lofty

So like, I have been sitting on a box full of Dimlit Tarot decks that are literally paid for & waiting for me to give them to people as community copies, shipping & everything covered. I designed this deck back in 2021, crowdfunded a print run in 2022, and finally finished the guidebook late last year. So, if you're looking for a queer-to-the-core highly aesthetic tarot deck based on the Rider–Waite–Smith system, I have a deck for you! I just need you to fill out either this Google form or send me an email at nikoblankworksltd@gmail.com. I even have a complete guidebook available for the deck if you want to read up on the deck in advance! A quick summary of how I designed this deck under the cut, for those who want to know.

UPDATE: Wow this got a bigger response than I expected! The last two times I posted "hey I have community copies available, here's some more info," nobody responded. I guess that's the power of adding deck images to a chost. >.> The form is now closed, but if you missed your chance, don't despair! I'm not against running another crowdfunding campaign to make a reprint happen. If you want to be emailed if/when I launch such a campaign, you can fill out this notification Google form to add your email to the mailing list.

Me, before this post: "Hm, I should make a post so I can finally give out the 22 decks that I've been sitting on."

Me now, with 18 decks claimed in the past ~2 hours in the middle of the night: "Well, that's a response."

I'll edit the OP & close the form if/when I run out of copies to hand out, and if too many people ask for a deck while I'm asleep I'll operate on a first-come-first-served basis. Here's hoping I don't leave anyone disappointed...

I've updated the OP and closed the form. Sorry to everyone who missed this because I posted it in the middle of the night! If it's any consolation, I've made a new form (also linked in the edited OP) to collect email addresses for if/when I launch a crowdfunding campaign to reprint the Dimlit Tarot. If you want to be kept in the loop, sign up for the mailing list through the form and I'll be sure to contact you should that crowdfund materialize. I'll pull back the curtain on how I'll be using this mailing list below the cut.

Academics across the country are talking about the reading problems they are seeing among traditional-age students. Many, they say, don’t see the point in doing much work outside of class. Some struggle with reading endurance and weak vocabulary. A lack of faith in their own academic abilities leads some students to freeze and avoid doing the work altogether.

And a significant number of those who do the work seem unable to analyze complex or lengthy texts. Their limited experience with reading also means they don’t have the context to understand certain arguments or points of view.

please understand that i mean no offense to lucas when i say this, but i think the way the post sets up the article is kind of disingenuous. the quotes are real and this is stuff the article touches on, but it set me up in thinking that this was going to be yet another thinkpiece on the decline of phonics education from the chronicle of higher education, of all places. what i instead came away with was an incredibly understanding and considerate piece that acknowledges that, yes, this is a problem, but also that the problem is complex, that the causes are multifaceted, and the solutions are varied.

a failure of reading education is too big to have a single cause, because a failure in reading education is also a failure in all education. when we look at reading education, we are not looking at the entire story; we are looking at a case study. the story of “why can’t students do the reading anymore?” is also the story of the entire american education system, and the article acknowledges that. Is This the End of Reading? is, at the present moment, the definitive work on the topic, and it handles the topic so masterfully that it makes every other article on the decline of reading ability seem almost uninformed in comparison.

here’s the quotes that i would’ve included if i was the one who first shared it to cohost:

Blum recently discussed the argument of Kotsko’s Slate article with her students, who objected to the idea that their generation has lost the ability to read critically. “We have narrowed the definition of reading to a certain kind of material,” she says — namely, textbooks and academic articles — “and then we have drawn the conclusion that they can’t read or they won’t read.”

As for why they may not show up for class or do the work, Rubin thinks it’s part social anxiety and part cynicism. “I think they see school very transactionally,” he says. “Schools also see students more transactionally than they did in the past. It’s not the deep relationship educators want it to be.”

i have so much more to say about this piece, but i’ll hold off on it because what i currently need is more of people’s reactions to this article. especially from people who are in education, either students or faculty. please comment them down below, or if you don’t feel comfortable sharing them then you can send me a private message on discord or through cohost’s asks feature (just state that you would like this ask to remain private and i will not publicly respond to it).

