Queer as in fuck societal norms

For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"

It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"

I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!

But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

On encouraging reblogs —

I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!

But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.

As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.

So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.

This is to accompany IndigoDream's awesome Witcher fic, No Kings Among Wolves, up on AO3 or on Tumblr @saltytransidiot and the beautiful art by @punchsomeoneforme-willyou here

It was a pleasure working with these guys and reading such a lovely story! :)

Anyways, here‘s my piece:

Welcome, welcome! It is that time again! We are coming back with a vengeance for 2026.

Four or More 2026 Pride Event

AO3 collection

This is a limited time Ficathon where the only requirement is to have your work be Pride-themed.

What’s Pride-themed? Anything from actually loudly attending Pride to quiet coming outs to family. Celebrating mixed orientation relationships or watching people’s sexual orientations and genders change and evolve within the polycule. Gender fuckery in the sheets or in the streets. 

We will not be policing works for one definition of Pride

Our Four or More Bingo will be officially launched on June 1st, but you can combine this event with the Four or More Bingo (or any other event that allows it) for an extra challenge.

This event will run exclusively from June 1st to June 30th.

This is a low-stakes, personal challenge. There's no penalty for not finishing, you just won’t make it to the Pride collection.

GUIDELINES

Any medium! Any rating! As long as your work focuses on a relationship with 4 or more people, it's allowed!

All works must be your own and not previously posted. AI generated works will be deleted from the collections.

You may combine these with other events, as long as the other event allows it (examples are @polyamships polyamshippingday, lyricaltitles challenges, etc)

Small fandoms welcome!

Don't forget to comply with the community guidelines.

MEDIUM SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

Minimum wordcount for fics is 100 words. There is no maximum

Minimum for art is a sketch on unlined paper (figure sticks allowed!). There is no limit to the quality or effort you want to put in your fills.

Minimum for moodboards is a 3x3 grid (9 images individually or edited in one image). Maximum is given by the place where you decide to post. On tumblr, the maximum is 20 images, but on AO3, you're free!

Minimum for podfic is a 100-word fic. There is no restriction on maximum length or sound effects.

Minimum for fanvids is 30 seconds. There is no maximum.

Other mediums don't have a minimum. Do you want to make an in-universe magazine for your ship? A cross stich pattern? A sculpture? Go ahead and do it! I look forward to all the things you can create.

FAQ below the cut

Sign-Ups Open for Launch the Ship!

Have you fallen for a ship with 0 fics? Perhaps you even thought about writing it but weren't sure there'd be a point. Why not join Launch the Ship—a multifandom challenge to write the first fic for a ship! It provides a friendly little community during what can often be a lonely voyage.

All you need to do is choose a ship with 0 fics, and complete a fic for it before the deadline, July 20th. Everything else is optional, though there are opportunities to share ideas and check out each other's work.

Sign-ups are now open at this link and will be until the deadline (July 20th, 23:55 UTC). Fics will be revealed publicly on July 21st, 00:01 UTC.

Today’s the day! ‘The Other A in LGBTQIA+’ by AUREA is officially out today! Dive into the powerful, personal stories of the aromantic community—our voices, our experiences, our truth. Read more about it here: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/news-feed/our-book-the-other-a-in-lgbtqia-coming-out-now. Grab your copy now and help us celebrate this milestone for aromantic visibility!

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

You’ve heard of employee unions using collective bargaining to force the bosses to provide better pay and better working condiditions. But did you know if you rent an apartment in an apartment complex, you can do something similar?

It’s called a Tenant Association, and it’s basically a union for renters.

Here’s an overview of the why and how of forming a tenant association

Here’s a more thorough organizing manual

the soviet union wasn’t some radical departure from the russian empire. it was simply the same empire in a new uniform. red flags and marxist rhetoric instead orthodox crosses or symbols of tasrdom. the core goal always stayed the same: control the non-russian peoples by any means necessary.

on paper, the ussr was a “friendship of nations,” a voluntary union of 15 republics. in reality, it was a centralized empire run out of moscow. the republics had no real say in foreign policy, trade, or even their own leadership. step out of line? you’d face censorship, arrests, or worse. this is well documented and it's gross that people try to downplay this because it challenges the theory they've consumed.

the soviet regime cracked down on local languages, histories, and identities. flags were banned. historians and artists were persecuted. even alphabets were changed with non-russian scripts rewritten in cyrillic to sever cultural memory. it was pure russification.

ethnic cleansing was policy. in the 1940s, stalin deported entire nationalities: chechens, crimean tatars, kalmyks, and others. shoved into cattle cars, sent to siberia or central asia and many never made it. half of the deported crimean tatars died. scholars now call these acts what they were: crimes against humanity, even genocide. ukraine’s holodomor (1932–33) was another brutal example. millions died of famine caused by soviet grain policies, right as the regime was wiping out ukrainian culture and religious life.

