Indivisible reports that these Democratic senators in particular need to hear from their constituents right now to oppose HR22, a bill which would disinfranchise millions of people, mostly women, from voting.

Again, urge these Senators in particular to reject the GOP’s voter suppression bill and protect our freedom to vote:

KELLY (AZ)
WARNOCK (GA)
PETERS (MI)
SHAHEEN (NH)
HASSAN (NH)
CORTEZ MASTO (NV)
ROSEN (NV)

If they aren’t your Senators, give your own a call anyway. You can call directly, or you can use Indivisible’s tool to help you call if you prefer.

HR22 is intentionally a voter suppression bill, and it’s intentionally suppressing votes of married women in particular. You need a birth certificate in person or a passport in person to register, and if you’ve changed your name (by, say, getting married) and haven’t changed your birth certificate to match, and you don’t have a passport (as most people don’t), then last I heard you’re just kinda fucked. You have to get one or the other done, and then get registered to vote, a process which will take months.

This is not an accident. Also, it eliminates registering to vote by mail or online, which is something else they want in order to, again, make it harder to vote.

This lines up with what the far-right openly say that they want, which is either eliminating votes for women entirely or assigning one vote per household, which would be executed by a man (presumably where such exists).

Also, they know that men vote Republican far more than women do, and it’s about making sure they can’t ever lose another election. This is what they’ve done in state after state where they have power, and it’s what they want to do across the country.

This can’t pass. It absolutely cannot pass. Make sure your senators know. Today.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

solarbird

Pretty good turnout in Bothell, counter had over 600 which is a good number given the rain in the morning and the unavoidable timing against Easter. It’s not what we had two weeks ago, but again, conflicts and worse conditions. Still a bit larger than the 2018-era protests, so I’d call that another win.

There were still people on the far downtown bridge, too. There were just gaps in the crowd between us and them.

I’d post pics but I totally forgot my phone, oops. And I actually did, not “lol no phone oops” did.

There was one (1) counter-protestor/heckler on the ground; he didn’t like my “NO KINGS” signs at all and started ranting about how Biden was the real “king” they got rid of. He didn’t have a sign himself and stayed pretty far back; I came across him accidentally while walking around testing our FRS radio range.

(As an aside: FRS handheld radios are f’real, team. Consider getting some and getting practice with them. No license needed, they’re channelised so can’t be used against you as “police scanners,” the range is shockingly good, and even with prices going up they’re super affordable. Ignore the only review on that Best Buy link; those are the exact model we bought. If you want to spend a little more you can get the T30 version, which has a headset and I think is rechargeable, but is otherwise pretty much the same radio and only comes in black. We specifically wanted replaceable batteries for extended-blackout reasons. Just remember: they are NOT private. Just relatively obscure.)

As with every other protest here, we had overwhelming support from the vehicle crowd. Hundreds to one in favour, easily, just like in person. I even got support from a presumably embarrassed Tesla driver.

I don’t know if there were more Bothell PD out this time, or if it just felt like there were. Might’ve been a difference in crowd to cop ratio, might’ve just been the escalating situation, might’ve just been where they were standing. But I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Keep on your toes. Even here, the cops are Trump’s friends.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s report, I hope your protests went well. Remember to save the date for May 1st, and to turn out at your local Tesla Takedown or similar before then, too. Momentum is everything, and we need to keep it.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

frameacloud posting in

otherkinnews

This blog post was written by Orion Scribner (frameacloud) on 2025 April 19 for Otherkin News, which is a volunteer run project. We welcome other people to submit articles about alterhumanity in current events. Learn more about this project and what we’re looking for.

Previously, we wrote an in-depth article about the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, a Republican proposed constitution amendment that proposes to criminalize allowing “non-human behavior” in public schools in Texas, which has been supported by the Governor. You can read it here. If you aren’t familiar with this news story yet, please read it first so that you can understand this one.

