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#genre fiction
oliveoilcorp · 1 year
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DARLIN’ AND HER OTHER NAMES, PART 1: MARTA
The first installment of my new werewolf-western-horror-romance comic is available now on gumroad and itch.io!
www.darlincomic.com
90 pages, mature readers only.
DARLIN’ is intended for mature audiences. This comic contains elements which some readers may find distressing, including: 
murder, gun violence, animal cruelty and animal death, blood, gore, body injury/horror, nudity, and language.
Please proceed mindfully.
Title designs by Binglin Hu.
(Thank you to friends, family, patrons and readers for your patience and support during the making of Part 1! 
I also want to give my immense thanks to Tin House, Mineral School Artist Residency, Artist Trust and MacDowell for providing time, space and support during various stages of Part 1’s progress. It means the world to receive validation for this weird little self-published project.)
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racefortheironthrone · 2 months
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fantasy sometimes doesn't afford itself the ability to fantasize about a better world with many of the same problems of real life. thankfully ive found fantasy thatfantasize about things like gender roles, orientations, social status, etc. being more accepting, and the world kinder more often than not. question is, as hard as it is to find solid urban fantasy, are there anyworks you know of that use itself to imagine a optimal city for us urban nerds? magic public works, free dragon transit?
So there is a real problem in the fantasy and sci-fi genres that they often have a failure of revolutionary imagination, as I’ve termed it. We’re so used to not just the world as it is but also the public historical imagination of how change happens, that even in art that’s supposed to be about radically reimagining our world or new worlds, we often revert back to the familiar. (I find this tic particularly annoying in alternate history, which is supposed to be about imagining how the world could have evolved differently, but often reverts back to a retelling of (often bad) history with the numbers filed off.)
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(A sadly rare counter-example.)
You raise a fascinating question about the potential for urbanist fantasy. This is often quite rare in urban fantasy, because often out of a desire to maintain the verisimilitude of urban life, they default to a masquerade scenario which renders it impossible to explore the impact of magic on transit, housing, and other aspects of urbanism because the central conceit is that people with magic are trying to hide and thus have no impact on the mundane world.
However, it does crop up sometimes in Magitech settings, because their central conceit is all about how magic would function in place of science and lead to new ways of organizing societies, urban and otherwise. For a popular example, look at how Arcane examines the social impacts of Hextech and Shimmer. My personal favorite example of urbanist fantasy is the plane of Ravnica from Magic the Gathering.
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Ravnica is a ecumenopolis, a city-state that covers the whole planet. The city is governed by a guild council, each of whom are responsible for an aspect of the city’s physical and social infrastructure:
The Azorius Senate is responsible for running the courts and the legal system, and sometimes they run the police as well (although they have a jurisdictional dispute with the Boros Legion on that front).
House Dimir are couriers, messengers, journalists, private investigators, spies, assassins, thieves, and librarians, as well as the city’s clandestine intelligence service - if it deals with information in any way, the Dimir have a hand in it…or do they?
The Cult of Rakdos run the city’s entertainment, food service, retail, and labor recruitment (lots of shanghaing and press ganging goes on in Ravnica) - and they’re also a crazed juggalo bdsm blood cult who are responsible for keeping an ancient arch-demon entertained so he doesn’t try to destroy the city, again.
The Gruul Clans are an anarchist collective responsible for the planet’s wilderness areas, which they try to maximize by violent raids that tear down developed areas any chance they get - which also makes them Ravnica’s main demolition industry. The Boros Legion spends a lot of time defending built-up areas from Gruul rampages.
The Selesnya Conclave are a hippie nature cult commune who manage the city’s parks and other green spaces, as well as providing basic welfare services (food, ���shelter,” clothing, etc.) to the city’s poor. They also use magic to do weird hivemind brainwashing in the name of harmony and unity, and they can raise giant Ent-Kaiju to defend the city in times of need.
