#the same stuff we talk about can be found on the publisher websites | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

exeggcute · 10 months

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in a similar vein to the stuff I was talking about recently with google (unknowingly?) selling invalid ad placements, here's an interesting post I saw on linkedin the other day about advertisers who think they're buying ad space on one domain but are really buying ad space on another:

so, for context: the woman behind this post was one of the creators of the sleeping giants campaign, which was a (pretty successful!) attempt to choke out right-wing "news" websites and other peddlers of misinformation by drying up their advertising revenue. she went on to found the check my ads institute, which does a lot of the same stuff and more; one of the recurring themes of check my ads' messaging is that advertisers often aren't aware that they're running ads on unsavory websites (and are therefore inadvertently funding those websites via their ad budgets, even though they genuinely want to avoid doing so)... in part because advertisers frequently aren't aware of where their ads are running, period.

in this post specifically, she's not talking about individual advertisers but about one of the companies that exists to connect advertisers (brands who want to buy ad space) and publishers (websites who sell ad space)—in this case, an ad platform called unruly, although they recently got absorbed into a bigger company called nexxen.

nexxen is an all-in-one ad platform that's both a DSP (demand-side platform, which helps advertisers buy ad placements) and an SSP (supply-side platform, which helps websites sell ad placements). they make money by taking a cut of each transaction.

what's happening here is that unruly/nexxen worked with a publisher called yorogon.com who was selling inventory (i.e., ad space) through nexxen's platform. so if you're an advertiser who wants to run ads somewhere, you can go to nexxen and buy inventory from their available sellers; in other words, ad space offered by yorogon.com is one of the "products" for sale on nexxen's markplace. (most of these transactions happen in split-second auctions, though... it's not like shopping on ebay.)

the problem is that this seller who nexxen authorized as "yorogon" wasn't actually running ads on yogoron.com or any of yorogon's nonexistent clients' websites... they were running those ads on fucking breitbart lol. basically the equivalent of a supermarket agreeing to sell some new cereal on behalf of the manufacturer, but the boxes are actually full of thumbtacks.

we can pretty safely assume that breitbart did this on purpose because they know that a lot of the big advertisers with fat wallets shy away from publishers like them—for a number of reasons—which means that they have to sell their inventory to smaller, shittier advertisers with less money to spend. otoh there's no reason to believe that nexxen was deliberately taking part in the charade; for one, the information that led to this discovery is public, so anyone who gave half a shit could've figured it out (including nexxen or any of their advertisers lol). not exactly some vast conspiracy when your extremely public records give away the mismatch. and for two, the whole "promising to run an ad in a certain location but actually running it in a different location" is a massive fucking no-no even if the "different location" isn't andew breitbart's personal wank cave. from that last link I just shared, scroll down a bit and you can find this:

note that the warning code isn't "you're buying ads on a shitty website that sucks," the warning is "you're buying ads on a website that isn't what it says it is." but there is a dedicated warning code! because back to the cereal metaphor from earlier, this is like—okay, even if the cereal box is full of actual cereal instead of thumbtacks, it's still a problem if you thought you were getting honey nut cheerios and then opened the box and it was full of apple jacks instead. (and god knows I would never willingly buy apple jacks.)

whatever you're selling, it has to be accurate: if you offer ad space on golflovers.com but you actually run the ad on golfenthusiasts.com, that's still a major issue and the advertisers you work with will rightfully jump on your ass about it... assuming they ever find out, lol.

what's really interesting to me, though, isn't so much that an ad platform was selling misrepresented ad inventory—because as far as I can tell, that happens all the time—but more that we only know about this particular instance because it involves breitbart. check my ads is specifically hellbent on throttling breitbart's ad revenue, which is why someone was even poking around in these seller lists in the first place. anyone else could have; the advertisers who unknowingly bought ad space on breitbart theoretically could have, and nexxen certainly should have.

but for all the ad quality and transparency standards in place, any parties involved in the advertising supply chain still have to take action and check their records to make sure they're following said standards. if they get complacent, bad actors absolutely can and will try to slip through their defenses. and what's especially embarrassing in this case is how many safety partners unruly/nexxen was working with who claim to mitigate this exact scenario... although one of them was doubleverify and they kinda suck lol

#adtech

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popculturebuffet · 29 days

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Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse Retrospective Part 1: The Penal Zone Review (Patreon Review for WeirdKev)

Hello all you happy psychic lagomorphs and welcome back! For those just tuning in last year I started a look at the Telltale Sam and Max Games. Kev, who comissioned these reviews, is a massive fan, bought me a copy and over 12 months, a lot of fun nonsense and some other sam and max reviews I too became a massive fan of this not all that ambigiously gay duo. You can find the previous retrospectives here

So it's been a while since we've seen our faviorite not really all that ambigiously gay duo of sam and max on this blog. There hasn't been a review since What's New Beelzebub as the intended plan of reviewing various episodes of Freelance Police gave way to other projects Kev wanted to use his patreon review for. On the bright side I did get to at least draw the two when we did a top 12 wedding's list a while back.

But otherwise it was mostly spent doing other stuff while waitingpaitently for Sam and Max to arrive. Hell the book seen in this little joke the book of bill both came out AND I reviewed it before we finally got to the Devil's Playhouse.

The reason is simple. For this retrospective i've been using the remasters done by Skunkape games, as until just last month, the switch was my only modern platform and the easiest way to play them, so kev got my copies there. I didn't have a way to play the original and even if I did... I prefer the consistency of having played the remasters for all three and on the same console. It allows me to track what's improved between games and remasters a lot easier.

So I simply waited mildly patiently. While it was a nearly year long wait after promised release dates of last fall and this spring, I dont' hold it against Skunkape in the slightest. I'd rather they take a good long time making the best remaster possible than rush one out no one likes or has to be patched constantly. There's also the simple fact that having a game day and date launch on all consoles.. is a lot. It just is. They have to map buttons for three consoles, convert the game to the console layout three times over and generally do a LOT of shit and that's before getting approved. IT's why i'm no longer a dick about something not getting ported to switch right away: it sucks, but it takes time to do it and Steam is an easier platform. So i'm just greatful Skunkape put in the hard work to make sure I could play the game day one.

Speaking of Skunkape it's time I do something long overdue and talk about SKunkape themselves. It's something I Should've done upfront and callously didn't think to, but at least fits given the namesake for the company debuts in this chapter. I only read their history recently but it's a neat one you can find on their website.

Skunkape Games came out of the ashes of Telltale Games, ironically starting for the same reasons Telltale once had: the publisher that made sam and max was imploding and someone had to take care of it. I had assumed Skunkape was behind the other telltale remasters but to my shock no... while that company gladly helped them on a few logistical things, Skunkape was formed by several founding telltale members who worked on this game for one reason: To Save Sam and Max. With the company falling apart they wanted to make sure someone not only kept the licensees but helped keep the games out there. So they bought it up.

Originally the plan was to just patch the games as was, maybe relrease them. But a combination of the old code being built on an old engine that was long since dead, and thinking of so many ways to spice the games up they decided fuck it, and have since dedicated themselves to remastering all 3 games in the telltale trilogy. I wanted to go into this as it's thanks to them I can even do this: The remasters are what I played and thanks to them everyone can enjoy these stellar games for themselves. It's also a stern reminder that

Has always been a terrible strategy. When someone else has it they'll.. actually do something, you get a tidy check, and fans will stop pestering you to do something with it like you should've. Skunkape is proof if you just give the people who created a thing (or in this case an adaptation of the thing), the rights, they'll make sure said thing is kept safe instead of locked in a vault for pennies. I may be just a touch bitter can you tell. But this story... is thankfully not that.

So with all that out of the way, join me under the cut as we open the final chapter as our heroes fight aliens.. for real this time, we find out how the heck Max is still president, and can rejoice that the soda poppers are fucking dead.

Devil's Playhouse begins.. with a narrator

Yeah we have a narrrator now, a weird wrinkly faced man with a rod serling flair who talks about the dark imaginings we're about to face and such. And having been spoiled on this long ago let me say two things 1) If you don't know you won't possibly guest and 2) what he actually is is a brilliant twist I won't spoil. I'll nudge at the two big spoilers I do know, but if your reading this since you can't play the games for whatever reasons. Let's just say it's wild.

Anyways we jump right in the middle of the story's climax: Sam and Max are trying to stop the evil general Skunk'ape, but i'll just spell it skunkape from taking over the earth in his giant braniac-styled face ship. The intro is fun as while Beyond Time and Space's "Night of the Raving Dead" had this sort of weird flash forward this time you not only get to play it, but it serves a vital purpose: introducing the new gameplay mechanics.

