#help me show them that I'm not an outlier

[treemaidengeek]

who else experiences this

[sardonic-the-writer]

𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬

↳ summary: in which crowley has a cold

↳ warnings: none!

↳ song: like real people do—hozier

masterlist!

Spring was a wonderful time of year all over the world. It was when the sun peaked its head out from behind fluffy clouds and let the flowers bloom, washing away any gloom winter might have left behind.

Walkways suddenly became full of pedestrians meandering about in city's and small towns alike. Large puffy parkas were shed in favor of light jackets and shorts.

Shops were suddenly bustling with all sorts of people out and about, taking advantage of the beautiful weather to buy a coffee or new pair of pants.

But in Soho, London, one shop seemed to be an outlier.

If any of the passing foot traffic had taken a moment to peak into the glassy windows of said shop, an elegant sign reading Fell & Co hanging over their heads, they would have had the pleasure of seeing three very different people all talking to each other idly.

Even if the conversation was anything but.

"Really Aziraphale, you think he'd be a bit less chatty when sick. Peace and quite for once an all that."

A light gasp sounded from your left, prompting you to look at the angel next to you.

"That is not nice!" Aziraphale said your name full of disappointment, prompting an apologetic smile to spread across your lips.

"Sorry, mate. But I'm not wrong, am I?" You said while continuing to help him shelf books.

"Bite me." A lump of blankets behind you growled in response, a head of red hair poking out of one end.

"No, thank you, Crowley. I'll catch your cold."

It was supposed to have been a normal day. You had called and asked Aziraphale if this afternoon was a good day to pop in for a visit, only to be met with the sort of panic that could only be described as fretting.

Apparently, Crowley has never taken too well to the springtime. Who knew a demon could have allergies?

Each time he or Aziraphale attempted to miracle away the cold, it would just pop back up a few seconds later. It was as if someone had cursed him with a mild inconvenience. You wouldn't be too surprised if that was the case, actually. I mean, this is Crowley you're talking about. He's not exactly the best at making friends—even if he did manage to snag you somehow.

By the time you had arrived at the bookstore, swinging open the door as the closed signed clattered against it loudly, they had given up on any thought of magical remedies.

So here you were. Hovering over the sick demon with a concerned look. Er, well, Aziraphale was. You had opted for more of a quirked eyebrow, not willing to show how worried you were just yet. Lord, er Satan, or whoever the fuck knows Crowley wouldn't let you live that down.

"If anything Crowley—" You paused for a moment to flip the book you had been holding upside down into its rightful place before handing it off to Aziraphale, "—I'd say this is karma from all those times you yell at your plants."

"To hell with my damn plants!" He sniffled, sun glasses no longer on his face as he glared at your back.

Before you could get a word in edgewise, a sneeze sounded out from the couch. Without even looking, your knee-jerk reaction kicked in.

"God bless you."

You got two very different reactions out of that.

Aziraphale practically beamed at your words, and Crowley hissed as if physically hit, curling in on himself. It wasn't until you stopped to consider what you had just said that you realized your blunder.

"Sorry." You cringed. "Forgot about the demon stuff."

"Forgot? Remind me, angel, why do we even keep them around." Crowley spat, pulling yet another blanket onto his ever growing pile. You risked a glance back at him only to be met with slitted eyes. You simply let out a nervous laugh before scooting to a different bookshelf farther away from him. Better safe than sorry when it came to your demon friend.

"Because we like them, remember? They complimented my vest and your Bently, and then you asked if we could keep them." The angel responded. If he noticed how you choked on air at that last bit, he didn't choose to say anything.

"He said what now?" You coughed harshly at the same time Crowley groaned.

"Yeah yeah. A mistake in the heat of the moment." Was all he said before retreating further into the blanket burrito he had concocted. Somewhere in there was a quilt you were sure Aziraphale had knitted for him centuries ago, but you chose not to point out the tiny detail, instead filing that information away for later as a hidden smile played at your lips.

"As much fun socializing with you two is, I must admit you need to get some rest, Crowley. If we are to fix this problem without a miracle, the human way will have to do." Aziraphale turned to face his companion after you helped file the last pile of books away. You were quick to follow his actions.

Crowley opened his mouth as if to retort, but his eyes flickered from your face and Aziraphales for just a moment. With that he muttered something under his breath and turned over grumpily.

"Just—bugger off." His words were muffled by a dense pillow currently being smooshed to his face. You couldn't tell if it was that or something else, but his voice didn't sound as venomous as it normally did when talking to you.

"Alrighty then!" Aziraphale clapped his hands with a smile, none the wiser. "Ring if you need us, won't you?"

With that, he began to politely exit in the direction of the back of the store. Probably to go read a new series he just got in or re-read another.

You shuffled off behind the angel—only pausing at the entrance to the backroom after taking one more look back at Crowley.

Without saying a word, you took your phone out and set the volume just high enough to be heard. Setting it down on a nearby surface, you pressed play before quickly tip toeing out the room. As if that would stop the fallen angel from figuring out who left it there.

You slipped away just in time to miss Freddy Mercury's voice start-up. As well as the way Crowley smiled in spite of himself, starting to feel a little better already.

[0w0tsuki]

It's always telling that the only time when transandro bros even dain to recognize intracommunity transmisogyny, it's only when they're forced to distance themselves from the rampant transmisogynists in their community whose transmisogyny is so cartoonish it becomes undeniable. And it's only to preserve image and position themselves as the non-reactionary alternative.

They did it when one of their own sent out rapey sexual harassment copypasta anons to trans lesbians. They did this when already infamous "transmisogyny group chat"/"The TMRA Radfems warned you about" faggotwithopinions/transmascpeterwenz treated becoming mutuals with the CEO who permabanned a trans woman for no reason and followed her off-site to violate privacy data protections in order to paint her as a sex pest as Huge Get. They did this when TERFs felt comfortable with their communities transmisogyny to openly talk about how they plan to use transandro bros specifically to drive a wedge in the trans community, something trans andro bros accuse transfeminists of all the time.

And when I say it's only in these cases it is ONLY in these wildly cartoonish scenarios. Back when the "transmisogyny group chat" was still fresh news, something that usually happens when a queer transmisogynist shows their full ass happened. A bunch of TERFs who stalk these discourses because they're obsessed with trans women went into his anons to send the most vile hate they could summon while pretending to be trans women so our abusers have something they can point to to play victim. And all the transandro bros took these ANONYMOUS HATE MESSAGES sending gendered slurs/sexual harassment at FACE VALUE when they said they were coming from trans women. It got so bad that prominent transandro bro GenderKoolaid when "dissecting and analyzing" a cropped screenshot of a post by Predstrogen (you know the trans woman who was later outsted by the CEO himself) made some wild speculation about how an offhand comment about "transfems taking the piss" was a direct joke reveling in this harassment.

