can't we stay on topic?? ~never~

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

Happy AAPI Month!

I didn’t have as much time to this put one together as I decided to do it pretty last minute but I hope someone will still find a book they’ll enjoy!

Read and support Asian authors and creators all year round.

Fantasy: 🏳‍🌈🔮

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

The Ivory Key by Akshaya Raman

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame by Neon Yang

Tell Me How It Ends by Quinton Li

Muneera and the Moon by Sonia Sulaiman

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Siren Queen by by Nghi Vo

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Mooncakes by Wendy Xu

Guardian: Zhen Hun by Priest

A Coffee Shop In an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee

The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Jade City by Fonda Lee

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

A Clash of Steel by C.B. Lee

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera.

Sci-Fi:🏳‍🌈👽

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

The L.O.V.E Club by Lio Min

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon He Lee

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

Hammajang Luck by Makena Yamamoto

In The Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Le

Horror:🏳‍🌈☠️

She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tan

They Bloom At Night by Trang Thanh Tan

Chlorine by Jade Song

The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan

Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

How We End by L.M. Juniper

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

The Devourers by Indra Das

The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim

A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui

The Dark Becomes Her by Judy I. Lin

Dawn’s Cozy Horror Corner by Dawn Chen

Night of the Living Queers by Shelly Page & Alex Brown

Romance:🏳‍🌈❤

Love Points to You by Alice Lin

Love In Focus by Lyla Lee

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Love Makes Mochi by Stefany Valentine

Cafe Con Lychee by Emery Lee

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen

Like Water Catching Fire by EM Lindsey

When Tara met Farah by Farah Pammi

It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura

The Other Man by Farhad J Dadyburjor

You've Found Oliver by Dustin Thao

When Haru Was Here by Dustin Thao

All the Right Notes by Dominic Lim

Single Player by Tara Tai

Contemporary:🏳‍🌈📖

The Perfect Match by Adiba Jaigirdar

Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min

The Skin and It's Girl by Sarah Cypher

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

Guapa by Saleem Haddad

Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee

This Feat of a Life by Holden So & Cynthia So

Marriage of a Thousand Lies by S.J. Sindu

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Baby Drag Queen by C.A. Tanaka

Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabrina Khan

I'll Be The One by Lyla Lee

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

Historical:🏳‍🌈📜

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lại

A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar

The Chosen and The Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Last Night At The Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Where There’s Room For Us by Hayley Kiyoko

The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

The Gardens of Yes and No by Kae So Bu

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story about two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

Ya’ll don’t have any idea how fucking brave and needed these plot lines were.

This was before Ellen came out.

This was before civil unions.

This was before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

This was when your ass could be fired, blacklisted, and shunned with no legal protections for even being hinted at being gay.

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

link to the podcast, this section below is from timestamp 24.35

“andy weir provided a packet to the creature shop that was like a packet of eridian biology and stuff but there wasn’t much about eridian culture or eridian sociology and i made a bunch of choices going in because i just needed to have like a ‘who am i?’ right? 

[…] and i made a decision that rocky’s species, that eridians are really social animals that in fact are like a beehive or a pod of dolphins - it’s a unique and really integrated ecosystem of everybody doing their [specific] part. and the fact that rocky had to fly that ship for about 45 years - longer than grace has been alive, i wanna point that out - he’s been alone on that ship, having to run that by himself and- ryan and i would talk about that, one day we sat down and he was like “so what’s the movie from rocky’s perspective?” and i was like “oh it’s like ‘alien’, […] like he’s in a ‘contagion’ movie by himself and he has no idea what’s going on.”

he’s basically in castaway by himself which of course ryan is too but like, one reason why we never cut to the past of rocky is like, i think it was really horrifying! i don’t think rocky has slept in however many years and so a thing i was really struggling with is this idea of like “rocky must watch sleep” because how do you make that a need as opposed to like, a cute idea? and i just had to make the decision that […] he has a lot of unprocessed trauma around the things that he doesn’t understand and how much he is blaming himself because he’s the guy who fixes, he’s the guy who fixes and there was something really freeing about deciding that rocky was a deeply emotional, deeply anxious, deeply horrified person - being - that is trying to move through that in some way and how that affects the early scenes with him until there’s a point in the story where you can see we’ve physically softened rocky’s behaviour, because he’s finally feeling more safe and ok but all of that lore, all of that information [was essential].

Inner Mongolian Child

The little girl’s name is Butedmaa and she was just 5 when this picture was taken in 2003 by Han Chengli.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

The note count as of 3:12 PM EDT was 742.4K.

We’re almost 258,000 notes short of the Committment To The Bit Tumblr Curse goal, or what I am choosing to call:

The Bear Nessiecity