This is why I can't have nice things.

WHY CAT WHY: a coloring book explaining cats is available NOW!

Why do cats do the weird things they do? Why do we let these pointy, inconvenient creatures and their buttholes into our homes? This book explains cats (and why we love them) with 26 fun and informative coloring pages.

I’m awfully fond of this book. And of cats. 

Please enjoy these free coloring pages! (And buy my book if you want more) 

Shiny Actual Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997573848 

IT’S HERE IT’S HERE IT’S HERE!!! And just in time for Halloween!

Making Friends in the Afterworld is a creepy-cute picture book which was written by my dear friend Jonathan, illustrated by me, and colored by our friend Lee at @studiointerrobang. It’s about friendship, finding people who love you for who you are (even if you’re a little bit weird), and cupcakes.

This book is chock full of heart! And also other organs. But mostly heart!

- An ID that resembles your current appearance (just get a new photo taken on a driver’s license or ANY government issued ID) - Passport photo that resembles your current appearance (From any drug store)

- Proof of legal name change (if applicable)

- A physician statement that indicates you have either completed or are in process of treatment for gender transition (the hardest part) No surgeries, no red tape, no bullshit. And when people try to harass you or puush you around because “Hahaha your ID says your x” Whip out your passport and shut them DOWN. I carry mine wherever I go and I know a lot of my friends who live in the south do so as well.  This law could VERY easily change under a Trump presidency and I haven’t been as serious about anything as I am about this. PLEASE GET A PASSPORT. Even the passport card (which is half as expensive as the book is!!!) will do. Just please if you can, get ONE ID that matches who you really are.

If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, and you can’t see yourself voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, then don’t. Vote third party.

Consider the Libertarian or Green Party.

Voting third party in America throws your vote directly into the garbage. Our system does not work like Australia’s. You don’t get a second or third choice, and candidates who win aren’t going to look at the numbers and say “I see 25% of Americans voted Green, I should implement Green policies.” That’s not how it works. Conservative voters overwhelmingly back a single party, the GOP, while non-conservative voters are the ones that scatter across multiple, weak fronts when faced with an unappealing Democratic party nominee. Think about it like this:

The majority of Republican voters support Trump and are not changing their vote even though party leaders and figureheads are universally decrying him. They’ve been groomed for decades by the GOP to be this way, and now party leaders have lost control of the impressionable voter base they created for themselves. There’s nothing they can do about it at this point. While a small number of Republicans can and are switching parties, it’s not very much. Meanwhile, Democrats are floundering, trying to decide which front to unite under. Some of them go to the Green party or Libertarians, sure; the rest stay with the Democratic party in the hopes that even with people leaving, they will have enough to block Trump. But Trump doesn’t need a majority of total Americans to vote for him; he only needs more than the other candidates have. Do you understand what I’m saying? Trump could get 10% of the vote, but as long as no other party has more than 10%, he still wins. The second you split the left and middle across three or four fronts, the right seizes control. This is how it goes down every single fucking time we go through this.

Earlier this year, I sold the coloring books that made up about 95% of my income to a publisher. This was a great move for a lot of reasons – getting my books into brick and mortar stores means more people can pick them up, and those books get better promotion, quality control, and overall awesomeness thanks to Sourcebooks’ fabulous print job.

(Also, I get to visit the Unicorns Are Jerks 3-in-1 book whenever I go to Target. STILL NOT OVER THAT.)

The downsides of moving into traditional publishing are that I get paid less per book and I no longer have a monthly paycheck. I’m living off my advance and savings and crossing my fingers that the royalty report I get every six months will say good things.

This is why I started looking into Patreon.

Showing other people what I’m working on is a huge motivator for me, so I’m excited to have a new way to do that! If you support me on Patreon, you can look forward to WIP posts about projects I can’t talk about publicly yet, misfit coloring pages that didn’t make it into my books (and maybe Patreon-exclusive coloring pages?), and pictures of my cats, because why not.

like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’ 

was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’ 

here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.

however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around. 

but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh). 

conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr. 

Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).

And then there’s this gem from Plato:

“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium

According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone. 

In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of. 

Arthur Conan Doyle’s first two Sherlock Holmes novels weren’t hugely popular, but when he began to write stories for The Strand magazine involving Sherlock Holmes, the public basically went absolutely mental. He used to get fan mail - predominantly from women, apparently - addressed directly to Sherlock Holmes, some women even offering to be his housekeeper. 

He eventually got so fed up of writing stories about a character he didn’t really like (he considered Sherlock Holmes to be an irritating distraction from his ambition to write historical fiction, once saying “he takes my mind from better things”) that he took measures to end the series once and for all. First, he raised his fee for writing the stories to an extortionate amount, hoping that the magazine would refuse to pay it and fire him. However, there was such a demand for new Sherlock Holmes stories that the magazine just agreed to pay his ridiculous fee. So, he killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 in the Reichenbach Falls, and when he did that, shit hit the fan. People reportedly placed Sherlock Holmes obituaries in newspapers. Many of them cancelled their subscription to The Strand, and wrote angry letters to Arthur Conan Doyle explaining how he’d broken their heart. To fill the gap left by the death of their bb, some people wrote fan fiction and shared it in literary groups and book clubs. 

BIG NEWS: Target is carrying this huge, 3-in-1 edition of my coloring books!!!

Starter Pokekittens!