And there are still plenty of blatant transmisogynists that are propped up as prominent members of the transandro community because they haven't had their own "Me and CarExplosionsHammer Photomatt are besties!" moment. There's the aforementioned GenderKoolaid who routinely engaged with "critiquing" transfeminists posts out of context behind their back and alongside spacelazarwolf has promoted the kiwifarms style blog transandrophobia-archive.

They harbor loads of ex TERFs. ftmtftm who left a 31 paragraph college dissertation with proper citations carefully explaining why I'm either purposely unintellectual or actually stupid and what I was saying was radfeminism aktually when I was looking through his blog before blocking him I saw 1) him lamenting about feeling abandoned by the radfem community he was apparently raised by and 2) him sighing with fucking "transmisoginy group chat" faggotwithopinions of all people about how "these Actual Transmisogynists™ make it so hard for us Actually Nice TMRAs and we need to put an effort to come across as considerate to their experiences with them when we engage with transfems" acting like they they aren't the very problem they are complaining about.

An out Ex-TERF nothorses is responsible for cultivating the current transandro echo chamber tried to use his influence in the community he helped create to try and redefine TERF to try to allow for the label to paradoxically include trans women. After that he wrote an anti-transfeminist manifesto that "defined" Beaddelism and cited open TERF sources. And this manifesto is still constantly linked by transandro bros whenever someone outside the discourse asks what a beaddel is.

The transmisogyny is so bad in their community but simultaneously is explicitly an outlier and not representative of them. Every prominent member is transmisogynists Georg and should not be counted but only when you can prove he is unequivocally, beyond the shadow of a doubt, transmisogynist. Up until then everything he does is fine until it's not.

To transandro bros "transmisogynistic trans men" is this Mystical Other problem that can only be solved with better PR and is completely unaddressable and says nothing about their community at all. Something that they've wholly separated from themselves that's only addressed in the theoretical until they're forced to confront it because they've fostered it so much it's become too big to ignore.

Like if your truly "one of the good ones" whose "only trying to talk about specific issues trans men face" then ask yourself why you've aligned with an ideology founded directly in opposition to transfeminis?. Why do you stand with a community whose mest well regarded members are also some of the most rampant transmisogynists on this site? Why you are constantly having to do PR work to not be instantly regarded as on the transmisogynists that you're community has become known for?Why you refuse to address the transmisogyny problem so much that out and proud TERFs feel comfortable enough to walk right in and start proposing "AMAB supremacy" theory?

Like I've said before. The disgusting actions and behaviors from the community alone are enough to not regard any "theory" they put forth to excuse it.

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

Started murderbot on the plane today. Let's look back on what I screenshotted and try and remember why

Ok first screenshot. Easy mode. Wanted to pay respects to a polyamorous king and his seven children by various partners

I think here I was going to point out that the prose in this thing is just. Not particularly inspiring. Right now in my post-travel clarity the thing I've read most recently whose prose style lines up with murderbot is the animorphs books. Which is absolutely not an insult because I loved those fucking books, but I don't want books written for adult audiences to remind me of books written for elementary schoolers.

"You may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I'm a pessimist." Ugh. I'm interpreting the style in the most favorable way I can and assuming that we're more or less supposed to view murderbot as having the angsty broody personality of a sulking teen. Taking the prince of darkness out for a walk. And that were not supposed to take it too seriously

I will say I'm kind of disappointed in How human murderbot is. When I heard the premise "killer security robot who goes rogue and binge watches a bunch of tv" this isn't really what I was expecting. Obviously I am just on the first novella but rn murderbot feels indistinguishable from like a loner space merc character. Like as in the This Is A Robot stuff just isn't hitting like I wish it was.

I think it's really not helpful that we aren't introduced to any more "standard" sec units to compare murderbot too. Are they even "standard?" How much personality do secunits typically have? Are permitted to show? Not knowing that makes it impossible as the audience to actually understand what makes our main character an outlier from its peers, which is kind of a critical point of failure for characterization

But at least we know it can /j with the best of them

[in-flvx]

I still find it interesting how so much of the perception of Sirius as a character is swayed by his haughty expression.

Most metas (this is not a dog against those btw, I love Sirius metas, just want to add my own) etc I've seen go with this, his ultra love for james, and his derision towards Peter as the most prominent shows of his character, and infer meaning into every other relationship he has from that point out.

And I think these are outliers.

He looks haughty? Some people are born with resting bitch face, what of it?

And I'll discard any mention of James and Harry right now, bc these are outliers of the greatest magnitude, and looking at every relationship Sirius as extensions of his love for james imo just cheapens his bond to him.

His derision towards Peter is very reasonable, and also the most obvious outlier, and I don't think I need to explain it further. Instead I'll add snape and mundungus fletcher into the mix here, and go on to talk about the often-talked-about usage of certain descriptors within the black family towards people they don't like. As others have pointed out before me, the preferred way to insult people within this family is to insinuate uncleanliness. Walburgas portrait, kreacher and I think also Phineas nigellus use these kinds of insults on a pretty regular basis - many of which go against Sirius as well. And Sirius has adopted these insults, and uses them when he really wants to cut deep. He has many people to be angry with, is surrounded by a whole lot of poor people (for example the entire weasley clan, Remus, and mundungus fletcher), and we even see him in battle.

But he notably uses these cleanliness based insults on two specific people: Peter, and snape. What do these two men have in common? For one, obviously, they all went to hogwarts at the same time. For another, Sirius has, or had had obvious respect for both. Peter as one of his closest friends, as a person he confided in and cared for, and who he then expected to care for him in return (and we know how that turned out). And snape as a rival. As much as Sirius likes to insult snape to his face, he also never misses an opportunity to praise his intellect. Similarly to the way he praises and goads bella in his last duel.

Meanwhile, again, he purposefully surrounds himself with people, who the malfoys regularly call dirty ( the weasleys, hagrid, Remus, hermione), and is also on notably good terms with mundungus fletcher, who everyone from the order likes to call these things too. All of which Harry has described in several shades of dirt as well, tbh. And I'm saying this not in a 'oh wow, the rich boy lowers himself to the commoners' kind of way, bc to me he never gives anything close to this impression. The weasleys come closer to this kind of mindset toward any kind of marginalized person lbr.

What we do see, though, is sirius being incredibly forthcoming and caring towards literally everyone.

