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A few weeks ago we saw folks considering an exodus from Discord as age verification gets rolled out globally. This is the era of centralisation, of objectification and mass surveillance. There's a term for that, but it puts you in mind merely of Big Tech and profit margins. When the danger really is more to decentralisation and our human rights. The danger is to how we can safely exist in our communities and to advocate for our human rights.

It's not always caused by Big Tech, sometimes it's our governments after they've been lobbied by Big Tech.

Prisoners of our own Nostalgia

Now I wish to be clear. I and my project Librecast are very much against age gating. So much so, that we stopped using Matrix.org because it and it's flagship Homeserver are domiciled in the UK. The online harms act has caused many UK sites to shutter, and other sites to block access to UK users. This is a digital rights issue.

This is also a privacy issue, which was always there in our walled gardens of Web 2.0, our bounded realms where what you put online could be packaged up and sold later. Which wasn't just your messages it was your digital footprints.

Discord already had an age verification leak of user data, so folks were feeling nervous. Those of us who advocated against Discord, may be feeling vindicated. But there is no way for us to be able to provide everything that the folks who used Discord used to manage their Communities.

So do we give up?

NO. Of course we don't give up.

But there's some thinking and reflection that we all need to do.

We shape our reality and our reality shapes us

Shadow memory

When I was a child my parents split up and my mother chose to leave my childhood town to move nine miles away. I was uprooted quite rudely from my community of friends and activities. I felt I moved to the chilly hinterland on the coast. North Coasts in Scotland tend to be chilly. The wind blows into your bones.

So every weekend when my Dad visited, we'd go to my former town. Have a coffee wander around and grieve. We did this for years. I didn't see my friends, but it was a place of comfort for nine year old me, walking on the high street.

Eventually I got a new start and built a new group and home in the big city when I chose to live with my Dad. It was very different. But the new circumstances helped me to heal.

I've moved cities since then, and even Aberdeen the city I love, doesn't feel like home anymore. It changed while I moved, and when you haven't been in a place to see the changes, you realise your home isn't there anymore. Your community has moved on. Had kids, made new friends.

I'd say I grieve this. But my childhood was an early lesson on how your place in a community is a moment in time. You can never go back there. Your rosy memories of the past and the connections you made will stay there in the past.

You will never experience that particular perfection again. The connections will move on. Perhaps you will meet folks again and reminisce. But it won't be the same.

So take the time to grieve this. Then be ready, for you can experience new connections and make new memories. You can build new ways for your communities to organise and be together, and I don't mean coding.

Nostalgia

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L.P. Hartley The Go-Between_ (1953)

My formative years as an adult, were tied into University and competing in University Fencing. When I wasn't learning about Maths and Computer Engineering, I was training. I learned I loved Epee. I got team medals and a couple of Individual medals. I was a Vice President, and then a President of my University Fencing club. I competed with my team and qualified for British Universities Student Athletics. I earned my half and my full blue.

After University Finished, I did a few more years and met my partner at a fencing party.

I was hooked into a multi-city, multi club community. It was complicated and brilliant. I helped to setup and organise a local community competition.

As time went on work took precedence. We moved cities twice. We didn't fence as often, some clubs closed and some of the fencers like us, had work and other commitments.

The community changed, and the fencers that were left joined other clubs. My university class graduated and left the city.

Things change. That point in time with those intense friendships and connections fray to a thin thread of acquaintance. Some folks do grieve. I'd had this grief as a child. I learned to move on. It was a good lesson for me to learn in the early two thousands as I started to find others on the web.

Dot com blues

We had a plethora of websites that young folks and some adults joined. Not all of us grew up on Usenet or a BB board. Suddenly there was a riot of graphics and music auto playing on MySpace, or large comment parties on LiveJournal. I couldn't tell you what Bebo was as I bounced off it, my sibling loved it. Folks created Fansites on Geocities for bands or their favourite movies and shared their love, bootlegs and screenshots of their faves.

The Internet of our corporate Fae is rather bland compared to those early days.