One more thing I noticed after I wrote my article is that the wording of the two F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act bills isn’t completely identical after all: one of them has a typographical error in it. The version filed as Texas House Bill 4814 (TX HB 4814) says the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act stands for Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education, missing the final word of the initialism. The version filed as Texas House Bill 54 (TX HB 54) ends the initialism with Educational Spaces. I had assumed that its author, Republican Representative Stan Gerdes, must have filed the bill a second time because of this error, instead of correcting the introduced bill text afterward. However, in a post to his Facebook on March 14, Gerdes wrote that the bill

“now has the support of Governor Greg Abbott and Speaker Dustin Burrows, who recognize the importance of keeping distractions out of our classrooms. Speaker Burrows has reassigned our legislation as House Bill 54, a low bill number that signals its priority status in the Texas House! I’m grateful that our leadership is taking this issue seriously and ensuring that Texas schools remain places of learning, not roleplaying. I’ve appreciated the conversations I’ve had with my own Smithville ISD Superintendent on this issue—our educators should be focused on teaching, not managing classroom disruptions from kids pretending to be animals. This is common sense. Let’s get it passed.”

Given that the bill is associated with treating an urban legend as though it’s happening in real life, anything else he says about his bill is reasonable to view with doubt. Whatever the reason for the two different bill numbers, the bungled initialism is the one that most of the news articles repeat. At least one news source ends the initialism as “Education and Schools,” which doesn’t appear in either of the bill texts. I’m also skeptical of exactly what conversations Gerdes had with the Smithville ISD Superintendant, if any, for reasons that show up later in this post. I don’t recall seeing Burrows say anything about the bill, either.

Here is a round-up of some more of the media coverage about and response to the bill since I last wrote about it. This is a reference list, sorted alphabetically by surname of the author, with my own annotations about the accuracy of each article and any new information it contributed.

Bahari, Sarah (2025 March 17). Texas bill would ban ‘furry subculture’ from public schools. The Dallas Morning News. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/03/17/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-subculture-from-public-schools/ Archived 2025 April 8: https://web.archive.org/web/20250408185746/https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/03/17/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-subculture-from-public-schools/

Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC) says that this Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper for a region of Texas has a right-center bias and high credibility. This article accurately says that the litter box rumor has been debunked, and that the bill is connected with Republican efforts to use taxpayer dollars for private schools, though it doesn’t bring up that this means defunding public schools or the connection with satirizing transgender students. This article adds important new information about the story: some written statements about the bill were provided directly to the Dallas Morning News for the above article from the legislator, Rep. Stan Gerdes, and a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, Andrew Mahaleris. Bahari reports, “Gerdes acknowledged furries soon might show up at another place: the Capitol in Austin. ‘I fully expect the subculture to show up in full furry vengeance at the committee hearing,’ he said in a statement, adding that he will not tolerate theatrics during the legislative process.” Sounds like Gerdes meant for the bill to be bait for a spectacle. The same statement also claims that “he wrote the bill in response to an incident in Smithville ISD, but he did not elaborate. Smithville is about 45 miles southeast of Austin. Neither Gerdes nor the school district immediately responded to a request for more information Monday from The Dallas Morning News.” Over a month later, there still has been no public comment from that school district to substantiate Gerdes’s claim.

Billson, Chantelle (2025 March 26). Texas GOP lawmaker introduces Furries Act after falling for the litter-boxes-in-schools hoax. PinkNews. https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/26/stan-gerdes-texas-furries-act/ Archived 2025 April 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20250402063947/https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/26/stan-gerdes-texas-furries-act/

PinkNews is an online magazine focusing on LGBTQ+ pop culture for the UK and worldwide. MBFC says it has a left bias and high credibility. That may have been true once, but sadly, PinkNews has started using generative AI in their process for writing their articles, judging by a flag that appears on the end of some of the web addresses that they linked to in their article: /?utm_source=chatgpt.com. This reveals that PinkNews used the genAI ChatGPT as though it was a search engine for discovering those links. PinkNews also gives an inaccurate history of how the litter box urban legend arose and spread, giving the wrong dates and crediting the wrong people. PinkNews says the legend started in the early 2000s and only credits its popularity to a single deleted tweet from a random sports coach in 2023. This is very far away from the facts: the legend was invented decades later than that, in 2021 and 2022, and was very visibly popularized by a number of Republican politicians and public figures. The fact-checking sites Reuters, PolitiFact, and Snopes have all covered this history as part of debunking the urban legend. If PinkNews had been even partly overseen by a human who cares about writing accurate news articles, they would have proofread their machine-generated story against at least one of those fact-checking sites.

