Tess is Surviving the Horrors

I haven't had a chance to listen all the way through but I'm already having ALL THE TRANS FEELS over the scene where Marin tells @queenjulia11.bsky.social's Leander that if she *could* find a way to share the curse that forcibly transforms her (in ways that were taken from them at birth) she would.🥹

When that happened Marin surprised me (and it really felt like HER surprising ME in that moment and not me surprising myself) by getting apologetic, and bashful, and awkward. She didn't want her crew to see her as a monster.

I haven't had a chance to listen all the way through but I'm already having ALL THE TRANS FEELS over the scene where Marin tells @queenjulia11.bsky.social's Leander that if she *could* find a way to share the curse that forcibly transforms her (in ways that were taken from them at birth) she would.🥹

Okay, now the architects of the cruelest timeline are twisting the knife. They're not satisfied with stripping us of our civil rights, making us live in constant fear & precarity & violating every social contract to harm us. Now they rob us of a Mass Effect game written by @catvalente.bsky.social!?💔

Don't think for a minute that those things aren't connected. We live in an era where a few of the worst people on the planet have seized almost all of the power, privileges, & resources available & are so lacking in imagination that all they can think to do with them is torment the people they hate.

Hard to overstate how important Bioware's work has been to me (I literally wrote my doctoral dissertation about the Mass Effect games.) I got out of games & stopped training new devs in 2023. I couldn't bear staying complicit in feeding young people to an industry that treated them as disposable.

...and then discarding them. Most of the devs in the area had done time running the EA gauntlet before they attempted their own ventures. At UCI we were a feeder school for Blizzard, whose corporate culture paid more lip service to creator autonomy, but who still had immense turnover & burnout.

Hard to overstate how important Bioware's work has been to me (I literally wrote my doctoral dissertation about the Mass Effect games.) I got out of games & stopped training new devs in 2023. I couldn't bear staying complicit in feeding young people to an industry that treated them as disposable.

The last few years of layoffs, buyouts, vulture capitalism, & genAI have all accelerated a trend that I observed as a professor & games scholar for over a decade. Games publishers have always exploited the love of the medium that game designers, artists, & programmers have, resulting in inhuman...

Midnight thoughts: It would be nice if more of our narratives about DaVinci, and the whole "Renaissance woman/man" concept would properly acknowledge that what we're REALLY talking about is a queer neurodivergent fortunate enough to have their basic needs met and their creative pursuits resourced.

And, I suppose the corollary thought is: would me and all my queer neurospicy trans creative moots be regarded as genius polymaths in the Renaissance? Will we be acknowledged for our brilliance by history? And how much **** do I have to **** to get a wealthy, connected, patron?

Midnight thoughts: It would be nice if more of our narratives about DaVinci, and the whole "Renaissance woman/man" concept would properly acknowledge that what we're REALLY talking about is a queer neurodivergent fortunate enough to have their basic needs met and their creative pursuits resourced.

Got my Proofs/ARCs for The Egg Prime Directive today and I honestly don't have the words (ironic, I know, since there are almost 123,000 words in these puppies!) Cover art: @enerjax.bsky.social Cover design @ MLS Logo: @catblackard.bsky.social Interior art: @jayeallisonashtear.bsky.social

"Is there *anyone* on this ship who doesn't have mommy issues?" That, and the running gag with @yellowstonefree.bsky.social about fucking @jellyfishlines.itch.io's character's mom is going to be my Actual Play legacy, isn't it?

NEW PANDEMONIUM SONG DEMO! Walton Darling's dad wants to send "him" to military school to "make a man out of him". But this is the LAST thing he wants. He yearns for a different life, somewhere beyond his window... #transmusic #musicaltheater #pandemonium

"Come for the tits and the goofy lipsyncing, stay from the trans feels and earworms!"

Harvest time! The thing that really blew my mind this year is that these cherry tomatoes are all volunteers that popped up near where last years plants were!

When your #Inktober sketching gets out of hand.... The Horned God Acrylic and black walnut ink Theresa Jean Tanenbaum October, 2026

When your #Inktober sketching gets out of hand.... The Horned God Acrylic and black walnut ink Theresa Jean Tanenbaum October, 2026

Reposting for the night crowd! #indieauthor #transauthor #saophic #T4T #Eggfic #coverreveal

Cover reveal for The Egg Prime Directive! Y'all, I cannot get over the gorgeous artwork that @enerjax.bsky.social created for this, or the stunning design that @catblackard.bsky.social did for the cover! They absolutely nailed the Yuri vibes of the story! (full cover & original art downthread!)

Want updates about the book like release dates, special events, and pre-order info? Join the mailing list at eggprimedirective.com

Cover reveal for The Egg Prime Directive! Y'all, I cannot get over the gorgeous artwork that @enerjax.bsky.social created for this, or the stunning design that @catblackard.bsky.social did for the cover! They absolutely nailed the Yuri vibes of the story! (full cover & original art downthread!)

@enerjax.bsky.social created such an extraordinary scene for this cover, with a bunch of other characters snuck into the background at the con! It hurt to have to cover this up with text, but sadly it was necessary. I'm hoping we can do a special edition with a full-art cover at some point.