He has discussions with hermione about elf rights and their projections of the coming year. He obviously cares about Ron's well-being, long after he mauled him. He jokes around with the twins, and helps them with their inventions. He forgives Remus for thinking Sirius was the spy. He makes a considerable effort to be friendly with Molly after their fight. He adheres to dumbledores bs orders. (I think he told ginny about the repellant charm on the doors but don't quote me on that.) He had the most emotionally honest relationship with lily we see in the text. He cared so much about Peter that lily notified him of his emotional state as something Sirius should see to. He organizes the best Christmas he can manage to keep everyone's mind off of their worry for Arthur. He came close enough to kingsley for inside jokes to develop - jokes urgent enough to be passed to him as quickly as possible.

In my eyes Sirius Black is singular in the way he develops relationships, and in the way he cares for everyone he surrounds himself with.

Even with those he hates.

[myheartalivewrites]

(Some of) My favourite fics of 2023

2023! What a year, eh? Jesus fucking Christ.

There's no way I can start this list without making a huge caveat: unlike last year, I have NOT read all the RWRB fics that have come out in 2023, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. There's just been SO MUCH, and I have in no way kept up.

Anyway. These are my favourite things that I HAVE read. Rules (because who am I if not an extremely organised rule follower?): fic has to have been published in 2023; no more than one per author (some of you gave me real trouble here). Last year I only let myself put five fics on the list, this year I’ve been slightly more generous. Here we go:

muscle memory by @dumbpeachjuice: (E, ~30k) pining while fucking so good it makes me a little bit insane.

Going Platinum by @cricketnationrise: (E, ~20k) OMG the camboy!Alex AU I never knew I needed.

With so much of my heart (that none is left to protest) by @kiwiana-writes: (E, ~65k) Shakespearean actors goodness!

Sweetheart Grips by @orestespdf: (E, ~13k) I am a little bit in love with trans Alex.

coyote ugly series (part 1 part 2) by @smc-27: (E, ~12k) *the rules are being bent, no one look over here. I'm already screaming at myself for not choosing the tennis AU or the stripper!Henry entry* Pining that's worth its weight in gold.

Taste the Way You Bleed by @cha-melodius: (T, ~4k) *again it pains me to not go with spy bois or cheesemonger Henry* The Halloween Huh! fic that nearly ended me in the best way. So funny I could scream.

The Edge of Glory by @historicallysam (T, ~10k) fantastic post-canon exploration of: what if Alex got asked to back into politics, after they've had a kid?

a rich and complex tapestry by @everwitch-magiks (E, ~9k) Henry hosts a radio show about sex and relationships, Alex fucks his way through his bisexual crisis. Delightful.

And of course I couldn’t leave out these babies I helped birth (gross, I beta read them):

Underground by @zwiazdziarka: (T, ~4k) If you love Labyrinth (and Henry in tights, which--who doesn't!) then I've got the fic for you!

why are you googling vampires? by @daisymae-12: (E, ~14k) vampire Henry goodness starring Twilight obsessed Alex

***

As for my favourite out of my own fics, I'm gonna go for an outlier: Down by the Water, I Saw You (E, ~63k). I love all my fics, and the numbers on some of the post-August 11 fics speak for themselves, but this one has my heart. The journey from sad/angry exes to trusting each other again and getting over all the past hurts; to being able to dig into their hearts and find that love that they'd both buried but never managed to get rid of. I wrote it because it was what I wanted to read and it still kills me. Of all my fics, it's the one I miss the most.

***

Thanks to all of you who've read my stuff, everyone who’s sent a nice comment or message my way; everyone who started reading RWRB fic this year, everyone who watched the film then found the book then turned to ao3 because they needed MORE. I know the feeling. What a ride it's been.

[descenacre]

Art Tutorial (aliased brush, oil painting look)

I've been using Pikmin Echo as a springboard for myself to practice new art techniques!

I had a few people ask me how I draw backgrounds in paint dot net, so I quickly drew this image you see below!

Now, there isn't one process I use, I mostly freehand it straight from the noggin to the paper. I barely use references, and I really should use them more often!!

But this should show an outline of generally what's going on in my mind when I'm doodling a doodle :)

Step 1: Choose sky color

I personally like to use either a light blue or a light orange!

This reference uses a light orange so I'll steal it.

Step 2: block the main contrast out with a big brush

There is a foreground and a background to this scene, a clear light and dark.

It's much easier to work with a blocked out pattern! It's like the sketching equivalent in this technique.

By the way, I'm using an aliased brush because I'm a pixelart nerd (so retro 🤓☝️) and also because it makes selecting blocks of color much less messy! But trust me, it will look soft in the end :)

Step 3: Look for blocks of common color

I see big patches of blue and orange when I squint my eyes, so I plot those in!

Look at how the light comes from the top right, it illuminates the trees on one side!

Step 4: Look for hue variations in the lights

Natural colors are never going to be flat or homogeneous--theres variations everywhere!

Add in greenish, reddish, bluish and yellowish patches, and even if at first it's a little scary to stray from such bold colors, I promise, gray is essential to making a truly vivid image!

Step 5: move on to the darks

The tree trunks in the left shade looked blue to me! So I toss in some blue splotches.

Don't worry if it looks messy. You can always clean up your messes later <3

Step 6: Fine detail in the very back

Going just like a traditional painter, painting the back first is perfect because you will later paint over the back layers with the front ones, creating realistic layers of texture!

It is much easier to go back to front than the reverse.

Think about the shape design and the flow of all of the elements.

The mountains curl up and down in very specific ways, and the trees look like circles from very far away, with leafless outliers few and far between.

Step 7: let's take a break from the canvas and do homework

learning how to simplify incredibly complicated shapes is crucial!

Trees, grass, rocks, everything in nature has very complicated structure, but you can simplify them very much!

With newfound respect for the complexity of nature, start noting down the elements of your scene in more detail.

You can move your reference around and crop it so that it's easier to perfectly replicate what you wish to draw....but....

personally, I like to use the reference more for vibes and just ad lib the rest!

Study the general shapes of your reference, and apply them in new, unique ways!

I hope this tutorial was helpful for you!

Please feel free to rb this post with any art you make with this! I'll be excited to see what you create :)

Thanks for reading!

[chaifootsteps]

It's been amazing to watch Hazbin Hotel going down in flames the way it has! But there's something I thought of that worries me a little; I hope it doesn't taint this kind of opportunity for other creators in the future?

I would HATE for these companies to see what happened with Hazbin (only caring that they took a chance on Vivzie, who was a nightmare to work with, blew a giant budget and wasted years of time, and resulted in an atrocious end product), and just decide that "projects that start on the internet"/"internet creators" are poison and never want to pick them up again.

I'm not very knowledgeable in the industry myself, so I don't know if that is actually something to be worried about in the end or not. Either way, I hope it doesn't happen. I just don't want Hazbin's failure to potentially ruin opportunities for anyone else. Let the consequences stay with Hazbin, don't punish everyone else, please!!