Folks were used to having different accounts on different types of networks. It was rather scary for the unwary, on places like ICQ. Especially if you were femme presenting.

Gradually those sites were bought, stifled and retired out of sight. The communities scattered. The digital diasporas looked for a new home. We all chose differently, but sometimes we saw each other as we tried other networks.

Each time it happened I adjusted, found a new place to go. But I am of the first generation of the Web, We were used to new ideas, new interfaces. We knew that folks had different ideas of what a community was.

Our coders created software according to what they and their friends thought were cool. Folks came on and started to use it. The software evolved, partially shaped by the community, but the way the software was designed it shaped community interactions and workflows.

While Web 2.0 sought to keep you trapped, there's a point where folks decide to leave. It's hard to leave the spot where your friends and family post news. It's hard to leave the spot where your community groups organise. Sometimes you stay in a place longer than you should despite the fact everything is crumbling around you. On average mine is eighteen years. Nostalgia creates inertia, it keeps you imprisoned until you break your own bonds.

We're seeing the result of misplaced nostalgia in our walled gardens, in our communications and in our politics. There's a point in time when you put away childish things.

The walled gardens arrested our development in the same way my need to walk my old villages streets arrested mine. I was in an unhappy limbo. As a child I couldn't do much about it.

We are adults now. We can learn, we can grow. We can make new connections and sometimes some of our old connections come along with us.

We don't have the answer for an alternative to Discord yet. But at some point Discord also wasn't the answer to something else for a community. It hasn't been built yet. It certainly wont be built if you don't give the Discord community time to grieve and try out things so that they can say what would be better.

We all need to leave the shadow lands of our memory. They were a place in time. We can learn from them, but we should not let nostalgia dictate that these new spaces should be exactly the same. It's the chance for something new.

We need to build new places for our communities.

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter E Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

E is for Embroidery

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

Let's tell a Fairy Story

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

One upon a time in the online realm a cis white man did a controversy. That man then blamed the purity culture within his community.

More controversy kicked off, and the man doubled down on “Purity Culture”. Other's came in defence of the person and repeated that it was “Purity Culture”. Some folks were happy to accuse the left of fermenting discord. Of tearing the great man down.

To be clear I'm not referring to any specific incident here, that's not what this post is about. Although I'm very sure someone's come to mind. There's always someone.

Much like our fairy tales and folklore, there are variants on this story.

Sometimes the person kicks off the controversy referring to those nasty leftists openly. Sometimes it's a general reference to Purity Cultures or Purity Spirals. Sometimes someone finds out about the person doing abuse and raises the alarm. Sometimes it's not a cis white man.

Harassment can happen, the fans of the person rush in to defend them, or whatever disappointing thing the personality is defending. There are reply guys.

Some folks who know the personality hope that it's an aberration and perhaps they can be called in.

You get the idea.

On Spirals

This is a pattern I'm seeing happen again and again.

I keep seeing a libertarian pipeline, it starts where we lift someone up (usually someone who already had a lot of privilege), they manage to shit post and argue their way to popularity. We're very good at that on the internet, we've managed to create an adversarial space in a medium that was meant for sharing information. It's the market place of ideas after all.

They may write some books, create a massively used project, get into policy spaces. At the point they have enough power they decide they are so important. If you are against them, it's tall poppy syndrome or the Purity Culture of the left. “The bitches are out to get me”. Pick your poison, but the fairytale is always the same.

They are cancelled they say, as they appear on various podcasts or talk to authors about that time they dropped the mask. Some folks are a bit shocked, but some of us in the silence of the aftermath start to compare notes.

In the meantime, this person isn't really cancelled because cancel culture doesn't exist either. There will always be people willing to platform, support and patronise someone who is “cancelled”. There's always a talk circuit. There's always fans willing to pay for your work. There's a point in time where they've made it.

I've seen this happen in the past decade a few times online, I've experienced the surprise in person.

