"Once Upon a Time...

We're having our turn in the heat wave and reports from the National Mall are brutal already this week. That screenshot is today's forecast (courtesy of the Capital Weather Gang) and tomorrow and Saturday are confidently going to be worse than this is.

The national Mall has no shade on the grass and you will be exposed to the sun constantly while also experiencing extremely high humidity. You will not be allowed a bag over a certain size to enter the mall and it has to be clear. You cannot have an insulated water bottle, it has to be clear. Reports are that there are two entrances to the area so you'll have to wait in line to even get in. I cannot find a number on how many cooling stations there are, except that it's "few" to "none" depending on what accounts I read online. Vendors are allegedly charging more than the posted prices and seem to be unprepared for actual crowds - these are the official vendors not the scam food trucks that park all around the edges of the mall. And that's the extent of the planning done because it was not a priority to make sure attendees don't pass out.

My local friends and I have reached a consensus that tourists are going to get extremely sick and none of us know what the EMT response or planning is on the mall this year. People are going to die.

Cool, so you want natural fiber costumes with no/nuanced corset slander, people wearing colors, historical hairstyles, people wearing hats or headcoverings and long sleeves outside during the day, no potatoes or pumpkins in pre-columbian Europe, actors with textured skin and wrinkles, minimal makeup, consulting HEMA groups and weapons scholars for all the weapons and fight scenes, a good soundtrack that includes traditional instruments?

• Indigenous women and girls make up 50% of human trafficking victims, while only making up about 2% of the population.¹

•If the territory of Nunavut was an independent country it would have the highest suicide rate in the world (135 per 100,000, which is 10x the canadian average)²

•Despite Calgary having a fairly low crime rate the Calgary Police kill more people than any other police force in Canada. In 2018 CPS killed more people than the police forces of Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Edmonton combined. ASIRT, the provincial police watchdog, has never charged an officer for these murders. If you control for population, the rate of civilians killed in Calgary by police is 8 times higher than in New York City. ³

•Between August 30th and December 14th 2024, 15 Indigenous people were killed by police in Canada. 15 people in under 4 months. Because Canada does not collect data on victims of police violence it's difficult to know exact numbers, but it's estimated that Indigenous people make up 16% of police killings, while only making up 4.1% of the population. Indigenous people are killed by police at a rate 10x higher than white canadians.⁴

•28% of people federally incarcerated are Indigenous. This number is as high as 40% in women's prisons. Indigenous women are incarcerated at a rate 12.5x higher than non Indigenous women. ⁵

•29 reserves in Canada are under drinking water advisories. Some of these advisories have been in place for more than 25 years. ⁶

•53.8% of kids in the foster care system are Indigenous. In the province I live in (Alberta) that number is more than 70%. ⁷

• 7% of non Indigenous Canadian children live in poverty. 38% of Indigenous children in Canada live in poverty. ⁷

Canada is not America-lite. Canada is not America's polite northern neighbour. Canada has its own brutal colonial history, and sits on forcibly occupied Indigenous land.

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

Moments after being called to the dining room table and briefed on a lengthy set of rules, local woman Shayla Meyer reported Tuesday that her relationship with Matt Brickell had apparently reached the point where she had to learn his family’s weird card games. “Okay, so everyone gets seven cards that you want to arrange by suit, and starting to the left of the dealer, we all take turns drawing a card from the deck and adding its value to the face-up ‘community card’ in the middle,” said Brickell’s father to Meyer, who nodded politely during a three-minute explanation of the so-called “kitty” and “trump suits” while simultaneously coming to the realization that, as long as her relationship continued, she would be expected to play this game with her boyfriend’s family every time they were all together.

This is so fun, I love the brightness and joyfulness of the art, and Elliot so clearly being a little menace and their very different angry expressions. And the scar on Luke’s head from the trigon ball!

I absolutely love the progression here, not just Elliot from lil snot to much bigger snot in jock denial, but the progression of the weird table’s dynamic. Luke and Serene, who were platonic love at first sight, Elliot’s undeniable bisexuality and the celebratory way it’s shown.

And since it is the last day of Pride, I do have some other things to say. Things are rough right now. I hope in an extinction burst way, where people are being awful because they know the tide is turning against them. I hope things will get better and better. In some ways they are! LGBT representation has come a long way since I was first published in 2009. There was behind the scenes pushback then I don’t get now. I watched Queer as Folk back in the day, but all my friends weren’t watching it the way they all watched Heated Rivalry.

At the same time, the way is rocky and full of stumbling back. Tasha Suri (genius author of the lady knight/witch Arthuriana tale ISLE IN THE SILVER SEA) showed me this link about how Heated Rivalry spawned… straight hockey shows? (Well said by the lead and writer of Fire Island, a very excellent gay modern take on Pride & Prejudice.)

And my head spun round and round. And yet… before Heated Rivalry, last year publishers in various markets were saying no thanks to LGBT fiction, and now they’re saying yes again. Baby steps through the rocks.

There is a reason I wrote IN OTHER LANDS on my blog, and that it was published by a small press. For the record, if any book with a straight romance at its centre had made the sales numbers IN OTHER LANDS did, it would have been SNAPPED up by a big publisher. And several editors over the years have tried. (Whenever I talk critically about publishing, I mean the institution, most people in publishing are beautiful story-loving souls.) All of this is incredibly frustrating for those of us who want to celebrate love and share stories.

Still I do think there’s a rising tide of love and change. There are more writers sharing more diverse stories than ever before.

For obvious reasons, LONG LIVE EVIL is the story that means the most to me, and that I think of as my best. (I’d hope my writing has improved in 10 years, or what is it all about). And Time of Iron is making a lot of points about queerness as a way of breaking free from the narrative that I couldn’t quite articulate, back then.

But I know for many of my readers IN OTHER LANDS will be the book that means most to them, the big magical joyful bi coming of age tale that came to them at an important time. I have read and cried over emails and letters telling me that they read it and came out, to their families or themselves, that Elliot was their first bi MC. I’ve heard from other writers that it inspired them, as books like Swordspoint inspired me. And this book survived, and in a large part my career survived, when books I published with big publishers went out of print, because of readers loving this book which for so long I didn’t even know was a book. I wrote it long enough ago now that I experience the book through my readers most: I love it again through their eyes. You bring the tale and the joy back to life for me.

I wrote some of this book sitting in the London beer garden of a gay pub with my friends, drinks in jamjars, drenched in sunlight, lying to them that I had a deadline. Playing with my awful and awfully good Elliot, Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, and golden Luke. Telling the story mattered, and so does love and celebration.