the baltics suffered too. in 1941 and 1949, tens of thousands of estonians, latvians, and lithuanians were deported, targeting everyone from political leaders to schoolteachers. all while moscow insisted it was promoting “friendship.” and after wwii, the ussr exported this "model "friendship" to central eastern europe. poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, and others swapped nazi rule for soviet occupation. local revolts were crushed (hungary in ’56, czechoslovakia in ’68). sovereignty was tolerated only when it served moscow.

even economically, the ussr followed the imperial playbook. resources flowed to the center; local populations got pollution and poverty. ukraine powered soviet industry with coal and grain but saw little investment or infrastructural support. the baltic states were productive yet politically silenced.

kazakhstan? used for 456 nuclear tests without consent, leaving over a million exposed to radiation. uzbekistan and turkmenistan were turned into cotton monocultures, poisoning land and water for moscow’s benefit. sound familiar? it’s the same exploitative dynamic seen in british india or the congo.

and the legacy lives on. russia’s invasions of georgia (2008), crimea (2014), and ukraine (2022) aren’t accidents. they’re rooted in an old imperial belief that former soviet republics can’t exist without moscow’s blessing. the kremlin still pushes “russkiy mir”, this insane idea that russia has the right to “protect” russian speakers wherever they are. but this protection has meant war, occupation, and death, especially for russian-speaking ukrainians.

ukraine’s refusal to bow to this narrative is exactly why it’s under attack. the empire might’ve changed flags, but its logic never died. and the fight for true decolonization is far from over.

My family were among the people who lost their home in the ethnic cleansing of Crimea. For years afterwards they weren't even allowed to visit their homeland. They never got their home back or managed to build a new home in Crimea even after they could finally live there again, although given what's happening in Crimea now maybe that's a blessing in disguise. My great-grandfather was imprisoned for six years (and sentenced to many more) for the mere crime of being the wrong ethnicity. My grandfather was left without a dad for years as a sickly little boy stuck in Siberia. Hell, years later, long after his father's release, when he was graduating top of his class his teachers had to petition for him to be allowed to graduate with the appropriate honors, because he was the son of a "traitor to the nation." He still wasn't fully granted the honors, despite having perfect grades.

Meanwhile, the cotton monocultures in Uzbekistan? Those weren't just poisoning the environment, they were poisoning school children. Every year school students would be sent to work on the field and help with the harvest, exposing them to the pesticides that lay over the fields like a thick haze. My grandmother would get horrible allergic reactions from it, but it was still next to impossible to be freed from this duty. If I get my story straight, eventually she managed. I don't know from what age they would send kids to work, or when they stopped doing that. From what I know my mom didn't have to pick cotton anymore, but she still remembers the pesticides.

And those are just the larger crimes. You know why my grandfather's family eventually moved from Siberia to Uzbekistan? Racism. People would call them names and insult their appearance. My grandfather would have girls from the school years above him running up to him during breaks just to look at his dark eyelashes, like he was some kind of zoo animal. In Uzbekistan, at least, people looked like them and were Muslim like them, even if religious expression was still heavily stifled in public settings.

All of this happened in living memory. People have taken long-term health damage. People have lost language and culture, not only through the horrible crimes against humanity, but also through the pressure to assimilate to (white) Russian language and culture. Crimean Tatar is an endangered language. Nearly all of my maternal relatives have a Tatar name and a Russian name, because I guess even simple Turkic names are too "difficult." Very early on, people had to change their surnames to something Russian sounding. To my mom and her brother, Russian is their native language. I don't even speak either of my family's Tatar languages anymore. It's all getting lost.

One of the best navigational tools ever built. Can't be jammed or intercepted. Something breaks, you can fix it yourself. Hard to learn. Yes, but once you've mastered it, you're free.

Obi-Wan and Mace (Jedi Landing Platform) | Deleted Scene

Like, he isn’t just asking for guidance, he’s telling him about his super private doubts about Anakin (his brother, son, best friend, one person he loves most in the universe, platonic soulmate, take your pick). And Mace just patiently listens - kinda smiles too - and doesn’t reprimand him for “caring too much” (a common occurrence in fanfic representation), doesn’t go “yeah, totally, Anakin is unstable and dangerous and we shouldn’t trust him,” doesn’t turn this into a lecture of any kind. 

He just lets Obi-Wan vent his worries and then reassures him, and Obi-Wan looks genuinely pleased and grateful. Their body language is open - Mace walks behind Obi-Wan at one point, so he’s treating Obi-Wan like an equal. 