The first two games were largely the same, with Beyond Time and Space only really adding mini games, most of which were forgetable except that motherfucking surfboard may it rot in hell, which are thankfully absent from this game. Just like the soda poppers as while death is not the end in the sam and max universe, theirs thankfully stuck. And.. just give me a moment to celebrate

Okay i'm good. Anyways my point is the games largely pointed and clicked the same way, with a few quality of life adjustments in Beyond Time and Space.

While the core gameplay is largely the same, pionting and clicking, asking questions, going to a guide on occasion when the puzzle is obtuse and the hints are not remotely helpful, there's one big wrinkle that helps spice up Devil's Playhouse: The Toys of Power. The Toys of Power are the mysterious macguffins at the center of this story, which only a few chosen indviduals with the right potetial for psychic powers can wield. Lucky for us and a defcon five for everyone who isn't sam and also possibly sam, MAX is the one who can. So this go round you can play BOTH freelance police. Sam only has the toys as his inventory, but said powers vary up the puzzle solving. You still use items a lot, but sometimes you'lll have to think how they combine with whatever toys you got. Chapter 1 largely leaves you with the future vision, in the form of a view master that allows you to seeee the fuuuuttuuuree and a toy telephone that can teleport you to any number you have memorized but I also got to try some cards that I forgot what they do and some rhinoplasty putty, silly puttiy in a nose that allows you to transform into objects in this intro.

Along the way we found out the guys befriended a brain, stinky is skunkape's queen and harry moleman is going through some stuff.

So we end by throwing Skunkape into the titular penal zone by throwing a homing beacon onto him and sucking him into a hideous void.

And with that we snap back to reality op there goes gravity as it turns out this was max SEEEING THE FUUUTURE.

Rather than start where the game does let's go back a few seconds before we were all caught up: Sam and Max are outside their building, with it being condemend due to massive cracks in the pavement left from the last game. It's been 6 months and max picks up the haunted viewmaster off the ground and thus awakens his psychic powers. Sam's reactions about what you'd expect

Said power give him a grisly version of the future.. and Sam.. somehow. So our heroes know not to trust Skunkape when he arrives soon after.

Skunkape is a gorillia man from space whose come seeking the toys.. and even if they hadn't had a vision of them fighting him, our heroes kidna got the impression from his creepy ship. He came to meet our heroes since Max is leader of the free world which he admits after a great joke about there being many great nations and oh no one's present.

We also get an explination for HOW Max is still president given his 80 impeachment trials, war crimes and general jackassery. The answer is he hired Jimmy Two Teeth and friends to spread a plauge that brought his numbers up because Max actually knows how to manage a pandemic.

Somehow Max being good at crisis managment isn't the only shocker. Turns out this whole time this trilogy, and likely sam and max as a whole has been set in new york. Yes really. HOme of the x-men, the teenage mutant ninja turtles, the teen titans for a while in the 80s, The Fantastic Four and countless others, is also home to Sam and Max. I Assumed they just were housed in some generic new york like city like the tick. This is of course a big joke as the bulk of each chapter takes place on some nondiscprit street but it's a good one.

So circling back around, Jimmy's exit is one of MANY this game. In addition to the soda poppers who are dead.. which.. again need a moment

Thank you, so anyways bittersweetly after 2 games as a mainstay, if in and out of the second, Sybil is gone and will only return for the finale, having an extended honeymoon with that bastard lincoln. Lincoln is also gone and for my thoughts on that please look up at the happy muk thank you.

Much more sadly Bosco is gone and as far as I know does not come back. This is a huge blow as he was one of the funneist parts of both games, and while like Sybil he had a reduced role in the second, he was still great. He's gone to Vegas with an even bigger loss.. Buster Blaster

Yes while I've heard, i'm so thankful for this spiler he'll be back.. Bluster Blaster is sadly gone for most of this adventure. Why.. I have no idea. He could split from the COPS and still show up. Fate is a cruel bitch sometimes I swears its. I'll try to go on but it's rough.

That said while I will MISS Sybil's, whose poseesisons are now in boxes outside her store thanks to our heroes and Bosco's... it was the right call. They clearly ran out of ideas for Sybil's place after the first game and her arc with lincoln makes me want to wretch, so her taking most of the game off is needed and with Bosco they probably just felt they had way more they could do with his replacement while also giving us a fresh setting.

That said even with all these shakeups who helps our heroes is about the same as Stinky's Diner and the COPS return.

Let's give it to the COPS first as their a pretty big change as they've joined our heroes.. even though Sam and Max would prefer they move out. After most of the block was shut down, they let the cops move into their car and they haven't left, but their now working as a crime computer, though their only able to do it once the dynamic duo find Sally, an old crime analyizer in some garbage. They add in another gimmick: crime anaysis pop in evidence and you'll get a clue, popping in two gets you a new location as your new way to unlock new locations. While ti can be frustrating doing it againd and again till you get a match, it's a fun more engaging way to open up new places.

As for STinky's things aren't going great for either stinky. Girl Stinky is mad Stinky is back and made the restraunt hav ea coherent theme again, and Stinky is mad she won't let him commit serial murders via food. He's also mad the duo stole his recipie last game, something I did't think was going to come back but did.

It also brings up something I noticed about the writing that's a vast improvement over the previous game: the tone is a LOT less cruel. oh there' sstill some black comedy as we'll get to, we still do some awful stuff.. but it's tone back down to save the world's less over the top cruelty. You still do awful shit, but it's less spiteful and more just our heroes being who they are and the targets, at least so far, tend to either get saved or are less terrible.

Stinky won't give us his broth and turns out we need it as inspecting the ship we use the viewmaster on the brain who thanks us. And this is another neat feature and one badly needed: the seeing the future.. means you get a clue about where to go. Granted they won't tell you HOW you solved the puzzle, as that'd be too easy, but generally it tells you what you need to do. It can be ocasoinally opaque as flint paper whose eating at the diner gets a hatchet to the head and given his constitution and this series approach to death in general I assumed it wasn't a big deal. Turns out we need to save our old friend whose looking for mama bosco's power core. We need that and the broth.

Naturally this involves a bunch of puzzles I only vaugely remember, but mostly involves getting everyone out of there so we can use Stinky's secret entrance and get that sweet broth. That's going to take, as usual a lot of moving around so we need to visit our last area. via flier and some other stuff we're able to get our first location, boscotech labs.

Boscotech Labs is our new go to get gadgets place since the COPS changed gimmicks and Bosco took all of Sam and Max's money to vegas.. that's.. that's canon. He left with all the money from the first adventure he still had left.

I was a bit antsy about Mama Bosco as a replacment because her one real gag in the previous game was straw feminist

Thankfully this game and likely several decades and being turned into a ghost she's more a mildly sarcastic, as she knwos what she's dealing with, but kindly scientest. She's also still a ghost after Sam and Max blew her up real good last game. Again the contrast is just staggering. Here the worst we're doing is stealing her power core.. which even then is to save an innocent creatre and the planet. She can probably build another to power her "I'm not a ghost anymore machine" and would likely give it if she was aware skunkape was evil. We've come a long way from "condemming a child to hell to move the plot along" and i'm here fo rit.

We do get one her of devices and more importantly run into her univnited guest: harry moleman. Harry is here because he wants a job and instead of asking for it just.. tunneled in. So I don't feel bad for the attrocities we're about to commit. Earlier our heroes found out that molemen are getting sent into a processing chamber on skunkape's ship via a free vacation ticket scam leaving us with one of those and a helmet.

Thanks to seeing the future, we can see the lottery ticket harry has will win an dtrade it for the vacation pass. He leaves to his doom and somehow.. this is still not only the worst our duo gets up to this episode.. but is still not as bad. Harry was being a dip, and while we cost him a million dollars it's going to Grandpa Stinky, who we horribbly wronged last time. He's getting it for entirely self serving reasons sure, but it's still a bit easier to swallow.

So with all the items it's time to get everything. The broth is easy, just give grandpa stinky the lottery ticket, he forgives you and he's gone. Next is flint who we give a helmet as Girl Stinky is trying to murder him. And not just in the obvious way his foods laced with peanuts, which he has an allergy to. Which is a great payoff and proves my instinct was right: you really CAN'T kill flint paper with a hatchet to the skull.

This does lead me to something I like about this chapter and another improvment over the other games: the difficulty. With the previous two, ESPECIALLY beyond time and space, I had to use a guide often... or if I was running behind. This time, I largely winged it. I'll need to take better notes next time to remember order of events, as things are a bit tighter this go round, and frankly should've for the last game, but otherwise this experince was easier but not painfully easy. Ther'es a lot of clever solutions to the puzzles often involving max's ability to teleport he gets after this stretch.

With that we simply have to call stinky, getting her private number from the future, then calling her. She thinks we're skunkape who she's kinda dating? It's complicated. This gets rid of her , we get sally from her underground passage and get the core from said passage.

