sleepyowlet

[sleepyowlet]

extremely cool that the removal of wolf protections in europe are being driven by an eu official having one of her horses killed by a wolf. literal cartoon villain shit

[sleepyowlet]

this is getting concerning no i do not want to coddle a man like a child nor do i want him to control me and make all my decisions. have none of you considered maybe a man who is nice to you and treats you well and respects you. just a thought

[sleepyowlet]

Adam Driver #145 (Venice FF 2023)

Adam, face framed by the waves of his collar-length mane, peering upward, forehead furrowed by the beseeching quirk of his brows, the creases of his crow's feet gently crimping the corners of his eyes, lower lids pursed, a fine webbing of quiescent crinkles fanning over the swell of his cheekbones, the aquiline arch of his nose leading down to neatly trimmed whiskers framing a gently set mouth, chin tipped upward to reveal the soft brush of his beard ruffling down the strong column of his throat.

Adam in Venice is always a vision, but he was especially gorgeous this day.  There he was, on the red carpet in front of the theater, dapper in his tux and neatly knotted bow tie, the sunglasses he'd been wearing were tucked into his coat pocket but had left a faint impression on the bridge of his nose, and his beard trimmed more neatly than I'd ever seen.

Mostly Adam's whiskers seem to somehow leap from rather long stubble straight into a somewhat scraggly beard, but he'd clearly made an extra effort to have his facial hair especially tidy that day, and with his chin tipped upwards we get an extra good look at how that better-tended-than-usual-beard ruffles down his throat. I am especially amused by that single rogue silver hair on the left corner of his chin which somehow escaped being trimmed as short as the rest of it's brothers.

But it's an unusual choice, even for someone like Adam, who is known for unusual choices, to look up over the heads of all of the photographers vying for your attention. I wonder what he was gazing at, and where his thoughts were taking him.

It's a wistful expression, but not an unhappy one; his brows are quirked upwards enough to tug a tiny wrinkle into the upper lid of his left eye and dig those furrows into his brow, but something about the softness of his mouth and the forthright but relaxed  set to his shoulders leaves me with the feeling that perhaps he was just quietly taking a moment, in the midst of the chaos, to appreciate the extraordinary gift of being there. It's not every day— or, for that matter, every life!— when you get stand on the red carpet in front of the main theater of the Venice Film Festival as the lead actor in a movie directed by someone you idolized as a kid.

Even if you famously aren't all that fond of red carpets.

Photo used for reference taken by the_italian_reve during the red carpet for the premiere of "Ferrari" on 31 Aug 2023 at the Venice Film Festival.

About 22.5 hours of painting time. I had intended for this to be a quicker, brushier, less tightly controlled portrait, but the details, like the curve of his mustache hairs where they spring up and out of his upper lip, were just too delicious, and I happily fell, nay, I leaped, headlong down the rabbit hole pursuing them.

[sleepyowlet]

Phil Davies

"The Egret was in shadow and the background was in full sun"

[sleepyowlet]

"Two groups conflate Zionism and Judaism: Zionists, who want to legitimize Zionism by pretending that it is Judaism; and anti-semites, who want to delegitimize Judaism by pretending it is Zionism." -Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro

[sleepyowlet]

[sleepyowlet]

[sleepyowlet]

Brocialists when they find out Engels was woke: 🤯🤯

"With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production. Not until the coming of modern large-scale industry was the road to social production opened to her again – and then only to the proletarian wife. But it was opened in such a manner that, if she carries out her duties in the private service of her family, she remains excluded from public production and unable to earn; and if she wants to take part in public production and earn independently, she cannot carry out family duties. And the wife’s position in the factory is the position of women in all branches of business, right up to medicine and the law. The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules.

In the great majority of cases today, at least in the possessing classes, the husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy, without any need for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat."

- Friedrich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

[sleepyowlet]

"Sorry I can't, I'm busy"

Me being busy:

[sleepyowlet]

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has just died and I am seeing a woeful lack of crab raves on my dash.

[sleepyowlet]

Nothing in the world feels as unjust as the fate of the Disco Elysium developers.

Imagine you build this in-depth fictional setting over the course of decades with your friends, and then decide to turn it into a game for fun. You end up creating one of the most celebrated and well-written RPGs of all time and become celebrated for reviving a dying genre.

A few months later, you're fired from the company you founded for criticizing the new direction its taking. The company has the copyright not only to the game you made, but literally everything in the world of the game, which spans decades of lore you built for no profit with your group of friends.

Like, this is a nightmare that I didn't even know existed before I ran into it. To have, what is essentially a passion project that branched off from a TTRPG campaign, be pulled from your hands by a corporate entity that only yearns to abuse your creation for maximum profit. I couldn't imagine myself going on creating anything after that.

[sleepyowlet]

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!

[sleepyowlet]

There once was a droid and it went to space cleaning up ships all over the place

The crew walked up a knife taped down Oh the history that made

HUH

Soon will the Stabby bot come to clean up dust and grease and gum You’ll think this is all in good fun 'til you’re hopping around on one foot

(He's coming to getcha)

[sleepyowlet]

THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991) + ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993) + literal trope

[sleepyowlet]

one thing i do know about UK politics is that the tory power stance is the funniest thing ever