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Arinn Dembo

@erinys.bsky.social

1.5K followers 620 following 3.1K posts

Lead Writer, Narrative Designer, Textile Artist, Anti-Fascist. Games: Homeworld, Sword of the Stars, Fort Zombie, many others. Television: World Trigger, Metalions. Stories/poetry: F&SF, Weird Tales, many anthologies. Fibre Arts: Slan Baby.

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Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · Oct 25

Hi! Rumor has it that lots of new people are coming to this app, so—hello to friends old and new!

Ten things I do and love (and post about):

🎮 #gamedev
👾 #pixelart
🎭 #voiceacting
💻 #writing
🏺 #archaeology
🚀 #sciencefiction
🦄 #fantasy
💀 #horror
🏳️‍🌈 #pride
🧶 #crafting (especially dyeing yarn).

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 1h

Thank you. :) I don’t know where I fit in the leftist paradigm anymore; I just want to make pretty things, punch Nazis and save all the weirdos.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 2h

Can I be in your club? ;)

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 5h

it really has been amazing how much one person in a frog suit destroyed their fantasy visuals over the past week. this wouldn't work everywhere but Portland, you are doing amazing sweetie

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 5h

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest.

There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day.

What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.

It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 3h

I think they work best when they’re an automated response, a Pavlovian twitch. Unfortunately I received that conditioning as a child, apparently? It has taken actual work to silence the inner demon that apparently wants to silence people when they have to call me out.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4h

If you read this story and find it relatable, by the way, try to imagine how much harder and worse this phenomenon must be when you’re BIPOC as well as being queer and neurodivergent and whatever other marginalizations I might claim.

This is why I don’t cry at people.

Even if I feel like it.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4h

Long story short?

Karen wins. She gets me thrown out of the writing group by going to the top authority in the entire organization with a story about how mean and harsh I was, and how our disagreement was TOTALLY and ONLY about the Very Bad and Wrong Assumptions I’ve Made About Her.

Me: 🙄

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4h

The rest of the group: *nervous silence*

Karen: All I said is that I don’t like trigger warnings and I don’t think they should be used!

Me: And I’m telling you that yours isn’t a morally defensible position. It’s equivalent to hating a wheelchair ramp.

Karen: *turns on the waterworks*

Me: 🙄

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4h

Me: Look. Maybe if you don’t have PTSD, you don’t get it. You’re not going to crack open a book and end up re-living the worst day of your life. SA and child abuse, the suicide of a person you loved. Your miscarriage. Things that just shatter you.

Sometimes you just don’t have time to shatter.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4h

Thinking today about White Woman Tears, and how Canadian women in particular can use them to make themselves the martyr in any situation.

Karen in my old writer’s group: I hate trigger warnings! They are the worst, they ruin all suspense, no one should use them!

Rest of the group: Yeah!

Me: 😡 No.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 5h

Oh yikes. At least I’m never on the latter kind of list.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 5h

Oh nooooo

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 5h

I can see that there is a disconnect there in the use of terms. I’m an old, so even as a queer person I didn’t grow up using “straight” as a pejorative. I was thinking it was a post about generically popular m/f fiction, like “Outlander” or whatever.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 7h

Okay. Sorry if I misread your post, I didn’t realize we were talking about work that was bad.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 7h

*shrug* I’m pretty agnostic about the genitals of the lovers in a hot scene if the writing is good…? Certainly if I wrote a good queer story I’d hope the straight people in the audience were capable of enjoying it. Seems only fair to return the courtesy.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 13h

Oh. My god.

Best. Pet cosplay. Evar.

Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 14h

When parakeets cosplay

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 1d

Taking a brief break from my dye pots this week to work on a big shop update. Hoping to have all ready-to-ship items listed by a Friday.

Want to help? Please visit the Slan Baby website! Check the navigation, click around the photos, ogle the yarn! All feedback welcome. :)

Www.slanbaby.com

🧶

Four skeins of hand-dyed yarn in a pastel colorway called Margaritas on the Beach. The main body of the skeins are a soft delicate yellow, with gentle hints of lime, peach and strawberry.

Four skeins of hand-dyed yarn in a colorway called Elisabeth’s Grey. There are elements of deep slate grey, blue-gray, brown, and gold.

Four skeins of hand-dyed yarn in a colorway called Blackened Jade. The main body of the skeins are a rich dark teal green, with flashes of a green so dark that it appears black.

Four skeins of hand-dyed yarn in a colorway called Red Fox Agate. The skeins are a mix of fiery red, smoke grey, and black.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 1d

That otter painting! Unf. I absolutely love it.

BlindCoyote 🔜 BLFC @blindcoyote.com · 4d

4 done, 8 to go!
Having so much fun with these guys!

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Haligren @haliteatiger.bsky.social · 1d

Reposting for #werewolfwednesday!

Haligren @haliteatiger.bsky.social · 2d

Finished the little maquette of Autumn, but she's been kind of hard to get good pictures of in the way I would like. Guess I just need to fiddle with it a bit more. Autumn was sculpted in Zbrush, rendered in Blender.

3D render of a lean female werewolf against a forested backdrop at night. She is hunched over in an aggressive position at the camera, snarling fiercely. She has dark red eyes that match the dark red of her fur. The lower part of her face is tan, as is her underside, while her extremities are black.

Same werewolf but more of a foreward-facing shot, close-up, of her snarling face. The dark red of her eyes is more clearly seen here.

Full-body side-view of the werewolf. Once again the lighting is a bit more moody, a contrast between moonlight and some off-camera lamplight in the background.

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Gold Skull Games @goldskullgames.bsky.social · 1d

I think what these "big brain strategists" fail to realize is that if you don't want to support rights for trans folk, we are not on the same "team", your person winning the election isn't a win for me if you're not supporting rights for everyone

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

RJAIN // seinobyte 🔞 @rjain.bsky.social · 1d

If you are a Canadian NSFW artist, please keep an eye on your account after Oct 15 and contact me if any of your media/account is censored with the new ToS.

I may have a follow-up meeting with the federal government in the coming months to address this.

Save my info: linktr.ee/rjainxiv

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Dr. SkySkull @drskyskull.bsky.social · 1d

Be the sort of person where even the rumor of your demise sparks a global depressive spiral and not the Ewok celebration from Return of the Jedi

PBS News @pbsnews.org · 1d

“There are just a lot of rumors flying around. But I figured if you heard it from me, you’d know that I was okay,” Dolly Parton said in a new two-minute video posted on Instagram. “I’m not ready to die yet. I don’t think God is through with me. And I ain’t done working.” https://to.pbs.org/4hc1DXB

'I'm not dying': Dolly Parton responds to concerns about her health

Late last month Parton postponed her first Las Vegas residency in 32 years, citing “health challenges.”

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 1d

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4d

2¢: If you’re starting to feel like you need to hit the “reset” button in your life—you’re in a marriage, a career or a location that isn’t working out?

Just DO it.

Get a divorce. Go back to uni. Move to Timbuktu.

The older you get, the more change sucks. Do it while you can still move a couch!

essencesimmone.blacksky.app @essencesimmone.blacksky.app · 6d

Those who are 35+, what advice do you have for people just entering their 30s?

Arinn Dembo @erinys.bsky.social · 4d

Minus the apology, this is exactly what I said with the narrative design around AI in Sword of the Stars.

If you create a consciousness, it is your child.

Only monsters enslave their children.

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman @josie.zone · 4d

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

Reposted by Arinn Dembo

Ruth Zakarin @ruthz.bsky.social · 5d

It’s time to post this quote again…

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

― James Baldwin