With that we can finally ressurect the brain in a jar, a fairly nice fellow whose willing to help. He's been used by Skunkape as his proxy since while having psychic powers himself, as his origin video telltale put out outlines he was an abused outcast on his own planet who when fired from his job threw a tantrum and got a piece of rebar in his head that unlocked his powers and conquered the planet., he can't use the toys and it also makes it clear max is in terrible danger. It's kinda telling every villian's big evil scheme relies on max in some way.

Brain guy is also a lot of fun, especially how skunkape got him as he claimed to be a nice stranger and when Max points out how stupid that is, we get the all time line of "HE SAID HE HAD CANDY".

The good news is brain guy waking up actually made skunkape run aground, as it's clear his story wouldn't hold up with witnesses who aren't rabbits of questionable character. The bad is we need to find him. The gooder news is Superball is now not only on our side for a change but has the cure: turns out Skunkapes a fugitive from the law having escaped the penal zone.

So we need to send him back to the penal zone for hard time. We need his beacon and his remote... but first the brain forces us to use teleport because he wants to see it so we can't go investigate the mole murder room. It's unecessary backtracking and it annoys me.

SO my first teleport was naturally mama bosco as she created a remote. Unfortuntaely doing so gets max strangled by an ape

While I simply teleported him out turns out you need to stand on the flag above Boscotech, teleport max in and have the ape fall on top of the ape guarding the place

As for why they went in there and took over, Mama Bosco naturally has the solution to their problems, a one use one way teleport to the wang place.

Next is the badge. Getting this was something I simply didn't think of but how you do so is great. First you need to check out the mole murder room: Turns out Skunkape is sweating moles... TO DEATH.

Going in nearly gets you killed and your possesions dumped out..s o you need to do it to Grandpa Stinky. Thankfully he was very stupid with the money he won thanks to you giving it to Skukape and insults both our heroes when they fake wanting to enlist, with Sam ready to murder him and Grandpa Stinky VERY lucky he's so short and dose'nt have any knives... though if he wakes up in a future chapter with a butcher knive in his head I won't be suprised.. nor will I when he comes to work anyway.

No to beat him you need to piss off max then teleport everyone to the murder chamber after leaving Girl Stinky's cell phone in there. You can find it by going there and it's the key to many a puzzle. I also almost forgot to mention the reason for our title picture and the best scene in the chapter: when you teleport hte first time we get a surreal mindscape of maxes.. and .. this

So while we're scarred for life we can teleport baby. Skunkape gave Grandpa Stinky the beacon as a badge as leader of his massive fleet and as a convient skapegoat. So to get it we have to piss max off. As said Max's short height means that won't be as bloody as you'd expect, but it does mean going back to the death room where Grandpa Stinky learns the awful truth... he's a frycook.. 8th class!

Disgusted he got conned out of his millions Stinky leaves, having saved us and we get the badge and his stuff including a meesta pizza shot glass. This brings up a running gag I hadn't mentioned in the previous two as while I loved it , it was rarely plot relevant: Sam could use the phone in the office to call up meesta pizza, with no one answering. It always struck me as just some weird gag he was doing and I never assumed anything was on the other line. But low in behold... IT EXISTS...

And we get to VISIT IT. Sadly it's not a fully rendered location but to find Skukape we follow his trail using the shot glass and a recepit we found earlier to go to meesta pizza, where Girl Stinky and Him had a romantic date and some light indgjesticion. Our heroes can go inside which I like, as even if we can't I love Sam's jolly love of food places that are objectively terrible. I relate to it you know? Sometimes you just want a pile of grease you don't have to pay a mortgage for you know?

It's here we get one of the few puzzles that's just... what the fuck is this. Most of my getting stuck in this part of the story is simply not thinking to use my new powers. IN this one though.. it relies on you putting an engagment ring you find earlier on a pizza box so a pidgeon can eat it.

It gets up on the roof we get the ring back and we're happy. You can also use the ring for proposal shenanigans which I wish i'd done more of. Doing it to max nets you a hilaroius diamonds are forever parody add. Dated? Yes. Hilarous? Yes. Gay as hell? HELL YES. I also like that the gay jokes have evolved from HAHA queers to "eh sam would enjoy it but decides not to right now". That's more my speed.

So we track skunkape to a toy store he went to.. only to get trapped! Skunkape arrives with his henchman and Girl Stinky

So we're back about where we started. We convince Girl Stinky to accept her role as Skuknapes concubine. Apparently even when self preservation is on the line she's still awful.. but once she finds that finally someone will let her out of her cage since time for her ins't nothing and she ain't counting no age, she agrees.

And then..... we get a hell of a twist: Turns out while we were captured, Skunkape used the viewfinder.. and thus SAW how his defeat would playout and wisely removed the two toys you swiped in the intro. He then sends our heroes to the penis place and our heroes have to escape. Thankfully we can just.. casually teleport out of danger, but it leaves the threat of the giant ape man shooting at us with his big space ship. I do love this twist.. that you saw how it WOULD'VE playe dout.. but the very thing that gave you a leg up leaves you twisting in the wind.

We got to boscotech as Mama Bosco pulls us out , working closely with superball. The bad news is the escape collapsed the penal zone. The good is they can make another. The worse is our heroes wil lhave to give up their office and frakly.. I really miss it. I miss the trophies and it's sad to know I won't see the piling trophies from past chapters ever again. Also Leonard's probably dead but given he was stuck in an abandoned building for 6 months with no food or air he probably was anyway.

So for our final showdown we need to plug her portal thing into a big enough power source which means we're going deepr underground there's just too much panic in this town. It's here we go into a secret entrance and find MORE MOLES... and also a cult. Sadly no lambs and weirdly max isn't leading it this time. But he is their christ figure as the prophecy fortold him getting the toys and his head lighting on fire. Sure he's fine.

Turns out their a splitner who worships the devil's toybox, a powerful box and where the toys of power came from which max is the chosen one for. It makes a handy power source though and with skunkape blasting in we're able to open the all new all diffrent dong depot and suck him in... after making it nice and sweaty of course. Phrasing.

With that our heroes have won, the universe is saved... but the narrator warns we still have a cliffhanger.. OUR HEROES SKELETONS!

The Penal Zone is one of the best sam nad max chapters i've played so far and a great start for the Penal Zone. This feels like the best of both previous games, having save the world's still irrevernt but less cruel humor mixed with the refinements from beyond time and space, and then adding it's own flair. While the toy puzzles can be complex, they add a lot more variety than just "get the thing use the thing" now using the things in new ways, the joke writing is at the top of it's game and the game itself looks crips and gorgeous in the remaster. You can also already see the more seralized story I heard this game has creeping in: we get tons of omnius hints for max, and rather than the mystery of the last two of "whose behind it all", which is barely threaded through both and only fullyc omes together in the last chapter, here we get a bunch of mysteries and plot threads up front: where does the devil's toybox come from, why is max the chosen one, can anyone else use the toys, why are skeletons of our heroes in present day, will max survivie when everything from medical advice to omnius foreshadowing says his head's going to catch fire, and why do we suddenly have a narrator? It leave sme stoked for the next chapter and shows the evolution of how telltale was telling these tales: Before it was more self contined chunks, now with more games getting made around this time like back to the future, we're seeing them start to captalize on cliffhangers to keep you hooked and it works well. While I know WHY skeletons thanks to chapter summaries, it's still a good hook if you didn't know the next chapter was about their ancestors

Next Time:A full chapter flashback. Goodie? Thanks for reading.

#sam and max #sam and max the devil's playhouse #sam #max #sam x max #agent superball #mama bosco #harry moleman #general skunk'ape #girl stinky #grandpa stinky

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kingmystrie · 1 year

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The reason why AO3 doesn't take down problematic content is because the entire purpose of the site is for archival purposes. An archive is meant to house a lot of information, the purpose of an archive is not to promote certain works of art or to determine the ethics/morals of fictional media. They don't censor anything because that's not their job, their job is to just store as much fanfiction as humanly possible.

It's not a publisher, it's just a giant digital filing cabinet.

I'd also like to point out that censorship has historically been used to rewrite history, silence black voices, silence queer voices, silence indigenous voices, silence activists, suppress workers fighting for decent pay, suppress information regarding political corruption, suppress international news coverage, etc. You'd like to think that censorship will be used only to stop bad people from spreading bad messages, but that is never the case.

Obviously AO3 users are overwhelmingly white and somewhat well off. I highly doubt they'd censor anything racist or even most problematic content, best believe people like me who have the audacity to be autistic and black at the same time would get annihilated immediately.

Even if we lived in a magical world where we all agreed that pedophilia is bad and that black people are humans, there's the issue of how they'd even censor the damn sinkhole.

As stupid as it sounds you'd have a better time protecting individuals from creeps by explaining the importance of consent and why pedophilia is wrong. Unironically. I'm deadass serious. This is why ponder sprocket made that video on why zoophilia is bad.