The Orzhov Syndicate are a vampire banker mafia, and also one of the city’s biggest religions. They believe in debt on a spiritual level, and their religion fully embraces indulgences to their logical conclusion. The Orzhov preach that you can literally buy your way into heaven, and that debts to the (Catholic by way of Prosperity Gospel Evangelical) Church or its many front organizations and legitimate businesses will carry over into the next life; the Orzhov practice debt slavery on both living people and ghosts. And lest you think it’s all a cover for profit-making, they can summon dark angels to conduct rituals, lead services, and make war on their enemies. Something above is answering their prayers…
My personal favorite is the Izzet League, an institute of mad scientists and engineers and elementalist wizards who combine science and magic to research, build, and maintain the city’s infrastructure (as well as funding all tech R&D and theoretical and experimental research in physics, chemistry, and engineering) - the power grid, water and sewer systems, heating and gas lines, as well as the city’s mass transit and transportation/freight system, are all powered by their steam and fire and lightning and Magitech gadgets and robots and cyborgs made out of a magic metal named mizzium. Yes, a lot of their devices explode, and yes their golems and robots and elementals have a tendency to go rogue, but that’s the price of progress!
The Golgari Swarm are a subterranean necromantic cabal who run the city’s waste disposal, burial services, and do the bulk of the agricultural production for Ravnica’s hungry masses. All of Ravnica’s citizens are entitled to a food dole provided by the Golgari’s fungi farms as a form of basic income. Just don’t think too hard about what went into the compost heaps or what your rations might be made of…
The Boros Legion is Ravnica’s main police and military, led by a literal host of warrior angels. Imagine the combination of a police force entirely made up of noir detectives and loose cannon Dirty Harry-esque cops and an army with flying fortresses led by fiery angels who are all deeply dramatic lesbians. True believers one and all, the Boros are here to mete out justice and divine wroth upon evildoers wherever they hide. If they had their way, the Orzhov would all be in prison along with the Gruul and the Rakdos, but the damn bureaucrats in the Azorius Senate keep trying them up in knots with paperwork.
The Simic Combine are responsible for the city’s environmental quality, ensuring biodiversity and sustainability in a global metropolis; they are also the city’s universal health care providers. All Ravnicans have access to free health care, as long as they consent to the Combine’s biomantic research. See, the Simic are the other group of mad scientists/mages in the city, except they went into genetics, environmental science, and (marine) biology and they believe in individual and societal evolution through the use of augmentation, cloning, and splicing. After all, why stop at curing someone’s respiratory illness when you could also give them gills? Or giant crab claws? Or tentacles?
I love the world-building and the attention to urban systems and infrastructure in Ravnica. More than most, they’ve thought about what urban life needs to function and made it magical.
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chocochipbiscuit · 10 months
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Fic (and nonfic!) Recs for Pride!
In honor of Pride, have some of my favorite F/F and F/NB reads!
Short stories (available online)
Radcliffe Hall by Miyuki Jane Pinckard - 40k word novella, with a Japanese student attending an American women's college in 1908. It's a Gothic novel with the characters encountering the supernatural, which is no less malevolent than systemic racism and homophobia.
The First Stop Is Always the Last by John Wiswell - Short and sweet time loop flirtation!
Scallop by J.L. Akagi - A woman begins growing eyes all over her body, and struggles to hide them. All the warnings for body horror, eye injury, and referenced sexual assault.
The World Ends in Salty Fingers and Sugared Lips by Jen Reese - Time loop story about the end of the world and the ways we try to deal with the crushing uncertainty of the inevitable.
Romance
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - Subway time travel romance! August moves to New York and meets Jane, a butch punk from the 70s who’s trapped on the subway. It’s warm and sweet and funny, with all the feels and queer found family goodness.
Fatal Fidelity by Rien Gray - Dark romance/erotic suspense featuring a bi femme fatale and a nonbinary assassin! The series begins with Love Kills Twice, in which Justine hires an assassin to get rid of her abusive husband…unaware that Campbell was also hired to kill her. Absolutely delicious.
Feminine Pursuits series by Olivia Waite - While I’m listing it as a series, each novel is entirely stand-alone! These are a set of historical F/F novels featuring women in arts and science (and beekeeping!) making their way and falling in love with one another!
Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan - Historical romance as two older women (73 and 69 years old, respectively!) plot the downfall of an absolutely Terrible Nephew who deserves everything that happens to him. An absolutely delicious comedic romp.
The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz - An AI repair technician and an autonomous robot who runs a small tea shop, set in a retro-futuristic America. It’s warm and gentle and yearning in very good ways.