It's...a concern. I've worried about that one myself.

I do think the success of indie shows that aren't by Vivzie is going to help offset this. Glitch and Lackadaisy are out there proving it's viable, doable, and profitable, which makes Viv look less like the norm and more like the outlier she is.

[dduane]

I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, given the previous thing about different ways people write, but I just wanted to tell you because I'm so excited: I finished the first draft of that script! I actually finished a writing thing for the first time in over a decade! I've never attempted to write a script before, and now I've finished my first first draft. My friend said that's a big deal, and it makes writing other scripts much easier when you finish your first. Is that what you've found?

Oh apparently I have a few more questions, sorry: The first time you finished a project, and you knew you were on literally the last few paragraphs or scene, or what have you, how did that feel for you? And when you were done, did you initially love writing, or did you debate ever writing again? Did you start working on something right away, or did you break for a little bit?

Sorry, I'm just so excited and proud of myself right now, and wondering what feelings might come next. I haven't been this proud of myself in I don't know how long. I mean, I know I have to finalize it, and even still, I know I'll never be able to get it made. However, for right now, I'm proud of myself! I'll probably go back to being sad I'll never get it made tomorrow though, which sucks, but it's a good night right now!

I hope you're doing well today! Sorry for the bombardment of questions.

First of all: congratulations! You've got every right to be excited. Screenwriting isn't easy or simple even at the best of times. Doing it well requires that you write in ways that can seem really counterintuitive when compared to working in prose. And it's always, ALWAYS a big deal when by completing something you break a long creative dry spell. So GOOD ON YOU! You got the job done. :)

(And now, of course, comes rewrite. The brain—yours, or someone else's—always has notes. But I'm sure you knew that.)

While I know how it is to be relieved on finishing a first script, my weird work history makes me kind of an outlier when it comes to discussing this. I went with unexpected speed from "I'm Just A First-Time Novelist, What Do I Know?" to "I'm Just A First-Time Screenwriter, What Do—WAIT WHAT??". Because the man who was soon to be my story editor on Scooby and Scrappy-Doo walked in the door one evening, having just read The Door Into Fire, and said, "Would you be interested in writing cartoons?"

It was kind of a surprising career development, but I quickly learned at that point in my life that when the Universe turns up on your doorstep with the Moon on a silver platter, you don't tell it to try next door: you say "Wait right there and I'll get a knife and fork." In the space of a given month of being walked around Hanna-Barbera for the first time, I turned in my first animation script... and then sagged in my chair on getting the phone call when my story editors told me, "That's a strong start. Now we have some notes." And all I could do was collapse with relief that I had not fucked it up.

However, this situation also left me in no position where I'd be able to debate ever writing a screenplay again... because suddenly there were a couple of very intent guys telling me "Okay, new story premise coming over to you, we need the outline by next Thursday and the script the Thursday after, you okay with that?"

(Are you kidding me? I thought. Let me get the knife and fork!)

So as I said, I'm really an outlier in this regard. The next three years of my life pretty much went as above, as Tom Swale and Duane Poole (great Thoth rest both their gentle souls) took me with them from one show to another, and kept me busy. (Thereby financing the writing of So You Want To Be A Wizard and The Wounded Sky and assorted other work.) But there's no question that each time you finish a script, each time you type FADE TO BLACK, you feel better about the whole enterprise. It doesn't precisely get easier. But it gets more familiar. And that helps. (If I have to be locked in a haunted house, I'd sooner it was one I'd played in when I was a kid than one I'd never been inside before...)

Anyway, again: congratulations. But also: Do not be too sure you'll never have it made. ...Granting you that "made" can look a lot of different ways in different times and places, and can shift under your feet without warning. But the world that depends on scripts can do very, very weird and unusual things without warning. Best to do your homework and be ready for them... and know where the knife and fork are.

Also, a side note: As you do more of this work you may well find that finishing a script leaves you with more energy, not less. I think this may be a lot more normal than we routinely allow ourselves to believe. It makes sense to me, from the psych-nurse end of things, that successful completion of a project allows the release of a lot of energy that you've been holding in reserve to help you cope if something went horribly wrong with the piece of work you just finished. Me, when I've felt that rush, I do a thing that C. J. Cherryh taught me: immediately roll another sheet of paper into the typewriter. ...Though these days, it'd be "open a new file." You don't necessarily have to do anything with that blank page or screen if you don't want to. But it's wise to be ready.

In any case: all the good luck to you (because sheer blind luck plays its part in this business, no matter how much we wish all our hard work counted for more)! ...And let us know how you get on.

[amethystfairy1]

Before I ramble, I just want to say I love your writing it gives me so much brainrot :DDD

1. Will we ever get to see Martyn and Scott's hometown? I think it'd be super cool for either(or both) of them to have to face their past directly, especially with their partner. I just love both of their characterisations so so so much yes this is an excuse to ask about their friendship

2. Out of all of the main cast, would get along the best that havent met yet/don't have a close relationship?

3. I LOVED the newest one shot of scarian and grian comforting scar IT WAS SO CUTE

4. How has Grian kept his identity of Cuteguy secret for so long? Is it just the absence of wings? Is it also just an MLB thing of "you couldn't be him, you have clean hair :3" even if it's a plothole, it's still funny to think about lmao

5. I think Scar and Scott would get along. Thats the entire question :D

6. (Besides the people with kids) which couple is most likely to impulsively adopt a child?

7. What happened to scars parents? Are his parents dead, or did they leave him?

This is completely for fuel towards mine and others brainrots :]

Hello hello! ✨

I'm so honored and happy to hear that you love my writing!

FUEL THE BRAINROT! LETS GO! 🏃‍♀️

Yes. That is all I will say on that account. 😳

I think the Scar and Joel of this AU would get along really well! They both have to deal with their own disability and despite being confident and very excessive sorts of guys in their own right, they still have issues dealing with it and with how it causes others to view them. Plus I'm sure they'd have a ton of fun ribbing Grian together. 😆

I'M SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT!

Do you mean like, how no one has realized the architecture professor Grian is Cute Guy? Well, for starts everyone in the over-city is still completely convinced that no hybrids or mutants come above bedrock. Cute Guy is this bolt from the blue, a total outlier, and it's not like he showed up at the same time Grian did. Grian didn't pick up the Cute Guy gig till after he'd gotten his job at the university and become friends with Scar (that's how he recognized him in Back Alley Heartthrob). So like...why would you think it was him? Cute Guy has enormous pink and black wings, and also two sets of wings on his head. Grian doesn't have wings on his head! You can't see them! And remember, no one in the over-city has any idea what glamor even is, much less that you can use it to conceal parts of yourself. Also the persona Grian plays up as Cute Guy is very different from his usual demeanor at the university. So I don't think it's that difficult to believe at all, that he's been able to keep it a secret. I mean, Scar has kept his secret identity intact for 20 years now using a lot of the same tricks!

