falling petals

Queen Tilde and her ladies 🐍

The Russian government has declared that Night Cascades is too gay and demanded that it be removed from sale (in Russia)

And, well, it IS pretty gay.

For those unfamiliar, Night Cascades is a visual novel set in an alternate New Age 1980s, in which two ex-girlfriends are forced to work together in order to solve occult mysteries (and work out their personal issues). It features adult female characters and explicitly mentions discrimination, so by Russian standards it is definitely illegal gay propaganda.

(It is not 18+, scenes will fade to black before anything explicit happens, but there is a toggle you can set if you'd prefer to skip the spicier parts)

Everyone has a story when it comes to this band. I remember my dad telling me about his friend, Jasper saying Cec, you have to come listen to these albums, they are amazing! Then him riding his motorbike over to Jasper’s place and hearing A Day At The Races and A Night At The Opera for the first time and having his mind blown away by how different and groundbreaking this was from everything else at the time. There was nothing else like this band at the time, and hasn’t been anything since. A cultural phenomenon. 

For me, the song that really blew my mind was Princes Of The Universe from the A Kind Of Magic Album. And it’s mainly because of the movie tie-in. Highlander was just so fucking cool. No other way to say it. From the worst accent of all time from Connery to the bombastically ridiculous neon soaked sword fights on top of buildings in a thunderstorm, cause why the fuck not? I used to play this on LP at my mum’s place. Being 9 years old and just trying to work out how to get the arm to land on the start of the song. Getting the RPM right. Realising the volume button of the amp was overly sensitive so it would go from near silence to, we getting evicted if I can’t adjust this right. A time before knobs were commonplace and it was a vertical slider that would just always find the volume you weren’t looking for as if by design. 

here's a lesbian for you

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.

cerise

junicorn

day 07

Thomas G. Aylesworth’s Servants of the Devil (1970) is from the same series as Vampires and Other Ghosts, and like that book it is full of large art reproductions and flare for pleasing graphic design. But where the former book is breezy and light, this one is a sober evaluation of the folklore of witchcraft and the use of the same as an excuse for murder and torture by the churches and governments of Europe and elsewhere. It’s nice to see Aylesworth struggle to be impartial. Any semblance of that falls way pretty early. By the time he mentions Nicholas Remy, the judge who sentenced hundreds of “witches” to burn to death in a span of 15 years, Aylesworth’s anger is pretty apparent. Toward the end of Remy’s life, he was plagued by guilt, not for the deaths but rather because he spared some of the children who came before his bench. What a shit.

Anyway, after that point, Aylesworth is pretty clearly horrified by the persecution of witches. He leaves some room for the existence of witchcraft as defined by Margaret Murray, that is, as a survival of a pagan religion dedicated to a mother goddess. He does this, it seems, because of the absence of evidence either way. As for the diablery described by the witch hunters, he appears deeply skeptical. In all, it’s a rather bracing indictment of cruelty and hysteria.