Horror/Suspense
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin - Gender apocalypse featuring trans women! A virus has turned anyone with over a certain level of testosterone into cannibal rape monsters, so we’re following our trans protagonists as they try to survive feral men, murderous TERFs, and a sociopathic bunker brat. This deserves a LOT of content warnings but it’s also been blurbed as a ‘bleeding love letter to trans women’ and it really is.
Blackwater Sister by Zen Cho - A Malaysian-American lesbian moves to Malaysia with her family, where she is haunted by her grandmother’s ghost. Her grandmother is out for supernatural revenge, involving our protagonist with gangsters and a terrifying goddess.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - Historical crime novel in which a thief poses as a lady’s maid for a con, and ends up developing feelings for the mark. Except the lady’s not as innocent as she seems, and it’s difficult to add more without spoiling the novel but it’s good!
Science fiction
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - Ambassador Mahit Dzmare travels to the capital of the interstellar Teixcalaanli Empire, discovers that her predecessor has died, and must find not only who murdered him, but why—while trying not to get murdered herself, and trying to maintain her small station’s independence from Teixcalaan’s ever-expanding empire. And there is a sequel but that has its own plot and requires you to read this one anyway!
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages - Set in San Francisco, built on artifice and delight as we follow a group of queer women both present and in the 1940s. Central story is a romance, two women trying to navigate both joy and the brutality of the worlds they inhabit.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - An epistolary love story across time and space, in far futures and alternative pasts as two rival agents—post-singularity Red and bio-consciousness Blue—foil and thwart one another.
Fantasy
The Burning Kingdoms by Tasha Suri - Indian-inspired fantasy trilogy (third book coming in 2024!) that follows a captive princess and a maidservant with forbidden magic who navigate the the tension between their different loyalties and the politics of empire. Just! So good!
The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk - A fantasy trilogy (that’s actually complete!) set in a world where witches are persecuted and placed in asylums…while secretly, the witches of elite families use that power in service of the crown. The first book (Witchmark) starts with a murder mystery and a doctor with PTSD who follows that mystery to government secrets that force him to confront his estranged family. It’s also M/M, but the sequels (Stormsong and Soulstar) center around F/F and F/NB main pairings, respectively. 
The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir - The first book starts with swordjock butches and lesbian necromancers in space going through (essentially) a haunted mansion together, and it just keeps going after that! It’s delightful, deranged, and full of fantastic characters I want to gnaw on!
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo - A beautiful frame story with a very fairytale feel, where the cleric Chih is telling the story of a tiger and her lover, a female scholar, to a trio of hungry tigers who threaten to eat them if Chih tells the story incorrectly!
A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark - Mystery and magic and suspense in a steampunk Cairo, set forty years after magic returned to the world! The first female agent for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities is assigned to discover who murdered members of a secret cult. In addition to solving the case, she’s also assigned a rookie partner to train, and navigating the surprise return of her girlfriend, who has her own secrets! This is a really fun romp, full of joy and wonder. (And Fatma’s fabulous suits!)
Nonfiction
In the Dream House by Carmen Machado - A memoir about surviving domestic abuse, with each chapter using a different trope or genre convention to not only explore the way the relationship affected her sense of self, but also about trying (or failing) to find that representation in cultural history. It’s a rough read in places, but absolutely worth it if you’re in a space to handle that sort of content. (And in case it’s not obvious: her ex was another woman. Abuse isn’t limited by gender.)
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ariel-seagull-wings · 2 months
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IN DEFENSE OF THE ALIEN DESIGNS IN STRANGE WORLD
@themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @tamisdava2 @minimumheadroom @thealmightyemprex @amalthea9 @angelixgutz @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @softlytowardthesun @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales
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So, I read on-line some comentaries saying that it was hard to connect to the titular Strange World because of how out of this world the alien creatures were.
Their designs were considered too strange, to the point of being considered scary by audiences, who expected those creatures to be intimidating monsters, rather than the neutral, if simpathetic beings they were portrayed as.
This characterization apparently didn't correspond to what is expected from their appearance.
And I started to investigate in my memory: why this disconect happened?
Why it was more easy to imagine those beings as villanous monsters, rather than the simple living beings they actually were portrayed as?
