madame-duckie

[madame-duckie]

david, commission. 2019

i am aware that this piece of mine has been re-posted a thousand times, but now you can re-blog it from the original artist! :~D

[madame-duckie]

Apparently a part of the reason why farmed bees stay in the beehives that humans build for them is because the farm hives are safer and sturdier. I don't know how a busy Discord server's worth of bugs that only have one brain cell each would logically conclude that the humans protect them from outside threats, illness and parasites, but if I understood right, the bees would be free to move away and build a new nest somewhere else any time they'd want, and they simply choose not to.

You know how in almost every culture, people have some concept of "if I sacrifice something that I made/grew/produced to the Gods, they will ward me and my harvest from evil"?

So, in a way, don't the bees willingly sacrifice a part of their harvest to an entity not only far greater than them, but nearly beyond their comprehension, in exchange for protection against natural forces wildly outside of their own control?

So tell me, beekeepers, what are you to your bees, if not a mildly eldritch God?

[madame-duckie]

The come-down from doing a good deed is crazy. Like I think I could rescue a baby from a burning building and 30 minutes later I’d be like, “Idk was it cringe of me to run into that building like that? The baby didn’t even seem that happy to get rescued. Honestly maybe the baby started the house fire and I interrupted an important life lesson.”

[madame-duckie]

It is actually so important to me that Clark did not defeat Luthor. He stopped his current rampage, yes, and that is very important. But Luthor loses the moment the news article goes live.

He is defeated by Eve, who found a way to document all his shady bullshit despite understanding perfectly well what kind of danger she is in. He is defeated by Lois, who already knows Luthor is up to no good but spends the whole movie finding proof of it so she can publish it.

Clark didn't even know about basically any of that stuff before he saw it on the news. He did not defeat Luthor. He just bought Lois the time she needed to do it.

[madame-duckie]

[madame-duckie]

[madame-duckie]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[madame-duckie]

finished the murderbot show :)

[madame-duckie]

Cozy. Creepy. Cryptids.

Strange Animals is the new contemporary fantasy novel from poet, podcaster, and memoirist Jarod K. Anderson, creator of The CryptoNaturalist.

Preorder now available!

[madame-duckie]

when I was a teenager and a young adult I really didn't understand a lot of things about racism particularly anti-black racism. so I read books written by black people about it. I recommend this method to anyone who is tempted to make their lack of understanding the responsibility of the group that they do not understand

[madame-duckie]

Hnngh. The Audible "hack" is making the rounds again, with people claiming you can use your Audible credit to listen to a book and then return it "for free." While I am the first among many to say "fuck Amazon and we should gullotine Jeff Bezos," I need you all to know it's not Amazon refunding you.

It's the authors.

They take that out of our royalties. And that's after they take 80% of our royalties on sales we do make.

(Note: Also, do not assume that your credit is worth the price listing that Amazon shows. Amazon does not pay us the cost of the listing. ((WHICH THEY PICK, we cannot set our own prices on audiobooks and then that forces us to use the Amazon price for the rest of the market!!)) What we get is 20% of the credit's value, so my book might appear on Audible for $20-30. However, if you received an Amazon credit for one of those $4.99 deals, I'd get 20% of $4.99. Yes, it's fucked, it's all fucked. Yes, other audio retailers do the exact same thing. This is one of the reasons authors don't make half as much money as people think they do.)

This became such a big issue that they had to make it impossible to return books after a certain point without talking to a customer service representative, because people were using Kindle/Audible and Amazon's return policy "like a library," and some authors (myself included) were getting royalty checks that showed negative income.

At this point, I don't even know if the Audible "hack" still works (Amazon has made changes to protect authors from this kind of thing at a glacial pace), but I need you to know it's not Amazon that's refunding you. This isn't a fun little "fuck Amazon" thing. The way Amazon has it set up, it's directly fucking the authors over.

So, yeah. Obviously, if you download something and can't get into it, or if something pops up on the author's side that makes you not want to support them anymore, yeah, process that return. Yeet the bitch. But please don't use it "like a library."

It's really harrowing to see your predicted income based on sales and then find out you're getting one-tenth of that because of refunds. And it's not even because people didn't like your book. They're just using the wrong place like a library and fucking over your algorithm as well, because once you get too many returns, you stop getting promoted.

Try using a library. You can access places like @queerliblib for FREE provided you have a US library account that you've hooked up to Libby. It's a little bit of work, but once you've got a card number, you're golden.

Just, y'know, throwing it out there because I don't think people realize this is how it works. You're not taking something back to Walmart, and Walmart is eating the refund before dumping the item in the garbage. Amazon takes the refund, turns to the author, and takes it off our plates.

Note: this does not affect Kindle Unlimited. Flip through the end pages to give the author maximum pages read, and then return that bad boy so the author can get paid. But also, please, maybe think about switching to a Kobo+ account instead. It offers the same subscription-based membership without demanding exclusivity, so authors aren't locked into just Amazon the way they are with KU. (Royalty rates are roughly the same, but it's a better deal in terms of allowing broader market access.)

This has been a rambling and exhausted PSA from your local peddler of weres.

[madame-duckie]

ubi, universal basic income

[madame-duckie]

Another comic based on a favorite post of mine, because what can I say? I love posts

Original post by @cryptotheism

[madame-duckie]

whenever i go to bat for extreme horror or hardcore bands or transgressive art i feel like john denver when he trotted at the congressional hearing to support explicit content in music

[madame-duckie]

[madame-duckie]

[madame-duckie]

After- *checks notes* three months I have finally finished my 24 Hour Comic Day comic. Or zine. I don't even know. I see a million things wrong with it but I'm also really proud, and I learned a ton.

Lyrics by Cloud Culr

Bad ideas by me.