a voice beckoned gently, ,,now it’s time to go’’ a requiem played as you begged for forgiveness “don’t touch me”, i screamed “i’ve got unfinished business”

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Mercurius Pretty — PC98 — NEC (1994)

Maya Angelo, from “Alone”, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelo

Tag list @sithwitch-crosshairs-toothpick @undercoverwizardninjaturtle @kabuki-akuma @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses @shadows-fan-space

I may have seen Two Girls One Cup by accident and at the tender age of ten, but I never had to deal with companies using gambling-addiction-creating strategies pioneered in literal casinos to try and make me hand over hundreds of real dollars at the same age. I may have been exposed to vicious bigotry in anonymous and pseudanonymous messages boards, but I never had algorithms spoonfeeding me explicitly far right radicalizing content. The blithely unfettered access people of our generation had is just genuinely not the same as what kids with unsupervised access are getting today.

Now, those spaces that can keep kids content and happy with their best interests in mind are all but gone. Sites and apps lean harder and harder on paid features, the death of Flash has made countless harmless free game sites go extinct or be abandoned long before now, and the content for kids is dumped unceremoniously into the same spaces as content for those older than them, with both ends of age-appealing spectrum being trimmed and penalized further and further in favor of the marketable middle ground. Younger groups have to more often than not pay if they want to get into spaces suited for them - Star Stable, Webkinz (more than they did before Deluxe Accounts existed, there’s a difference between buying a single plush that lets you access the site and having more and more features behind paywalls), and many others. And on the free sites where kid content and grown content mingles, there’s no trustworthy adult staff even bothering to limit the harmfulness of the site to something as simple as offering every kid regardless of data ads for a new Poptart flavor or card game - all that exists is an algorithm that has one goal - maximize engagement, whether through charm or horror, and no matter who wears such a mask. Now, the internet is the one we can’t trust with a child.

Autumn at Scotney Castle, Kent (@jameslloydcole IG)

This is the story of Prince Apollo and his devoted Knight, Sir Klavier. Here are the illustration i did for the 2021 klapollo minibang where i partnered with @parchmints on her royalty / fantasy AU! I had a blast designing the costumes and the frames for a storybook style. The last chapter just dropped so go take a look! (completed) READ ON AO3

redbeanbaby

The Highest Room in the Tallest Tower 🏰🐉