#i do the art for her book covers

[raininyourblackeyes]

My cousin, a published writer, a well-known poet in my country and a literature professor, for whom I've always been no.1 support ever since her first attempts at writing in high school, told me that I must stop writing as a hobby because that's her thing and since I'm writing fantasy mostly my writing could never have any important artistic value anyways.

[zombie-bait]

happiest girl in the whole entire world

thinking about my favourite kind-hearted eldritch horror trapped in the body of my favourite traumatized goth girl

(+ purple variant)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

IMAGINE. working at ur stupid uhhh job or whatever. pulling into your drive way and ready to work on some crazy project in your garage. opening the door to the most unfamiliar silence. did your wife and kid leave for something? could you imagine knocking on your kids door, hardly getting an answer, and opening it to find the splattered remains of your wife across his room your child is scared! hes hardly consolable, in a state of shock and terror. you are too, but youre the adult here. you need to take charge. you need to protect him. you need to do something. you need to do something.

[whirlwindwonderland]

Life is Beautiful, the World is Marvelous, and I Love Everyone!

I saw a few bits of very neat Geronimo Stilton Fanart, went down a rabbit hole, couldn't find any art of my favourite character. Which on one hand, fair, she only appeared in one book, but on the other hand Justice For My Queen Cheesy Lou, because I was almost convinced I'd imagined her.

[dawllick]

One of these days I’ll stop making OC pairs and I will make more side characters or just one OC at a time BUT THAT IS NOT TODAY (see tags for more I don’t like cluttering the post)

[sensenotsense]

i want lil page dolls for some of my pages and ive thought of one for my crochet and gaming pages

[ninelivesart]

Part 3 of Drawing My Reads 2024 was In Nightfall by Suzanne Young.

This book was basically the Lost Boys but if the vampires were a gang of teenage girls.

[secretsivekept]

I needed an illustration piece for portfolio stuff, so the last few days I’ve been working nonstop on a mock up book cover for an old story I made up when I was twelve LOL

It would be called “A Dragon’s Tail” but i have no graphic design skills whatsoever so there’s no typography on this book cover mockup

If you want a basic (and chaotically organized) rundown of the plot, keep reading under the cut LOL

In the OG story, there's 3 main characters: Adrien (QuetzalCoatl, or feathered serpent), Penny (a normal human) and Silver Stride (a unicorn).

Adrien the dragon was originally the main character that we follow (and if I were to ever rewrite this, she would continue to be the main character. I only put Penny in the center of the cover because it worked better for the composition i was going for, and I didn't have time to explore more variations.)

Anyway, Adrien's mother goes missing, and she teams up with a Penny, and Silver Stride, who have also lost their families to an evil wizard named Rogabas, who for mysterious reasons is kidnapping dragons, unicorns, and other wizards for an evil purpose.

No i can't remember what that purpose was, and i don't think my 12 year old self would know either tbh

The three characters would go on this epic journey to find the lair of Rogabas and meet a whole assortment of fantastical creatures along the way, like a giant talking goat named Merryweather who guards a bridge (a bridge passed down from generation to generation after winning it from a troll and demands golden carrots as a toll to cross it), good werewolves and bad werewolves, gargoyles who guard libraries, and I can’t remember why but in my old drawings there’s also this manticore (or maybe just a lion) with sunglasses for some reason. Maybe he’s just there to chill, idk.

Also there would be two side kick characters, who are two of Penny’s dad’s familiars ((((oh yeah penny’s dad is a wizard, too, unbeknownst to her)))) and guardians of “Magic Rock TM” that the evil wizard Rogabas is after. The side kick characters are two overzealous, punch-first-ask-questions-later rabbits named Flopsy and Mopsy, who are enchanted to know karate. (There is a whole leigion of karate rabbits who guard “Magic Stone TM”.)

(((If you’re wondering why a wizard would enchant rabbits to know karate, well of course every wizard usually has a collection of animal familiars enchanted to know a specific type of martial arts to guard their magical artifacts. This is standard practice, don’t you know? 12 year old me definitely wasn’t going off the title of “kung fu panda” and start making a whole bunch of animals like “Kung Fu Kitty” or Jujutsu Doggy” or “Judo-Penguins” or Tae Kwon Do Tigers)))

Also, I don’t know what “Magic Stone TM” is, I just remember it was a big important thing Rogabas was after.