So, when it comes to other worldly creatures written in fantasy and science fiction works, since we are humans, it has historically been more easy to connect to alien fictional creatures that are closer to humans, or at least other mammals.
The more distant they looked from humans in appearance, usually closer to reptiles or insects, the more likely they were to be presented as villanous monsters that must be eliminated by the heroes.
In fantasy you have the usual conflicts between heroic and appealing humans, elves, dwarves and halflings against the villanous and grotesque orcs, goblins and trolls.
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And in sci fi, the more sympathetic aliens are the ones that look close to humans, while the more far from humans that alien is, the more likely is that they will be the treat to be fought.
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In the Lindsay Ellis video "Designing the Other", she brings up the important point on the emphasis on eyes to make audiences form a connection with an alien character.
When they have big, expressive humanoid eyes, they are more likely to win the audience's simpathy:
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When their eyes are more insect like, or non existent, then they become mysterious, threatening monsters:
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Jack Saint's video "Avatar: Dances with White Saviours" comments that the presentation of the planet Pandora and the native Na'Vi as conventionally beautifull is used as the main argument to make audiences simpathize with it and support its message of echological preservation
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While less mainstream literary sci fi would present the message that even the non beautiful, even violent ecossystems and creatures are important for the balance of the enviroment and have the right to be preserved.
And then there is Strange World
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Strange World presents a story where a team goes trough the subterranean to save the plant that is their source of eletricity from creatures that they perceive as an agricultural plague.
The creatures follow the design pattern that we usually associate with monstrous, villanous aliens: far away from humans or other mammals, closer to insects, sea creatures and abstract cells.
We look at their appearance, and feel fear, treating them like abominations who would destroy us.
And the narrative knows that. Is an important discussion in the narrative.
When Jaegger joins the journey with the team, Ethan tries to show him and Searcher the card game Primordial Base, which is about finding peacefull solutions to live in harmony with the enviroment surrounding you, which includes the creatures you consider threatening eldritch abominations.
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At first, Jaegger and Searcher fail to understand what Ethan says.
Then, they learn what his words means when they see that the supposed plague that they come to destroy was actually an imune system working to heal the living heart of their world, from Pando, the plant that for years they tought was beneficial.
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The saviours of their lives are the beings that they believed to be monsters.
Just because something is not what we perceive as beautiful, doesn't mean its evil.
That is the message that the characters had to learn to be alive.
And by extension, us, as the audience, had to examine our decades of biases on who is good, and who is bad, in the proccess.
Nature is neither good, nor bad. It doesn’t care about us.
It just is. That is enough reason that it needs to be respected and preserved.
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phoenixyfriend · 1 year
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"Why didn't you include--" there are only ten options, and there's only one other breakdown I'd consider (which I'll link in the comments in a few minutes once I make it)
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dukeofriven · 9 months
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Rereading Pern as an adult is a complex experience because Anne McCaffrey filled her books with strong female characters but boy howdy does Anne McCaffrey seem to hate women. Anne McCaffrey builds a world in which the weyrs, the home of dragons and their human riders, are promiscuous and sexually uninhibited places, and then proceeded to shame any and every woman in them who is the slightest bit promiscuous as the sluttiest slut slut who ever slutted, how dare she, what a vain and stupid whore. Every female protagonist is rigidly monogamous, bitterly jealous, resentful, and suspicious of any woman who isn't sufficiently meek towards her, and full of loathing and contempt for expansive female sexual desire. Not the men: the men get around and do so with, at most, a boys-will-be-boys eye-roll and chuckle over their multiple-partner virility, but not the women. If you are a woman and you enter the sexually promiscuous weyr culture and enjoy it, you're evil, which in McCaffrey's lens means that your are both vain and stupid, the one indivisible from the other. I'm going to out on a limb here for a moment. I've seen a lot of this in genre fiction: a particular type of woman whose beauty and vanity are so all-encompassing that it's the totality of their self. I've met plenty of vain, attractive people in my life but never once garnered the impression that, when left alone, they—like Narcissus—did nothing but stare at themselves in the mirror and think about how beautiful they are and what that does for them. And here's the out-on-a-limb part because I wasn't Anne McCaffrey and can't speak for her but—does this come out of insecurity? Did women of a certain era—the ones who wrote protagonists who were 'strangely' pretty despite not being written as resembling classic bombshells—was this their revenge fantasy? Because it always reads as personal, like they're all thinking of Debbie Fitzluder in grade 11 who was the 'prettiest' girl in school and this was what they imagined the object of their hatred did all day instead of being the tangled mess of adolescent anxieties and fears she likely was. Sure she's hot but that's all she is, she isn't clever and resourceful and cooler to hang with like me. It always feels painfully insecure, and yet I've seen male authors run with the same theme until genre fiction becomes this long exercise in insisting that women primarily do nothing but busy themselves hating and resenting other women.
