#like I said it’s 100% a pay to publish

[crinkle-eyed-boo]

[reasonsforhope]

"At HarperCollins, a lot of attention and thought is given to deciding exactly what combinations of margin measurements, font, and layout feel most appropriate for the genre, and writing style.

But in a case of do-your-part environmentalism, designers at the publishing house have now standardized a series of subtle and imperceptible alterations to normal font style, layouts, and ink that have so far removed the need for 245 million book pages, totaling 5,618 trees.

Telling the story in Fast Company, representatives from HarperCollins, one of the four largest publishing houses in the world, explained that the idea first arose in Zondervan Bibles, HarperCollins’ Christian publishing division. Being that the Bible is 2,500 pages or sometimes more, saving ink and pages was not just an environmental consideration, but one of production costs.

A new typeface called NIV Comfort Print allowed Zondervan to shave 350 pages off of every Bible, which by 2017 had amounted to 100 million pages, and which, as Fast Company points out, would be four times higher than the Empire State Building if stacked.

The production and design teams then wondered how much they could save if they applied the same concepts to other genres like romance and fiction. Aside from the invention of the eBook, publishing hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and the challenge was a totally novel one for the teams—to alter all their preconceived ideas and try and find a font and typeface that resulted in fewer pages without being harder to read.

They eventually standardized 14 different combinations their tests determined were the most environmentally friendly, and which delivered an unchanged reading experience.

But the challenge didn’t stop there. Printed books, one might not know, are printed in large sheets which are then folded into sections of sixteen pages, meaning that Leah Carlson-Stanisic, associate director of design at HarperCollins, has to calculate the savings of space, words, and ultimately pages with the help of her team to fall in multiples of sixteen.

Nevertheless, they have been successful with it so far, and in the recent print run of one popular book, 1 million pages (or a number near 1 million that coincides with the 16 times tables) were saved.

“We want to make sure our big titles, by prominent authors, are using these eco-fonts,” Carlson-Stanisic said. “It adds up a little bit at a time, saving more and more trees.”"

-via Good News Network, April 4, 2024

--

Note: Great! Waiting to see this on the rest of their books and at the other big publishers!

Actually, though, it's worth noting that this may not come quickly to the other large publishers, because Harper Collins almost certainly owns that font - meaning that other publishers would have to pay HarperCollins in order to use it, on an ongoing basis.

More on publishing shit and more realistic solutions here below the cut!

What I'm hoping for and think is more likely is that this will inspire the development of open source eco-friendly fonts, which would be free for anyone to use. That would make it far more likely other publishers would adopt eco-friendly fonts.

I'm also hoping it would inspire other publishers to create similar eco-friendly fonts of their own.

Ideally, there would be a whole new landscape of (hopefully mostly open source) eco-friendly fonts. And/or to see calculations of the eco-friendliness of popular existing fonts, compared to each other.

If we could have a publicly accessible list of calculations for different fonts, including fonts designed to maximize eco-friendliness, I really do think that it would affect which fonts publishers choose to use. Here's why:

Most people in publishing are on the left (notoriously, actually) and really do care about the environment

People in publishing are plenty aware of these issues re: paper and trees, I promise

Shorter books means smaller production costs - and possibly smaller shipping costs as well, over time! So it would save them money too.

Eco-friendly fonts could also be combined with other measures for greater effect, such as bamboo paper (already in use for a lot of projects where page color/quality is more flexible) and thinner paper (aka paper with a lower weight) that uses less trees.

Don't expect books to all move to just one or two different fonts, though. Publishers and typesetters and font designers will innovate to create more options instead, though it will take longer. This is because different books really do use different fonts for various different reasons - one new font to rule them all isn't really a solution here.

"Every book is in the same font" may sound like a "whatever" deal to a lot of people, but as someone who works in publishing - trust me, it would actually make your reading experience worse, even if you could never quite put your finger on why.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This is your brain on fraud apologetics

In 1998, two Stanford students published a paper in Computer Networks entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” in which they wrote, “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

https://research.google/pubs/pub334/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The co-authors were Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, and the “large-scale hypertextual web search-engine” they were describing was their new project, which they called “Google.” They were 100% correct — prescient, even!

On Wednesday night, a friend came over to watch some TV with us. We ordered out. We got scammed. We searched for a great local Thai place we like called Kiin and clicked a sponsored link for a Wix site called “Kiinthaila.com.” We should have clicked the third link down (kiinthaiburbank.com).

We got scammed. The Wix site was a lookalike for Kiin Thai, which marked up their prices by 15% and relayed the order to our local, mom-and-pop, one-branch restaurant. The restaurant knew it, too — they called us and told us they were canceling the order, and said we could still come get our food, but we’d have to call Amex to reverse the charge.

As it turned out, the scammers double-billed us for our order. I called Amex, who advised us to call back in a couple days when the charge posted to cancel it — in other words, they were treating it as a regular customer dispute, and not a systemic, widespread fraud (there’s no way this scammer is just doing this for one restaurant).

In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor hassle, but boy, it’s haunting to watch the quarter-century old prophecy of Brin and Page coming true. Search Google for carpenters, plumbers, gas-stations, locksmiths, concert tickets, entry visas, jobs at the US Post Office or (not making this up) tech support for Google products, and the top result will be a paid ad for a scam. Sometimes it’s several of the top ads.

This kind of “intermediation” business is actually revered in business-schools. As Douglas Rushkoff has written, the modern business wisdom reveres “going meta” — not doing anything useful, but rather, creating a chokepoint between people who do useful things and people who want to pay for those things, and squatting there, collecting rent:

https://rushkoff.medium.com/going-meta-d42c6a09225e

It’s the ultimate passive income/rise and grind side-hustle: It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover a whole festering nest of creeps on Tiktok talking about how they pay Mechanical Turks to produce these lookalike sites at scale.

This mindset is so pervasive that people running companies with billions in revenue and massive hoards of venture capital run exactly the same scam. During lockdown, companies like Doordash, Grubhub and Uber Eats stood up predatory lookalike websites for local restaurants, without their consent, and played monster-in-the-middle, tricking diners into ordering through them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#man-in-the-middle

These delivery app companies were playing a classic enshittification game: first they directed surpluses to customers to lock them in (heavily discounting food), then they directed surplus to restaurants (preferential search results, free delivery, low commissions) — then, having locked in both consumers and producers, they harvested the surplus for themselves.

Today, delivery apps charge massive premiums to both eaters and restaurants, load up every order with junk fees, and clone the most successful restaurants out of ghost kitchens — shipping containers in parking lots crammed with low-waged workers cranking out orders for 15 different fake “virtual restaurants”:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/01/autophagic-buckeyes/#subsidized-autophagia

Delivery apps speedran the enshittification cycle, but Google took a slower path to get there. The company has locked in billions of users (e.g. by paying billions to be the default search on Safari and Firefox and using legal bullying to block third party Android device-makers from pre-installing browsers other than Chrome). For years, it’s been leveraging our lock-in to prey on small businesses, getting them to set up Google Business Profiles.

These profiles are supposed to help Google distinguish between real sellers and scammers. But Kiin Thai has a Google Business Profile, and searching for “kiin thai burbank” brings up a “Knowledge Panel” with the correct website address — on a page that is headed with a link to a scam website for the same business. Google, in other words, has everything it needs to flag lookalike sites and confirm them with their registered owners. It would cost Google money to do this — engineer-time to build and maintain the system, content moderator time to manually check flagged listings, and lost ad-revenue from scammers — but letting the scams flourish makes Google money, at the expense of Google users and Google business customers.

Now, Google has an answer for this: they tell merchants who are being impersonated by ad-buying scammers that all they need to do is outbid them for the top ad-spot. This is a common approach — Amazon has a $31b/year “ad business” that’s mostly its own platform sellers bidding against each other to show you fake results for your query. The first five screens of Amazon search results are 50% ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is “going meta,” so naturally, Meta is doing it too: Facebook and Instagram have announced a $12/month “verification” badge that will let you report impersonation and tweak the algorithm to make it more likely that the posts you make are shown to the people who explicitly asked to see them:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/21/23609375/meta-verified-twitter-blue-checkmark-badge-instagram-facebook

The corollary of this, of course, is that if you don’t pay, they won’t police your impersonators, and they won’t show your posts to the people who asked to see them. This is pure enshittification — the surplus from users and business customers is harvested for the benefit of the platform owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

The idea that merchants should master the platforms as a means of keeping us safe from their impersonators is a hollow joke. For one thing, the rules change all the time, as the platforms endlessly twiddle the knobs that determine what gets shown to whom:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

And they refuse to tell anyone what the rules are, because if they told you what the rules were, you’d be able to bypass them. Content moderation is the only infosec domain where “security through obscurity” doesn’t get laughed out of the room:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Worse: the one thing the platforms do hunt down and exterminate with extreme prejudice is anything that users or business-customers use to twiddle back — add-ons and plugins and jailbreaks that override their poor choices with better ones:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

As I was submitting complaints about the fake Kiin scam-site (and Amex’s handling of my fraud call) to the FTC, the California Attorney General, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and Wix, I wrote a little Twitter thread about what a gross scam this is:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1628948906657878016

The thread got more than two million reads and got picked up by Hacker News and other sites. While most of the responses evinced solidarity and frustration and recounted similar incidents in other domains, a significant plurality of the replies were scam apologetics — messages from people who wanted to explain why this wasn’t a problem after all.