Scar and Scott would get along, I agree!

I think Martyn and Ren would probably be most likely to impulsively keep an orphan they found. 😆 Ren is tenth of fourteen kids, so I'm sure he wants to have a big family of his own one day, and Martyn was an only child, so maybe he'd like the idea of having more people in his family? Who knows!

Scar doesn't know, he's been orphaned his entire life, so he's never heard anything about his parents one way or another.

I hope this helped fuel your brainrot!

Thanks for coming by! 💖

[jadagul]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Why is it harder for larger countries to have citizens with a high median level of wealth? What makes it harder for a country with the US population vs, say, Japan? I can imagine obvious challenges, but also reasons why larger countries can make their median citizen wealthier more easily. Economies of scale, more chances for innovation that can later be widely adopted, strong institutions having outsized effects. Can you help me understand the logic more?

It's not a stupid question! It's a common but incredibly counterintuitive thing that comes up in statistical comparisons. The short version is: you get more variance with small samples than with large samples.

To start off, let's point out this isn't just theoretical. According to the IMF, the twelve highest GDPs per capita are in this chart:

(If you use a different source the numbers change somewhat but not dramatically so.)

If you rank countries by population, those are rank 122, 163, 118, 134, 162.5, 95, 99, 115, 3, 191, 169, and 103.5. The US is in position 3 and the next-highest is at 95 (out of about 200).

Conversely let's look at the ten most populous nations:

When ranked by GDP per capita, those come out at ranks 73, 127, 8, 98, 138, 144, 87, 128, 56, and 71.

And notice already this looks different: these numbers are mostly in like the middle half, whereas the others were almost all in the bottom half. And that makes sense based on the theoretical argument I'm about to make.

A big country has a lot of people in it. And more than that, it has a lot of places in it. And while those places all have a bunch of stuff in common (like being part of the same country), they also have a bunch of things different from each other. So you can think of the per capita GDP of a big country as, like, averaging together the per capita GPDs of all the regions in it. (And then the per capita GDP of a region is a weighted average of the incomes of all the people in it.)

If you look at a city-state like Singapore or Hong Kong, you're "averaging" together one city. And for a small country like Ireland or Luxembourg, you're averaging one city with a small amount of hinterlands. That means that if that one city is unusually lucky, the whole country is rich.

(And if that one city is unusually unlucky, the whole country is poor. The ten least populated countries on the list that have IMF data have GDP per capita ranks of 146, 119, 95, 9, 152, 60, 106, 16, 134, 52, which are all over the map. None of them are at the very bottom, and I assume that's because cities are richer than non-cities, in general. And also maybe a city-state that's also dirt poor gets swallowed up.)

And if you look at our list of richest countries, you can really see this effect. Ireland is a tax haven for the EU, and traditionally so is San Marino. Singapore is a weirdly-managed outlier city state, as is San Marino (and Hong Kong used to be). Qatar and the UAE are all drafting off of oil revenue, and for that matter so is Norway.

And to drive the point home, let's look at the list of US metro areas by per capita GDP.

San Jose beats every country in the world hollow. San Francisco is tied with the top entries on the list. And our tenth-richest metro area would place fifth on the list of countries by per capita gdp. (Contrast Paris at €60 and Berlin at like €42k, if my quick googling is right.)

And then to drive the point home, look at the top of the list. The richest metro area in the US isn't San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles (which at 18th and $86k doesn't even show up on that list up there, but would still put it at 8th in the world); the richest metro area in the US is some place called Midland TX. It's a small town that sits in the middle of a giant oil field, and as I understand it it's basically a base camp for all the oil work out there. So it has one thing going on, and that thing is super lucrative, and distributed across relatively few people; so it gets the top spot.

And that's why the richest countries are likely to be small.

[anneapocalypse]

On Dragon Age II's Ending

The ending of Dragon Age 2 has always felt to me like the least morally ambiguous of any of the games' mage-templar decisions and frankly one of the least ambiguous "big" decisions in the series.

DA2 makes it extremely obvious that the Circle mages are about to be executed for something that absolutely none of them had any part in and no one, not even the Knight-Commander, is arguing that that isn't the case. You can feel whatever kind of way about what Anders did, and still recognize the staggering injustice of killing all the Circle mages for something that everyone, including the Knight-Commander calling for their deaths, is fully aware they did not do.

And just in case that wasn't clear, someone made a point of dropping in that bit of ambient dialogue telling us that Meredith is already trying to get clearance for the Right of Annulment before the explosion; she's just looking for an excuse. The game is pretty clear about the injustice of this situation, regardless of how many demons and blood mages there may or may not be in Kirkwall.

I'm a chronic replayer who enjoys making up new characters every time to see things I haven't seen before and I didn't have a particularly difficult time coming up with in-character, circumstantial reasons why a character might annul the Circle in DAO or recruit the templars in DAI and believe they're doing the right thing. For the former: dwarven noble who knows little about magic and believes what the Knight-Commander tells her, and chooses the wrong dialogue option with Morrigan in the party so Wynne attacks and therefore is not present in the party as an emotional anchor and a voice for the mages, and listens to Cullen when he says it's too dangerous to let any of the mages live. For the latter: non-mage human noble from a Chantry-connected family who just implicitly trusts templars, as he was raised to. Or Dalish elf who walks into Redcliffe, sees a magister stinking up the place and says "Well, the Dread Wolf take the lot of you then" and turns around and marches straight to Therinfal, conscripts the templars, disbanding the Order in the process. Just a couple of easy examples I've actually played.

But the ending of DA2 is a choice between "Yes, I will help to execute these people for something everyone knows they didn't do" or "No, I will not do that and I will help them defend themselves and escape." Of course it's possible to come up with in-character reasons to make the former choice, and I have! But it's much less of a choice a character could just stumble into, and you have to do a lot more ideological contortions for a character to do that and believe they're doing the right thing.

Yes, there are a lot of blood mages and demons in Kirkwall. While we don't get a lot of opportunities to treat blood mage NPCs with much nuance apart from Merrill as most blood mages are programmed to attack on sight (and this is likely a product of the game's tight development deadline), the game itself offers an explanation for this in the writings of the Band of Three, the Enigma of Kirkwall codex entry that you can collect throughout the story. While you have to look to find it, this history does make it clear that Kirkwall is meant to be an outlier, for reasons both political and historical (which is another post for another day). And Merrill herself, whether you agree with her viewpoints or not, does offer an important counterpoint: a character designed to be sympathetic while giving a more nuanced perspective to the player on why a mage might choose to use blood magic.