Below i talk abt how censoring digital platforms is lowkey ethically dubious.

Even if Ao3 was to try and censor specific works, it would be near impossible for them to do in an ethical way. Something i dont see people talk about in this conversation is that if there's censorship on a site someone has to read all of that pedophilic, racist, rape fetishizing shit.

You know youtube? They have like thousands of employees in the global south getting paid like 2 dollars an hour to see the most horrific shit known to man. These are VIDEOS mind you, AKA real csam and real gore, with all the viscera a human eye can find, in motion. No counseling, no nothing.

If a site is to actively censor something, it no longer becomes a case of just the weirdos and people with paraphilias actively searching for something and being pushed away by a wider community. The moment that a website starts censoring stuff they have to employ people to go find that shit, people who don't want to see that shit.

And we know for a fact that we can't just use a robot for that crap either, cause we know for a fact that robot censorship doesn't fucking work, because chat gpt employed a bunch of underpaid workers to do the same thing.

Not only does censorship go against the purpose of the website, but honestly with how much fanfiction is being uploaded and stored on that site it would be wildly unethical to make people have to go through all of that crap.

Not to mention - even with all that work put into removing this dangerous content there is STILL a thriving pedo ring on youtube there have been several videos detailing this. Not to mention fetish-farming crap like elsa-gate.

Not saying that makes it useless for youtube, because unlike AO3 youtube has an algorithm which means that youtube promotes specific videos over others. If youtube didn't trawl through the garbage and take it out they could end up promoting something dangerous to someone who didn't want it. With an algorithm there is no choices, only whatever the math sends your way.

And because of that I've been reccomended some disturbing content on youtube about people wanting people like me get killed, which has damaged my health severely. In contrast - I've never found anything disturbing on AO3 because nothing is being shoved in my face. The front page doesnt even show you any fanfiction, you have to search for whatever you're looking for yourself.

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curried-mermaid · 5 months

Text

Special Edition - A Review: Does it Count if you Lose your Virginity to an Android? Vol. 2

Author: Yakinikuteishoku Illustrator: Yakinikuteishoku Publishers: Seven Seas Entertainment Age Group: Older Teen, 17+/YA, Mature Genre: Girl Love, Romance Type: Manga

Content Warnings: Sex, Lewd/Naughtiness

Spoilers ahead

Plot

Beautiful, brainy Tsuda Akana is indispensable at the robotics manufacturer where she works, but her colleagues never see her private side. At home, Akane’s a hot mess with an apartment that looks more like a landfill than a living space. When she drunkenly orders a maid to help her tidy up, the lady android who arrives is a horny hottie who’s about o give Akane more service than she bargained for!

Akane gets a strange e-mail to join a VR chat session with other pleasure android masters. Will she learn more about Nadeshiko?

Character Development

As before, Akane and Nadeshiko are well thought out. A third character is introduced, Nadeshiko’s creator (mother). Her mother gives advice, asks for updates, and wants Akane to “register” Nadeshiko as well. With this goal, her mother tells Nadeshiko things she should try to get Akane to “register” her as owner of Nadeshiko.

Nadeshiko’s mother seems like a mad scientist type who is also using Akane to test and further her research of A.I.

World-building

The world-building is the same, but we do find that other pleasure android owners get together. They seem like a normal group of people you’d make friends with online.

As part of the world-building, Akane finds that the website she ordered Nadeshiko from, doesn’t actually exist (at least not anymore). None of the other owners know who would make Nadeshiko as she’s more realistic than any of their androids.

Themes

You reap what you sow.

In essence, due to Akane’s tendency to shop for weird stuff while inebriated, she has no one to blame but herself for her predicament. Now she has to keep it secret that she has a pleasure android, find out where she came from, and if she can get her savings back before she’s found out.

Observations & Predictions

This second volume is a bit better in both smut and world-building. The best example of this is when Akane has her VR spectacles on, we find out that Nadeshiko can link into those and create scenarios (such as a threesome). While the spectacles don’t have tactile capabilities, Nadeshiko can provide that through some of her functions, creating a complex VR experience that allows all senses. This is fascinating as current technologies can’t do this even in Akane’s world.

A new character has been introduced, Nadeshiko’s mother, whose motives are still unclear. It can be assumed that she’s using Akane for some purpose. This would make the most sense considering Akane’s job as a planner for an electric manufacturer that deals with A.I. tech daily.

My hope for this series is that we get more of the VR chat group. Somewhere Akane can talk freely without freaking out about getting arrested.

We do see some emotional attachment between Akane and Nadeshiko. We also see some social learning from Nadeshiko. I hope that we get more social learning from Nadeshiko as this will help relieve some of Akane’s fears of being found out.

I’d also like to see Akane reason out that she should “register” as Nadeshiko’s owner just so she can learn more about her and where she comes from. We get a little of this when Nadeshiko shows Akane what she can do with the VR spectacles.

I love the fresh take on the smut in this second novel as it’s innovative while bringing in a classic dream of many people (threesomes). The artwork also made it easy to distinguish between the normal Nadeshiko and the VR Nadeshiko, which I found very helpful during that steamy scene.

In all honesty, if the first volume and the second volume had been edited and combined, this would have made an excellent introduction into this series. While it’s still not perfect, there is some good momentum and hope for the future volumes of this series to expand upon a real plot that makes this series worth reading beyond the smut.

My hope for the next volumes to for the author to continue with this momentum. I will be picking up the third volume to see how it improves. I’ll keep you updated.

Recommendations

If you want a GL with the human to be Dom

Papa no Sexy Doll (Daddy’s Sexy Dolls) By: Gaku Kajikawa

#manga review #anime #book review #smut #girl love #android #a.i.#Akane Tsuda #curriedmermaid #otaku #weeb #mature

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callsigndragon · 2 years

Note

hi:) im trying to write a fanfic for the first time and i was wondering if you have any tips! i like my concept but i feel like my writing is no good. do you know anyone who would be willing/able to proofread my work and tell me how i can improve? i’ll take all the help i can get because i’d LOVE to publish something on here.

you are one of my favorite writers i’ve come across :) i’d love any advice you could give

I'm not a great writer myself, and I compare my work with every single person of this website.

For instance, I do not use a lot of descriptions in my fics. I'm a firm believer that sometimes you don't have to talk about the room in big detail. Give them the important details. It's good for the first stories you write, don't focus on description if it troubles you. Dialogues are perhaps ten times better than a description. Lots of famous novelists used them only when necessary and it works for me. Short fanfics don't need lots of descriptions. And one good thing about a fanfic is that the reader knows the place where things are happening because it has seen it before on a screen or have read about it before. They've seen/read the characters interacting with the different objects, they know how they move around. They know. You just need to write what's different between your scenario and the one from the movie/series/book. Descriptions can be a pain in the ass and avoiding them can work. Sometimes.

If English is or isn't your first language, it doesn't matter because you will need a good friend: synonyms. Those are your besties from now on. Using different terms to talk about something can also help to give a simple yet effective description. So when you're writing, open thesaurus and keep it there. You'll use it, believe me.

Grammarly can also be helpful. Or Google Docs. I use the last one. Sometimes, as a Spanish speaker, I write something and it has the same structure as in Spanish, and it's absolutely wrong. It happens, it's normal. Your brain is not prepared to be thinking in English 24/7. Google docs has a grammar checker and Grammarly, well, you know how it works.

But I feel like the most important tip I can give you it's summed up in one word: read. Reading thousands of fics (as I've been doing for the... Past 10 years? Omg I feel so old right now) will help you find your own literary voice. You'll read things you don't like, you'll read things you love. Whenever a new author pops up on your screen and makes you feel something with their words, like and save that post for later. Try to write something using their technique. Add a few personal things. Does it work? Good! Then keep going.

It doesn't matter how much you try it, you will always feel that your writing is not good enough. I think we, fanfic writers, are programmed to self-sabotage us every time we sit in front of a white screen.

I don't believe my work is good, and I had a hard time when I began publishing here, because i thought people will criticize my work. I've seen it before in other fandoms and it scared the shit out me. However, i ended in the best fucking fandom to start writing bc the amount of love y'all have to give is amazing.

I don't have people I send my things to read, per se. I found beautiful human beings on this app who talked to me through DM, and they are willing to listen and share ideas, opinions and stuff like that. (You know who you are babies💕) but I'm up to reading something if you want to sent it to me!

I'm afraid I don't know what else to say. There's a lot of posts going around with useful expressions for beginners, tips when describing sad scenes or smut scenes or what clichés you need to avoid... Look for them, they have a lot more information and good tips than silly old me.

