#i would really appreciate your help!!!

[imagineyneyjr]

I need your help!!

I'm currently in the process of writing my Master's thesis for which I am looking for respondents. My topic is about the engagement of the female audience with the female characters of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I am genuinely interested in your opinion, there are no right or wrong answers. The survey takes no longer than 10 minutes to fill in, and I would deeply appreciate your help. Please note: you must be 18 years or older and a female to participate for the purpose of the study. By all means, you may quit at any time, and all data is anonymized and will solely be used for this thesis. Click on the link below if you're interested: 

[plulp]

hey guys. remy design

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[alaraxia]

mini me banner I made originally with the intention of using it for my ko-fi account, but I realized I don’t have the energy to keep something like that meaningfully updated, so now it’s just a general banner for my socials if I feel like it

[hellenhighwater]

How muscular are you looking for? Also what kind of lighting? Maybe me or someone has an appropriate friend/associate for a mini photo shoot?

Probably like swimmer/runner sort of build. I hate to impose on anyone, but if someone's up to the task I'd hardly refuse. I'm sure I'd come up with something to give them as thanks! I'll be able to figure something out, but good references make everything easier, so here, if anyone wants to take a shot, this is what I'm thinking:

I only need back references, so pants can stay on! Direct top lighting gives deep light/dark contrast, which is what I'm tentatively planning on.

[mokutone]

page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6 | page 7 (you are here) | page 8 | page 9 | page 10 | page 11 | page 12

image desc under the readmore

ID:

In the blue flashback, Tenzō stands with his back to a glass tank. He is narrating: "While I didn't like the lab, I wasn't scared inside it. My emotion's felt quiet." "Distant." "It was like they weren't there at all." A small red panel shows Kakashi looking down at Tenzō quietly. "...I see," he says. Beneath that, a small red panel of Tenzō where his body is now, he keeps his head turned down and away, as if ashamed. "It was only after returning to Konoha...that my body began to quake and shudder," he explains. The fourth panel shows Rabbit-Taichō telling Tenzō "You look like you're gonna be sick, Cat. Go to the hospital. Make sure that wound isn't infected." And Tenzō responds "Yessir." A Narration-box from Tenzō rests above the fifth and sixth panels. "But I couldn't stomach the thought of the hospital..." it says. The fifth panel shows Tenzō with his feet braced on the apex of a roof, as though he's inching forward, but his legs are wracked by tremors. In the sixth panel, his feet are closer together, no longer inching forward on the roof, still shaking. "I intended to stay in the barracks..." Tenzō says. In the seventh panel, Tenzō has dropped down to a crouch, reaching out as if going to brace himself with his injured arm. "Fuck," he says. He thinks to himself, body swarmed with thin white lines to indicate shuddering, "I'll just kill myself if I try to shunshin while shaking this bad."

/end ID

[thebirdandhersong]

btw in case you're wondering if, after reaching adulthood, you finally escape the horrible pain of always being picked last for sports/games: unfortunately, it does still happen, and it still hurts as much as it did when you were a kid

[thejadecount]

I’m surprised that no one has made a Marvel x Rottmnt crossover where Dr. Strange becomes Mikey’s teacher to train his magic after the movie

I mean y’all saw what Mikey’s portal shit done to him in the final act, he ain’t going to drawing for a while—he could totally parallel that whole ‘traded his craft for magic’ stuff Dr. Strange did

And the personality foil! C’mon folks the fanfics and oneshots are practically writing themselves

[epickiya722]

I am so pissed right now that I'm literally shaking.

Like... I recently posted my fic, His Role, and decided to check the bookmarks for it. And now I'm upset. I wrote that fic while I was sick and just not feeling my best, but it's a fic I am very proud of. 17k+ words that I somehow managed to write in one fic, which isn't something I often do.

Someone left this comment on a bookmark. I had to do a quick translation from French, so anyone who is more fluent in the language, if you can provide a more clear translation, I would appreciate it. But this is what I got from checking two sites. Just two, because I just... I can't... [Pictures below]

Folks, don't fucking do this to writers. How many times we have to say do not leave negative reviews like this on bookmarks? Writers can see it and honestly, it's fucking weird to bookmark a fic you don't like. It's fanfiction, yes, but damn it. A lot of us write fanfiction because it's a passion, it's something we like to do to connect with the media we enjoy.

It's no fun when people do shit like this. Don't do this!!

"... there's nothing else to read" Don't come back to this fic then. I don't care for you to read it. BLOCKED AND MUTED.

[siriuslynephilim]

you ever hangout with someone and their company is actually much worse than being alone?

[satans-knitwear]

The celebrations begin ✨

This has been a long time request 🚿

Treat me ~ Tip me

[ghost-bard]

Back to thinking about goobleck again 🧍‍♂️ he deserved way better than what he got (from both the riptide pirates AND the fandom)

[softlikethesunset12]

Romance!

Hi guys, I know it's been a long time since I posted something on here. And I have to disappoint you because I'm not posting the next part of Need Some Help? 🤪. But I'm on here because I am writing a research paper about writing romance, I have a survey about romance and romance tropes. I would really appreciate it if you could answer the survey, it will only take a one or two minutes and help me a lot!

Thank you in advance and I hope everyone is doing well! ❤️

The survey

[adozentothedawn]

WIP Friday Saturday

Got tagged by @solas-backpack-mug, thanks! Originally I intended to post a picture of my embroidery progress but you know what you can have my daily fic progress. I'm having some trouble orienting myself in my story so having some reaction to it might help.

A tankard was banged on the table in front of Waidwen with enough force to splash the Wyrthoneg both over his fingers and over the wood, filling the soft grooves of the grain with the sticky substance. Without thought he lifted his hand and licked the drink off his fingers as he mindlessly watched the liquid slowly creep across the table, soaking into the wood like he saw the dawn's rays soaking into every living being, regardless of the sun's position in the sky. The coolness of his tongue helped little against the burning. Where the wood absorbed the golden liquid, it turned a dark brown colour, soft and almost soothing. Above it sat more sparkling drops, shimmering in the firelight brightening room, almost glittering like early stars during sundown. Staring at them he could almost see his own face reflected, sprinkled over the wooden surface, first in the beads of Wyrthoneg sitting on the already soaked full spots, then in ever smaller droplets, specks sitting in the grain, so small that the grooves looked like canyons and he himself scattered between all of them, in ravines, mountains, fields without focus or reason, the only constant being an overpowering warmth.

[starlitangels]

Somebody help? Just a lil bit? I got smacked with a bad headache several hours ago and it made the Cognitive Distortions™ rear their stupid ugly heads