The most common of these was victim-blaming: “you should have used an adblocker” or “never click the sponsored link.” Of course, I do use an ad-blocker — but this order was placed with a mobile browser, after an absentminded query into the Google search-box permanently placed on the home screen, which opens results in Chrome (where I don’t have an ad-blocker, so I can see material behind an ad-blocker-blocker), not Firefox (which does have an ad-blocker).

Now, I also have a PiHole on my home LAN, which blocks most ads even in a default browser — but earlier this day, I’d been on a public wifi network that was erroneously blocking a website (the always excellent superpunch.net) so I’d turned my wifi off, which meant the connection came over my phone’s 5G connection, bypassing the PiHole:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/28/shut-yer-pi-hole/

“Don’t click a sponsored link” — well, the irony here is that if you habitually use a browser with an ad-blocker, and you backstop it with a PiHole, you never see sponsored links, so it’s easy to miss the tiny “Sponsored” notification beside the search result. That goes double if you’re relaxing with a dinner guest on the sofa and ordering dinner while chatting.

There’s a name for this kind of security failure: the Swiss Cheese Model. We all have multiple defenses (in my case: foreknowledge of Google’s ad-scam problem, an ad-blocker in my browser, LAN-wide ad sinkholing). We also have multiple vulnerabilities (in my case: forgetting I was on 5G, being distracted by conversation, using a mobile device with a permanent insecure search bar on the homescreen, and being so accustomed to ad-blocked results that I got out of the habit of checking whether a result was an ad).

If you think you aren’t vulnerable to scams, you’re wrong — and your confidence in your invulnerability actually increases your risk. This isn’t the first time I’ve been scammed, and it won’t be the last — and every time, it’s been a Swiss Cheese failure, where all the holes in all my defenses lined up for a brief instant and left me vulnerable:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

Other apologetics: “just call the restaurant rather than using its website.” Look, I know the people who say this don’t think I have a time-machine I can use to travel back to the 1980s and retrieve a Yellow Pages, but it’s hard not to snark at them, just the same. Scammers don’t just set up fake websites for your local businesses — they staff them with fake call-centers, too. The same search that takes you to a fake website will also take you to a fake phone number.

Finally, there’s “What do you expect Google to do? They can’t possibly detect this kind of scam.” But they can. Indeed, they are better situated to discover these scams than anyone else, because they have their business profiles, with verified contact information for the merchants being impersonated. When they get an ad that seems to be for the same business but to a different website, they could interrupt the ad process to confirm it with their verified contact info.

Instead, they choose to avoid the expense, and pocket the ad revenue. If a company promises to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” I think we have the right to demand these kinds of basic countermeasures:

https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach/

The same goes for Amex: when a merchant is scamming customers, they shouldn’t treat complaints as “chargebacks” — they should treat them as reports of a crime in progress. Amex has the bird’s eye view of their transaction flow and when a customer reports a scam, they can backtrack it to see if the same scammer is doing this with other merchants — but the credit card companies make money by not chasing down fraud:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/mastercard-visa-fraud

Wix also has platform-scale analytics that they could use to detect and interdict this kind of fraud — when a scammer creates a hundred lookalike websites for restaurants and uses Wix’s merchant services to process payments for them, that could trigger human review — but it didn’t.

Where do all of these apologetics come from? Why are people so eager to leap to the defense of scammers and their adtech and fintech enablers? Why is there such an impulse to victim-blame?

I think it’s fear: in their hearts, people — especially techies — know that they, too, are vulnerable to these ripoffs, but they don’t want to admit it. They want to convince themselves that the person who got scammed made an easily avoidable mistake, and that they themselves will never make a similar mistake.

This is doubly true for readerships on tech-heavy forums like Twitter or (especially) Hacker News. These readers know just how many vulnerabilities there are — how many holes are in their Swiss cheese — and they are also overexposed to rise-and-grind/passive income rhetoric.

This produces a powerful cognitive dissonance: “If all the ‘entrepreneurs’ I worship are just laying traps for the unwary, and if I am sometimes unwary, then I’m cheering on the authors of my future enduring misery.” The only way to resolve this dissonance — short of re-evaluating your view of platform capitalism or questioning your own immunity to scams — is to blame the victim.

The median Hacker News reader has to somehow resolve the tension between “just install an adblocker” and “Chrome’s extension sandbox is a dumpster fire and it’s basically impossible to know whether any add-on you install can steal every keystroke and all your other data”:

https://mattfrisbie.substack.com/p/spy-chrome-extension

In my Twitter thread, I called this “the worst of all possible timelines.” Everything we do is mediated by gigantic, surveillant monopolists that spy on us comprehensively from asshole to appetite — but none of them, not a 20th century payment giant nor a 21st century search giant — can bestir itself to use that data to keep us safe from scams.

Next Thu (Mar 2) I'll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who's-who of European and US trustbusters. It's livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free:

https://www.brusselsconference.com/registration

On Fri (Mar 3), I'll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival:

https://elevate.at/diskurs/programm/event/e23doctorow/

[Image ID: A modified version of Hieronymus Bosch's painting 'The Conjurer,' which depicts a scam artist playing a shell-game for a group of gawking rubes. The image has been modified so that the scam artist's table has a Google logo and the pea he is triumphantly holding aloft bears the 'Sponsored' wordmark that appears alongside Google search results.]

[gothiccharmschool]

Longtime listener, first time caller. It looks like the book you published through Harper Collins will be discounted at Amazon's Kindle store tomorrow (Feb. 29). I know that's 100% a publisher thing, not an author thing. I don't know if promoting such is a good thing or not for an author. Or if it's something to be shared with a select few. Questions well above my pay grade. I simply wanted you to know that it appears it will be on sale (probably in the $2-$5 range) in the Kindle store. If you look on Today's Deals, you'll see it listed as a Kindle deal that will start at 3:00 AM EST tomorrow. Big fan of your blog. Love your advice to the Young Ones. Love your supportive and encouraging presence out here, even as you want people to remember Their History and Roots. Like I said, an FYI for you to do what you want with. Take care.

It is?! I had no idea!

Promoting that sort of thing always helps the author! Book sales are book sales, and that is always good.

Hey folks! Did you know I wrote a book? Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them is available on all major bookseller sites, and can be ordered by your favorite indie bookseller!

The book was published in 2009, so some of the content is dated; I would love to write an updated version, but that depends on if I can talk HarperCollins into it.

[chansshands]

Warm like hot chocolate

Pairing: idol!chan x fem!reader

Genre: fluff??? (I'm confused like you trust me), best friends to ???, cuddles, pecks

Author note: And I’m back babies, I have a lot of free time, sadly I have a brace on my foot so I need to rest all day on my couch, without moving, so I started writing again. I have like 9 drafts just on tumblr and a LOT more in my notes so be prepared I might publish something else this week hihihi, anyway since my birth i have this issues where I can't warm up by my self if the weather it’s not at a proper temperature, I’m in my 20s and I still struggle to warm my self up especially my arms, hands, legs and feet. That’s why i thought about writing this thing down, because I’m 100% sure that Chan is the warmest person ever, just like hot packs. not proof read I'm too tired and lazy.

As always my request are open!🩷

-✉️

I’m so insecure about my English, as I said it’s not my first language and I’m always scared to make mistakes or stuff like that, so if you find mistakes please let me know, I’ll be thankful and also my English will improve!

-✉️

Why it's so fucking cold in here?

you think

after months, you finally had the opportunity to sleep at your brother's place, his dorm actually, that he's sharing with some of his bands mates.

You get up, shivering cold, maybe with a pair of pants you could warm your self up? but you know that you can't fall asleep with pants, who sleeps with pants in 2023? exactly no one, you need something or someone to warm your self up and that's where are you going, in tired, sleepy steps.

you knock at your brother's door, opening it a little to see his figure under the blankets

"Changbin Oppa, you sleeping? I'm so cold"

you say waiting for a response, but a little snore informs you that luckily he is sleeping peacefully.

you get out, closing the door behind your back.