ALSO also, 12 year old me decided that Adrien was adopted by a European dragon and had 2 siblings, Martin (a european dragon) and Cho (a chinese dragon) who were also both adopted, but If I were to rewrite it think it would be simpler to keep it to just Adrien and her adopted mom, just to keep the keep the already big cast to a more manageable number LOL

(Btw, “Rogabas” is the latin word for “You were asking” and when my sister and I were learning latin, we thought that word sounded like the name for an evil wizard and laughed ourselves silly saying “you were asking, evil lord Rogabas??” Over and over)

Basically the story would be this wild comedy adventure with a lot of magical tropes and shenannigans thrown in.

[tariah23]

Also… is there a Daydream Hour book out there that contains all 5 Daydream Hour books/ extras 🧍🏾‍♀️… I don’t like the idea of buying all of the individual books when I could just as easily purchase a full collection of them.

[awkward-smirks]

love is making your best friend an interactive table/spreadsheet of every single place you want to take her when she comes to your city and then creating a yelp page with the 47 corresponding locations for an easily viewable map + reviews + pics so she can choose. <3

[raininyourblackeyes]

So that cousin who told me how I shouldn't write as a hobby because she is already a published poet... yeah, today I went to her book promotion because no one else from my family could go and I was free and as the favourite cousin I was dragged to get coffee with all her fellow Bosnian language and literature graduates and fellow authors. As she was introducing me she said "Oh, Adna, you MUST start writing yourself and get published so you get into this clique." I was there like 😀 the sheer audacity 😀😀

[aroaessidhe]

2022 reads // twitter thread    

Kiss Her Once For Me

a poor artist agrees to fake-marry a rich himbo so he can get his inheritance, but when she goes to spend xmas with his family discovers his sister is the girl she had a one-day-romance with last xmas

anxious perfectionist webcomic artist MC

[thegirlwholied]

Kenobi (the show) is missing one key thing for this Star Wars era in particular but imho, it really missed it:

Propaganda.

oh it skirts close to it in a couple spaces - but the quotable speech, the one that leads up to the Inquisitors' catchphrase (the Jedi hunt themselves) misses the proaganda boat entirely and oh boy would/should the Empire be blowing wind into those sails.

If the Inquisitors are talking among themselves about how Jedi are compassionate and cannot resist saving people - that's one thing.

If the Grand Inquisitor intends to kill everyone who overhears him admitting the Jedi are just so darn good and heroic, well, that is another.

But going into a crowded bar in classic bad guy dress clearing your throat about how the Jedi cannot resist saving you ordinary citizens at their own detriment? That's, uh... that's a choice.

The scene with Reva & Owen gets closer-- she has a negative Jedi point! 'The Jedi failed you/they would not protect you in return' etc -- phrasing clearly intentionally meant to suggest a personal vendetta -- and Owen to protect his family clearly repeats the party line with a Tatooine twist - 'the Jedi are vermin like the kind I shoot on my farm' - BUT

That's the thing, it should be the party line. We're not getting the party line (think posters, fear of the Jedi, whispers, even an antagonist who wholeheartedly believes They Are Good and Bringing Order to the Galaxy...)

The Empire wants to be undermining the legend of the Jedi, turning the galaxy against them, and even in the Outer Rim it should not be publicly deviating from that party line in speech and without at least some flimsy coverup/excuse.

And terribly it also shouldn't be very hard for them to turn people against folks with mysterious powers who do not share their secret ways and take young children who are like them! Especially when Revenge of the Sith's end note includes the propaganda of 'the power-hungry Jedi tried to kill the Emperor and take control' ... in front of the general population it should be Anakin's basic old 'the Jedi are evil' - the Jedi are traitors - the remaining hiding Jedi are cowards works too! - the Jedi were babysnatchers; the Jedi were frauds (Han Solo not believing in the Force gives you a setup for that kind of propaganda right there)-

Some of the population will see right through this, & some will only see when the Jedi and Empire's actions reveal the truth, & because TV is a visual medium this could have been very clearly shown but...no?

The absolute best line of the prequels (imho but I do think objectively!) is "so this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause" - in movies that were just as much for kids as the show, but that thread is absent here, when it should/could have been naturally woven in.

Overlooked in the writing? A lack of faith in the audience's ability to see through even fictional propaganda portrayed in context? Either way it is what it is, and I'll of course still be watching, but in my opinion that absence makes the whole thing less Star Wars than it could be

[moomoomooing]

yum art

[noodlesarecheese]

There's really no telling what my brain will decide is A Challenge, but at least it occasionally works to my advantage. I started writing a novel, and I was telling my mom that since it was a middle grade novel, it would be shorter than a typical adult novel. It would still take me a while, but I'd been making good progress and finished the second chapter the other night.