My last and, probably, most difficult tip: don't doubt yourself. You finish writing something? Check for grammar mistakes and then publish it. I'm not crazy, believe me. You'll think it's trash but if only one person gives you a heart on that post, that means you reached someone with your words. And remember. Your writing is yours. You do it for you, because you need to see those scenarios written down. So, write what you want to see. Don't do it for the audience.

And thank you, sweet anon. I will call you writer anon in case you want to ask again or send me little snippets of your writing in the future (I'm serious, send whatever you want I'll read it). Thank you for loving my work even though I'm trying to love it myself 💛

#jenn answers #writing tips

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katherynefromphilly · 2 years

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Very often on fanfic writing blogs I hear people lamenting the overuse of “the raven-haired one” or “the blond” euphemisms in place of just re-using character names. On the legendary SFWA website they call this writing tendency the following:

“Burly Detective” Syndrome

This useful term is taken from SF’s cousin-genre, the detective-pulp. The hack writers of the Mike Shayne series showed an odd reluctance to use Shayne’s proper name, preferring such euphemisms as “the burly detective” or “the red-headed sleuth.” This syndrome arises from a wrong-headed conviction that the same word should not be used twice in close succession. This is only true of particularly strong and visible words, such as “vertiginous.” Better to re-use a simple tag or phrase than to contrive cumbersome methods of avoiding it.

Lots more sassy advice here: https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/18/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/

#writing #fic writing #fic writing IS WRITING #fic writers ARE WRITERS #the same stuff we talk about can be found on the publisher websites #like exactly

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cinlat · 2 years

Text

Interview with a Fic Writer

I was tagged by @swtorpadawan (Thanks a bunch!)

I’ll tag @kunoichi-ume @tishinada @dimigex @sleepswithvillains @actualanxiousswampwitch @chivalin and anyone else who wants a tag. Feel free to slap my name on it so I can read your answers too.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

42 (I’m now unable to post anymore fics because it’ll mess up this perfect number)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

923,873

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Family is more than Blood

Heart on a Trigger (the sequel to the above)

Echo of Evil (ffxiv)

The Lost Medallion

Odessen Files

Holy crap, Primal Appetites finally got booted out of the top 5.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I absolutely do....even if it takes me a minute. I love reading the comments that come to my email, but since those usually reach me away from my computer, I tend to....forget until I log in to publish something.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

That’s a tough one, but I’ll have to go with Soul of the Bes’bev. It ends with Fynta being forced to acknowledge out loud the lengths that she’s willing to go to, to the one person that she never wants to disappoint.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I mean...are we talking smut? Because all of those have happy endings. No? Okay then how about Shenanigans. This fic will always have a special place in my heart.

7. Do you write crossovers?

I have been known to dabble. The only one currently posted is SWTOR/Naruto crossover shared with @dimigex involving the disasters that are Fynta Wolfe, Theron Shan, Genma Shiranui, and Kakashi Hatake. The aptly named Tounge-in-Cheek

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

One person disagreed with my interpretation of Ma’at as a slave to her families’ expectations rather than a proper slave in Sithy Bunch, but I’d hardy call it hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Do I write smut, haha. Yes, actually, I do. Mostly aggressive given my main subject matter. It is also playful or a way to express deep emotion that must never be spoken aloud because scary. There is lots of flirting, plenty of biting, and satisfaction for all.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not in the sense that someone specifically singled it out. Just that it’s shown up on websites without my permission.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have, it’s always a fun experience. Namely, Thunder and Scars with @kunoichi-ume and Rules of Engagement with @tishinada

I also have several series where each of us writes a chapter and posts it into the same story with Ume, Dimi, and Tish as well.

13. What’s your all time favourite ship?

I’ll never get enough of these two. Art by the amazing @dingoat

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

Sadly, probably Generations of War, the continuation of Our Own that introduces Quinn/Sith Warrior and their 4, head strong and very Force sensitive daughters alongside Jorgan’s triplets. I love the story so much, but I have absolutely no idea where to take it. Waht I have published though can be found >HERE<

15. What are your writing strengths?

Action scene, without a doubt. I enjoy writing the flow of a battle or just movement in general.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

All the squishy, gushy stuff that makes of a romance. Legit, I struggle hard with feelings.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’ve written a lot of Mando’a into my fics. It was daunting at first, then became fun when I needed to figure out how to string something together to make phrase that wasn’t pre-generated by the online dictionary.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Probably SWTOR

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet, but want to?

Gears of War. Man, I love those stories so so much, but I just...haven’t written anything for it. I reread their books once a year though.

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I’m going to have to say my Meet Me on the Battlefield series. I don’t even know how many years I’ve been working on this, but I’m into the final book (that I will finished damn it.) with a few in between novellas, if you want to call them that?

#fic writer interview #thanks for the tag #it was fun going through all my old works #i got nostalgic #makes me want to write again #maybe I'll edit something #XD

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mitigatedchaos · 3 years

Text

On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article. The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn’t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking. The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.”

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.”

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later. Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training. This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.” For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods. When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status. And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it. So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here.

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop. While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving. (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this. Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not?

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist. Anything in the world can be tied to something racist. (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions. There are guesses based on correlations. Proposals. But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands. The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian. It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship. I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature. I mean among the base. I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective. They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care. He could do this tomorrow. The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention. When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out. The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012.

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t. Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work. In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year. It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year. Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week. Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day. Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them. This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable. The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology. The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it. It leaked out.

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work. The best way to do that may be to cut off the source. Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop. Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples. If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results. If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space.

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon. "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.” It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.

#racepol #american racepol #critical race theory #social justice #racial justice #longpost #flagpost #black lives matter

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thewritewolf · 4 years

Text

No, Really

Summary: Adrien can no longer deny it - he is in love with Marinette! The only problem is, she has made it absolutely clear that she is definitely not interested in him. But when he discovers that Marinette might be harboring feelings for Chat Noir, Adrien decides that there is only one way to get together with her: Reveal his identity.

Trouble is? She doesn't believe him.

Hello and welcome! This fic was written for the @totographszine, which was publish for free here. Go check it out, the wonderful @anna-scribbles even did some excellent art of this fic in there.

Read on Ao3

Without any further ado... Enjoy!

Adrien was in love with Marinette. There was no getting around that any more. But, unfortunately, it didn’t seem that she felt the same way.

Ever since he had come to terms with his feelings, he’d been trying to flirt with her. A few cheesy lines here. Some lingering touches and eye contact there. Compliments scattered throughout the day. Although, as he had realized now, it was harder to compliment her more than he already had been. How had it taken him so long to figure out his feelings?

The worst part of it was that she even flirted back! Which may sound great, but his experiences with Ladybug had taught him that flirting back could also mean friendly banter. It was a frustratingly similar experience, which he chose not to dwell on too hard.

And just like with Ladybug, he was at least appreciating the friendship that he could share with Marinette. Now that she had begun to open up to him, he was learning all sorts of things about her. Her favorite foods, what exactly tickled her most, her little mannerisms.

One day he learned the most important little fact about Marinette of them all.

“What is it with you and crushin’ on celebs, girl?”

Adrien recognized Alya’s voice at once and his eyes widened when he realized who she was likely talking to on the other side of the locker.

Sure enough, Marinette let out an irritated groan. There was a sound of a locker opening.

“What makes you think I have a crush on him? Just because I drew him in my notebook—”

“Oh sure, if you were just drawing him, that’d be one thing. But the hearts and kissy faces tell a whole different story.”

Adrien stood stock-still, listening as intently as he could. It felt as if his heart had

stopped beating. Had he failed to win the hearts of both his crushes? Would he ever get a lucky break just for once?

“They weren’t—that’s—no! Those were …” Marinette sputtered and eventually mumbled something that sounded a lot like “spades.”

“Spades.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, girl, if you want I could probably mention your name the next time I see him. Sure it’d be harder to pull off than with blondie, but I’m down.”

“Drop it, Alya,” Marinette said half-heartedly. The locker door was shut and they walked toward the entrance. For a moment, he was scared they would turn around and see him eavesdropping. “I’m sure Chat Noir doesn’t want to have my number pushed into his hand.”

Adrien’s eyes widened as he suddenly jolted to life. Chat Noir?

“Maybe. We’ll only find out if we give it a shot.” Their voices got more distant as they walked away. “At least we know you’ve got a type now.”

“Alya!”

In his heart of hearts, Adrien hoped that type included boys with green eyes and blond hair. Would it be too much to ask that she fall for him a second time? Not just as Chat Noir but as Adrien?

It was there, standing alone in the locker room, heart pounding in his throat and feeling light headed, that Adrien was suddenly struck by a plan. And while he was no Ladybug, he was pretty confident about this one.

After all, he didn’t need to make her fall for him twice. She just needed to find out who Chat Noir was.

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

His first opportunity took way too long to arrive. The need to confess his secret identity to her had been weighed against his duty not only to Paris but to Ladybug. He was as certain of Marinette’s trustworthiness as he could be, but he needed to be sure that she and only she heard him.