And yeah, even with the fact that the game makes you fight Orsino in the mage ending, I still think this. It's clumsily executed, yes, but Orsino going all blood magic harvester abomination is just one more example of what the game has been showing us all along: that mages (like most people) turn to extreme measures when they're backed into corners with no sense of hope, and the templars then use those extreme actions to justify further abuses of mages. I don't think it was strictly necessary (and for what it's worth, Mark Darrah agrees with that; it's a decision that was made out of concern for gameplay balance more than narrative and in hindsight he's said that he thinks it was a mistake), and I definitely think it could have been executed better, but as it stands it does fit an ongoing theme, and Orsino's actions still do not justify the murder of every other mage in the Circle.

And then there's that thing where Hawke can only receive the support of the nobility and become Viscount if they side with the templars, thereby agreeing to uphold the existing power structures in Kirkwall. It's easy to miss if you've never played through the templar ending (and also because Hawke doesn't hold the position for long and Inquisition doesn't really acknowledge that they ever did Correction: It is actually mentioned in the Champion of Kirkwall codex entry, and possibly other places as well, my memory just failed me), but to me that outcomes is absolutely inspired. It serves to highlight how deeply intertwined the nobility are with the Chantry. The nobles of Kirkwall want Meredith deposed because they feel she's overstepped her bounds by denying them a proper viscount, but they are not anti-Chantry or anti-Circle; they still want mages locked up, and they probably also remember what happened the last time Kirkwall's nobility decided to try and contest the Chantry's power in their city (see: Perrin Threnhold).

I find the templar ending genuinely interesting to play through in terms of seeing the story from that angle, and in terms of what it has to say about power structures and politics in Thedas generally and in Kirkwall in specific, which I also wrote about recently. (To say nothing of how differently it frames Varric in Inquisition when the Hawke he idolizes is the Hawke who slaughtered Kirkwall's mages to a one.) I would honestly recommend playing it at least once for lore reasons if you're into that sort of thing. But I would hardly say that you as a player come out of that ending feeling like you're playing the good guy.

And I'm not even arguing that all choices in the games should be this in-your-face. On the contrary, I don't think they all should. I like it when it's possible for a character to make a choice with unintended outcomes, or get accidentally locked into a worse choice because of previous decisions (like annulling the Circle and then being forced to kill Connor or Isolde). Those are some of my favorite kind of choices in these games. In this particular case, I do think the extreme nature of the choice is important to the story, both as the catalyst for the mage rebellion and to underscore why Anders did what he did.

So when people tell me that DA2 "both sideses" the mage-templar conflict... I respect that it's possible to feel that way about it, but I just don't see it. The game allows the player to role-play a character who might make various choices within its narrative; that is not the same thing as presenting all choices as morally equivalent in-universe, and it has never been the same thing, in any of these games.

If you're looking for one mage-templar choice that puts the injustice squarely in your face, I think the ending of DA2 is very much that.

[steampunkforever]

Dune Part 2 is once more proof that Denis Villeneuve is an incredibly calculating director. And it should be good. He's been storyboarding Dune since the 80s. Of course Zack Snyder also released a film recently that'd been his passion project since before he was making movies, and Rebel Moon sucked, so that's clearly not a metric for success, but you get my point.

Right on the heels of releasing the phenomenal Sicario, Villeneuve got the keys to Dune. This is a moonshot take the money and run opportunity. I love this type of film. One of those "They may never let me do this again" movies like Magnolia or (to a lesser extent) Apocalypse Now! that build on previous success to sucker studio funding for something you really want to do. Usually this involves jumping to it and spending as much money as possible before accounting changes its mind about sending all those blank checks, but Denis was just as calculating as ever with it.

Adapting two more scifi properties at differing scales was the right idea for this, both allowing for more time to develop Dune and for Villeneuve to find his footing with less ambiguous science fiction (considering that my friends who watched Enemy barely understood it to be about aliens). Villeneuve is calculating. His steps are measured, and I've yet to see a film of his that feels outright rushed.

I think that this is in part due to Villeneuve's understanding that he is (at least up until the release of Dune) not part of a generation of directors who get whatever they want. This generation of director has been waning for a long time, but Nolan and Tarantino really mark the last generation of directors allowed to experiment on blank checks no matter if their last film flopped. Zack Snyder is also technically ranked among them but his decade-long slump is clearly an outlier. Villeneuve has to put out solid movies to earn the right to take creative risks, and Dune has clearly been another measured step in his film career. Which is to say that Dune Part 2 is fantastic.

I have a deeply nuanced relationship with Dune screen adaptations, so do note that there is some bias here, but regardless, this is a wonderful film. Did I wish they'd stuck to their guns and shown Alia for real? Did I kind of hope they kept it to just two films instead of the projected 3+ that are sure to come? Am I still outraged that they didn't recast Sting? Of course. But when it all boils down, this film is a science fiction accomplishment that you SHOULD go see.

The set design, sound design, acting, and cinematography were all top notch. There was rarely anything in this film I did not love (read: Timothee, my archnemesis). Of particular note were Pugh, Ferguson, and Bardem's performances. Bardem's Stilgar was an absolute delight, and I found myself losing the fact that he was acting in his performance. The plot, spectacle, and inclusion of Christopher Walken all sold me on the film.

Another detail that was clear evidence of Villeneuve's extremely calculated process was Zendaya's role as Chani in Part 2. Chani (largely sidelined in the books after showing up partway) is positioned as sort of the soapbox character to remind you that colonialism is bad at predetermined intervals. And while this is certainly not a choice I would've made for the character (I prefer to do my soapboxing in different parts of the text) I can't help but find that I didn't hate Chani's direction in the film. This is in spite of the fact that I detest Soapbox characters (except for in Spike Lee films. Love you Spike Lee) and find their usage lazy. Somehow it works for me here, even if it could've been more subtly rolled into the narrative. Man I'm really reaching for nitpicks, I should go back to demanding they show me a creepy toddler Alia.

Anyway if Sting was the one fighting Timothee's Paul that twink would get stabbed to death so hard you have no idea.

[sunhazeheart]

While I understand that they had a lot of ground to cover in the show, I really wish they'd just lengthened the season so we could get move covered in the years between them. I could do this for so many characters, but one person that fascinates me is Alicent in the spaces between time skips.

For example, one thing would be thinking about what basically surrounded her in the days, weeks and months after Viserys announced that he intended to marry her. While I'm sure lots of superficial courtiers flocked to her looking to cozy up to the Queen-To-Be, but there's no way there wasn't also a lot of scorn from others, particularly other girls in court and power-hungry fathers, brothers, etc.