Folks, there is no such thing as a purity culture or purity spiral in the left. What you're seeing is the fallout from abuse in community spaces. It's just easier to tell the fairytale of the left not cooperating, rather than examine toxic individuals. Or folks leaving for their safety. Get a community started, at some point in time you will have abusers, or agent provocateurs, or well, people who start to form a cult of personality around them.

But it is easier as a centrist to ask everyone to just get along and follow behind this person. Get behind the banners, get behind the slogan. Which plays into the right wing, because the right wing are very good at lying to centrists and each other.

“Eyes on the prize folks”, you think smugly, as you dismiss leftists. No wonder we can't get anything done if we keep judging people. “You're so judgy on the left, why can you not just follow the banners? It's a purity spiral” you think, the left can't help itself.

So you bury the unease. Bury the niggle. Give chance after chance after chance, after chance behind the scenes. Vulnerable folks, or those of us who've seen this before break off. Start or find another group. Because it's not safe, Or because we know that we can't follow in that direction .

So the personality grows in power and influence. There's no dissension and no one now, to rugby tackle away the means of communication from them. To go, “hang on. Perhaps you want to rephrase that.” Or “perhaps you don't want to argue with people for several days on the internet. Go outside for a walk now and calm down.” They are filled up on Power and Hype, on yes men, who uncritically think that we must follow that banner. We grow that power by reading what they write, sharing their ideas. We open doors to get them to talk to our governments.

Then the controversy happens and those of us that left don't feel victory. We feel tired and start to pick up the pieces of community. We know the call in will be pointless, there will be more incidents like this. We know the personality isn't an ally anymore, and perhaps they never really were.

Can we stop this spiral

I'm so tired of this. Aren't you tired?

Aren't you tired of giving these powerful folks the benefit of the doubt, even as they defend folks like Minsky? Or do they just do good work? Does your favourite matter more than hearing from other points of view? From other backgrounds?

Do we keep having to repeat this spiral, the real spiral. It's not a purity spiral at all. It's bigging up people who confirm what we think, who explain it in a clever comfortable way.

It's the spiral of choosing our comfortable ideas over the truth of what's happening elsewhere. It's not really sacrificing anything for our values, but sharing great slogans to show support. We get behind someone's banner as we think we will get closer to real power.”

We shouldn't be surprised then, when the person drunk on their power does a thing. Throws away the leftists who bigged them up, who shared their ideas. Because they don't need us anymore. We're problematic to the cause. We tend to speak up and share criticism after all. It's time for the centrists to fall behind the banner.

As a recovering centrist myself, I've learned this the hard way.

But whenever I see a man; and in my experience, it is always a man, talking about purity culture (or cancel culture), I tend to wonder what abusive behaviour they are hiding. Or who they've excused because of the “bigger picture”. That access to power and influence. Their comfort, not yours.

Because if your worried about purity culture in leftist spaces, you are chasing power. You aren't particularly worried about hurting people, you are more worried about them exiling you from their group.

People do make mistakes. But the way you gain forgiveness is to be accountable. To examine your behaviour and your motives. To make reparations.

The group does not have to accept you back. But when someone is going from group to group, blaming purity culture in advance, you need to look for the wreckage. Even if their ideas are good, because they may well be packaging other ideas. They just happen to be the person you vibed with.

We do need to take responsibility for who we platform. Because ultimately it is down to us. We give power to our heroes by sharing their ideas, buying their stuff, using their projects. We need to understand the reciprocal nature of this.

Once we understand this, we can then consider if we should keep sharing those particular posts about an idea. We can choose to share our power with marginalised voices from the Global South. We can open ourselves up to folks who aren't from our culture. We're at a time where we need new ideas and viewpoints. We need to look at concepts from around the world.

It's a more positive thing to do than to try to change the personality, it's a more positive thing to do rather than try to argue with the personality. It opens us up to each other. Sometimes we find commonality in the concept of an idea, along with another way to describe it.

Sometimes we want a glib concept, a simple word to explain our world around us. But perhaps we could do a little more work and look outside words and slogans.