You knock at the door that it's in front of you, knowing that the person on the other side of the wall is awake, for sure, you knock gently, but you don't receive a response, maybe he's wearing headphones?

"Channie-oppa you awake?"

you open the door

"oh, cupcake what you doing here? is everything okay?"

he says taking his headphones off his head

"I'm freezing, why it's so cold in this house?"

you say closing the door behind you

"have you try to put a pair of pants?"

he says closing the laptop that was on his lap

"I'm just like Binnie, I can't sleep with pants on, but that's not the point. there was a fucking penguin in my room, because of the cold"

he giggles a little

"come here cupcake, I'll warm you up, but don't you try to fall asleep here"

"I wont, I promise"

you say crawling in his bed

"wait, before I get in, you have something on or I have to met little bang again?"

"right, wait. cover your eyes, and stop calling him little bang, he has feelings and he's not little, and you know it cupcake"

Of course you know it, the first time that you met him he was naked, like fully naked, you saw IT, just for a couple of seconds but you saw it, he tried to cover himself with a pillow but it was too late, you saw it and even if you know that it's NOT small (the perfect size actually) you call it 'little bang', just to piss him off.

You cover your eyes with your hands, trying to give him some privacy.

"Okay, I'm done."

he says, lifting the blankets so you can snuggle in, placing your body right next to him, head resting on his bare chest, he covers your shoulders with the blankets, his arm on your waist.

"I swear to God if you drool on me, imma ban you from my room"

"I'm not going to drool on you"

you say caressing his abs

"mhmh, liar"

he whispers

"you're so warm, you know that?"

"yeah?"

"mh, just like hot packs"

"hot packs?"

"yeah, hot packs or hot chocolate I don't know, you're just warm, and I want you in my bed every night, I'll pay you to warm me up every night, and your scent is addicting"

"addicting? what you mean?"

"I don't know, every time we cuddle the next day I need more of your cuddles and your scent stay in my t-shirt for nights."

you look at him smiling shily

"you can always come here to get your cuddles you know that right?"

"I know, but you're always working, and naked and I live away from your dorm and I can't come here every night, and-"

"I'll start wearing underwear if you want to cuddle every night"

"no more little bang for me?"

you smile at him, he try to hide a smile, but his dimples pop up anyway

"and again stop calling him little, he's not little"

"mhmh, whatever you say"

you smile

"Channie?"

"mh?"

"can you date someone at the moment?"

"what do you mean?"

he says looking at you

"it's a difficult question for you? can you date someone, you know with the dating ban and everything"

"uhm, yes. It was just for two years after the debut so yeah, I can date whoever I want"

"good, so we can go out right?"

you look at him smiling

"yes...are you asking me on a date?"

"I mean, If you want to yes, I can go back to the penguin in my room if you don't want to"

"nono, i want to-i-yes"

he stutters shily

"yes, I want to go on a date with you, but a real date, in a restaurant, with a nice dress and high heels"

"you mean both of us in a dress and high heels or you can wear that beautiful black coat and a white shirt"

"I'll wear the dress of course"

both of you giggles

"well, thanks Channie"

"for what?"

he asks

"giving the honor to come on a date with me"

"the honor? y/n I wanted to ask you to come on a date for months, I even asked permission to your brother"

"you ask permission to Changbin? For me?"

"yes, is that weird?"

"fuck no"

you say kissing his lips

"i-i'm sorry, I wasn't thinking-i-i fuck sorry I-emh I have to go"

you say trying to escape from his arms

"ah ah, where are you going?"

"setting my self on fire because I kissed my brothers best friend after I asked him for a date?"

"shut up y/n"

"but-"

"shut up, please"

he says kissing you, taking your face between his hands

"you know how long I have waited for this?"

you say in his lips

"yeah, since the first time that you see me, your brother told me about the little crush that you have on me"

he says looking at you

"see, he made a mistake"

"what you mean?"

he asks

"my crush for you it's not little, it's huge actually. You're in my mind most time of the day and the night, especially at night, and this lips? - you say touching his lips- I have dreamed about them for years Chan, so pink, and plumped and kissable, I knew that you were a good kisser"

"really?"

"fuck yes"

you kiss him one more time

"wanna know the other things that I'm good at? they involved little bang"

"don't talk, show me"

Tags: the one and only @paboswriting (I miss Mr Bang)

[redrose10]

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I’m just tired and I don’t have a lot of down time any more so it’s been hard to get anything done.

And to be 100% honest I just haven’t been feeling The Interlude Inn fic I’ve been working on. It’s not going the way I had envisioned so I’m lacking the motivation to continue writing it. I do plan to finish it eventually.

I have been working on something new though that I should be posting soon. I’ve been reading a lot of hybrid fics lately (send recs please) so I’ve been playing with this idea.

It’s a Yoongi black cat hybrid story. I’m going to publish the entire thing in one post (if Tumblr doesn’t freak out) that way I don’t have to worry about chapters and posting updates. I’ll post a small teaser below the cut.

Thank you for everyone’s patience and to those that have reached out I really appreciate you!

Teaser Below for new Yoongi Hybrid Fic

Warning-Teaser contains mentions of violence, guns, assault

“Just thought I’d stop by. Maybe we could go to that diner on Main. Like old times.”, he smiled.

You don’t know if it was the warnings or what, but this definitely didn’t feel like all the old times when Jungkook would show up at your door in the middle of the night wanting to go get chocolate chip pancakes with you while you both told corny jokes and laughed until the waitress finally had to kick you guys out. This felt darker, sinister even. Only made worse when you noticed the piece of black metal clinging to his hip that he tried to hide with his leather jacket. Jungkook had always been against violence especially anything that included weapons. You remembered when he first started training for the agency and had to learn how to assemble and use a gun. He despised it, almost quitting because of it, but he knew it was for the better of the hybrid community. If he really had quit the agency like Namjoon said then he would’ve had to turn in all of his weapons so the fact that he had one on him made your uneasiness all that more prominent.

“Yeah let me go grab my purse!”, you exclaimed trying to get away from him now realizing something was up. He grabbed your hand stopping you from going any further, “No need Y/N. I’ll pay.”

“Oh well at least let me go get dressed. I don’t want to go out looking like such a slob.”, you chuckled quickly bolting up the stairs before he could stop you again.

In your room with the door closed you frantically searched for your phone wanting to call Namjoon or the police or anyone for help.

Finding it lying on the floor you grabbed it quickly searching your contacts. In your frazzled state you failed to hear anyone creep up behind you until it was too late and you felt the cold metal against the warmth of your forehead.

A strong arm pulling you close against a body much bigger than yours.

“Y/N, put the phone down. You don’t want to do that.”, Jungkook growled in your ear.

“Why are you doing this?”, you asked slowly tossing your phone on the bed. “You were against abuse towards hybrids just like me and Namjoon. Now you work with the worst in the business?”, you questioned him.

“Look, I really don’t want to have to hurt you. I still care about you Y/N. That’s the only reason I didn’t just kill you the other night and take Yoongi then. Tell me where he is and I’ll let you go.”

You shook your head, “I don’t know. They took him this morning.”

You could hear him scoff as he pushed the tip of the gun against your forehead a little harder making you flinch in fear.

“Y/N, I won’t ask again. Where did they take Yoongi?”, he shouted.

“A shelter in North Provence. That’s all they told me.”, you spit out.

You cried tears of relief when you felt him pull the gun away before throwing you down on the ground.

“Thanks Love.”, was all he said before sprinting out of your home.

[centrally-unplanned]

"Suicide in protest" is not self-evidently the result of being "mentally deranged" if you believe your suicide may inspire others to protest or to support your cause.You may be wrong about that belief, but being incorrect is not the same as being deranged. This is what I wanted to distinguish in my exchange with Summer. It's true that any single act of protest is unlikely to yield major results, but that's true of any kind of protest. It doesn't follow that protest is always an irrational act.

I will respond to all your asks on this one, as I think its form of goose chase logic. You can try to construct some intricate chain about how this or that might be some logical act, and in the platonic ideal universe that is true. I was quite consistent (its tumblr, I wasn't publishing a paper so maybe not everywhere) on how its almost certain, its not some 100% thing, its not logically impossible.