Bollinger, Alex (2025 March 24). GOP governor tells rally that kids are using litterboxes in classrooms. The crowd agreed. LGBTQ Nation. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-governor-tells-rally-that-kids-are-using-litterboxes-in-classrooms-the-crowd-agreed/ Archived 2025 March 26: https://web.archive.org/web/20250326051627/https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-governor-tells-rally-that-kids-are-using-litterboxes-in-classrooms-the-crowd-agreed/

LGBTQ Nation is an online magazine in the US that specializes in queer-positive news. MBFC says it has a left bias and medium credibility because it doesn’t label its opinion articles and uses loaded words. LGBTQ Nation has had several pieces on the litter box urban legend. This article focuses on that aspect of the context of the bill, and especially on how a number of Republican politicians and public figures have promoted the urban legend during the past few years, and that its purpose was to criticize transgender students having access to public school restrooms. Otherwise, this article doesn’t add new information about the bill.

Codega, Lin (2025 March 19). A Texas conformity bill could impact tabletop roleplaying games in schools statewide. Rascal. https://www.rascal.news/texas-furries-act-tabletop-roleplaying-games-in-schools/ Archived 2025 March 20: https://web.archive.org/web/20250320225725/https://www.rascal.news/texas-furries-act-tabletop-roleplaying-games-in-schools/

Rascal is a site for news about role playing games and culture, run by three people. Rascal doesn’t have an entry in MBFC. Although it’s a small news source, this is an especially well written article that was cited in the article by Them.us. It offers some original insights to the story from a couple of lawyers, and looks at the bill from the angle of being part of another moral panic, similar to what happened in the 1980s when the Satanic Panic spread urban legends about Dungeons and Dragons being dangerous. A ban on role play is a ban on a part of the Constitutionally protected freedom of expression in public schools. One lawyer, Tess Lynch, compares cat ear headbands with the black armbands in the landmark case about students’ freedom of expression, Tinker v. Des Moines, which is the same thing that my partners Page Shepard, House of Chimeras and I said about it in our convention panel about anti-furry bills a couple of years ago. The other lawyer, Noah Downs, says that the bill text is worded in such a broad way that it could ban or criminalize school clubs for Dungeons and Dragons and many other play activities organized or approved of by teachers.

Esguerra, Vanessa (2025 March 20). A Texas bill could ban ‘furries’ from public schools—yes, really. The Mary Sue. https://www.themarysue.com/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/ or https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/ar-AA1BjM4r Archived 2025 March 23: https://web.archive.org/web/20250323101320/https://www.themarysue.com/a-texas-bill-could-ban-furries-from-public-schools-yes-really/

The Mary Sue is a feminist online magazine for women about geek culture. MBFC says it has a left bias and high credibility. It focuses on fact checking what the furry fandom is really like, as part of the magazine’s interest in fandoms, but only barely implies that the bill has an anti-LGBT context.

Fields, Alyssa (2025 March 17). Furries, Meowing in School Now a 'Radical Trend,' According to Lawmaker. The Dallas Observer. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-bill-aims-to-eliminate-furries-in-schools-21926996 Archived 2025 April 9: https://web.archive.org/web/20250409081416/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-bill-aims-to-eliminate-furries-in-schools-21926996

The Dallas Observer is a newspaper established in 1980 and appears to have a left bias, focusing on local businesses and lifestyle. It doesn’t have a listing in MBFC. The above article was cited in several other news sources because it has an interview with a member of the furry fandom, Andrew Kaiser, about what he thinks of the bill. Kaiser had been active in the fandom in Texas, but he’s one of many LGBTQIA people who move out of that state to flee conservative politics. Kaiser explained that since the fandom is known for having many LGBTQIA people in it, “any legislative discussion or any Republican talking points regarding furries are considered as a proxy attack on that [LGBTQ+] community.” Although the furry fandom has its sexual aspects, much of it is carefully kept separate from that, and animal characters and role-play are normal in children’s media and play. Kaiser pointed out that many conservative bills that are supposed to protect children from seeing anything remotely associated with sexuality are really “a disingenuous attack on people that [conservatives] don't like.”