Perhaps we could stop putting folks on pedestals, or expand it and open up the stage for others. We can pass the mike. Perhaps those of us on those pedestals need to acknowledge that we are on stage and there's a responsibility towards that audience.

I include myself in this. You shouldn't put me on that pedestal, I can climb on the stage myself. I write well, and I do have a message I want to pass on to you, my audience. But I am sure that there are folks who have better ideas, who don't choose violence. Who are conciliatory rather than argumentative.

Who should we be listening to? This is something we need to ask across our networks. We need to be prepared to listen, especially when we feel uncomfortable and judged. We need to take a moment, think, let the feeling wash over us. After all, when we ask, we are asking for access to their labour. Then listen again, and go and learn. Work on ourselves, understand that discomfort.

People are human, but we do seem to be picking some folks who should never have been given so much power and influence over us. Our big men do have influence and power, we wouldn't be hearing about them otherwise.

We keep platforming them.

So give your power wisely. Build community locally, or in your online spaces. Consider also joining a union, or creating a union. That's really how to do something with our power.

Let's leave this spiral.

Too easy to fall for too strange to parse

Each of my touches seem to leave scars

Too old to hold to too young to die

Too cold to fondle too quick to cry

I will dress in warning signs:

Toxic waste, Beware of mines

********

Beginning last summer I posted a bunch of old lyrics of mine. Early drafts, scribbled down ideas, unused bits, unfinished thoughts.

Among these I posted some final forms, with sometimes only a line or basic consept remaining from those early versions.

The short piece above is what will in the future be an early draft. It was written on Sunday, 8th of February 2026 and by the time I got it written down I knew: this won't do.

The piece is raw and emotional, but the rhyming makes me feel like I'm going to get on stage on a local village culture night's open mic with a bunch of other uneducated in the arts of poetry but having a lot to say villagers.

Not that I'm anything but for village culture nights and uneducated in the arts of poetry folks writing rhymes anyway. At least in this I don't have double standards.

By the following day I was ready to ditch everything but the last four lines. While the feelings expressed in the beginning of the poem/lyrics piece come from trying to express heartfelt things, do I sound whiny? Granted, the lines were not written without tears, but still...

On the other hand, dressing in warning signs takes control of what happens to the narrator, be as it may the end result remaining the same.

We'll see.

#poetry #lyrics

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter D Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

D is for Dog Park

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

Let me start off by saying this: I create work and express ideas that I believe should stand on their own merits without relying on networking, trends, or the whims of a fickle audience or a handpicked group of elite critics or judges. And yet, I am acutely aware of the paradox that confronts just about anyone wanting acknowledgment that translates into visibility and validation that is genuinely of substance despite not always being able to immediately please everyone: the tension between merit and what people determine is worthy of that acknowledgment.

Now, let's be honest: I am not and never have been a social media person. I don't have as much of a childlike susceptibility to finding literally every kind of well-produced art or comedy or similar entertainment to be easily amusing and so good, as I'm much more discerning about what I like and what I choose to engage with. I don't reply as much to literally every single trending post I see, partly because responses are often misread and partly because of me feeling pressured to reply to these posts for every repeated time I see them. I do not widen my social circle by default, and I reserve warmth and attention for whom and what truly interests me; this does not mean that I find the people I choose not to engage with literally unworthy of that interest, but rather, I haven't found that kind of spark in most people and things yet. (Basically, what I'm saying is, it's not you, it's me.) Because I'm very selective in my warmth, don't believe in joining niche groups on the premise that “common interests bring people together” (in my experience, they don't, and reality is much messier than this childlike premise), or otherwise play the social game of being more entertaining or interesting in a way that attracts others, my work doesn't generate those signals and so it stays mostly invisible to those not susceptible to what's immediately engaging.

As a result, everything I do becomes discoverable only when someone actively seeks it out, when an aggregator surfaces it, or when one or more people (I refuse to use the word “algorithm” or blame it on an abstract “system”) choose to amplify it, hence my reliance on word-of-mouth marketing. Because I don't engage or connect or immediately impress people the way others want me to, I become socially deprioritized, no matter how good I am at my craft or how interesting or useful or talented I could be.