Before this, Alicent is of not practicular importance in court besides the fact that she is the close personal friend of the princess. Her father is Hand, yes, which garners lots of respect, but as far as I know he doesn't have much else besides the station that he's worked for. He's an unlanded second son, and with him having at least one son of his own, while the Hightowers are obviously one of the wealthiest families in Westeros, there would be limitations to her dowery and what else she brings to the table besides prestige and the general good graces of being a young pretty girl supposedly able to provide children. She's slightly removed from the main branch of the Hightower family which will continue down her cousin's line. I'm not saying she doesn't have prospects, BUT she's not exactly worth a King.

So I could see rumors quickly spreading around her about why the King chose her over a Velaryon, or another sister or daughter of a great lord. Honestly, I don't think anyone was thinking there even could be another option besides Laena. Maybe we just didn't see it, but I didn't get the impression of noble families trying to parade their women in front of him. Even with the knowledge Viserys basically has to marry again. If I'm not mistaken, up to this point, no Targaryen King or prince had married outside of the Targaryen or Velaryon families (besides Jocelyn Baratheon who was half Velaryon, and of course Maegor, but he's an outlier is several ways). So imagine the surprise of lords and ladies that young Alicent Hightower, of all people, managed to snag the King. 100% Servants and guards or other people in the Keep saw her in or entering/leaving the King's chambers. In episode 2, the second scene of them together it looks like they're sharing a meal. I would imagine rumors could swirl about her visits to the Viserys being more salacious than they were, and an interesting take could be almost like the reverse of Alicent and Larys talking about Rhaenyra years later in the gardens.

There's the cut scene of Rhaenyra appearing to scream and rage at Alicent directly after the announcement of Viserys' intent to marry her, which imo, completely understandable with the limited information and surprise that Rhaenyra was just dealt. And of course the next episodes showcases Rhaenyra's isolation from both her father and Alicent as her stepmother. But there are the stills of a scene of Rhaenyra helping Alicent dress for her royal wedding and appearing to wipe the blood from around her nails. A few different scenarios could have culminated in this happened, whether Viserys forced her to, as an attempt to reconnect the girls, or this was the first instance of Alicent reluctantly using her soon-to-be rank over Rhaenyra to force her to talk to her, or if Rhaenyra simply chose to etc etc.

But the reason why I bring this up is that in those two poor-ass quality screen caps, Rhaenyra doesn't seem overly angry or hostile. So many the girls had a slight reconciliation at that point? Maybe Alicent tried to explain to Rhaenyra that it was on her father's commands that she became close to the King? Who knows. But then things could turn back very angry and hurt on Rhaenyra's side if, lets say at the feast and celebrations after the wedding, Rhaenyra, who no longer has any friends in court and likely already began to keep to herself, were to begin to overhear the scandalous rumors that Alicent seduced Viserys and visited him in pretty finery as soon as the very night after Aemma's funeral. That could be what broke down again the tentative bridge they may have built and results in Rhaenyra rebuffing Alicent again and again like we see in Episode 3.

Also, how was Alicent when she first found out she was pregnant? She has no mother or really any female figure in her life to speak with her about such things and what to expect, besides the probably very misinformed and clinical maesters. She's very much a child forced to go through the strain and pain of pregnancy, as if the sad truth for most girls in this world. She would have witnessed time and time again Aemma's miscarriages and stillbirths, while not likely physically present at them, seeing the toil of the aftermath on her best friend and her parents would have been terrifying enough.

On top of that, no matter how much remorse and guilt Viserys expresses over what was done to Aemma, I don't think she or anyone could ever 100% believe that he would never put his desire to have children, specifically a son, over her life.

And while I picture her father putting a whole lot of pointless pressure on her for her child to be a boy, and no doubt Viserys as well, I could see her almost wanting it to be a girl. While they're apart, Alicent's personal loyalty and love I would think it still reaching out to Rhaenyra. She wants her friend back, she wants the only person that I believe ever truly loved her for her, besides maybe her own mother. I think that Alicent wouldn't want to take that last thing for Rhaenyra, which she knows how much it means to her.

I wonder how Alicent felt when Aegon was born, a boy and given the name of a conquerer. How she watched Viserys fawn and preen over his new son, while she felt disconnected by the child she never even wanted to have yet. Maybe she expects to feel the mother's love that all women are meant to feel when they first see their child, but when he's laid in her arms she just sees a screaming little babe who is just a point blank reminder of her girlhood being gone and all the different expectations being mounted on her and any child that she has. Like she says later, she'd like to be Lady Alicent, but everyone only sees her at the Queen and now as the Prince's mother.

[cy-cyborg]

I am SO close to finishing Baldur's Gate 3... I think, I've been saying that for the past 20 hours lol, but I really want to gush about Karlach! Once I've actually finished the game I'll probably make a proper post talking about her in a more structured way from a disability standpoint but I just really want to talk about her now lol.

[ID: A gif of Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3, a tall woman with red skin, one black horn, black hair and glowing orange eyes. She is covered in scars and tattoos, her chest glows and she is dancing on the spot in front of a cluttered tent./end ID]

I did not know how much my inner child needed to see someone like her on screen. Strange thing to say about a character from a game that's intro features worms crawling into your eye in hell but its true.

I have massive burn-like scars all over my my lower body, especially my legs, and while I always (mostly) saw the amputations they came with as just a part of me, I had much more negative feelings about those scars, well into my young adulthood, but especially as a teenager. It wasn't helped by the fact that while most folks had the decency to keep their comments about my visible disability... neutral-ish, the comments about my scars ranged from "you should cover those up" to "that's discusting" and young children literally crying at the sight of them. On top of that, every time a character with scars like mine was in the media, they were either the villain, used to teach others a lesson about not being mean or to teach that chatacter a lesson about how beauty is on the inside or how to love their appearance despite thier scars (that they'll be sure to tell you they think are hideous).

But karlach isn't any of those things. She's confident and literally walks around armour that show her scars by default. No one calls her gross or tells her to cover them. Her scars are never brought up as a negative at all, at least that ive seen, they're never something that detracts from her appearance. She never tries to hide them or gets insecure about them. When you romance her, there's no comment about if you're sure you can find "someone with scars like hers" attractive. Characters in the game dont find her attractive in spite of them, they just find her attractive. Full stop. They're just, there. And what's more, the fandom, for the most part, seems to agree. I have seen so many people swooning over her, and they almost never bring the scars up. People don't care, they just think she's hot! (There will always be outliers of course but they seem few and far between in my circles at least lol).

And my God, it's SO refreshing! Don't get me wrong, it's not inherently bad to have chatacters be insecure about things like scars (Wyll has a few moments of insecurity around his, and I think it's done well) but it's so nice for it to not be the central focus for once, or even really a big at all. Especially for a woman character.

