work on the story, send it out to agents/publishers, get turned down, put the story away, sit on it for a few years, bring it back out, etc etc. In 2023 I realized that my book of Queer Robot Romance was just a little too strange for traditional publishing. So with the help of family, friends, and donators I got the funds together to get my story ready for self publishing.

And now it's ready.

Echo of the Larkspur is a full Sci-fi/Romance/Mystery novel at roughly 130k words now available for preorder on Amazon (other sites coming soon).

This is a story about love, trauma, overcoming the past, learning to trust, all while being queer and diverse as fuck. If you enjoyed the original fic (or any of my other fanfics) then you're sure to fall in love with Ciro and S.A.G.E.'s 'enemies to lovers'-style romance.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way, and thank you to everyone willing to give my novel a shot! Love you all!

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April 30, 2025

Ms Gray: Mr. Speaker, at a time when President Trump is going after Canadian jobs, industries, and truly, our entire country, Alberta should be shoulder to shoulder with every other Canadian to build up Canada, not tear it down. But this government refuses to stand with Canada. For years they’ve attacked our country. They do not value the institutions we share as Canadians. They have attacked public health care, public education, the CPP, amongst others. Now, after introducing legislation to make it easier to separate, it must be asked: why does the Premier want Alberta to leave Canada?

Ms Smith: I may ask the member opposite why it is that they want Alberta to fail.

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May 1, 2025

Ms Smith: All we are doing is addressing some of the issues around citizen-initiated referenda, recall, election financing. It’s a broad menu of reforms. I invite the members to read it, and we will put it to the people. If they have an issue they want to put forward, they now have the ability to do so.

Ms Gray: Mr. Speaker, she wants to put it to the people. Today there was a rally in support of separatism. Three people showed up. That’s who she’s listening to.

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April 16, 2025

Mr. Dach: With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the American poet, I title my address: How Do I Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

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April 16, 2025

Mr. Schmidt: You know, to go back to my previous comments, long ago we capped soft tissue injury compensation and then . . . [interjection] Mr. Speaker, I’m trying to focus on the automobile insurance rate system. I think the Government House Leader is disappointed with my comments.

Mr. Schow: Spice it up a little bit.

Mr. Schmidt: All right. All right. Hold on a second. Points of order.

The Speaker: I don’t advise that.

Mr. Schmidt: Now, if you’ll grant me latitude, Mr. Speaker, I understand that I do have a small place in your heart according to Hansard but also according to Hansard that it’s shrinking every day.

The Speaker: My heart is full.

Mr. Schmidt: Now, Mr. Speaker, I would commend to you a morality tale called the grinch who stole Christmas. [interjection] That’s a story about somebody whose heart was shrinking and saw the error of his ways and reversed that trend. Hopefully, there would be something in there for you.

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WHY ⁉️ CAN'T ❌️ THEY LET A GIRL 👱‍♀️ MARRY 💍 THREE 3️⃣ MEN 🧔👨‍⚕️🤠, OR AS MANY ‼️ AS WANT HER💃, AND SAVE ALL THIS TROUBLE 😭???

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baby dragons whose scales are much more shiny and iridescent in order to hide in their parents' hoards

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Created a new sex symbol for intersex as an alternative to the mercurial symbol or the other one which shall not be named. The central ring is near a partial martial and a partial venusian symbol to represent simultaneous existence outside the binary and partial parts from each.

Best used in combination with an intersex flag to distinguish the circle from a donut in event you only have one marker and are drawing on a whiteboard at a donut shop. Because the intersex flag most definitively has nothing to do with donuts.

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Oh gods. And that was the one month out call from the surgeon that just happened. Holy shit it's happening. Again.

Meanwhile, my gfm is so not even close to where it needs to be. Help a girl out with making sure she has a home to recover in? https://gofund.me/74494d4f

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I made you a mix tape of Intersex Tumblr

This blog is an informal, curated anthology of posts from intersex people on Tumblr talking about our experiences being intersex.

If you’re new to Tumblr, or even just the intersex part of Tumblr, it may be kind of overwhelming or confusing. What I'm hoping to do here is to organize a nice sampling of posts from Intersex Tumblr that feels like it has a coherent order and has educational value.

The main audience I've had in mind in putting this together is for people who are questioning if they are intersex. But this compilation is also here for anybody who just wants to learn more about intersex! That includes people who know they are intersex, or perisex individuals who want to be a better allies! 💛💜💛

I start us off with some basic Intersex 101 background, and then shift into featuring common kinds of experiences people describe on this site. These include failing at being a “girl” or “boy”, struggling with being medicalized, healing from medical abuse, body shaming, how intersex intersects with gender identity, intersex experiences with the wider LGBTQIA+ community, intersex validation, and the need for intersex community. 

Then we get a little bit into intersex studies and what intersexism looks like. At the end we return to the theme of questioning, advice about pursuing a diagnosis, getting involved in the intersex community, and coming out.

CWs include medical abuse, intersexism, and body shaming.

The posts here are curated so as to be an introduction to intersex Tumblr, and I hope you go on to read more from our community! The final post has recommendations for more reading, should you find yourself wanting more. 💛💜💛 Note: the image used as the header for this blog is from this post by @sex-variant. Avatar is from this post by @intervex.

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Hannibal (2013-2015)

3x11 - “And the Beast From the Sea”

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I really wish there was an option on those Customer Service Surveys that says specifically, “The representative I spoke to was lovely and helpful and deserves all of the raises but I think that you, as a corporation, should die in a fire.”

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From Julia Johanne Tolo's chapbook, August, and the Snow Has Just Melted, available from Bottlecap Press!