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booksinpiles · 20 days
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artform-virtue · 3 months
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i’m sooooo sick of people acting like romance is an inferior genre. like show me in your pretentious litfic books a story where a fat woman gets to fall in love. show me where queer people get to be happy while experiencing virtually no homophobia. show me the space where the male gaze is practically nonexistent. go on, don’t be shy!
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copperbadge · 10 months
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Long time reader here, bad at tumblr. I noticed a while back that your Shidvadhverse could easily be a modern AU of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar series, and with this latest revelation that King/Emperor Gregor(y)‘s parental figures had a longstanding booty call I can no longer keep silent. Have you read Barrayar? If not, you would probably enjoy it … but I’m not sure I should recommend for fear of over-influencing your future stories! (Jerry=Ivan, Eddie=Miles(?), Simon=Simon, etc…)
Yeah, a couple of other people have mentioned that! That Jerry resembles Ivan and there's a Gregory who's the ruler. Being fair to Jerry and Ivan, they both belong to a stock character type with a very long history in literature. :D
As far as I'm aware, it's pretty much coincidence. I tried reading Bujold many years ago, but I didn't get very far and my memory of the one book I started is minimal (I'm not sure which one it was). Aside from the fact that it had Miles Vorkosigan as the protagonist, mostly I remember being profoundly frustrated with the book in general, and I know I didn't finish it.
I doubt it's the book's fault; my relationship to the classics of SFF is turbulent. I had similar frustration with The Left Hand Of Darkness, which I did finish but begrudgingly, and more recently the first Murderbot book, which I didn't finish but did get most of the way through. It's strange because when I bond with a genre novel I really bond with it, but they seem to be few and far between and I'm not entirely sure why.
In any case I don't think we need to worry -- given I'm behind on reading books I know I'll enjoy, I don't think I'm going to be returning to Bujold anytime soon. :D
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rockislandadultreads · 9 months
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Disability Pride Month: Genre Fiction Recommendations
Noor by Nnedi Okorafor
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt...natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was "wrong". But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the "reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist" and the "saga of the wicked woman and mad man" unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn't so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.
Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
It's 1942 and Willowjean "Will" Parker is a scrappy circus runaway whose knife-throwing skills have just saved the life of New York's best, and most unorthodox, private investigator, Lillian Pentecost. When the dapper detective summons Will a few days later, she doesn't expect to be offered a life-changing proposition: Lillian's multiple sclerosis means she can't keep up with her old case load alone, so she wants to hire Will to be her right-hand woman. In return, Will is to receive a salary, room and board, and training in Lillian's very particular art of investigation.
Three years later, Will and Lillian are on the Collins case: Abigail Collins was found bludgeoned to death with a crystal ball following a big, boozy Halloween party at her home—her body slumped in the same chair where her steel magnate husband shot himself the year before. With rumors flying that Abigail was bumped off by the vengeful spirit of her husband (who else could have gotten inside the locked room?), the family has tasked the detectives with finding answers where the police have failed.
But that's easier said than done in a case that involves messages from the dead, a seductive spiritualist, and Becca Collins—the beautiful daughter of the deceased, who Will quickly starts falling for. When Will and Becca's relationship dances beyond the professional, Will finds herself in dangerous territory, and discovers she may have become the murderer's next target.
This is the first volume of the “Pentecost and Parker” series.
Borderline by Mishell Baker
A year ago, Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she’s sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales.
For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she’ll have to smooth-talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and sometimes terrifying truth behind the glamour of Tinseltown. But stronger forces than just her inner demons are sabotaging her progress, and if she fails to unravel the conspiracy behind the noble’s disappearance, not only will she be out on the streets, but the shattering of a centuries-old peace could spark an all-out war between worlds.
