Malda Marlys 🍉

"hey do you ever think about... that day? when it happened?"
"of course i don't think about that day. it didn't happen. you're delusional."

my poor littlest brother, some sort of genetic sport, is a 1 in a family of 2s. when he was little he'd be horrified as the rest of us went "oh, huh, neat" when the sirens started and then went about our business. he still tries to harangue us all into the basement when the sirens start up

not quite as high, only in the low 70s yesterday, but it might possibly snow a little tonight, and the dog is currently hiding under my desk from an early march thunderstorm. (thunder can't get you if you're under your human's knees?) it is deeply weird

I have still not quite forgiven the friend (a good man with dreadful taste) who thought I'd love this great book he'd loan me for my long train ride

terry goodkind is my activation phrase except instead of a cool sleeper agent assassin I instantly become the petty bitch yelling "and another thing!" about a 30 year old book i read half of in college

A five-image grid with two squares on top and three on the bottom, all featuring cropped art of dogs from the We've Always Been Here zine. All are rendered in very different styles, two are traditional art while three are digital, and they are in a wide variety of poses.

Throughout our zine's Kickstarter, we'll be sharing collections of queer and cultural identities (and some other themes) featured in the book!

But, to start, let's show off some of the dogs of the zine! Aren't they all so cute? 🐶

Support our Kickstarter here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/tap...

La Brea Tar Pits ~ megafauna 🐻🦁🦥🐴🐺🦬
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After watching Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, I was inspired to do a big piece based around my fascination with the La Brea tar pits and all the incredible creatures and flora that have been claimed by the tar ⚫️🌿🦴
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#paleoart #iceage #prehistoricplanet

I almost put down my du Maurier collection and went to bed with the weight of impossible eeriness bearing down, but no, I had to crack the trashy court drama about improbably pretty people backstabbing each other politely and swooning, which goes down like nectar for the weaker parts of my nature

yesterday everyone was disoriented and cranky. today, having committed a classic blunder ("it's late I'll just read a chapter" falls somewhere between "land war in asia" and "go in against a sicilian when death is on the line"), now only I am disoriented and cranky. this definitely will go great

(anyway fun exercise)

New story up at GNS:

“The asshole knew I loved him,” said Gerry. “At least I hope so.”
“Nothing wrong with telling him again,” I said. “I talk to dead folks all the time.”

Read “About Face” by Teresa Milbrodt
giganotosaurus.org/2026/03/01/about-face

(actually they probably do scratch that, people are unreasonable and the worst. but!)

(do people run up to painters and tell them blue is out of fashion? knock the granite out of a sculptor's hands because they heard silly girls are really into granite right now?)

(sorry i thought it had blown over and then saw someone firing off about how present tense is bad and also from fanfiction or something because these damn things always circle each other like unfriendly cats when this round of discourse comes again)

(psst, you see how these are all different stories even though they introduce the same event? how tools like tense, person, and perspective are some of the most basic building blocks of developing stuff like tone and voice and theme?)

We will meet you at the end of your reign, great ladies. We will hold out our hands, a thousand-thousand hands for every blade you set against us. We will teach you what we wove into the warp and weft of our daughter-sister-lover-stranger’s soul, and you will learn too late what forever means.

The empresses did not say, what a fine night to live forever, what a fine world for us to rule. The girl in stolen official’s robes saw it in eyes she met fearlessly, for she was a thing that lived beyond fear. Her smile curled graceful as a cat’s tail, as ready to pounce and catch justice at last.

Your nose itched. Years of scars thrummed under your skin, your future must end with your next breath, your promise to the priest hung about your neck like an albatross, but all you could feel as you drove the blades home was the dreadful tickle. What a tale for the children you would never bear.

Royal blood rains down with dignity. It doesn’t spatter like a peasant’s, no better than a goat. So fall the final thoughts, twinned to the last, of the ladies who topple from their thrones. So fall the ladies, each reaching, each missing, her sister’s cooling fingers.

The girl who opened the empresses’ throats hailed from the salt flats, smelled of horses and the moon, and wore her left hand with three fewer fingers than was fashionable. Nothing more would be known of her by any soul that lived for a year and a day after she vanished.

(with affection. i like many of these stories. the diametrically damaged siblings--sometimes triametrically if you wanna juggle more--are on their way to being archetypes. it's nice to see them as you settle into a novel and put your things down)

"hi, welcome to my haunted house book!I'm the sibling who's an invenerate fuckup!"
"and I'm the one who grew into a neurotic control freak. we're this way because of our unspoken childhood trauma."
"it's about ghosts but not really. by the end of the book we'll appreciate each other."
"But not now."

"silly stories should also be good" is history's most lukewarm take and yet it's an uphill scramble to find good-faith crit or discussion between the deadly valleys of "I am serious and this is for babies" and "um it's just for fun who cares if it reads like an underslept 8th grader wrote it"

how travel-free jet lag is going: forgot to make tea this morning. reached for my cup after I'd been at my desk getting very little done for 20 minutes and it was mysteriously empty. I usually start the kettle before I've even got my coat off.

oops we're doing person/tense narration discourse again. my habit whenever this wave rolls in is to write in increasingly outre combinations. second plural future perfect is the new hotness. you will have refused to read anything else, least you be left behind

I knew it would speak to somebody

little girl in a blue armchair by mary cassatt, 1878. it's a very descriptive title. there is a bored child in a frilly white dress kind of Outfit slumped in a big, frilly armchair. a small terrier sleeps the sleep of a little dog who's been putting up with a child in another chair

the impressionists do not do a lot for me but this perfect grumpy little rat dog (the artist's; his name was Baptiste!) and grumpy little rat child are really capturing this weekend of the stolen hour for me

A digitally painted scene from the Fezouata Formation featuring Aegirocassis, Sagenograptus, Falcisicaris, Bathmoceras, Rhopalocystis, Plumalina, Brachyaglaspis, Choia, Megistaspis, Eoconularia, Plasiacystis, Plumulites, Ampyx, Pirania, and a non-specific Conodont

Fezouata Formation.

Felt like drawing an Aegirocassis, accidentally drew a bunch of other stuff too.

#paleoart #sciart #art

Happy Women's Day #AlliDrawsArt
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