He lets Obi-Wan come to his own conclusions and doesn’t push one view or another on him. (-> He doesn’t say that Anakin is the Chosen One, just that it’s a possibility, he doesn’t say whether or not he still thinks it was wrong to train Anakin, he doesn’t comment on the Anidala hints.)

He doesn’t tell Obi-Wan what they could do to “straighten Anakin out” or “make him a better Jedi” or anything - he only tells him how he should act. It’s such a Jedi thing - you can’t control other people’s behavior. You can only seek to improve yourself and have faith. 

(Image ID: A chain thread by user @rahaeli on bluesky that discusses a handy way to combate American insurance companies denying coverage for care. It reads:

"To everyone in a similar scenario: the tactic my doctor's office has taught me is to ask, in writing, for:

1.) The name, board specialty, and license number of the doctor making the determination the treatment was not medically necessary

2.) Copies of all materials they relied on to make their determination

3.) Proof the doctor making the determination has maintained registration in your specific state and documentation of their meeting all their continuing education requirements

4.) The aggregate rate at which similar treatments are denied vs. approved by the specific doctor being used for peer review

You are not entitled by law to *all* of these things in most states, but you're entitled to some of them, and you can always ask for them.

This is, she says, a wildly successful tactic, because if the insurance company answers them honestly, it gives you evidence that the "doctors" making these determinations are practicing medicine out of scope, without proper licensing and qualifications, in areas they are not competent in.

Everyone knows this is true; it's not a secret in any way. But it's in violation of a number of regulations, and a LOT of times the company will just give up and pay the bill rather than handing you proof they're violating the regulations. It's a tactic that has worked for me many, many times."

Little Eva - Loco-Motion

Martha & The Vandellas - Dancing in the Streets

James Ray - I've Got My Mind Set On You

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog

Robert Knight - Everlasting Love

Erma Franklin - Piece of My Heart

The Family - Nothing Compares 2 U (written by Prince)

The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love

The Supremes - Keep Me Hanging On

Lord Creator - Kingston Town

The Paragons - Tide is High

Commodores - Easy

And here's an entire playlist with songs by black artists covered by The Rolling Stones:

A creative fandom event dedicated to appreciating the Jedi, taking place during the entire month of June! Each week will feature two prompts, around which people can create fanwork (of any kind – fic, art, cosplay, edits, anything you can think of) or meta focusing on the Jedi and the Jedi Order. All eras and continuities are welcome; OCs, established characters, doesn’t matter – it just needs to be about appreciating the Jedi!

Rules:

If you are participating, please tag your work/meta with #jedi june and/or @ this blog so that I will see it and reblog it here. All work must be your own. Feel free to crosspost it off-site.

This is an appreciation event, focusing on what we love and enjoy about the Jedi – not what we don’t. This is not the place to air your grievances with the Code, take potshots at the Council, prop certain Jedi/certain eras of Jedi up at the expense of others, or disparage the Jedi Order or their philosophy (including the concept of non-attachment) and way of life in any way. You are free to do that on your own time if that’s your thing, but it has no place within this event.

AUs and crossovers are allowed, with caveats: again, the purpose of this event is to appreciate the Jedi as Jedi, so sticking your favorite Jedi characters in something like a modern AU or making them all Sith or Mandalorian is not really within the spirit of this event. However, AUs such as making a non-Jedi character a Jedi, having a character survive their canon death, giving a character a different teacher or padawan, or killing Palpatine off-screen in an unspecified yet embarrassing and painful manner, would all be perfectly fine. Use your best judgement to determine whether an AU fits the spirit of the event or not.

On non-attachment: in a general sense, attachment refers to grasping, clinging, possessiveness, jealousy, and the "I can't live without you"/"I will burn down the galaxy before I risk losing you" attitude. See this post and this post for more information. A romance can certainly exist without these things, so you can certainly write Jedi in relationships for this event!

Please tag any spoilers up to two weeks after the relevant content has aired.

Following the prompts is encouraged, but not required. Any sort of pro-Jedi content is encouraged all year month long, and if tagged (and following the rules), will be reblogged.

We also have an AO3 collection!

Prompts:

Week 1 (June 1 - 7):

Prompt 1: Resilience

Prompt 2: A Choice Not Taken

Week 2 (June 8 - 14):

Prompt 1: Compassion

Prompt 2: The Jedi Code

Week 3 (June 15 - 21):

Prompt 1: Interconnected

Prompt 2: Life, Death, and The Force

Week 4 (June 22 - 30):

Prompt 1: Lightsaber

Prompt 2: Jedi as Family

Bonus (any time):

Prompt 1: Memory

Prompt 2: Master Learning from the Padawan

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I hope you will have fun participating!

Static banner credit @independence1776​​

by glass_museum on tiktok