I was so convinced as a teenager that no one would find me attractive because of those scars. Scars like Karlach's. I'm older now, I have worked through it all, and any lingering insecurities I had on the subject were shut down when me and my partner got together. But 15/16 year old me desperately needed to see a chatacter like Karlach, and im so happy she exists now!

[passerkirbius]

Rusty Quill Saga - 24 Hour Follow Up

Hi everyone! I appreciate all the new follows! Might actually get me posting more about stuff!

So, it's been about a day since I posted my response to the Rusty Quill article, and reading some of the tag comments I wanted to respond to a couple, again in the interests of helping those who aren't within the audio fiction community get a little context that you might not otherwise have had.

But I also wanted to put my cards on the table - why should you listen to me? Hi! My name is Lee Davis-Thalbourne, I'm Australian, and I'm one half of the Fiction Podcast Production team Passer Vulpes Productions. We're the creators of a number of fiction podcasts, including Love and Luck and Supernatural Sexuality with Dr. Seabrooke. I also have a reasonable resume of small VA roles with a lot of different podcast production teams, I have a history of theorycrafting around podcast production, and I'm currently engaged in some part-time independent research around fiction podcast production that, if people are interested, I might actually get around to finishing one day. Myself and my partner Erin were the founders of AusFicPodMakers, which was/is an informal group supporting audio fiction producers in Australia, and as part of that support, I currently curate a list of Australian Fiction Podcasts (which I encourage you to take a look at!). In terms of affiliations, PVP is not associated with any podcasting network (though a few have knocked on our door), and I'm not currently producing audio fiction right now - I have no projects on the boil, so to speak.

So, I think I can say, with some evidence, that I'm a part of the audio fiction production scene, that I care about audio fiction in general, that I might have some thoughts worth listening to about it, and that I'm a mostly disinterested party regarding this - I have no particular stake in Rusty Quill's fortunes one way or the other.

Tag Responses

Okay, so I wanted to quickly respond to a few of the tag comments that have popped up in response to yesterday's post, mainly because I feel like it's worth expanding on some of them:

#i also feel bad because i was always kinda wary on tma2#now it feels even more like a cash grab

Look - as a podcast producer, I can respect a cash grab. If you can grab that cash, I'm a strong believer in doing so, because making audio fiction without cash is kinda sucky. It's like any other big endeavour - when you get nothing out of it, it eats away at you. That's part of the reason why PVP isn't producing at the moment - We tried to scale up to multiple productions and it damn near killed us. We weren't really getting the income we needed to do more than just barely break even - we, as producers, weren't making a dime off of our podcasts, even with Patreon and crowdfunding. Rusty Quill is actually an extreme outlier regarding their ability to get cash from their audiences. How extreme? Well, before the TMA2 kickstarter, the most successful Audio Fiction crowdfunding campaign was Unseen, from the producers of Wolf 359, one of the seminal audio fiction shows of the modern audio fiction renaissance, and it hit a little over US$40,000. Which, just to note, was significantly higher than any other audio fiction crowdfund project before it - very few audio fiction crowdfund campaigns get more than around US$5,000-10,000.

So, sure, it's a cash grab. It might still be good anyway though! Don't disregard it just because they're making financially-dominated decisions.

#Adding onto this while the evidence isn't conclusive (because as many people have said it is conjecture and opinions and stuff)#and also the author's credibility is...in question

So, first things first, Newt Schottelkotte is an extremely credible journalist in the Audio Fiction space - they've broken a number of big stories, and written a lot in support of the audio fiction production scene. Wil Williams, who helped edit the piece, is also a highly respected critic and journalist within the space, while Tal Minear is a very prolific audio fiction producer of good repute. Personally, I have absolutely no concerns about their integrity or credibility - they've all done incredible work.

But it is worth noting that Audio fiction is kinda odd, in that journalists, critics and producers all pretty much come from the same group of people. The honest fact is that Audio Fiction, as a beat, has pretty much no prestige, there are (currently) no publications that are dedicated to audio fiction coverage, and the whole sector is mostly considered an afterthought to the real podcast industry. So, the few people who do create audio fiction meta-content, even if they begin as separated from the industry, don't stay separated for long - they will start making contacts with producers, they may start finding people offering cameo roles in shows, and eventually, they'll consider moving into podcast production. If your requirement for a "credible" voice within audio fiction journalism is one that has absolutely no connections with any actual production, I'm sorry but that ain't happening - the scene is too small, and people move between production and commentary so often, that "true independence" isn't a thing.

With that said, these journalists do a lot to make their affiliations visible up front, which is the other way to manage conflicts of interest within the scene - by declaring them. I'd be a lot more suspicious of a journalist that doesn't put their affiliations up front, honestly.

The Rusty Quill Response

So, I wrote yesterday that I wasn't expecting a response from Rusty Quill for a good three days - they are a group, it takes time to coordinate a response, I figured I could relax for a bit. However, Rusty Quill has already produced a response, and that alone says something - it says that a single person has dictated this response. Considering the record speed, I also doubt that it has been looked over by anyone else. Knowing these things, I find it very likely that this is Alex Newall's response specifically, speaking for Rusty Quill, rather than one that that the leadership at Rusty Quill has worked on together.

I'm not going to go through the whole thing point by point - I don't have the time, and this post is already too long for most Tumblrites to consider going through it. But on a more general level, I find it interesting that the response contains not a single link, not a single pointer towards contrary evidence. Almost certainly this is due to the timeframe - were I in RQ's position, I would be going through our paperwork to find some boilerplate contracts to provide some counter-evidence to the article, or providing some financial details to show where the money is going, but finding, redacting, and publishing these things takes time. RQ has done none of this, and this isn't necessarily a point against them, but it does mean that Rusty Quill hasn't done much more than shout "Am not!" into the audience.

To talk about one specific point, I also find it interesting that, having been attacked on the subject of crew pay rates, they talk about how their cast have very good pay rates. This might be true, I don't have the resources to fact check that, and I hope it is - actors do deserve pay. But it is worth noting that actors are on a production for very little of the time - it's the editors, sound designers, musicians, transcribers, etc who put the most time on to a production. In general, you'd expect that the crew would be getting more money than the cast, because the crew is going to be putting in more time (although, fair's fair, the vast majority of audio fiction out there doesn't do this, because the only "crew" is the producer, who is usually financing the production out of their own pocket).

Questions?

So, I figure that if I'm putting myself out there, I might as well offer the opportunity for people to pick my brain. Have a question about Audio fiction production? Want to hear my explicit comments about something someone has said? My asks are open, I'll do my best to come back and answer any asks that come my way.