But I am allowed to be a human being using my eyes observing reality. And that logic chain is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if "superhero movies valorize last stands" or w/e, because mentally well people *don't* watch those and then suicide themselves for arbitrary political causes. We in fact have a long track record of people who do these kinds of things. You mention in the other ask Christian martyr types, and we have those in the modern era, you don't need to go back to old bible stories. You know them as people like abortion clinic bombers! And they are mentally unwell pretty much every time, because in real life that is the precondition for someone doing this kind of thing if they are from this kind of social context. Fortunately Aaron was more moral/not quite as unwell as those who drag others down with them, but its the same state of mind, the same social phenomenon.

Personally I think that is this was someone burning themselves alive protesting the injustice of Trump having the election stolen from him in 2020 no one would be debating the mental state of that person here, but with the political poles flipped suddenly its heroism; but I wont put that on you, that would be unfair, you haven't said that. But for the wider discourse its almost certainly true.

Again there are exceptions out there, rare but it happens. But this isn't some abstract conversation. He was almost certainly mentally unwell, the evidence we have *already* suggests that, and while we might never get more evidence because that isn't how reality works if we do all the smart money suggest it will show more. Because sociology is real, humans aren't snowflakes.

I do admit that there is a strain in US/western culture that baits the mentally unhealthy into extremist behavior that, for the most vulnerable, can spiral from performative politicking to things like actual violence or self-harm. I am happy to admit that the line between "mental health" and "sociological phenomenon" is blurry here. But in this debate neither side of that coin is paying the bills of the "hero" stance, so I don't think its that relevant; I don't object if someone thinks its more the other side of that coin.

(If it helps by the way, I don't believe the rare odds are like 0.1% or anything, humans are very diverse. My strident tone is matching the confidence (with no evidence) that so many were trumpeting that this is an act of brave heroism that should be celebrate. I don't apologize for my tone, I think those statements are quite awful and should be met with strident condemnation if one is so inclined. But my stridency is not a function of the odds assessment or w/e)

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (January 14-20, 2024)

Ultraman Blazar's finale aired on Friday. It was a solid capper to what's easily the best entry in the Ultra Series since I was an undergrad, full of heart and pyrotechnics. There were a few major loose ends—Captain Gento is better at keeping secrets than most hosts—which I'm hoping the movie, due in late February, will address. If you're looking for a place to start with the long-running franchise, it would be one of my first recommendations. Great effects, great cast, tons of new kaiju, and a blend of novelty (lots of focus on the tensions between the defense team and the larger monster-fighting organization; a host who's in charge of said defense team) and returning to form (Blazar yowls plenty but is an Ultra of few words; the power-ups and goofy weapons are kept to a minimum). And even if you don't want to commit to a whole show, episode 22, focusing on a hapless salesman of kaiju insurance, is a must-see for any fan of the genre. There seem to be no worlds left to conquer at Tsuburaya for lead director Kiyotaka Taguchi, so as I've been saying since around 2015: Toho, are you paying attention?

Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, the regraded black and white version of Godzilla Minus One, is coming to North American theaters for one week starting January 26. Toho's yanking both versions from theaters after February 1—puzzling considering that the film is likely going to be nominated for the Best Visual Effects Oscar tomorrow. Takashi Yamazaki led a Godzilla delegation to the Academy's visual effects "bakeoff", in which voters watch highlights from the ten shortlisted films and their VFX teams explain their work. IndieWire reports that Yamazaki's presentation drew the most applause, describing Minus One as the "potential frontrunner." The Hollywood Reporter likes its chances too. Nominations will be announced starting at 8:30 AM EST. The Creator seems to be its biggest competition.

Godzilla Minus One also recently cleared $50 million at the U.S. box office, in the process passing the first Demon Slayer as the highest-grossing Japanese-language film ever released in the U.S. Some outlets are reporting that it's the highest-grossing Japanese film ever released here, which isn't accurate; the English-dubbed Pokémon: The First Movie made almost $86 million back in 1999. (And I think it's plausible that something like Rodan or Godzilla vs. Megalon would be the champ if you figured out how much they grossed and adjusted for inflation.)

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #4 brought Godzilla and Tiamat to Atlantis, forcing Aquaman to release the Kraken to defend his city. Incredibly, this is the third Kraken associated with the Monsterverse, after Na Kika (called Kraken when it was introduced in the King of the Monsters novelization) and the main antagonist of the Skull Island cartoon. I'm guessing it's going to have a shorter lifespan than either of them though.

In other Godzilla comic news, IDW will be putting out another intriguing one-shot in May, titled Godzilla: Mechagodzilla 50th Anniversary. Past comics from the publisher have included multiple Mechagodzilla models, but this one seems to be going above and beyond. Rich Douek is writing; Andrew Lee Griffith is illustrating. The logline:

For 50 years, the King of the Monsters, Godzilla, has gone toe to toe with its robotic doppelgänger, Mechagodzilla! As an intrepid reporter profiles the history of Mechagodzilla and its creator before the launch of the newest model, he finds himself entangled in a much deeper conspiracy. A decades-spanning adventure celebrating the mechanical monster's milestone!

One of master kaiju illustrator Shinji Nishikawa's books will receive an English translation courtesy of Titan Books. Awkwardly titled Godzilla: The Encyclopedia of Godzilla, the Japanese edition included over 100 full-bodied illustrations of various Godzilla series kaiju and analyses of their designs (alongside plenty of Nishikawa's trademark chibis). I'm sold, suffice to say.

Ryo Momota, director of the short tokusatsu film Revive! Smile Rock Giant God, has put the whole thing on YouTube with English subtitles for your amusement. It posits that a real rock formation outside of Tamano City will come to life to help its citizens in their hour of need. Very low-budget.

Kaiju Brooklyn is a one-day con that began filling a longtime void for East Coast kaiju fans last year. Here's the first major piece of news about their June 1 event: they'll be screening The Return of Godzilla outdoors at day's end. Consider me highly tempted.

Kaiju United has a new, wide-ranging interview with Barry Goldberg, webmaster of the legendary Barry's Temple of Godzilla. That fan site was my first window into the wider world of Godzilla in the early 2000s, and it's only been updated a few times since, so I was pretty interested to read how its creator was doing. Don't get your hopes up for a revival: he's still a Godzilla fan (loved Minus One, Shin not so much), but has moved on to other things. Great insights from a Big Name Fan who stayed humble.

[barbwritesstuff]

I remember reading how much choice script (or steam??) Took off the profits u made from blood moon. It was an astronomical amount tbh. With that in mind, would you recommend choice script or itch.io for new writers?

It very much depends on what you, as a writer and game developer, are hoping to achieve. There are downsides to writing with choicescript, but there are also benefits. Ditto with Steam and itch.io. I think it's important to weigh up all the options and make your own choice based on your goals.

Breaking it down.

Choicescript is (in my opinion) the easiest coding language out when it comes to making interactive fiction. You really don't need any coding skills to be able to make a game with choicescript, which was why I used it to write Blood Moon. I had zero coding experience back in 2020 and would not have been able to make a game with Twine or Ren'py at the time.

However, choicescript is not an open source language, which means, if you want to make money off your game, you have to publish it with Choice of Games or one of their imprints (Heart's Choice or Hosted Games).

They will take 75% of royalties, which is steep, but they also have a pretty dedicated audience which you probably won't reach if you don't publish through them.

And I think those numbers are significant. My independent games, despite being pay-what-you-want, usually only get a few hundred downloads. My choicescript game has over ten thousand. 25% of $70,000 is better than 95% of $200.

Steam vs itch.io is a very similar situation.

Steam has an upload fee of $100 and takes 30% of revenue from games, but Steam also gets more than 10x the traffic than itch.io. So, while itch.io only charges a small amount in processing fees, you're probably going to get more sales from Steam.

All that said, I am bad at marketing. I also struggle with spelling, so need extra help editing and proofreading, and am still very much a novice when it comes to coding. I also do not have the money to pay for much out of pocket. I get a lot of value from working with publishers like Choice of Games because I get that extra help and support. That might not be true for you.

I've seen some independent game developers create really dedicated audiences, craft amazing games, and market themselves really well. They regularly get thousands of downloads on their games. For them, publishing with an open source language like Twine, and doing so on a more independent friendly platform like itch.io, is 100% worth it.

Doing so also gives you more creative freedom, as choicescript is very limited it what it can do.

Ultimately, it's a choice, and the right choice is going to change depending on the individual, their needs, and their goals. I'm happy to talk about this more and answer questions, because I think writers should help each other, and the best way we can do that is openly sharing information.

Hope that all makes sense. Sorry it was so long. 💙

[jermasubtitledofficial]

Hi everyone, I'm the official subtitle editor for 2ndJerma and Jerma Stream Archive. I've been working to make Jerma985's videos more accessible through closed captions and subtitles. Jerma985 videos are subtitled regularly. You can view the definitive playlist of them here:

I also provide play-by-play updates on Twitter (@JermaSubtitled) to keep you informed on when and which videos have captions finalized and published.

