i'll eat your trash

Art by the incredible @eliotbaum.

Mirrorwoven is a sapphic young adult fantasy in a Renaissance Venice-inspired setting, pitched as The Priory of the Orange Tree meets Gossip Girl. The blurb and further info below the cut:

So mysterious! So demure! Thank you once again to @eliotbaum for the breathtaking artwork, and the additional tweaks for the different market. (I'm so glad they kept the base illustration! And the COLOURS!)

Hmmmmmmmmmm...

Shovel-headed Tree Frog (Diaglena spatulata), family Hylidae, Mexico

photograph by Juan Ma Gonzalez Photography

Spotted Shovel Nosed Frog (Hemisus guttatus), family Hemisotidae, Phoenix, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

photograph by Tyrone Ping

Shovel-billed Kookaburra (Dacelo rex), T - female, B - male, family Alcedinidae, order Coraciiformes, New Guinea

photograph by John C. Mittermeier

Southern Shovel-nosed Snake (Brachyurophis semifasciatus), family Elapidae, southern Australia

Mildly venomous.

photographs by Artur Tomaszek

Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Calidris pygmaea), T- winter plumage, B - breeding plumage, family Scolopacidae, order Charadriiformes

Breeds on the coast of the Bering Sea.

Winters in SE Asia.

photographs by tareq’s photography

Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), family Threskiornithidae, order Pelicaniformes, Hillsborough, Florida, USA

photograph by Peter Hawrylyshyn

Fork-tailed Woodnymph (Thalurania furcata), male, family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, Colombia

photograph by Diego Jaramillo R

Fork-tailed Flycatcher (Tyrannus savana), male, family Tyrannidae, order Passeriformes, LA, USA

This bird is usually found in Mexico, Central and South America, but sometimes wanders into the southern U.S.

photograph by Dania Sanchez

Longcomb or Green Sawfish (Pristis zijsron), family Pristidae, found in the Tropical Indo-Pacific

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

The longest species of sawfish, this species grows to a length of up to 7.3 m (24 ft).

Shoebill (Balaeniceps rex), family Balaenicipitidae, order Pelicaniformes, found in freshwater marshes in east-central Africa

This bird is the only member of its family.

The taxonomic affinities of this bird have long been debated. It currently rests within the order Pelicaniformes. (It was, in the past, often places in the Ciconiiformes). Its closest living relative is most likely the Hamerkop.

They grow up to 152 cm (60 in) tall!

They are not noisy birds, but communicate with bill clapping, moo like noises, and high pitched whines.

Mainly piscivorous (fish-eating), they also feed on a variety of small vertebrates (even preying on small waterfowl) and large invertebrates.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

another commission for @dumpsterhipster :3 Illustration for her novel Mirrorwoven!