I'll go first:

So I originally was going to go with Sara. I've always vibed with the name, I used it in video games for my characters constantly, and it just felt right. Also for Sara Kerrigan who's "I'm queen bitch of the universe" line was probably my first experience of gender envy. The problem is at this point Sara had become a character in what was my most popular series at the time so it felt weird naming myself after a character I only retroactively realized was a self-insert of my gender needs.

I next was going to go with Jessica, for Jessica Drew from Marvel - specifically the Ultimate version of the comics. While the Ultimate comic line is largely remembered for being mostly bad and had the one redeeming quality of introducing us to Miles Morales (which 100% is the best thing to come from the Ultimate universe), it also gave us Jessica Drew of Earth 1620 - a clone of Peter Parker who just had the Y chromosome replaced with an X, and also had all of Peter's memories. The character was incredibly trans coded and fascinated me long before I figured out I was trans...but one of my closest friends is Jessica and so it felt weird.

So then I was going to with Rachel for Rachel Summers from the X-Men as well as to give myself a name that tied me to my Jewish origins but then someone asked "Can I call your Rach?" and the sound of that shortening was so very much not a vibe that I dropped the name entirely.

Then I remembered Sylvia. Sylvia Dawngard was a character of mine in a long running FATE game I was playing with friends at the time. While not my first TTRPG character to be a woman - that was a Sara - Sylvia was the one that gave me gender euphoria. A changeling in a world were that meant "Human who got abducted by fae and was raised by them," Sylvia was the champion of the long forgotten Autumn Court of fae and over the course of the game came to weild the Eclipse Hammer (which I now have tattooed on my arm) and just was one of my favorite characters I've ever played. She also was constantly torn between her fae upbringing and human nature, not feeling like she fully belonged in either world, which only changed when she met her Nephilim girlfriend Kohabiel and together they formed a new home and... yeah, I loved that character.

Equally importantly there's no shortening of that name I dislike. Syl, Sylvie, Vee, Via, Lyv, Sylv, basically any version of the name worked perfectly for me.

So yeah, that's my story. What's yours?

This'll be a long post 'cause plurality.

First up Leolin was our chosen name before realising plurality. It's an anglicisation of Llewelyn, drawing from the two flase beliefs that the Llew in Llewlyn is llew as in lion, and that the Leo in Leopold is leo as in lion to morph the Llew into Leo. It ends up as a distincly Wenglish (Welsh-English) name, and also relating to cats like our legal name is, and pronounceable by non Welsh speakers as long as they don't overthink it. We had actually been using Leo as a fursona name, and also our Animal Crossing name, but it wasn't intended to become our primary name at first.

Individual headmates under the cut.

i looked through a list of names and claire resonated with me

the body's first name is fionna because of adventure time; one of the first direct hits of gender (instead of glancing blows like freya crescent from final fantasy ix) was a piece of fanart that depicted finn and fionna as being a single individual that was genderfluid

charlotte is our middle name because of two songs by los campesinos!, but specifically "a heat rash in the shape of the show me state; or, letters from me to charlotte"

from coming up with friends at the table's twilight mirage excerpt names;
"from our lofty inclination, we heard the choirs on earth, and joined in their rapture"

honestly I feel like the secret sauce of cohost's plural community isn't just that it's chill and relatively free of discourse, but that cohost itself is not solely about plurality, and not solely used by plurals. I think there's something really valuable in how you'll just casually find someone talking about their love for a game or their plans for a garden and they'll also just happen to be plural. similarly, there's something really valuable in how plural folks and friendly singlets just casually mingle on this site without blinking an eye.

we are allowed to just be, like anyone else. we do not have to be an isolated subculture; we are part of the world.