$55 Sketch Commissions Open!! Past Set Is Due To Be Delivered This Week!

Okay the pink dolphin on the T-shirt kinda looks half a donut with frosting and sprinkles..

So much "spiritual' incest in #kdrama 's. So many 1-sided crushes via adopted siblings. Kinda disturbing.

The whole New Year's Wishes sequence in one place...

A decade ago, I wrote:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And almost half a decade ago I said,

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

In 2011, my wish for each of us is small and very simple.

And it’s this.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

  Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

  So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

  Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

  Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

  And last year, I wrote:

It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world. 

So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them. 

And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. 

So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy.

Hey all! I'm selling reprints of my FF7 / Aerti postcard sets over at my Gumroad. Pay what you want, and all proceeds will be donated toward helping families evacuate G*za. Please boost even if you can't purchase!

Purchase here

A: occupied Poland.

First Felon has over 3500 court cases.

Now that he is a convicted felon, fraud, and adjudicated rapist, he wants to skip judicial process and one-way ticket innocent people to concentration camps in El Salvador.

Just a few geeky/fantasy pieces I’ve been working on lately, all available in my Etsy store!

www.geekoutlet.co

·Winged crystal quartz sword pendants ·Deathly Hallows pendant ·Slytherin ring with Labradorite ·Legend of Zelda song rings ·Lapis Lazuli’s mirror ·Mermaid tail pendant, fin moves!

Happy Valentines to me ^_^;

SO got us tickets to Kris’ s ( of EXO fame) new romance movie. Somewhere Only We Know ...still it was better than "A Good Day To Die Hard"

Chinese Censorship of the 2023 Hugo Award Nominations

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

This raises a lot of questions as to if this basically taints the process, and what can be done about it.

Unexpected Overwatch

One of the guys in wifes latest Korean Drama (a boys love one) is a Hanzo main. He must be trash, and I hope something terrible happens to him.

Hey y’all.

Old cishet white lady here. I’m going to lecture at you, and not just because it’s my day job.

Vote for the guy you can persuade.

Don’t vote for the guy who will fuck with 9/10ths of the country and half the planet.

Don’t vote for some third-party rando. That’s a vote for Orange Man.

And don’t sit this one out, due to apathy or despair.

FIGHT.

Fight hard. Fight now. Give money, even $1. Post signs. Write postcards. Get your friends and acquaintances to register to vote. Then make sure they DO vote.

I’m more afraid than I was during Reagan/Bush. And I was terrified then.

I’m afraid for my queer kid, for my students, for my friends.

AND I AM GOING TO FIGHT, because I am a cranky old bitch who loves this country, as flawed and crazy as it is and can be.

Also, I’m fighting because I am enraged that the powerful, the oligarchs, the rich white dudes, think that a rapist racist homophobic felon with no discernible ethics has the right to lead us.

They aren’t going to save us. We have to save ourselves.

So start. Register people to vote. Doublecheck your own registration status. Sign up to be an election monitor. Write letters and tweets and posts to the big newspapers whose editors are acting like the felon is going to win. Call. Write. Speak. Post signs. Protest. Write postcards to undecided or lapsed voters.

My ancestors fought in two revolutions and I will too, if I need to.

Old lady out.