McCormack, Caitlin (2025 March 17). Texas bill aims to ban barking, meowing and other ‘non-human behavior’ in schools to tackle furries trend. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-news/texas-bill-moves-to-ban-non-human-behavior-in-schools-to-eliminate-furry-trend/ Archived 2025 March 17: https://web.archive.org/web/20250328092550/https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-news/texas-bill-moves-to-ban-non-human-behavior-in-schools-to-eliminate-furry-trend/

MBFC says the New York Post is a newspaper with a right-center bias and medium credibility. I notice that the New York Post is a tabloid that has a consistently transphobic slant in its reporting, judging by the headlines in its transgender tag. This is relevant because this bill arose from anti-transgender urban legends. This is a poor article with no new scoop to offer of its own, and which fails to mention that there is no truth to the Republican politicians’ claims about furries disrupting schools. The New York Post treats the litter box urban legend as though it was fact.

Mion, Landon (2025 March 19). Texas lawmaker proposes bill targeting furries; measure seeks to ban 'non-human behavior' in schools. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-lawmaker-proposes-bill-targeting-furries-measure-seeks-ban-non-human-behavior-schools Archived 2025 April 6: https://web.archive.org/web/20250406225521/https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-lawmaker-proposes-bill-targeting-furries-measure-seeks-ban-non-human-behavior-schools

MBFC rates Fox News as a questionable source. Interestingly enough, even this article by Fox brings up that the litter box rumor is a debunked urban legend. However, Fox only says that the rumor “circulated online,” which is far less visibility than it demonstrably has had, even in this same article, where Republican politicians are promoting it as part of their platforms. Fox otherwise focuses on Gerdes and Abbott’s claims about furries being problems in schools. This allows the article to give the impression that there could be partly some substance to the claims about furries, even though they’re well-known to be baseless. It mentions that Abbott talked about “the furry issue as a motivating factor to allow private school choice vouchers,” but doesn’t explain that the vouchers would be made by sending taxpayer dollars away from public schools. Fox gave just enough of the facts to almost but not quite criticize Republican politicians or say something false.

Qureshi, Arshi (2025 March 20). TEACHER'S PET: High school students identifying as cats & using litterboxes & leashes in class target of new crackdown with $25k fine. The US Sun. https://www.the-sun.com/news/13822175/texas-wants-ban-furry-culture-school/ Archived 2025 April 11: https://web.archive.org/web/20250411123606/https://www.the-sun.com/news/13822175/texas-wants-ban-furry-culture-school/

MBFC says the US Sun is an online-only tabloid with a focus on sensational news, a right bias, and mixed factual reporting due to failed fact checks and promotion of misinformation. The Sun outright says that the litter box urban legend is true, and fails to mention that it has been consistently debunked.

Ramirez, Juan Carlos (2025 April 6) Legislature should not focus on furries during current session. North Texas Daily. https://www.ntdaily.com/opinion/legislature-should-not-focus-on-furries-during-current-session/article_91a6ee7c-1f8c-4561-a665-5753a64b78bb.html Archived 2025 April 19: https://web.archive.org/web/20250419214919/https://www.ntdaily.com/opinion/legislature-should-not-focus-on-furries-during-current-session/article_91a6ee7c-1f8c-4561-a665-5753a64b78bb.html

Established in 1916, North Texas Daily is a student paper of the University of North Texas. MBFC doesn’t have an entry about this news source. Although this is an opinion article, it does well at summarizing various news sources related to this story. The author’s stance is that the bill distracts from real issues that lawmakers need to address about schools in the state. It doesn’t get into the context of Republican opposition to public schools or LGBT rights.

Riedel, Samantha (2025 March 26). Texas Republican Introduces Bill to Address the Nonexistent Problem of Furries in Schools. Them.us. https://www.them.us/story/texas-republican-legislation-furries-in-schools Archived 2025 April 10: https://web.archive.org/web/20250410001653/https://www.them.us/story/texas-republican-legislation-furries-in-schools

Them.us is an online magazine for LGBTQIA people, which MBFC rates as having a left bias and high credibility. This article is an accurate summary of the context around the bill. It also points out that the bill is "likely to fail as its predecessors have … not least because Texas legislators have filed over 10,000 bills in the 2025-2026 session so far.”