Subtitling is a labor-intensive task that requires a lot of time and effort, but it's worth it to make sure that everyone can enjoy Jerma's content. However, I don't receive official compensation for my work. (writing, reviewing and editing captions) Without official pay, it can be difficult to justify the time I put into managing subtitles. That's why I'm reaching out to the community for support.

If you appreciate the effort I put into providing subtitles, please consider supporting me on Patreon. You can join for as low as $3/month, and all proceeds go towards continuing to make Jerma's videos accessible. If you'd like to give a one-time tip instead, you can do so here. Every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated. Your funding is 100% responsible for keeping Jerma985 subtitles running.

I understand that not everyone is in a position to contribute financially, and that's okay! Just spreading the word and letting others know that these subtitles exist and are available is a huge help. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. With your help, we can do a great service for YouTube accessibility.

Up next, a recap of what happened in March 2023:

I update interested parties each month about what's been added, and I'll start posting them here if there's sufficient interest, plus any additional musings. So here's the recap from March:

The community has provided so many submissions I'm nearly overwhelmed! I have a lot to review. Every caption will be published, it's just a matter of time. Those not present have been added to the queue.

First, overlap from February is SCORN by me, Erasmus Magnus. It highlights an interesting conundrum of subtitling: how to intuitively portray something said for a deaf/HOH audience, in this case a filtered voice. Feedback I received including that of @maplecaster led to the final result, and I think it works tremendously well.

Second, we have The Short Sniper by community regular, kitpigeon. Short and sweet, high-quality subs for one of Jerma's low-profile videos. Great job.

Next, we have Receding Randy transcribed by @maplecaster. This was some fine stuff. I'm embarrassed how long it took me to sync it, but that's only because I'm something of a perfectionist. I try to limit the time sink, but I want the best for the subtitles, and it only makes sense to polish the time to be as good as the text content.

After that, we have an absolute classic in the form of Grab that Grotto 5—no relation to Grotto Beasts—by @graysaregay. Well done on this. I did some executive editing for some tricky stuff like the text-to-speech voice. I'm really glad this ol' classic nearing a million has captions now.

And finally, italoplumber has provided a German translation of The Max Cow Capacity Compulsion. Never would've guessed he was popular in DACH countries, but I suppose it makes sense. It's in his name. Willkommen in Jermany.

And that's it! If you want to see more about official Jerma985 subtitles, including musings and related information, consider following! And again, play-by-play updates can be found on Twitter at @JermaSubtitled.

[saezurumurmurs]

A BL Platform For Everyone

NB: Please reblog this for visibility!

A little over two years ago, me and my BL crew were in our little chat sharing recommendations. 

Cat had an impressive spread sheet, Marcie and I had iCloud Notes, and it was pretty much chaos.

I looked at it and said out loud, "There has to be a better way for us to keep track of our reads and share recommendations. There has to be right?"

Cat said she wished someone would build a BL app with everything already there. Me, a developer of almost thirty years, paused while a floodlight (not a light bulb) went off in my head.

“Well I could maybe build one… cause like, I build stuff. How would that be?”

By the end of the conversation Cat had invited me to build an app for BL. 

Four weeks later, in late February of 2022, digitaljuicy.com was online. 

In the last couple of years, I’ve been listening to the fandom, paying attention to feedback, poured over analytics, read your responses to the Reader’s Survey and continued to craft a platform with all this in mind.

What I have been building is 100% for us... there is nothing but BL and it is an attempt to encompass ALL of BL. Not just the bits and pieces.

But for two years I've been struggling. Struggling in many ways, but specifically to get what I wanted out of the platform. I tried and failed so many times.

In September of 2022 I tried to raise venture capital to build the platform I wanted for us. I pitched it to accelerators and true blue venture capital.

Juicy is what is called 'pre-seed'. Which means were still so new and evolving, under-resourced and while there was interest, there was no joy. No funding was raised.

In December 2023, I realised it was time to rethink Juicy. i have been on the deepest dive for months rebuilding Juicy from the ground up and preparing the framework for the mobile app.

I’ve built something I want to use… and wild, I’m building it and using it as a fan at the same time. I'm at the point where it's impossible not to want to share.

And what kind of platform do I mean? At its most basic level:

You can track your reads, watches and plays

You can review and recommend the titles to the community, your friends, strangers on Twitter, your friend you're trying to corrupt outside the fandom. Your poison.

Timelines for you, for titles, for episodes, chapters… just about everything. I mean everything: The creators, the publishers, the studios, the actors... you can leave reviews and status posts on EVERYTHING. No algorithms, no force feeding... just discovery, recommendations and honest reviews by this community about our community and the industry we feed.

Collections! Lists of stuff you're reading, dropped, want to read, want to buy, love or hate, all pretty and organised and shareable..

A growing database resource of titles, tagged up to its eyeballs with a minutiae of data.. with reading an streaming links and anything else we find that we think is relevant.

But it is also a lot more than this.

I wanted it to be more than what it was. I want to turn Juicy into a mobile app, add some more functionality and more specifically, platform all of BL for its non-Asian fandom.

We get left out of so much, I feel like we need our own thing. 

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I was tired of being banned on social media for sharing content. How you gonna ban me for saying a 2D fictional character needs to be shot with shite and strung with cobweb? But they did… and I know it’s not just me.

What about the creators? How do they interface with the non-Japanese or non-Korean fandoms? On which misogynistic hell site?

What about the publishers and merchandisers? What about the little Etsy sellers? Why does BL have to hidden away in the databases of mangaupdates, anisearch and anilist? Why does every single manga tracker out there seem to have pitiful listings for BL? 

Is it because we’re a female or queer audience? 

Look at this lil video I made:

Either way, I’ve long felt it’s time for us to do our own thing. So I’ve been building it. Pixel by pixel. Feature by feature on my own.

Juicy has been a small chat group, but I’m the only developer. We’ve always been clear about what we wanted to build: A platform for the fandom, the creators, the publishers, the merchandisers… my goal is a one-stop platform for BL and I am damn close to presenting this new iteration.

This was and remains the core of what I’m building: The largest English platform for BL on the planet. The functionality is one thing, but building a database like that is not a one-person job.

So now I need your help.

First to keep the servers online, so I can continue to build and develop and finally, finally release the mobile app. I can't tell you how much I want that.

I’m close to pushing the new Juicy 3.0 out, and I’m very in love with the work I’ve done since December. It’s a new look, and it works 1000 times better than the previous iterations of Juicy.

I just have hit a wall financially, and need your help and support to get it over the line.

Juicy's ass is fat and I been carrying her mostly alone for two solid years. 

I’m going to launch a Kickstarter for this project in a bit so I can hire another developer  to help with the trickier bits and fine tune the mobile app, but for now, I felt a Patreon would at least help us keep the servers up and maybe, just maybe allow us to afford a few crucial bits that will elevate your experience as a user.

And because I’m a developer, and I can do some pretty kinky shit with APIs and such, if you support this Patreon campaign, you will get some nice feature perks on the platform automagically. You won’t have to pay again to access these perks in-app later.

As many perks as I can cook up anyway, not the least of which will be access to some of the nicer functions and features I’ve already built into the platform.

When the mobile app launches, you will get it first and for free! Plus we’ve been talking about a lot of other ways we can make the platform fun beyond what I've done already.

I plan to monetise the platform in various ways, but in a profit sharing model. You contribute to the database, you contribute content, you get a share of whatever the platform makes. This is already built into the system. This will be open to anyone willing, but to Patrons first.

Finally, I'm limiting the number of people who can subscribe via Patreon to 1000 people. Once we hit that number, the rolls will be closed to new membership, and everyone directed to the platform to pay for any services or merchandise.

My goal for this group of Patrons is that you become an exclusive and tightly knit inner circle.

My hope is that you will help me actively shape what Juicy will become. Your votes and say will carry weight. Your feature requests considered and if possible implemented first.

You will get access to exclusive merchandise, exclusive giveaways and promos (like free stuff), and exclusive programming from the team.

With your help we will produce an exclusive podcast for Patrons only discussing all things BL and Juicy (honestly our conversations are generally wild and hilarious... it will be a rollick for sure), along with other content for Patrons only. We've even planned watch parties and other fun shit... I swear, we want you all to be our greatest ambassadors so we are planning as many treats as we can.

Your access on the platform will be specific to your Patreon subscription and your treatment will be VIP for the life of your subscription.

