Allison Illuminated

So there is power in the fact that this is our best performing article ever, there is power in the fact that this post has gotten almost 1000 notes in under 24 hours. It’s publishing power, it’s publishing parity. If we can show publishers that, no, even when there are only thirteen Black transfemme novelists in the whole industry, we can turn out THOUSANDS of people who want to read their work - that’s how the market changes!

And then national television pulls this flagrant bullshit right to my goddamn face.

In the short term - this month, right now, not down the line - what can we do about it? We can vote.

Voter Registration deadlines are days away in most states!!!! THIS IS THE MOMENT TO ACT.

VOTE LIKE YOUR HEALTHCARE AND FREEDOM DEPENDS ON IT - BECAUSE IT DOES.

You can find Voter Registration information at vote.gov:

Since the beginning of August, Republicans have poured more than $65 million into television ads in more than a dozen states on these topics in some of the country’s most competitive races, according to a New York Times analysis of advertising data compiled by AdImpact. The flood of ads in races for the House, Senate and White House inflame cultural divisions and cast Democrats as outside the mainstream. They are a sign that Republican strategists believe they have found a potent third leg for their messaging stool in 2024, along with the mainstays of inflation and immigration. [...] Mr. Trump’s most aired ad about Vice President Kamala Harris in recent weeks ends with the tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Up and down the ballot, Democratic candidates have mostly tried to ignore the onslaught, preferring to pivot toward more favorable policy terrain, such as abortion, rather than to be dragged into public debates on transgender issues. Privately, though, Democratic strategists concede that the transgender attacks are taking a toll in some races. The most aired Trump ad in recent weeks was rated as one of his campaign’s more effective in September in some Democratic testing, according to results reviewed by The Times. Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the country’s leading L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups, said Republican attempts to use transgender people as political tools had failed in key races in 2022 and 2023. She predicted they would fall flat again in 2024. “It shows that Republicans are desperate right now,” Ms. Robinson said. “Instead of articulating how they’re going to make the economy better or our schools safer, they’re focused on sowing fear and chaos.”

The operative and most important part of this is the sharing. When art becomes a commodity, it is fully damaged in its becoming.

I get that people have to live and must make ends meet and sometimes that necessitates this becoming. I am not shaming. I plan to do the same with my voice and my talent for expression.

Art is not defined by its medium but by the human connection it generates and facilitates.

I used to be a big genshin impact lore buff, i played, i read, i was on forums, i made fanart, and then i was deeply disrespected by the game itself (this post is about natlan)

I am brazilian and i follow a religion named candomblé. Long story short, its from yoruba people who were sent to brazil as slaves, then went through a big process of spreading out to not just black people, but light-skinned people of lower classes like my family. We believe in the creation by Olorum, the power of Axé, and the Orixás.

Natlan, as of now, has two characters named Iansan and Ororon. These names come from not just the yoruba predecessors of candomblé, but also the religion itself, the Orixá deities Iansã and Olorum.

My religion, my deities. My mother's deities. The statuettes in my house. Their names are recycled cheaply to be used trivially. Never have we of candomblé ever gotten mentioned by AAA games or films that give such attention to detail like Genshin does, and we are disrespected. Our Gods are used like rags for someone's profit to be thrown away, washed out. They do not convey our beauty, our grit, our wonder, they do not convey us but they profit from us.

People love to tell us that it is just a game, but think again: games are not entitled to disrespect us just because of their nature. We are entitled to complain, to scream, because this is cruelty. You brutalize our image, butcher our names, for what?

When I was younger, I used to look at games with religious imagery very curiously. It was always weird to see the faith of the people I know be used for aesthetic reasons or just because it looks cool. The same has now happened to me, but times worse. People will say anything to justify this mockery and throw excuses to keep playing the product of a corporation that won't ever understand what it means to be us.

the friend who received this is too nice to say something about it but i have reached a point now where i have seen them receive so many messages like this that i just can't keep my mouth shut anymore

this is straight up evil behaviour. whatever lighthearted tone this anon thought they were sending this with, i don't care. it's gross in every sense.

i'm speaking directly to whoever sent this now and frankly, if you follow me, non, unfollow me right fucking now because i don't want this energy anywhere near my blog. it hurts enough that you've targeted my friends with it.

listen up because apparently it bears repeating for the millionth fucking time -

FANFICTION AUTHORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. they have lives and jobs and school and things they struggle with. maybe they've even spoken publicly about their struggles in the hopes their readers would understand them a bit better because at the end of the day this is a community and they have every right to use this space however they fucking want to.

"don't start a fic you can't finish" - literally shut up. shut up! we are not paid to do this, i will start and not finish whatever the fuck i want.

and holy shit, anon. as if this message wasn't disgusting enough, please let me state plainly something you "desperately" need to hear: no robot can give you what a human writer can. and the fact that you even threatened to just go to AI at this point shows how little you care about storytellers and all they provide for you.

again, i don't care if every word of this message was sent in jest or meant to be read playfully. it's not fucking cute. this shit hurts writers and ya'll need to realize that.

if you take time out of your life to send messages like this, you're a bad person. period. this is not how fanfic works, it's not how the world works. if you can wait two-three years for a movie or a new season of your favourite tv show, you can wait a few months for a fanfic to update. or you can wait forever. we literally owe you nothing.

i'm done sugarcoating it, ya'll. disrespectfully, grow up. grow up! enough is enough.