No pressure.
This is the first volume of the “Arcadia Project” series.
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of the other things he's making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...
This is the first volume of the “Kiss Quotient” series.
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lushthemagicdragon · 2 months
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Inspired by a conversation had today.... they have something in common.
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oliveoilcorp · 3 months
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Happy 2024! 
A new year has started so I wanted to give a quick primer to newer followers about my Patreon offerings and how you can support my ongoing comic, DARLIN’ AND HER OTHER NAMES...
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DARLIN’ AND HER OTHER NAMES is a werewolf-western-horror-romance comic set in 1881. The story follows two strangers who meet in a moment of mutual desperation and forge a vengeful partnership. The first installment, Part 1: Marta, was self-published online in March 2023. Since then, DARLIN’ has won an Ignatz Award and I’ve been bowled over by folks’ enthusiasm for the comic!
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At the end of the day, DARLIN’ is a passion project created in my free time and it relies on reader support to continue. In addition to helping me dedicate more time to DARLIN’, pledging to my Patreon includes perks! 
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For $1+ a month, you receive access to:
Weekly process posts about progress on DARLIN’ and various other projects
50% off discount code on all PDFs
For $5+ a month, you *also* receive access to:
100% off discount code on all PDFs
Weekly “Director’s Commentary” posts: I serialize Part 1 of DARLIN' a page or two at a time alongside my notes, reflections, challenges, and influences for each specific page/scene. It’s a chance to dive even deeper into the nitty gritty of my process. I’ve unlocked the very first Director’s Commentary post for the public as an example: https://www.patreon.com/posts/part-1-marta-000-87167548
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I’m excited to keep making comics independently this year. But the amount of time I’ll be able to pursue them depends largely on the support of readers, so consider pledging if you want to see more DARLIN’ (and other weird comics) from me in the future! 
And even if you aren’t able to pledge, it’s always massively helpful to share posts and tell your friends about indie work that you love, especially in our current social media nightmare. 
Thank you! Every bit truly helps. 
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racefortheironthrone · 2 months
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As a big Arthuriana fan myself and an especial fan of The Once and Future King what are your thoughts on the ways that it depicts Fascism? And I agree that the squirrel sexual harassment is a bit weird to watch, especially as the book certainly doesn't play for laughs men being sexually assaulted by women.
I think T.H White's analysis of fascism (which is a pretty bog standard horseshoe theory take) is skewed by the fact that he was an anti-modernist pre-Raphaelite type who thought that trees are awesome and cities suck, therefore feudalism must have been great.
It is an illness that a certain generation (and class) of English fantasy writers were prone to - Tolkien managed to avoid the worst of it, but it was clearly an Achilles Heel for him. This is why I think Gillen in DIE and Once & Future is a necessary corrective.
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curtvilescomic · 10 months
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I feel the following quote by Ursula Le Guin fits to comics as well as to science fiction, fantasy and horror
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But sadly it is what it is 
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phoenixyfriend · 1 year
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(The other version of this poll)
Similar to the other post but just a TOUCH different lmao
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goldieclaws · 10 months
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My first ever short story is now available on Amazon as a Kindle Book and physical Paperback!
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Summary: With Gwen being a lighthouse keeper like her father and Beatrix from a family of fisherman, both have seen it all when it comes to the sea and the objects it leaves upon the shoreline, be it a coded message in a bottle; a broken piece of metal from a long-lost ship; or even a larger-than-life tree trunk from an unknown place. But when it comes to being deliberately given a gift from the sea, that part was a different story entirely.
ABOUT THE STORY
Daughter of the Sea is a short story and concept set in modern day, where a couple is chosen to look after one of the sea's most precious possessions.
FEATURES
Book made with InDesign
Roughly 7.6k words (4 chapters)
4 spot illustrations, 3 illustrations, 1 full-page illustration
Standalone story
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You can preview the book/buy it on Amazon HERE!
It is also still available on Itchio and comes as a PDF if you'd prefer purchasing it through there. You can get it HERE!
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Reblogs forever appreciated, thank you! 💖✨
Patreon | Tw//tter | AO3 | Itchio | Commissions | Webcomic
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