Finally, the way my auADHD are set up, I have no interest in the dramas of the BL fandom, so this is never going to be about gatekeeping access to anything. It’s about making more access possible. You can help bring us all together and make us stronger as a group.

So do you think Digital Juicy sounds like something you’d like in on?

Okute Sea

Saezuru Murmurs

[falloutjuli]

After a long debate with myself slelf I gave up and said “Fuck it, we publishing this now”. I felt like something was missing but I cannot for the life of me find out what. Anyways, Im hella down for a potential second part, so lemme know if yall would be interested in it, I‘d make the reader afab in that one tho.

Btw unless specified, I normally try to keep the reader gender neutral.

----------------------

NSFW Johnny x Reader - Talk dirty to me

Wordcount: roughly 2.2k

Short summary: Johnny discovers some mosquito bites on his companion and they get talking about some naughty stuff.

Warnings: Masturbation, Blowjob, Johnnys bug bite fetish, dirty talking, reader really likes some jockey from Kentucky (whoever that may be lmao)

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

-----------------------

A book, campfire, a starry night sky, and two good friends. What more could one ask for? You certainly couldn't as you were comfortably laying down on your sleeping bag, skimming the pages of the book you picked up in the last town. It was just a little something to keep you busy during breaks.

"Whatcha readin'?" Johnny asked next to you, leaning over a little. You were laying on your stomach, not bothering to look over. "Romance novel. It's quite crappy though." You replied and Gyro let out his signature Nyo-ho-ho.

"Romance? Never took you for that kind of person." He said and sat down on his sleeping place. "I do not actually read it normally; I just took whatever I found in the store. But man, it's so bad. I feel sorry for anyone who got this with the genuine intention of enjoying it." You replied and closed the book. You'd make sure to grab a new one in the next town.

Gyro and Johnny just laughed before falling into a casual conversation that you just listened to. It was a nice relaxing Time in-between the heated race where you had to focus 100%. You sat up to get rid of your coat. It was more than warm enough, especially with the fire nearby, so you tossed it aside before laying back down. Your head found place on your crossed arms to rest and relax as you thought about which paths to take tomorrow.

Gyro and Johnny had stopped talking and silence lingered around the little camp. Your eyes looked up and saw Gyro laying down too, his signature hat placed onto his face. Looking over to you right you saw Johnny staring intensely at you, a slight blush on his cheeks.

"Johnny?" Once he heard his name spoken, he prayed his eyes away. "Yeah?" "Why were you staring at me?" Johnny hesitated, his head looking from left to right. "Eh, you got a mosquito bite." He pointed out, his finger pointing at your arm. You turned to have a look at it and sure enough, four bites, varying in sizes. "Ah shit, they got me through the coat." You cursed, not knowing which effect these insignificant bites had on your blond friend.

He coughed, still looking incredibly flustered. You laid your head back down on your arms, enjoying the rest and not paying much attention to Johnny's weird behavior. You only noticed something was off when his eyes constantly went to your arm throughout the next half an hour.

He didn't know you watched him through your hair that nicely covered your face. Was it maybe worry, that you might have gotten an infection? Mosquitos did carry diseases so it could explain his weird behavior. But that theory was out of the window when he hesitantly extended his arm to have his fingers brush over the bites. As soon as his fingers touched your skin, you felt incredibly hot, unsure what to do.

His expression seemed pained almost, as he was biting his lip, his eyes squinting. "Johnny?" You called out, feeling a little weirded out as you weren't sure how to interpret his doing. Never in your life have you seen someone turn around so fast, desperately trying to pretend that didn't happen.

"Johnny, I know you're awake."

"I'm not."

"Sure." You replied sarcastically and waited but he wasn't going to explain himself. You came closer, poking him in his side.

"Johnnnyyy. Explain yourself. I'm not mad or anything, I just wanna know whyyy." You whined, your poking continuing before he grabbed your hand and shushed you. He arched his back, checking on Gyro who was still soundly sleeping, not noticing the commotion.

"Okay. But don't tell any soul! I will shoot you if you dare to tell anyone!" He threatened, aiming his finger at you. "Promise." You said and sat cross legged. Johnny propped himself up with his arms, his face looking away as he hesitantly spoke.

"Well I... This is really embarrassing but... I have a bug bite fetish." You blinked a couple of times. "A. what." "B-Bug bite fetish." You nodded slowly, trying to process.

"So you find my mosquito bites hot?" Johnny let himself fall back onto his back, his hands coming up to cover his face. "Shut up." He said, as you chuckled slightly. "Nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone got their fantasies or fetishes." "Even you?" He moved his hands slightly to peer at you from under his beanie he had pulled down.

"Like I said everyone. I bet even Gyro does." You laughed and looked over to the Italian man.

"T-then tell me one of yours! That'd only make it fair!" You waited for a moment, pretending to think about it while scratching your chin. "Mhm, fine, for fairness after all." You shrugged, making Johnny finally remove his hands from his flustered face.

"I have this fantasy about riding." Johnny looked at you dumbfounded. "Riding? You mean as in horse riding?" You shook your head. Scooting even closer to him, you leaned down to his face. Your breath tickled his ear, which made the blond shudder.

"No, I really wanna ride this one genius jockey from Kentucky." Johnny’s eyes widened, he swallowed harshly, trying to get rid of the sudden feeling of suffocating from embarrassment.

"Do you?" He finally spoke, hearing you chuckle as soon as he said that. "Yeah. I wanna see his face as I show him I don't only ride horses. I wanna hear him say my name as I choke on his dick. I wanna show him what I can give him, shower him in praise as he marks me as his. God I really have a thing for that man." With that you drew back, looking at him.

His face was covered in a huge blush, his fingers fiddled with one another on his chest, the effect your words had clearly visible by the way his pants bulged. "Night Johnny!" You happily declared, content with your work, getting back on your bag to lay down and rest, a big smile stretched across your face.

"H-Hey!" He called out desperately, almost too loud before he remembered he wouldn't want Gyro to wake up to this. "You can't just go to sleep now!" His hand shook your shoulder as your back was facing towards him. The way he reacted to all of this had you giddy.

"I can't? I thought we were just talking about fantasies! And I told you mine, so it's all said and done." You toyed with him, growing amused by how desperate he was to get a reaction from you. "Aw Darlin', come on, don't leave me hanging like that!" You bit your lip. Damn, that accent had you weak. That damn jockey from Kentucky.

"Well... I guess it'd be rude to get you all worked up like that. But i will need something from ya." Johnny stared at you impatiently, only wanting to hear your demand.

"Beg." You stated dryly, smirking when he shyly looked away trying to hide his reddening face.

"Please. Please help me get some relieve." You laughed and presented him the bitten shoulder. You looked at him through half lidded eyes as you spoke. "You sound pretty like that. I might need that incorporated in my own fantasies." "How dirty." "Rich coming from the guy begging." You got him there.

Johnny knew it was better to not get too snarky otherwise you could easily decide to not help him anymore, so he pushed his sassy side aside to play by your rules. "Why don't you tell me more about that Kentucky guy thing?" He asked as his hand wandered down into his pants.

"Oh him?" You made sure to get seated between his legs as you continued. "Well... He's just the prettiest guy ever. Man, those strong arms make you wish he uses them on you. I mean God, I wanna be pinned by him." Johnny’s breath staggered, and you looked down to his lower half to see his hand wrapped around his cock, stroking it.

"And you wanna ride him?" You nodded, enjoying the image of said scenario. You kept your eyes closed as you continued talking. "I once saw a good bit of his torso while he changed shirt. Wow. That's when I first had that thought. I just wanna show him how good I can make him feel, ride him until he begs me to stop." Johnny leaned forward, his forehead resting on your shoulder and his heavy, irregular breath hit your skin, giving you goosebumps.

"You think he would do that?" He asked. "Potentially? I mean you can never know. I always try to imagine what face he will make when he cums. How it'd feel if his hands grip into my skin, leaving marks. I sometimes wonder if he'd mark me."

"I bet he would." Johnny answered, his answer barley a whisper mixed with soft moans as his hand keeps working on himself. It felt so special that he played along to your little game. "Oh, to be his. Sometimes when I'm on the road with him, I only think about him in dirty ways. I'm a hopeless case." Johnny’s tongue flicked over your shoulder, giving the bites a careful lick. He could feel you shudder.

"Wow darlin' you sure got a dirty mind." You wanted to snarkily reply so badly, but you much rather listened to his breathless whispers against your skin. "To know you so shamelessly think about that guy all day long..." You nodded absentmindedly. Slowly you turned your head to him, waiting until he lifted his head to look at you too. The image of his lust filled eyes, the flustered expression and his dick in his hand was now forever engraved in your brain.

