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Do y'all ever read a fic so good that it makes you want to elevate your own craft and also befriend the writer? It's almost like, "Hi! You write so well that you've inspired me to embark on a creative training arc. Also, can I yell about the character in your dms because you get it?"

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in the club begging strangers for forgiveness and proving incapable of articulating what for when asked

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Sinéad O'Connor, from her book titled "Rememberings," originally published in June 2021

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Bai Qiu , from a poem titled "This Is Beyond My Control ," featured in Modern Chinese Poetry: An Anthology

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character who thinks they’re unloveable x character who finds loving them as easy as breathing (sometimes easier)

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dear god we don't talk much but please give me the strength to start that project, the determination to start that project, and the fortitude to start that project. thanks

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nothing but bloodied teeth

e | m/m | 1 chapter | 15.4k

A student in crisis!

Sith apprentice Anakin Skywalker has lost his lightsaber for the second time. As he reels from an unexpected injury, Obi-Wan Kenobi devises a plan to teach his apprentice an old Sith practice, remind him of his own strength, and punish him for giving his Master such a scare.

written for @topwan-obikin's sith week, day fifteen

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Hi, I noticed your story has conflict in it, and I was wondering why you didn't just write people who are right doing everything correctly with a note saying "I enthusiastically co-sign everything in this story"? Must be some kind of mistake haha

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Discussing sales and booksellers and how too many insist indie authors stop using the big ones because 'they're evil' but refuse to actually buy anything from the smaller ones... has me pondering things.

I am, of course, going to make this your problem.

The complaint I've been seeing is 'where do we go if Amazon is crap but no one will buy our books anywhere else (because they don't, there's enough numbers to prove this)?'

Now, I love itch.io. To fucking pieces. I will stand on mountain tops and I will sing their praises until I am hoarse. I used them when I was trying to make games, I still use them to buy indie games and follow devs, and I adore them for books.

I've sold more through them in months than I have in years on Amazon. I love itch because they love us. 'Us' being the creatives making and selling our stuffs. It is obvious in the way they run their site, how they interact when there's problems, how they promote people (because they actually do). They love having us there and want us to succeed. No matter what we make.

Problem is... Amazon readers don't love itch. They look at it and see little games and 'weird' books and miss their shiny store that they already trust. I would love if we could break them of this and show them how, with itch, they would actually own what they purchase. No chance of it being taken back or suddenly deleted from their kindle. It's theirs forever.

I don't know how to do that.

So instead, I propose more of us go to itch. Take your books off Amazon. Starve them of the indie titles they insist they want and make them come to where they are.

If you are afraid of the site, there's guides (this one is literally itch's) and also I am here and willing to share whatever I can and will always share your links when I see them. //I encourage you to actually use the site and the tags and try to find things through those, because that's how your readers are navigating and you need to understand it.

No one's going to help us, clearly, and readers can't really be trusted to find our books organically (the big sellers seem hellbent on assuring this) so we have to do this ourselves... and help each other in it.

We're not in competition.

We're in a community.

So get out there and promote your frens, rate the books you read on itch, put them on lists of favorites. Link them to others you think might like them.

For your own stuff: SALES, GIVEAWAYS, do them.

If you're on itch and you're not running these things every so often you are letting your books rot. Yes, I know it's scary to give things away for free but a lot of people tip when something is free and even if they don't... they might rate it or list it or remember you for later. They'll come back, buy your new release because you've proven to be something they like.

And, AND, when you have things up for free and people are downloading them it puts you higher on the genre pages. This can last weeks. That's weeks of top attention for a day of freebies. Do you see why this is important?

Have faith in your words, the goal is to get them out there and get people interested and a place like itch is honestly the safest one to do that in. You can even link a tipjar site like 'ko-fi' or 'buy me a coffee' if you want a way for someone to download it for free and pay you later if they love it. They'll do it! I've seen it happen! It is awesome.

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good smut is really a character study and that is final. i need it to be about vulnerability i need it to be about trust or lack thereof and most of all i need it to be emotional agony. thats what sex is for

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Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

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hate what people did to the dead dove tag

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Sinéad O'Connor, from her book titled "Rememberings," originally published in June 2021