Nothing to see, just scrollin

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981801-putting-food-by

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

The Wicker Man comes to mind. It's not a metaphor for anything. It's about the confrontation between Christianity and The Old Ways. There's metaphors in the story that are explained, but the film itself isn't a metaphor for anything. Christopher Lee's character says things elder Pagans taught me to say to Christians. The filmmakers did as much research as they could and cared about portraying the religious practises accurately according to information they had available to them at the time. The way the Christian character behaves, and what he says, is 100% things I have had said and seen done or had done to me and mine. There's no metaphor for anything, it's all right there in the open.

Sometimes there's no fucking metaphor.

Lately I've stopped writing because I feel so trapped by the audience assumption that everything I write will be seen to be, not just a metaphor, but specifically a bad metaphor, for some real-world thing when I am writing about literally what I'm writing about. A changeling is not inherently a Bad Metaphor for being autistic or disabled, writing about a religion is not inherently about Christianity. Vampires are not inherently a metaphor for sex or disability or what-the-hell-ever.

Not everything is a fucking metaphor, and tbh someone thinking everything must a metaphor for something else is a deeply Christian behaviour.

To assume that everything must be a metaphor is a very Christian way of viewing the world, I'm just gonna come out and say it plain. It's an established Christian belief that goes back at least as far as the medieval period, to think that everything in the world was created by their one-god as a metaphor or a parable for them to learn some kind of Christian idea, and that the whole world is meant to serve this purpose at all times.

Y'all need to stop fucking imposing that on everything. If you want that, stick to bible parables. Don't come out here reading stories by non-Christians expecting that's why or how we write stories, and certainly don't come out here combining it with bad faith readings and accusing people of things.

"well but I'm not christian anymore--" a person is what they PRACTISE, not what they say. People can SAY anything! So if you don't like being called christian, stop fucking behaving like one. Actions speak louder than words!

"but death of the author" that means YOU bring projection to the art, and YOU need to take responsibility for your response and interpretation. It isn't MY fault you are bringing a shitty, poisonous, lack of critical thinking to my story, and it isn't my job to soothe you either! death of the author means DEATH. It means grow up and take responsibility for your fucking projected meaning over the fucking text, not "my interpretation is what the author intended and even if it wasn't it's the author's responsibility to respond to me about it". No it isn't. You experience what YOU bring to the art.

Fatalistic sarcasm is a thing, however, it usually hides deep feelings of insecurity, and whether you consciously recognize this or not, it validates them. Seriously, I used to constantly make jokes about how other people’s work was better than mine, and it did nothing for my self-esteem, it was a tool to deflect from my own feelings of inferiority and it actively worked against me thinking critically about my own and other people’s work. If it was a joke I could put myself down instead of analyzing why someone’s work was better and trying to incorporate that into my own

As someone who took creative writing courses I was constantly surrounded by other brilliant people, if I hung my head in shame every time I read something as good or better than mine I never would have lifted it. 

As someone who has watched a lot of writers with very good idea’s crash and burn I mean it when I say you either develop a healthy sense of respect for your own work or you stop writing. 

There’s three things I really wish more people consider

1. Do you think their work is better because it’s a different style, one that you like? There’s an element to ‘the grass is greener on the other side’, I have seen people work in some amazing styles that I wished to god I could replicate, some I managed, some I never did, but there’s nothing wrong with either. having a different style Is Not the same as having a bad style, each has their own strengths and you can admire one without putting yours down

2. Knowing someone who is a better writer is a blessing and if they knew you were using their work to bring yourself down they would not be happy, mooch off that friend, analyze their work, ask them to edit your shit, as long as you’re not annoying them be shameless about it. the best thing creative writing did for me was give me the confidence to ask people to critic my work and shamelessly better each other for that sharing