"If Gyro wasn't so close by... The...the Things I would do to you... They'd make even him blush." "Same here." He replied before biting his lips. He imagined those things and it felt suddenly even harder to control himself.

"What would you do?" You questioned. "I'd already have you on me, fulfilling what you were fantasizing about. I want you to scream my name." "For you I'd do anything." A sort of starring contest broke out between you too as you only looked at one another with hungry eyes. Damned be Gyro.

At last, you made the move to slowly get down, trying to not break eye contact while doing so. Carefully you shooed his hand away from his cock to replace it with yours. As soon as you did you could notice that Johnny's breath hitched, making you smirk. With great anticipation, Johnny watched you dragging your tongue from bottom to top before a chunk of his dick disappeared in your mouth.

The blond threw his head back, a moan escaping his lips before he quickly pressed his hand upon it to keep quiet. His reactions only motivated you more, making sure to put extra care in everything you did. Your tongue swirled around his tip when you weren't busy seeing how deep you could take him in.

Seemingly pleased with your efforts the hand that previously kept his mouth shut now found its way into your hair, gripping it from time to time while you worked away on him. It didn't take long until you could tell by his breath, whimpers and suppressed moans that he was getting close.

Determined to end with a bang you bobbed your head up and down a few more times before taking in as much as you could with a hum. The sensation of it and the sight was too much for Johnny to handle and so he came deep in your throat.

You patiently let him ride it out, giving him one final lick to clean him up, before getting up, letting him watch you swallow his cum.

The confident smile that adorned your lips was now forever stuck in his mind. With the back of your hand, you wiped away any leftover saliva around your mouth before getting up to get your water canteen.

Johnny was left behind still feeling high on life before he too quickly fixed himself up. A bit of awkwardness lingered in the air now that the deed was done. Johnny awkwardly got back to his sleeping bag to lay there staring at the sky and you soon did the same.

You twiddled with your thumbs, all confidence from before gone now. The silence was only broken when Johnny decided to break it.

"Hey Y/N?" You hummed, signaling for him to continue. "How about at the end of the stage, when we stay at the hotel, we take a break from Gyro?"

"To do what?" A moment passed before he answered.

"For you to show that Kentucky guy your riding skills?" You had to smile, a chuckle even escaping you.

"Sounds good to me."

The awkwardness drifted away to be replaced by comfort and warmth. You two went from looking at the stars to looking at each other. You adored the way his blond hair fell around his face, framing it perfectly and pretty blue eyes that looked at you. That damn Kentucky guy would now even more dominate your thoughts, especially since you still had a good bit of way to cover until the stages end. Damned be Johnny.

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn. Some time ago you had a post where you - and I'm paraphrasing - advised people to buy/read 10 or 20 (I think?) current books and really "rip them apart" - i.e. analyze them, study them - to help assist with their own writing/publishing goals, get to know the market, learn from the books what worked to get them published. These weren't the exact words. I've tried using the search function but can't find the post. Could you link to it or maybe give similar advice again please? Thank you.

Sure - I know I gave this advice *someplace* on here, and for sure on twitter, but since that website has gone to the dogs I'll just paste the thread below and save it in the FAQ.

The best advice I have if you want to write for kids is, GO TO THE LIBRARY AND READ 100 BOOKS PUBLISHED IN YOUR CATEGORY IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS. Put your favorites in a special pile and buy your own copies of those so you can write in them. Tear them apart. Why and HOW do they work?

If you do this: CONGRATULATIONS, you just did much of the work for a masters degree without having to pay for it. While you're at it - make a spreadsheet of those 100 books, noting WHO PUBLISHED THEM, and agent/editor if they are listed in the acknowledgements. Note patterns!

If you do THIS step: CONGRATULATIONS, you just got a crash course in publishing and are armed with the knowledge of "who publishes what" that you will need as you begin your querying/publishing journey.

Whenever I give this advice, some folks push back and complain about "having to" read lots of kids books (which, it's the best homework I can IMAGINE doing, and if you don't like reading them, maybe don't WRITE them!), or they think it is a waste of time or I'm being MEAN... I think it can actually SAVE you time flailing in the darkness, and I'm being nice.

But hey, if you don't like it: Ignore me! You don't need to fight me about it. Like... it's free advice and this is a free country. I promise that I don't care what you do or don't do. :-)

PS: I specify "published in the last five years" bc publishing trends change; if you are relying on knowledge of the kids books that were published when YOU were a kid as your main source, you limit yourself. What flew in the 1980s would not fly today, and vice-versa.

PPS: For everyone saying this is advice applicable to any genre or category: I know! But since I’m an expert about children’s books, I’ll speak on children’s books. If I said “all books” I promise there’d be adult book writers hollering at me in the comments and I’m not into it!

PPPS: (And before anyone comes for me: I can call myself an expert about children’s books because I literally AM ONE, after 30+ years in the field. That doesn’t mean I’m better than anyone else or that you have to take my advice. You do you!)

PPPPS: ("But Jennifer how can you have been in children’s books for 30+ years when you can’t be more than 29 years old?!” I hear you say. Haha well, first of all, I started quite young, as a bookseller. And also, there may be a damnéd portrait somewhere, I can say no more!)

/fin

(Somebody followed up after I posted this and asked me to expand on the "tearing books apart" piece - so I did. That's here, clickety click!)

[harlowarchives]

❝ a 𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐎𝐖 story!

HI! omg ok, so this was originally published on wattpad because it wasn't getting any getting reads i gave up on it & left wattpad completely but... out of boredom i re-read it this weekend and was honestly in 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐞 so i decided to upload it here if u like this i'll do some more but i love you, enjoy! ⁀➷

↳ listen to THIS PLAYLIST.

𝐍𝐎 warning today, all fluff & language!

Dawn was simply exhausted. She had been working all day at her job as a daycare worker with mostly 3-6-year-old kids from around 8:00 am to 1:50 pm. She walked down the street from her job towards the deli, picking up her usual chop cheese and pineapple Fanta with a pack of golden Oreos. Dawn waited for her food and had her usual conversation with her favorite deli guy, Max, who had been working there since she was seven. They had grown a tight bond and he called her "bestie" every time she walked in the deli to put a smile on her face when she'd had a rough day or wasn't in a good mood. Dawn shifted a bit, feeling a figure behind her as a person entered the store. She posted against the fridge waiting for her food to be ready as she glanced over at a tall Caucasian man with fluffy curly hair and deep blue eyes. She stopped herself for a second when he turned around to look back at her, releasing his hand from his pocket to give her a calm wave. After a second or two, it had finally registered that the man was someone familiar, Jack Harlow. "Nina! One chop cheese," Max called out, pointing towards Dawn.

“How much, bestie?" Dawn smiled. "15.98," he replied, returning the expression. "I'll pay for her," Jack called. Dawn began to blush. "Thank yo—" as Jack stopped her. "Least I could do when you look that gahdamn fine." Dawn was completely flustered, interrupting her daze. "You want anything else?" he asked, looking down at her small curvy figure, pulling $500 from his pocket. "I'm good," she said nervously. Jack then nodded, placing a $100 bill on the counter, then grabbing her bag and his bag across from it, smiling at Max as Dawn waved and they walked out of the store together. "Thank you, I really appreciate it," the short, curvy girl said, gifting Jack a warm smile. "No problem, I'm Jack," he replied, laughing as she peered at him.

“TRUST ME, I know.”

The two of them laughed for a bit while walking aimlessly down the street before Jack asked, "You tryna hit the park with me?" Dawn teased, furrowing her brow. "I don't know, stranger. Am I?" "Handsome stranger," Jack added as she rolled her eyes. "Hm, it wouldn't hurt. But if anything, I'm showing you around," Dawn said, pulling his wrists while grinning.

Dawn was a BIG talker the entire way to all of her favorite spots in the city, but Jack wasn't even short of entertained. There was a glimmer in her eye whenever Dawn started talking about Queens. She told Jack pretty much everything about herself, and he shared stories of him and his rugrat little brother Clay. Dawn made him feel extremely vulnerable because he'd never see her again. His secrets would never be used against him in a petty argument. Regardless, Dawn wasn't even the type - she was so warm.

The city streets were boiling. The children played outside - little girls playing double dutch, making dance routines while the boys raced each other down the streets and tripped the girls jumping rope. One of the little girls began shoving her friend, screaming to look across the street, running across the street towards Jack as others followed behind asking for pictures. As he laughed, scratching his head, embracing the kids, handing all of them 5 dollar bills, the kids were smiling and thanking him.