Besides, it made confessing his feelings a little easier too, which was honestly weighing just as heavily on his mind. Sure, safety of Paris and fighting Hawkmoth and all that, but there was also his poor battered heart to take into consideration. Ladybug had been gentle with her rejections, but they still stung as much as being tossed into a wall by a dozen akumas.

It took over a month for a golden opportunity. The four of them had been studying in Marinette’s room when Alya had left to go babysit her sisters, taking Nino along with her. Adrien watched them slowly pack up and amble over to the trap door, silently screaming every time they stopped for another little chat. But eventually, they did leave. Nino’s cap disappeared below the floor and the trapdoor shut behind them. It was late enough that Sabine and Tom had gone to bed already, but not so late that Adrien would have to leave yet, at least not for a couple hours.

Swallowing against the suddenly dryness in his throat, Adrien looked at Marinette. All thoughts of the physics homework in front of them banished the moment he saw her tongue poking out the side of her mouth, her brow furrowed in concentration.

How could one person be so cute?

Her bright blue eyes flickered up at him. “Something wrong, Adrien?”

There wasn’t going to be a better time. It was now or never.

“Marinette … I’m Chat Noir.”

The sound of her pencil scratching along the paper stopped as she stared at her homework. There was a long moment of silence wherein Adrien silently panicked. After a few seconds that stretched into infinity, which Adrien spent praying that she would say something, anything, she finally spoke.

“Yeah, okay.”

She said it with a snort and a chuckle. It was like when he was experimenting with different jokes for her and he found one that didn’t quite land but didn’t completely fall flat.

She returned back to her homework, and the sound of the pencil resumed.

“Okay? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Um … I suppose I can add a ‘haha’ in there too? If it makes you feel better?”

“You’re not supposed to laugh!”

“Then it’s not a very good joke.”

“It isn’t a joke,” Adrien said, crossing his arms haughtily. This was not going how he had planned in the slightest.

Marinette raised an eyebrow as she sat up. “There is no way you are Chat Noir.”

“Why not? I’m cool!”

“Exactly, and Chat Noir is a massive dweeb.”

Adrien gasped, scandalized. “Take that back!”

“I will not. Besides,” she continued, raising her hand, “there are plenty of things Chat Noir is that you aren’t and vice versa.” She raised a finger for each point. “Chat Noir is loud, outgoing, with a sharp tongue, and he’s a flirt to boot. Plus the whole massive dweeb thing.”

“And what about me?” Adrien pouted, almost dreading the answer. “Adrien Agreste me, I should say.”

“You’re quieter, to start with.” There was a faint blush on her cheeks. Maybe it was easier for her to describe someone who she thought wasn’t present. “You’re considerate and kind and a perfect gentleman.” She smirked and chuckled. “At least, you usually are.”

Adrien put his hands together and brought them next to his lips as he took a deep breath. He was suddenly reminded of all the times he’d made reservations or tried to set up an account on some website under his own name, only to have it deleted because it “couldn’t possibly be actually Adrien Agreste.” By this point in his initial planning stages of confessing to Marinette, they were already organizing their first date between passionate spells of making out, not trying to determine if he really was himself.

But Adrien was nothing if not adaptable.

With a wide, toothy grin worthy of his alter ego, he leaned forward, putting himself dangerously close to her face. The faint blush she’d been sporting flared to life and spread across her entire face. Her eyes went large as he purred out a reply.

“What an unfortunate alley cat I am, baring my soul to a beautiful princess and she doesn’t even believe me. Whatever shall I do?”

“W-wow, you’ve … you’ve really practiced this, h-haven’t you?” She put on a brave face and scooted backwards.

“You could say that. You could also say I’ve got a lot of experience with the whole Chat Noir flare.” The smile became more genuine as he added teasingly, “And it looks like you think Chat Noir might be more than just a massive dweeb, hmm?”

“Y-yeah?” She got back some of her composure—not much, but enough to start bantering back at him. “And what else is he then?”

“A cool cat, maybe,” he said, tossing his hair and running a hand through it. “Or, even better, a fine feline.” He grinned and finger gunned at her.

Marinette snorted. “You’ve definitely nailed down some of that Chat Noir full-of-yourself stuff. Congrats on getting your research done at least.”

“Not research. Just living the life, Pigtails.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Very creative nickname.” She smirked and crossed her arms. “Then again, it’s better than princess or my lady, so I’ll take it.”

“Hey now, Ladybug likes me calling her that, even if she tries to hide it.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Somehow I doubt that. But seriously, whose idea was this? It feels like Alya had a hand in this. I just know it.”

“Why would Alya get me to try to tell you I’m Chat Noir?”

“She never gives up on her ships is all.” Marinette’s eyes went wide and she threw her hands over her mouth. “Forget I said that!”

“But I—”

Her hands went straight for his mouth. “Forget!”

He held his hands up in surrender and she backed off.

“Come on, though. What’s so hard to believe about me being Chat Noir?”

“I just can’t see you and Chat Noir being the same person. You’re both so different!”

“Okay, first off—yeah, I can be quiet sometimes,” Adrien admitted. “But you’ve seen how I am with my friends, when I’m comfortable. I can be just as outgoing as I am in the mask!”

Marinette massaged her temples. “So what, you’re saying you have to be with close friends to be as confident as you are making terrible puns in front of all of Paris?”

“Well, the mask helps a little,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “After all, then I don’t have to think about how what I say will impact the company or get yelled at by my father. I get to just … be wild.” He gave her a timid smile. “I suppose sometimes I go a little overboard, huh?”

Her blush deepened. “Y-yeah. I guess you do sometimes.” She cleared her throat and schooled her expression back into a skeptical one. “Assuming you are Chat Noir, of course.”

“Of course.” Quietly, he added, “You know, Adrien me isn’t the only one who is ... kind. I’ve done it plenty of times in the mask.”

“I mean, yeah, you do the heroics and everything, but I was talking about something—”

“Gentler?” he said with his best Chat Noir grin, which made her eyes widen like saucers. His voice was still barely above a whisper. “Like when I comfort akuma victims or sponsor animal shelters?”

“I—yes, like that,” she admitted in the same soft tone. A little stronger, she poked his chest and gave a small smirk. “But don’t you think Ladybug will be mad that you revealed your identity? You promised not to do that, you know. Assuming you really are Chat Noir.”

“Maybe I should have asked her about it first,” he admitted, even as something tickled at the back of his mind. How did she know about the promises between them? “But I’m sure she’d understand if she knew. The value of love is something we both agree on.”

“I mean, I guess, but—wait, what?”

“And I suppose you’ve noticed how, no matter what side of the mask I’m on, I love to flirt with the person I love?” She gasped, but he just shook his head and laughed. “Finally get there? I mean, I’ve been flirting with you nonstop for like a month.” He smiled. “Maybe you and Ladybug should hang out. The everyday Ladybug and the real-life Ladybug. Both of you can be really dense when it … comes to … realizing … oh my god.”

Adrien saw the exact moment that she realized that he had figured her out. One moment she was watching him attentively. The next, her eyes had widened in panic, her pupils shrinking down to tiny pinpoints. He knew that if he did nothing, she’d start flailing her arms around and denying it.

The distance between them turned to nothing as he leapt toward her, laughing. She grumbled as he pulled her close, squeezing her tight against his chest, but she didn’t try to break free.

“Don’t be so proud of yourself. You only got lucky,” she said as she returned the hug.

“Luck or not, I finally found you … my lady.”

He looked down at her face at the same moment that she looked up into his. A moment laden with meaning passed between them before they both broke down laughing again. At long last, they had finally found each other.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Adrienette #ml fanfiction #my writing #Totographs Zine

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curatedbyhatto · 2 years

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Fool in Utopia - Blacklight

Good morning! This week's song is called 'Blacklight' from the US artist 'Fool in Utopia' (because of time constraints, the video will be/was published on a different day than this post)

Hello! It has been an amazing, a bit stressing but wonderful week for me, and I hope the same applies for you! My birthday was on Thursday, everyone at worked wished me a happy birthday, as well as my friends and family, and to be honest, I love it. On Sunday, my girlfriend and my friends threw a surprise party for me and I cried internally with joy. It was brutal, they got me a Minecraft cake and Floppa cupcakes, some hot snacks, and LASAGNA. You can see more on my instagram profile.

Also, work has been hard, ngl, I started production this week and it's... a lot; but I've managed, we've all managed. And Kasia, my support coach has been amazing. More so because she's there when I panic.

However, back to what we're here for, the music. This week's song is such a freaking masterpiece. So, what about the artist?

About the artist

'Fool in Utopia' is the pseudonym of Texas (USA) based artist 'Marc Rodriguez' (though he's originally from New Jersey). He started playing cello back when he was in fifth grade, then became drummer for 'The Frites'.