Villarreal, Daniel (2025 March 13). GOP legislator files bill to stop ‘furries’ from using litter boxes in schools. LGBTQ Nation. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-legislator-files-bill-to-stop-furries-from-using-litter-boxes-in-schools/ Archived 2025 March 14: https://web.archive.org/web/20250314064854/https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/gop-legislator-files-bill-to-stop-furries-from-using-litter-boxes-in-schools/

Another article from this online magazine. This is a good summary, focusing on the spread of the litter box urban legend among Republican politicians. In regard to the Smithville school district that Gerdes had said had a furry incident, this article notes that the district “serves only 1,885 students … [and no] known news reports covered the alleged incident.”

Villegas, Patti (2025 March 18). Texas Lawmaker Unleashes F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act: No More Barking In Classrooms. The Dallas Express. https://dallasexpress.com/education/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-behavior-in-schools/ Archived 2025 April 19: https://web.archive.org/web/20250419215048/https://dallasexpress.com/education/texas-bill-would-ban-furry-behavior-in-schools/

MBFC says the Dallas Express was founded in 2021 and has a right wing bias and medium credibility. This is a poor article because it fails to mention that the litter box rumor has been consistently debunked by fact-checkers as an urban legend, which is a crucial part of this news story. It makes it sound like the politicians are responding in a reasonable way to a bizarre youth fad. The Dallas Express selectively quotes the furry who was interviewed in the Dallas Observer to make it sound like he’s normalizing these behaviors in schools, instead of any of the parts where he said that it’s not happening like that.

Generally, what we see in this round-up of news articles is that right-wing news sources vary in what degree that they will admit that the Republicans who support the bill are basing it on a debunked urban legend. Meanwhile, left-wing news sources vary in how much they get into the context of the bill to explain what Republicans are getting at. If any of these articles make you feel concerned or unsafe, please read the part of my previous article about the bill talks about things that you can do, such as writing to your elected representative, or building solidarity with your local community.∎

solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6 – 18 April 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.

Additions and changes since 1.5.1:

Large expansion north to Lynnwood City Centre and rail station across all of SW Snohomish County
Extension of Interurban Trail in Edmonds to 78th Place West reflecting new construction
Improved street labelling, mostly in SW Snohomish County
Route indicators at map edges describing past-map continuations to destinations such as UW and City of Snohomish

A screen-resolution preview of the newest megamap

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

frameacloud posting in

otherkinnews

This post tells about the Otherkin News project, the code of conduct for participating in it, and the style guide for submitting news articles to it.

I. About this blog

Otherkin News is a collaborative, volunteer-run blog for sharing news for otherkin, therianthropes, fictionfolk, plural systems, and all sorts of alterhumans. We’ll talk about current events in our communities, and discuss newspaper articles that are about us. You can post links to news articles you've found that talk about otherkin, or new fictionkin essays that you or others have publicly posted. You can advertise here about your surveys of therianthropes, and your calls for submissions to alterhuman essay anthologies. You can share news that you've found that aren't about alterhumans but that you think are relevant to the interests and experiences of many of us. Everyone is welcome to subscribe and to submit articles to this blog.
Otherkin News is a community blog hosted on Dreamwidth, a social blogging platform. That means this blog isn’t a place where only one user posts, it’s a place where many users can post, similar to a web forum. Certain members of the community have a moderator role. Here is the official FAQ about Dreamwidth communities.
You don’t need to have an account on Dreamwidth to be notified of updates to this community. If you have an RSS feed reader, such as Feedly, you can paste this link into it to subscribe to our RSS feed: https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/data/rss Or, if you use Mastodon, you can subscribe to this automated feed of it. A community moderator also manually links to the posts on Tumblr and on their personal Bluesky, if you use either of those social media platforms. Although we make these options available, we recommend that you read the posts on Dreamwidth itself, so that you don’t miss out on updates to individual posts and the discussions in the comments.
If you choose to use a Dreamwidth account to comment or post to this community, and you’re new to using this platform, then here are some resources that you can explore about it to make your experience better:
1. Carmentalis’s guide to Dreamwidth for Tumblr users is a brief overview of what this platform can do
2. SASO Referees’s guide on how to use Dreamwidth, which focuses on how to join a community and post to it
3. You can install Solarbird’s custom theme that makes DreamWidth work well on mobile devices.
4. Dreamwidth’s official FAQ is very thorough about all of its features.