"Do you make that popping song?" a little girl questioned, as Jack nodded. "Yes, I do make the popping song," he smiled. "Momma said that's the devil's music," the girl responded, scrunching her nose, looking slightly disgusted. "Where's your mom?" he questioned while the girl pointed towards her mother sitting on the step, yelling at the kids who were misbehaving. "Give her this, tell her I make the popping song," he laughed, turning slightly red, passing the child an uncounted wad of cash as the little girl beamed running towards her mother handing her the money as the woman broke into tears, smiling. The boys and girls crowded around the mother and her children as Jack grabbed Dawn before the woman had a chance to see where the money had come from.

Dawn smiled, pulling Jack into a tight squeeze that was quickly returned she didn't have any idea what to say to him she let her actions speak instead, Jack walked towards a stand nicely located under a gazebo where three or four boys who all looked to be no older than 18 sold teddy bears, bouquets & fruit arrangements. He bought the largest bear available while Dawn just stood watching with a smile plastered across her face. Jack bought a card, standing in the corner writing a letter to Dawn for about 5 minutes before unzipping the bear and stuffing the letter inside. "You are so extra," Dawn added while cheesing, unzipping the bear reaching inside before Jack quickly popped her hand. "Read it later, Dawn!" he said placing his hand on his hip as she burst out into uncontrollable laughter. "Ok, Mr. Sassy, I'll wait," she sighed as he looked at her completely unamused.

Dawn and Jack had just roamed around the neighborhood for a while aimlessly talking about absolutely everything, things they wouldn't dare tell anyone else.

Dawn told Jack about every memory she'd made on the streets they walked, and he'd always had a similar memory of his hometown to share. After Dawn had complained about needing to rest her legs, he'd thrown her over his shoulder. Her body adjusted, resting her legs on his shoulders, her arms around his neck, gently stroking his chin, playing in his hair while he walked towards the park nearest to her house.

Dawn and Jack sat on the park bench feeding the birds the leftover bread from Dawn's sandwich. They'd laugh at the ducks who fought for food, pushing the others over. As the sky began to grey, Dawn rested her head on Jack's lap as he stroked her hair while she played with his loose yet tight moisturized coils. They had yet to break eye contact. Jack was entranced in her deep expanding brown eyes. 'Do you have a staring problem?' Jack scowled, rolling his eyes as Dawn laughed and pushed him. 'Bitch, da fuck you were looking at me first!' she snapped back, causing them to break out into even harder laughter.

⁀➷ shortly 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑!

Jack's fingers intertwined with Dawn's his varsity jack draped over her shoulders as the two walked up to her building. Jack licked his lips sucking his bottom stuck in her eyes like a tangled shoe lace.

Dawn began grinning at Jack opening her arms wrapping her arms around his chest placing his arms around her small waist, time sat still. They just hugged & hugged and hugged, until Jack layed a kiss on her forehead both of them cheesing "Thank you, Jack." Dawn said as he wrapped his hand around hers, "Thank you more, beautiful." clearing her hair out her face as the midnight breeze ran through her hair, he ran down the steps of the building before the girl blew a kiss at Jack that he quickly caught placing it in his pocket running off.

🏷️ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒 ⁱ : @lexxlovesjack @iknowdatsrightbih @iheartharlow @livsters @honeyharlows @killatravtramp @jackmanduh

[netherworldpost]

From 2016 through 2018, Evil Supply Co. (hi, it me, we are rebranding) published 21 monster newspapers detailing the lives and tomfooleries of ghosts, witches, mermaids, monsters, dragons, gorgons, wizards, rock creatures, goblins, orcs... etc.

The Complete Evil Supply Co. collection is available for free via PDF by clicking this link here.

Please feel free to share. Please feel free to link to it on your own blog or media or whatevers.

The link will take you to a Google Drive page, so when I say "there is no obligation or sign ups" I mean it. I won't even know that you downloaded it.

You can of course tell me. But you don't have to.

The entire point of making this public is to give you something without asking for something in return.

Every issue. Every in-universe ad. A few extra rambles at the beginning and end discussing the future. It's just over 100 pages and something like 40- 50,000 words. I counted once and it took forever.

I've been making it free for years and have given away several copies because the community of folks who love monsters and Halloween and mermaids has provided me an audience to build an unimaginably fun life.

A company can exist for many reasons. Making the world a better place via a utopian paradise is one of mine.

When I say this project is my life's work, I mean it.

I'm getting far too sappy.

Let's talk about the future a moment.

I have been exploring various printed versions of the book for months. I'm hoping to narrow down a company to work with sometime before the store launches (Autumn 2023). Did you know that books are absurdly heavy?

The printed version will not be free. The link above (and here, we love utility in this crypt) is formatted to print fine on 8.5" x 11" paper. It is again though 100+ pages, so do be aware. The PDF will always be free, even after said printed version launches.

Onwards to next, non-secret things

Remember this? I've signed a contract today to build a microsite on the blog that will house the Dispatch in web format. This is third in priority --

blog (April 2023)

shop (Autumn 2023)

Dispatch microsite (...?)

-- for obvious reasons. The PDF will be available for free for as long as I run this company, this is not a limited time offer. I mentioned that above but I like mentioning things, including "I like mentioning things."

The existence of non-secret things implies... secret... things?

Kinda.

One of the features of the blog that I'm really excited to offer is advice columns and in-character pen pal exchanges. "Hey Strawberry, how does magic work underwater?" and then you'll get a reply if your ask is chosen.

And by reply I mean a published thing online + an actual physical letter in the mail as this company is a non-governmental postal facility after all. A post office, if you will. A Netherworld Post Office, even!

The stories from Evil Supply Co.'s dispatch are serving as a near-final draft of new stories.

Or maybe a solid starter. Anyway, the point being:

All of the plot points and characters (etc) are sticking around (with the exception of Atticus, as a fictional character in the newspaper, I've decided to just be a semi-fictional character in actual real life).

The direction of new stories is "more of everything" and "cleaning up minor plot point holes" and/or "using plot point holes for comedic purposes and strategic hilarity."

There will be a brand new character replacing the Atticus character.

I really liked running the Dispatch. It was one of the things I'm most proud of -- a monster newspaper?! all original content!! I drew it all, I wrote it all!

I want to explore bringing it back in some form.

And.

I recognize I have a lot on my plate at the moment. So the best path forward is, as above, giving away the base + building the microsite.

One of the beautiful things, I have come to realize after surviving my 2020 traffic accident + ensuing as well as not related legal battles to get people to pay me what they owe:

I have a lot of time.

I don't need to rush things.

Whoops!

Wrong link.

Try this one instead.

(That terrible joke was as immensely satisfying to write as you think it was. Doubly so if you get that the link is from Ocarina of Time and I was just talking about time okay I'll see myself to the door this post has gone on way too long.)

Let's wrap this up!

NetherworldPost.com has the email signup.

If you've signed up before, the auto- duplication- resolution- witchcraft- tech- things will take care of it. You won't get a ton of emails.

First email will go out saying "blog is launched" when said blog launches and then rambles thereafter.

(Bugs Bunny and others gifs used in this post do not appear but are included as helping legibility of said this post.)

[davekat-sucks]

Don't forget all the times the kids were literally referred to as "pink". Even then I don't get how people didn't catch on to these characters being white nerdy stereotypes. A thing that annoys me a little about the fandom is a chunk of it thinking the comic is so profound and 100% planned out when that's not the case. Caucasian Trickster mode and grimdorks being the first two examples that come to mind. Hussie obviously bent over the fandom, Homestuck isn't truly an inclusive comic. All the characters are parodies or stereotypes, I doubt he actually cares about that stuff and it's all performative. You're telling me a man who made numerous rape and racist jokes before Homestuck takes social commentary seriously?

This is the same Hussie that made these

It's even stupider that people believed that Andrew Hussie "changed" for the better. He only panders if it means he get attention and money. People even still forget said Homestuck^2 was also made as a cash grab to pay off his debt to Viz Media that he had to LIE to the freelance artists/writers working on it. You think there would be more of a big uproar of how he treats his employees at WhatPumpkin, but now, nobody bats an eye. Because he is an indie creator? Dude can't be called indie if he made a Kickstarter that reached 2 million dollars, bought an office in New York, got one of his IPs published under an actual company in physical book form, and then bailing out like a coward so he can throw everyone else under the bus and still get royals for his IP. I've seen fandoms being apologetic to the worst kind of people and people thinking the creator(s) are different from their edgy past selves. Homestuck is one strange case that I have ever seen. Not as bad as something like RWBY/RoosterTeeth standards. But just questionable that it would last for this long.