When I say I want my art to be recognized by its own merits, I don't really mean that I want a handful of professionals or a large community to decide whether I am worthy of awards or accolades or grant money. I mean that I want anyone to come take a look at what I do and decide for themselves whether they want to engage further with what I do or what I stand for or not. Experience, expertise, or even an interest in art should not be prerequisites for that judgment. My ultimate aspiration is not recognition from elite circles or mass validation (or even external validation itself!), but something more fundamental: genuine connection with other artists, especially with those in my situation. The ones who aren't immediately recognized and stay hopelessly deprioritized by the masses. That is part of the reason for my selectivity, not because I think I'm too good for everyone else or that no one could ever understand me. And I hate that people default to that kind of bias against me.

However, I don't like how one of the consequences of taking this stance has resulted in what appears to be a consignment of my work to silence, whether intentional or not. Currently, I have had to stop making Untilted constricted to a membership because of how I was not getting any subscribers whatsoever (though I did receive a thoughtful $1 donation), and it's getting harder to work with a lack of engagement and feedback on my work. I feel like everyone has become either too scared or too quick to overlook things to meaningfully criticize others. Constructive feedback and meaningful dialogue become substituted for dismissive one-liners and absolute black-and-white thinking. I also dislike that the populace that privileges visibility often forces this kind of compromise, and I resent that this is read as disengagement.

Let me tell you a personal anecdote about me. When I was still in high school, I would get mostly honor rolls and certificates of excellence and stuff like that. Sometimes, some of my art would be exhibited in the classroom hallways and in-school art festivals. I even had a self-portrait of mine get accepted to be published in the Spring 2017 Celebrating Art Anthology, though it never was selected as a Top Ten or a High Merit Winner. I don't really remember receiving any harsh criticism of my work or anything like that, but I did mostly get vaguely praised – think compliments like “Wow, she's so good!” or “How is she so talented?” But I don't feel like I ever received any real genuine praise or criticism that was actually willing to delve deeper into more than just the techniques I choose to enhance my artwork or the subjects I choose. This is especially noticeable when I make realistic paintings and drawings of things like flowers, plants, nature, animals, and other similar subjects. Part of the reason I don't depict as much realism as I used to back in school is because it seems that the majority of today's viewers only superficially see that I'm good at portraying it and nothing more. It's why I'm increasingly preferring to do nonrepresentational art nowadays, even if the majority mostly ignore it, don't quite understand it, or prefer a stereotypical depiction of it to my unique interpretation of it.

I may have to figure out a way to develop more nuanced strategies of visibility that align with my constraints and philosophy. But what would that mean for me? I don't know. All I ever wanted was to cultivate a small and discerning yet close-knit and thoughtful audience of people. I have no interest in controlling what and how people interact with me, or what they say and think of me. I just want to put my art out there without requiring me to have to actively impress others or justify myself existing. That's all. And frankly I already do some form of that, but I admit I have to try other things as well.

Anyway, now that I've made my point clear, I would like to announce that the Untilted comic strip is now on Comic Fury (has been, since 9 days ago at this time of writing) and I have uploaded all of my comics on there for public viewing, though the website is still technically under maintenance (I still have to manually add descriptions, tweak the website layout a bit, etc.).

I am also thinking of adding new digital products to sell this month soon, as soon as I make some time for it somehow. It will be mostly pay-what-you-want.

I've got so many ideas to experiment with that I often have trouble articulating them and sometimes even implementing them in practice. Not a rapid flight of ideas but rather a disorganized pile of them building up like paperwork. I know, I'm not efficient enough. But I want to test my own limits.

Well, take care.

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter C Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

C is for Cat

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

This is a review of a comic written & drawn by @pebble@critters.gay, available at [https://aacomic.pebble.pet/]. All perspectives expressed herein are my own; I received no compensation or free access to the comic or whatever anytime before or after writing this review. I just really liked it & wanted to share some of the things I liked about it since I suspect may others would like it, too.