( Read more... )

nova_dergs posting in

otherkinnews

Pixel art gif of a spell being cast on a book and text appearing.

Join the Fictionfolk Webring

Are you fictionfolk? Do you have a personal website? We'd love to have you join our webring!

We've have yet to see anyone make fictionfolk webring, so we're filling the gap ourselves. Learn more on our website. We have more info there on what we're doing, how to join and even links to the resources we used to build everything.

What is a webring?

It's basically a collection of websites, that you can cycle through and view via a widget all the sites put up. This means, that by using our webring, you can easily browse through a bunch cool websites made by fictionfolk without having to scour the internet! Neat!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.

lb_lee

This was the comics winner for this month's poll! Before I share it, let me tell you how it got made.

Recently, my local senator had a Town Hall meeting, and I was determined to go. I ran the gauntlet of Trumper protesters ranting about trans athletes (I recognized them from the library bomb threat back in October and waved to them), suffered through two plus hours of technological difficulties and clustering around smartphones in an overflow room, and then had to deal with one of my fellow citizens ranting about how she didn't want trans people around her children, we were just going to kill ourselves anyway.

The feelings that meeting gave me, I could not express. So I went home and drew all the genderful people who came before and alongside me, and I wrote their words instead--their joy, their survival, their power. And I converted that rage into fierce joy and shoved the local free libraries with them, and sent them to Florida, and disappeared into the night.

Mani Bruce Mitchel, an intersex person with breasts and beard, stands topless with the words I AM NOT A MONSTER written across the chest. A halo radiates.

Mani Bruce Mitchel, an intersex person with breasts and beard, stands topless with the words I AM NOT A MONSTER written across the chest. A halo radiates.

( 'This is the issue that we need to deal with in this century: what are we going to do with difference on this planet?' )

solarbird

Okay, so remember when I told everybody to hold April 19th? Here’s where you can search for a 50501 event near you, and there are definitely going to be other events on the same day by other groups.

It will NOT be as big as April 5th. But a good turnout is important – and basically will continue to be important for months and months.

The next really massive turnout day looks like it’s going to be May 1st, though. Reserve the day. Indivisible is cooking something up, 50501 will be in on it, so will a lot of other people, or so I hear. Put it on your calendar now, so you’re ready.

Here are some other April 19 events in the Seattle area, compiled by Indivisible. I’m sure you can find something to do.

Puget Sound-area April 19th Neighbourhood Day of Action schedule, with too many events to type into an ALT TEXT box, sorry.

See you out there, and as always – good hunting.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

lb_lee

Hey guys! We're going to be exhibiting in an art show, Love Is For All Of Us, and our work is being used for the name and the promo info! Neato!

Where: The Footlight Club, 7A Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

When: May 3-17, 2025 (Reception May 3, 7pm-8pm)

Hope to see y'all there at the reception!

Current Mood: drained

who_is_page

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

lb_lee

Mori: Last night, for Biff's birthday (it was not, he hates TV, he hates sci-fi, he's very "we got weirdshit at home,") we watched the mysterious DVD of unknown provenance from the sci-fi library that nobody knew what to do with.

( A fanmade Matrix/Star Trek/Firefly crossover thingy that never got completed and disappeared into the Internet ether? )

...does anyone want this? It is wasted on us.

Current Mood: curious

lb_lee

Tandy, Tandy, Burning Bright
Series: Xanth fanfiction
Summary: When life sends you nightmares, you ride them. When life sends you Smash Ogre, you ride HIM. Tandy deals with her sense of species identity, harnesses her nightmares, faces her demons, loses and regains her soul, and gets a character arc.
Word Count: 21,000
Notes: We have so many feelings and thoughts about Xanth in general and Tandy in particular that we're just going to put them in the comments below. Content warnings for reference to magically-compelled love, an incest metaphor that's never acted on, a magically-compelled suicide attempt (quickly thwarted, everyone's fine), fantasy racism (MAJOR theme), consensual kink (soul play, magical impact play), and sex. Also Tandy becomes median for this fic!