However they eventually started college (Marc is currently studying vision science at UIW), got separate ways, and that's when he really discovered his path with 'Fool in Utopia', singing his poems over his ukelele playing.

He cited twenty øne piløts as his biggest inspo (would you look at that, my favorite band too.)

Because of this desire to move further with the project Marc learnt how to produce his own music. Marc started publishing in 2018, with the release of his debut EP 'Eu'

After that, the release of his self titled debut album came, this in March 2019, and 'Blacklight' was there again. This album was produced in his college dorm room, by himself.

Then came all the other releases up to today, including 4 singles (lemon, isla blue, broken hearted boys and keep my head straight) which would later be featured in the June 2022's album 'Arcadia' (which you should also listen too!)

Marc has said the following about his 'Fool in Utopia' project:

"In this perfect place, in this utopia, we grow and we learn; and we try to understand the world around us; a place with ideas, with lessons, with the truth. The truth behind my name is that I feel as if this path, this lifestyle, isn't the one that is as perfect as it could be."

"This idea of 'Fool in Utopia' expresses how we each have a say in how our future turns out, how we are the fools that turn around to look at what this utopia is supporting and what this utopia wants us to be. We don't have to remain confined in this everlasting cycle of concrete floors and contained greenery."

Marc is on social media, like instagram, twitter, and facebook, and of course soundcloud, spotify and youtube. He also has a website for the project (and you should definitely check it out.)

About the song

'Blacklight has appeared on 2 different releases:

In his first EP, 'Eu', as the first of three tracks.

In his debut album, also named 'Fool in Utopia'; this time as the second track.

If I remember correctly, I found the song thanks to an Instagram ad (and trust me when I say I have discovered amazing music like that, from Dansu to Castlecomer, a lot of amazing stuff.)

It was an instant match. The vocals, the uke, the latinamerican percussions, EVERYTHING. I burnt the song. I played it over and over and then the whole album and then I followed Marc and- you get it.

Meaning

'Blacklight (basically) talks about a breakup (or death of a girlfriend) in a very poetic way. Explaining how people act like they don't care about what others feel, and how they make others feel. Deep lyrics, to be honest. Like them. Feel them.

Sources (except the ones already listed on text) 'Afton Emerging Artist: Fool in Utopia' an article in 'afton'3 'Take a listen to 'Fool in Utopia' a column in 'LOGOS' (UIW newspaper) 'Listen To Fool in Utopia New Album' an article on 'VISUAL ATELIER 8'

Gallery

#curated by hatto: the music #indie #independent #music #alternative #rock #latin rythms #obscure #unknown

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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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Your thoughts and headcannons on Nemuri Hachigou because I don't think she gets talked about enough, when in reality she's pretty interesting, she's essentially, a blank slate, Mayuri's second chance that I don't think he feels like he deserves. She's Nemu but she isn't and I think people(especially Mayuri) forget that a lot, that's a fascinating position to be in.

Puttin’ this under a cut because I’m gonna say some unkind things about Mayuri and I do not want to cause any distress to the many lovely people on this website who delight in his horrible antics.

This is not so much a headcanon so much as a thing I came up with for fanfiction purposes, but it’s all I got.

Right. So, like I said, I despise Mayuri. I just hate him. I understand that he appeals to some people, but I strongly dislike the dude and go to exorbitant lengths to avoid him ever appearing in my fanfic.

Additionally, I do not vibe with Nemu 7. She registers as not-a-person for me, she’s basically an extension of Mayuri himself. Don’t get me wrong, I find Mayuri’s treatment of her to be vile and I wish someone would take her away from him, but she comes off as very robotic to me. She is conscious, but she is not an independent being, if that makes sense. She is not a real girl. It’s funny that Mayuri keeps talking about how advanced she is, because clearly he means only her cognitive and fighting abilities. In terms of recreating a person, she’s incredibly primitive compared to the other mod souls we see. Take Kon, for example, who has a fairly limited powerset, but is never presented as less of a soul than any of the other characters. An even more interesting example is Ururu and Jinta. Ururu is described as being older than Jinta, and she is clearly “less human” than him-- she has less affect, she shifts into a distinct “attack” mode, etc, which implies that Jinta represents advances in mod soul technology. It’s notable that Urahara and Tessai and even Renji, in the canon scene where he protects the Shouten kids, never treats them as anything less than people. The contrast with the way Mayuri treats Nemu is stark. He likes that her feelings and personality are limited, he sees this as a feature.

I was completely unmoved by the entire chapter where Nemu died. Her sacrifice did not come across to me as anything indicating growth or humanity-- in every battle she's ever been in, she nearly dies because Kurotsuchi tells her to. She simply prioritizes Mayuri over herself. She always has. It’s simply the logical extension of her programming. A lot of people say they would have preferred Nemu to live and Mayuri to die and for sure I would have *preferred* that, but I have never seen Nemu as enough of a character to be worth rooting for. Like, at least Uryuu would have gotten some satisfaction form killing his clown ass, and that might have convinced me for at least half a second that he actually was on the side of the Quincy.

Caveat: if some talented fanficcer wants to write a short novel on Nemu discovering her humanity etc etc, I’m all for it, I’m just saying that canon hasn’t given us anything to suggest she would do more than just shut down without Mayuri to tell her what to do.

Onto Nemuri 8. I can’t believe they let Mayuri have another one. It makes my blood boil. The dude is an on-screen abuser and Kubo had the gall to try to make me feel sorry feel him (I did not) and then gave him another one.

So, I took her away from him.

I mentioned earlier that I go to great lengths to keep Mayuri the hell out of my fanfic, and usually the way I do that is to have my characters go through Akon whenever they have to deal with Squad 12. I think I started doing this because Akon is sort of weirdly familiar with Renji and Rukia in the TYBW, but I have projected all over him and he’s mine now. The way I assume Squad 12 functions, based on my career in scientific programming, is that Mayuri is like a primary investigator-- he's the Big Ideas guy and he spends a lot of time doing wholly self-directed research. He’s the face of Squad 12, so he has to go talk to the Captain-Commander and beg for money and defend blowing things up, but when it comes to science stuff, he does what he wants. Nemu is the lieutenant, and I think she handles most of the usual lieutenanting-- paperwork, meetings, etc., but I think Mayuri takes up a lot of her time by using her as a personal lab assistant on his wacky projects. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think in a lot of squads, the lieutenant is responsible for the day-to-day running of the squad and spends a lot of time dealing with their subordinates and other lieutenants. Nemu, instead, focuses on her captain. Now, the rest of the Gotei counts on Squad 12 for a lot actually-- gigai, Hollow tracking, Dangai monitoring, etc. etc. From the point of view of most science people, this stuff is mundane-- it’s all application, not development, and all the difficulty is in the twitchy little details. It’s frustrating and it’s unrewarding and you never get credit for it, and it is vitally important. There is a certain kind of science professional that makes a career out of this. They usually have master's degrees instead of PhDs, and they are usually tragically underpaid and underappreciated for what they do. In the real world, without these people, you wouldn’t have mass vaccination sites or weather data on your phone or cute li’l robots landing on other planets. In Bleach, these are the people keeping soul reapers alive in the field. And in my mind, this is Akon’s department.

So here’s the headcanon:

After Nemu’s death, Mayuri has so much sad clown pain about it that he wants another robot child poste-haste, but can’t bring himself to do the actual work, so he shoves it off onto Akon, with a list of the design specs he wants. The last one was pretty good, Akon can handle a few minor upgrades, it doesn’t need his personal hand in it. Thinking about going through all that work again just pisses him off, honestly. What a waste!

And Akon's like, yeah, cool, fine. It was heavily implied that he did a lot of the work on Nemu 7, it's just a matter of digging out his old notes and cleaning out some vats.

Except that, right around the same time, Rukia and Renji decide to have a baby.

Babies are super rare in the Gotei, and it’s not like those stuffy nobles are gonna let Akon look at their precious offspring. But Rukia is a rank weirdo, and Akon is their pal, so she’s always like “I hear they have these things in the Living World where you can pee on a stick and tell if you’re pregnant, can you make me one?” and Akon’s brain goes, “Wow, what even is the first detectable sign of a newly formed soul, this is very interesting.” So, at the same time he’s trying to grow a new and improved Nemu, he’s got access to the developing fetus of two captain-class shinigami. So when he has to pick between eight good candidate embryos to move to the next vat, he picks… not the one with the strongest reiatsu signature, like they did last time, but the one whose reiatsu looks the most like a real baby.