---

TL:DR – “Afterhour Adjustments” is a beautiful & impactful concise graphic novel that deserves a place within every collection of 'exceptional queer allegories'.

---

The digital 9-page comic “Afterhour Adjustments” (by @pebble@critters.gay) takes less than a half-hour to read, which I've done more than a dozen times by now. Every time I go thru this comic I find myself enjoying it even more – & I already liked it quite a lot the first time I read it.

Not only are the characters & scenes in this short story gorgeously illustrated, packed with abundant care & eye-catching detail, but the story those panels depict presents readers with an exceptionally compelling personal allegory that kept me ruminating LONG after I'd finished reading.

Right out of the gate, I'm a HUGE fan of how effectively this comic applies the color & composition of each panel & page as visual vehicles for its narrative: the dark, cool colors in first few pages immediately set a tone of unease & vulnerability that pave the way for the strange blue creature's 'adjustments', while the flip from cool to warm colors in the last two pages perfectly reflects Pebble's journey from disbelief to discomfort, to exploration, to acceptance and, eventually, to appreciation.

One aspect of this story I hadn't expected to appreciate as much as I do is the mystery: I LOVE diving deep into & unraveling all the settings & characters & backstories & motives in a story, but here all of those threads seem to be intentionally held forever “off-screen”. We don't know much AT ALL about the mischievous “strange blue creature” aside from what we can glean by their appearance (shackled arms & legs + ear tag suggesting a prisoner/test subject of some kind) & actions (powerful enough to permanently alter & teleport a living creature's body, but not to undo those changes, allegedly!), & there's nothing to imply that information would even matter, to Pebble. Far from a frustration, the absence of any further context or exposition regarding the SBC seems like an essential component that allows Pebble to re-frame & grow as a result of their experience.

To me, the heap of unanswerable questions surrounding the SBC represent their fourth & final 'gift' to Pebble, perfectly matching what their other three 'adjustments' provide:

Freedom via denial.

“By eliminating Pebble's ability to [A], the strange blue creature gave Pebble freedom from [B]”: [A]= speak; eat; grab/hold; have genitals; know anything about who did this to them, or how/why. [B]= worrying about what to say/how to say it; deciding what to eat/make/order for food; having to justify any perceived clumsiness; gender assumptions based on their genitals; the need to understand any of those things.

The titular events in “Afterhour Adjustments” are a powerful series of visual metaphors that manage to deftly capture & reveal the immaterial societal pressures that haunt the esteem of our own personal capabilities in an extremely memorable & remarkably wholesome fashion: by forcibly overturning their anatomy, the 'strange blue creature' relieves Pebble of the oppressive burdens they'd unknowingly inherited, demonstrating the true weight of those shadows by the lightness of Pebble's heart in their absence.

...and ALL of these events are super pretty, the WHOLE time. (Did I mention I like this comic? It's great!)

In fact, the only real criticism I have of “Afterhour Adjustments” (which isn't even an actual problem) is that I want MORE!

I REALLY enjoyed every glimpse of Pebble's story post-alteration, & wish we'd been able to tag along for more of their experience – from immediate fear & uncertainty to grief & dread, to desperate courage & tenuous progress, to fragile confidence & unexpected joys. I completely understand the author's choice to truncate Pebble's journey, as I'd imagine fleshing that all out would've fully redoubled the effort this comic required, but those two pages could have been twenty & I wouldn't have minded at all, given the chance to follow on & on through the indeterminate mire of emotions that led Pebble to the day they stood bare before a mirror within which they saw reflected a body worth appreciating that was their own.

...which was an absolutely incredible panel/imagery for the comic to end on, and I loved everything about it. I'm not crying YOU'RE crying!​

Fantastic work, all around! Cannot even believe that this is the author's first full color comic. 10/10, will happily read again & again.

-GoodNewsGreyShoes

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter B Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

B is for Bird

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

There's a fully Madonna themed takeout restaurant here btw

I thought I would compare my time on Isla Holbox (pronounced “Ol'bosh”) to the lyrics of Madonna's La Isla Bonita.