Mom says, Oh, so at this rate you'll be done by, what, the beginning of March?

And I was like no, that's ridiculous! It's the beginning of February and I've only just started. I'm fast, but not that fast.

So then I crunched the numbers and realized at my typical rate I would finish by mid July. And my brain went naaaaaah that's too long. I bet I could do it by May. And I promptly wrote 2 chapters in a single sitting.

I've been doing a chapter a night the last couple nights. And I ran the numbers again and realized that if I kept that up I would, in fact, finish by the beginning of March (the writing part, anyways. Editing is a whole other beast).

I won't be able to keep it up, the pace won't be sustainable when my work picks back up, but geez if I didn't get a huge head start.

[the-cimmerians]

It's 2024. I have been participating in fandom for 40 years. This is a ramble commemorating some history I've experienced along the way.

In 1984, I attended my first convention, and made a beeline for the one long row of covered tables in the Dealer's Room that was, according to the whispered lore of my friends, 'the one'. "um", I said, very suavely and coherently, except for how it was totally the opposite of those things, "I'm here for the... for the, uh. For-"

"Come around here," the man behind the table said with exhausted ennui, so I went around, and he lifted up the table skirt next to him and pointed to rows and rows of boxes underneath the line of tables. "It's all under here."

It was all under there. Along with about five older ladies with glasses, graying hair, cardigans. Flipping through slash zines and chatting in whispered voices like old friends (which of course they were). I noticed one of them had the good sense to be wearing kneepads. I was still too young and ablebodied to need kneepads when crawling on a carpeted floor, but I immediately found her preparedness skills to be both impressive and hot. "You're new," one of the ladies whispered to me--a bit warily, which made sense. "Are you sure you're in the right place?"

In the faint light (the kneepads lady had also come prepared with a flashlight, additional practicality hotness points for her) I grabbed a comb-bound book with a heavy line art piece on the cover, featuring a musclebound Captain Kirk getting righteously and enthusiastically plowed by a stern-yet-ebullient Spock. "This," I said, pointing helpfully at the cover, like I was trying to make myself understood in a language I had only the vaguest knowledge of. "I'm here for this."

Outside at the convention, most of the attendees were wearing large homemade circular pins that shrieked 'K/S is BS!!!'1. But underneath the table, we reveled in the forbidden.

***

In 1985, I fell very hard for Starsky & Hutch fandom. Which was simply referred to at the time as 'the other fandom', because there were only two. We were upstarts. Many fannish elders predicted that it was just a phase.

***

The 'circulating library' was a massive stack of barely-legible pages that smelled strongly of mimeograph ink. When you were on the list, you would write stories while you waited for your turn, and when the big box was mailed to you, you would read everything (new finds, old favorites), add your own sloppily-typed or hastily-mimeographed stories, and then mail the whole thing to the next person. For me, at the time, it was an extremely expensive indulgence--but my favorite one.

***

By 1990, slash fandom had grown enough that I no longer knew everyone in it, which was both thrilling and a bit daunting. A young woman at a convention waited for me after a panel I was part of (I think it was 'writing impactful smut' or something like that), and said she had a question she didn't want to ask in a group setting. I'd heard that before. I said that's fine, go ahead and ask; and she came out with: "Why do you have to be gay?"

I blinked. "Is... that a problem?"

She looked annoyed. "Yes, because your stories are on all the recommendation lists and in all the top zines, but if you're gay and I read something you wrote and I get hot from it that makes me gay, and I'm not gay."

"Wow." I grinned, I couldn't help it. It probably made me look very predatory-dyke-about-to-score-a-toaster. Whatever, it was enough to make her back away from me fast.

When I thought about it later that night, I wondered what it would be like not to be the only queer person in slash fandom.

***

By 1997, slash started appearing on the internet. Many fannish elders claimed it was the death knell of slash fandom, or dismissed it as 'just a phase'.

***

Anyway, I wrote all this for myself as a commemoration of sorts, but if you took the time to read it--thank you. Love you, fandom. I always will.

1 In those days, m/m fandom was known as 'slash', which grew from the fannish shorthand where 'K&S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock having adventures or tribulations or what have you, and 'K/S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock getting it on (Kirk divided by Spock or Spock into Kirk--it was mathy fannish humor and I was into it then and I still am now). Slash was decidedly unpopular in the fannish world in 1984, and there was a concerted effort to force slash authors, artists, and fans out of 'mainstream' fannish public life. Hence, under the table.