A drawing in purple, black, and white of a very large furry monster man in gauntlets being wrestled down and passionately smooched by a feisty girl half his size with tattered clothes and hair. A busty centaur with a very prominent nose says in the background, I disapprove of all of this, just so you know.

A drawing in purple, black, and white of a very large furry monster man in gauntlets being wrestled down and passionately smooched by a feisty girl half his size with tattered clothes and hair. A busty centaur with a very prominent nose says in the background, I disapprove of all of this, just so you know.

( You’re the most constant creature imaginable, and I love you. )

solarbird

I’ve got an alpha of the Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map posted in a temporary location. [EDIT: There’s now a Beta. Use that instead!] It extends the map northward to Lynnwood City Centre, tho’ not all the way up to Alderwood Mall.

If you have any knowledge of southwestern Snohomish County biking, give it a look? I’ll get up to Mountlake Terrace to catch a train and I’ve biked the Interurban and North Creek trails pretty far up, but that’s it, and is nothing like on-the-ground knowledge.

The uploaded version had to be trimmed at the bottom a little to stay on 11×17 paper with one-quarter-inch margins. Here’s what the full thing looks like; I’m honestly a bit up in the air about what to do about this. Staying on a single row of tiled 11×17 strikes me as kind of important.

The alpha test map without the 1" bottom trim tiled and on a tabletop

(Just because I happen to have some 11×17.625″ paper for reasons doesn’t mean most people do, because ALMOST NOBODY DOES lol)

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

lb_lee

We're down to the final cataloging push: anime, random con VHS tapes, and audio stuff! According to the documents, this includes...

Audiobooks
Radio shows (the Shadow, that one in/famous War of the Worlds broadcast...)
Filk
"assorted cassettes we haven't dared to look at"
"A cassette tape to learn advanced Klingon."

Yes good. If we didn't have a Klingon language tape, can we even call ourselves a sci-fi library?

Let's see if I find any goodies!

EDIT: Goody(?) found! This is a mysterious 2005 DVD of episode two ("Destination Home") of a series only entitled Wayfarer 1. Looks to be a sort of amateur X-Files thing with a Matrix flair? Also possibly a ten minute trailer? I can find no information about this mysterious thing anywhere; the back only says "Feedback needed and welcomed LightHouseART2005@yahoo.com" It stars Katherine Ryan, Alx [sic] Cruz, TonyYah!Dude, and Richard Savage, and comes from "Kuro Reign Creations," "Moonchild" and "Yah!Dude, Inc." This looks like it might possibly be of interest to

numb3r_5ev3n or

storyheight? The library has asked me to take it away from them. Will watch to investigate.

EDIT AGAIN: Tony Yah!Dude has a long-abandoned Deviantart? That seems to be all I can find on this mysterious project.

Current Mood: silly

solarbird

I’m finally expanding the Greater Northshore and MEGAMAP the extra mile or so into Snohomish County as I’ve been promising. This expansion gets users to Edmonds and Lynnwood Town Centre – including the light rail station – so there’s some real meaning to it. In the east, it’ll eventually be important for the expansion of the Rail Trail, too.

Sometimes, tho’, when you’re doing stuff like this, you discover something. That happened tonight.

Check out this incomplete little map section-in-progress. There’s something to infer from it:

The crossings of Highway 99 at 208th and 228th have weight. Cyclists use them, even where the infrastructure stops short of the highway. They’re okay with both.

But they don’t use 220th. That’s fine – 220th interacts badly with I-5 not much further to the east, and has no infrastructure east of Highway 99 anyway. Of course they don’t use it.

212th, on the other hand, doesn’t have those problems. Infrastructure on both sides, even if a little short on the east. No I-5 issues.

And yet, people DO NOT WANT TO CROSS there. They REALLY don’t. They want to go half a mile or more out of their way north and cross at 208th, or a mile and a half out of their way south and use 228th instead.