¿Cómo puede ser verdad?

How can it be true? I don't know. I don't think that it is, but maybe it's “emotionally true.”

Last night I dreamt of San Pedro Just like I'd never gone, I knew the song

Last night I dreamt of Isla Holbox (probably) I still haven't gone, there's much more than one song

Young girl with eyes like the desert

So, dry? Unemotional? Sandy? Or the dark desert at night? This island isn't desert. Nor at all deserted—even when we went to the far north end of the island tonight where this photo was taken, we were among other tourists.

It all seems like yesterday, not far away

It all was yesterday the day before and today and half of tomorrow too, not far away I'm still here

Tropical the island breeze, all of nature wild and free (Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah) This is where I long to be, La Isla Bonita

True!

And when the samba played,

Not so much samba. A lot bordering on techno. Dance music. Big bass. Also cover singers. ABBA daily. Even some Madonna. Sade. Gay, Latin or Miami dance club music. Nonstop right now at 03:27! Absolutely nothing indie. Shakira! Shakira!

the sun would set so high

How is that possible? The sun always sets low, as low as you can see. Madge, is your island mountainous? Isla Holbox is not. And here is its sunset.

(Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah) Ring through my ears and sting my eyes, your Spanish lullaby

My ears always ring. Tinnitus. The salt and sweat and sun lotion does sting my eyes. No lullabies. And if there were I'd likely call them Mexican (or whatever the country of origin) vs. Spanish. I know that the language is Spanish, but Spanish lullaby doesn't sound right, unless it's from Spain. He sang me a Spanish lullaby He sang me an Argentinian lullaby He sang me a Mexican lullaby 🤔

I fell in love with San Pedro Warm wind carried on the sea, he called to me Te dijo, “Te amo” I prayed that the days would last, they went so fast

I fell in love with Isla Holbox Refreshing wind comes off the sea, he called to me, “Are you looking for tequila?” / “Would you like to book a tour?” / “Prescriptions can be mailed to the US.” Te dijo, “No, gracias.” Pero hay un otro hombre y te dijo, “te quiero”! I didn't pray. The days did last. They flowed at the proper pace & it felt good. Yes I feel ambivalence about the time here ending but it's not permanent. My companion and I both look forward to what we will do next, separately. It's not sad just because this moment is good and temporary. I try to make every moment good.

I want to be where the sun warms the sky

💛

When it's time for siesta, you can watch them go by

??

Beautiful faces, no cares in this world

Patronizing, ignorant. But yes there are happy looking people here, why not? Society doesn't have to be miserable; it's a choice.

Where a girl loves a boy, and a boy loves a girl

A lot of that pretty much, though we did see 2 men holding hands walking down the street today. And that felt good.

See https://vernissage.photos/@Romex for photos of the trip. I'll continue adding to this gallery after the current trip ends. And I'll use that address for future Mexico travel.

Holbox is La Isla Bonita indeed. The best memories aren't all sunsets and lovers. I enjoyed meeting the Argentinian man who moved here, worked scooping ice cream for a year and then went in with a friend to open the simple & delicious restaurant where we ate tonight. A highlight of the time in Holbox is observing the many community games taking place in rotation on a central multi use court: practice soccer, volleyball, basketball. Wholesome night activities. And I hope to long remember the look that my words put on a woman's face tonight. In a convenience store where the line was never long but always steady, an older woman began ringing up my purchases. It was one of the few times here that I've seen someone looking beleaguered. “Buenas noches,” I said. She brightened, stood a little straighter, smiled and said, “Muy bueno!” Then we navigated selecting a Kinder Bueno for my friend & soon we parted.

¡Adios!

¡Hasta luego!

Smiling. Human beings being human. Smiling. Smizing. Living. That's why I'm on this trip, human being being human practice. And oh yeah Spanish practice too.

'Staluego amigos

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter A Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

A is for Aurora Borealis

Let's make terrific art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!