It’s very specific to the crossing, too. They do use the infrastructure on 212th, on both sides. It lights up on the heatmaps, nice and bright.

But they don’t leave it. They don’t cross 99. Not there. They go north. Or maybe south, but mostly north.

And I can’t for the life of me tell you why. Not from looking at the maps I have. The intersections at 212th and 208th seem much the same to me, even from streetview. Infrastructure’s a little more complete at 208th, but not all that much – what’s half a city block between friends?

And yet.

People who bike there, they know something. Something I don’t, and something I can’t see on a map or from a satellite.

Neat, eh?

I wonder what they know.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

Recommended by

nevanna!

"I never signed a pact with the Devil in my own blood, and I don't have nipples in my ears... but I do consort with spirits, don't I? You said so yourself. Bear does follow me everywhere like a familiar. And I am possessed."

Blurb: Sometimes, when a person dies, their spirit goes looking for somewhere to hide. Some people have space within them, perfect for hiding. Makepeace is one of the latter.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is VERY good! The plot goes through so many twists and turns, and Makepeace grows from a nigh-feral girl to a strong young woman in her own right as she accumulates her ghosts and learns to deal with them.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, bodyhopping, closeting, cofronting, the dead, nonhumans (a bear), friendship, teamwork, enmity, possession, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in French, Spanish, ebook, and audiobook.

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

"Please. I could go to one of the others, maybe. But I feel closest to you. Please. Please. [...] I wouldn't try that again, an unwilling host. You have to say you'll let me, or I won't come in."

Blurb: Deep space captain Adam is on his first trip through deep space when a free-floating "matrix" personality escapes containment and takes residence in his body. She seems nice enough, but the rest of the ship is deeply afraid; how can they hide her?

Why is it worth your time?: It's a good, bittersweet tale of two different people finding and connecting with each other in space! Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, bodyhopping, closeting, cofronting, teamwork, friendship, intimate relationships, setting-specific

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in audiobook, ebook, and still in print; also Italian, French, and German. Also on archive.org

Misc Notes: Nominated for Hugo, Locus, and Nebula.

Profile

houseofchimeras

The Chimeras Library

July 2014

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Page Summary

solarbird - Do This Today: Call Senators
solarbird - Good turnout in Bothell for Saturday’s protest
frameacloud in otherkinnews - A Roundup of News Coverage of Texas’s F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act
solarbird - Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 1.6
frameacloud in otherkinnews - Otherkin News - Rules version 1.1
nova_dergs in otherkinnews - (no subject)
lb_lee - Genderful
solarbird - Do This: April 19th list of protests
lb_lee - "Love Is For All Of Us" Art Show, May 3-17 in JP
who_is_page - Centaurus Festival 2025
lb_lee - The Mysterious DVD of chapter 1, episode two of Wayfarer 1
lb_lee - Tandy, Tandy, Burning Bright (Xanth fanfiction)
solarbird - Alpha test release: do you bike in Snohomish County?
lb_lee - More Adventures at the Sci-Fi Library
solarbird - the sort of thing you discover when working on a map.
lb_lee in pluralstories - A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge (fantasy novel, 2017)
lb_lee in pluralstories - The Secret Sharer, by Robert Silverberg (sci-fi novella, 1987)

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The Chimeras' Log

Standing Between Worlds

Reading

Do This Today: Call Senators

Good turnout in Bothell for Saturday’s protest

A Roundup of News Coverage of Texas’s F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act

Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 1.6

Otherkin News - Rules version 1.1

(no subject)

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Genderful

Do This: April 19th list of protests

"Love Is For All Of Us" Art Show, May 3-17 in JP

Centaurus Festival 2025

The Mysterious DVD of chapter 1, episode two of Wayfarer 1

Tandy, Tandy, Burning Bright (Xanth fanfiction)

Alpha test release: do you bike in Snohomish County?

More Adventures at the Sci-Fi Library

the sort of thing you discover when working on a map.

A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge (fantasy novel, 2017)

The Secret Sharer, by Robert Silverberg (sci-fi novella, 1987)

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July 2014

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