Akon reminds me of a lot of programmers I know, so I always sort of headcanon him as particularly interested in whatever passes for programming in Squad 12, and I think he takes special interest in revamping Nemu’s artificial intelligence system, which is primarily based on taking in information about the world and building up a realistic personality based on people she observes. In particular, it gives extra weight to “people who resemble her”. Nemu 7 was raised by Squad 12, so she came up very Squad 12, just like Mayuri wanted. Unfortunately, toddler Hachigou Nemuri’s algorithm unexpectedly decides that she has much more in common with toddler Abarai Ichika than any of the adult soul reapers around her.

Nemuri 8 is a very successful sample in terms of power and intelligence but she’s also very boisterous, and the rest of Squad 12 is like “Akon do something” so Akon takes drastic measures: he asks Renji for parenting advice. Distressingly, Renji is full of useful ideas like “tire her out” and “only fight the important battles” and “we’re signed up for baby yoga, you wanna start comin’ to baby yoga? Your back is gonna thank you.”

Akon didn't mean to let them hang out so much, but Ichika is a very useful data point and also if he takes Nemuri over to the Abarai house, the girls will entertain themselves (i.e. chew on each other) long enough for him to have a beer with Renji and Rukia and honestly my man really needs that beer.

I don’t think Akon thinks of himself as Nemu’s dad past the first time when she calls him ‘Daddy’ and he corrects her (she only did it because that’s what Ichika calls Renji, very predictable quirk of her programming). She’s just a work project. She’s not even his project, she’s Mayuri’s project, he’s just handling the little details. Fathering just happens to be an adjacent field of study that he’s found to contain a number of very useful best practices.

I would prefer not to get into the detail of the physical abuse that Mayuri uses against Nemu 7, but I would like to think that Akon finds ways to protect Nemuri 8 from the same, or barring that, maybe this is what finally drives Akon to murder Kurotsuchi and become Squad 12 captain himself.

Other Nemuri Headcanons:

Her favorite book is Rejection of the Twin Fishes!, Captain Ukitake’s posthumously published children’s book.

She prefers to be called “Nemuri” over “Nemu.”

Nemuri’s second favorite person in Squad 12 after Akon is Rin, because he always has candy. Rin actually likes having someone to share his hobby with and helps her make a World of the Living Snack Bucket List. When other shinigami come in for gigai, Nemuri constantly tries to con them into bringing something back for her.

Rukia teaches her to cuss, but tells her never to do it around Akon. Nemuri never actually cusses around anyone, but really enjoys having Forbidden Knowledge.

Speaking of Forbidden, she is mildly obsessed with Urahara, even though she’s never met him. She’s constantly on the lookout for thumbprints of his work in modern Squad 12 technology.

The one thing she does have in common with Mayuri is an absolutely batshit personal aesthetic. She starts painting her face as a tween and is somewhat inconveniently both into piercings and inflatable outfits.

The true proof that she has surpassed her predecessor, at least in terms of humanity, is that she is able to learn the name of her zanpakutou.

Oh, if you want to read any of my fanfics with Nemuri, here's one where she and Ichika play football and here's one where she tries to con Byakuya into buying her shaved ice. I really like writing Nemuri hanging out with Byakuya because I think an adult man who navigates social settings via rigid system of etiquette and class hierarchy and a small child with a pile of Markov chains for a brain would be natural friends.

#nemuri hachigou

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arecomicsevengood · 2 years

Text

Read a few comics today I thought were absolute bangers. All were serializations, basically self-published, that I haven’t seen much coverage of. I am going to half-ass my own reviewing practice in favor of just noting their existence. Sorry for not including images in this post.

Mike Shea-Wright’s Gigs Chapter One had me wondering “wait, is this the same guy as Tristan Wright, who did that Low Light comic a few years ago?” and I don’t think it is, but in a larger sense it is helpful to think of them as the same person. Mike Shea-Wright did a TCJ Cartoonist’s Diary last year. Anyway, Gigs is very cheap for the size it’s printed at and how many pages there are in it, and it’s telling a sci-fi story on pages without panel borders. The approach does sorta seem like if Tristan Wright (whose comics I compared to stuff that would run in Brandon Graham’s Island, interested in Moebius and Miyazaki) saw Connor Willumsen’s comics and loosened up their approach to how pages should read. The depiction of warehouse parties also suggests an author who was a big fan of the Load Records noise-rock scene of Lightning Bolt, Coughs, etc. and while that is an interest of mine as well, it also feels like the book’s low price point for the production value is also indebted to the early work of Brian Chippendale and Anya Davidson. So I love all of that stuff, and the concerns of the book’s subject matter also aligns with my own: Characters are getting older, wondering if they want to have kids, pursuing nontraditional relationships, still trying to party. The big questions are being asked: What’s the deal with robots and should we be nice to them, and for that matter, how should we interact with and raise children? Really great stuff, the author has other stuff that’s available via Domino Books and still other stuff that’s been reviewed at Four Color Apocalypse by Ryan Carey. This one’s at Wig Shop and Partners And Son. This came out last year I think, hopefully there’s more on the way.

Miles MacDiarmid’s Hive: The Coronation just came out, and is hopefully still in print, because it’s in the running to be the book of the year, as far as I’m concerned. MacDiarmid’s a member of Freak Comix, with Cristian Castelo, and I’d read a few of his comics before, all revolving around the same cast of characters. This is the latest incarnation of that sort of alternative comic about young people, going to parties and hanging out, with some surrealistic or fantasy touches. Like, there’s Jaime Hernandez’s Locas material, there’s Evan Dorkin’s Hectic Planet strips and probably a bunch of other Slave Labor and Fantagraphics also-rans lost to the sands of time. It’s kinda sick that every generation reinvents the youthful slacker comedy. You can also cite Simon Hanselmann as the current inheritor of this style, but the vibe’s different here -- more drinking beers and going out and less staying in smoking weed. Feel like the comedic timing is really good in this one, starting off aiming for naturalism and then ramping up the sorta surrealist elements until arriving at full-on horror. The character designs are all sort of cartoony grotesques from the jump though. This is in full color, and is a nice hefty object. Ends on a cliffhanger. While trying to find Miles’ website, I found this Pinterest post from his mom. This book is at Domino Books currently. There’s also a comic of Deleted Scenes I think I want to get but right now can’t find a link to. Freak also published the Shaheen Beardsley O Boy book I believe is now sold out, but there was never a site where you could order MacDiarmid’s books as well as the Beardsley for some reason, I don’t think.

Daryl Seitchik reprinted the first issue of Follow The Doll last year, and I have only now gotten around to reading it. I have previously talked shit on the Center For Cartoon Studies style -- their approach to comics-making favors starting from a place of simplicity of storytelling, in a way where, even though the artists may later complicate their work, it always seems straightforward in a way that a self-taught artist that starts off over-ambitious and then learns how to speak more clearly is just inherently more interesting. When I said this, I wasn’t aware Seitchik went to CCS. I like her work precisely because it does have a very straightforward toolkit that it then seeks to complicate. This story is an adaptation of a folktale (which my understanding has is a very common CCS assignment) but it leans into the dreaminess and instability of memory. I hope it gets weirder as it goes but what’s in this issue is a promising start.

I also read the third issue of Marc Pearson’s series from Glom Press. The first installment was called Flamingo Diamond, the new one’s called Mist From The Geyser. Pearson’s a fun cartoonist, Glom is a cool publisher, though they’re based in Australia and shipping charges are usually prohibitive. I got these from Partners And Son. This is an interesting serial, that feels fairly digressive, with the non sequitur being a big part of the sense of humor, and major characters that were introduced in early installments are absent in this one, which focuses on secondary characters, one of whom has become an amnesiac since his last appearance. While other comics I’m highlighting here are about young people and parties as the locus of social lives, this focuses on the middle aged and elderly, who are all meeting in passing, one-on-one, and trying to puzzle out their lives. It’s a very different effect, defined by entropy. Whether this is all going somewhere or just swirling around an absent center, I have no idea, but I’m on board.

Glom also publishes an artist named Eloise Grills, whose book with Glom has a blurb by the poet Hera Lindsay Bird. Her next book is being put out by an Australian press called Affirm Press, and it’s called Big Beautiful Female Theory. I’m probably not the right person to do it but I do hope one of my freelancing compatriots at The Comics Journal requests a review copy and writes about it.

Another serialized self-published thing, also about young people going to house parties and encountering the paranormal, is the maybe stalled out at the moment Adam De Souza series A Gleaming. Really nice art in that one, you can see De Souza’s work in an online comic strip called Blind Alley now as well as a short story collection called -ish Silver Sprocket is putting out. But I didn’t read any of that stuff today, I read it back when I read the earlier installments of the Marc Pearson stuff I‘m only mentioning now.

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chris-evans-indian-fanfic · 4 years

Text

A Second Chance?

One-shot

Description- Steve cannot forget Peggy and you become his second choice.

Warnings- Angsty Steve

This one-shot is for the exciting weekly challenge set by @donutloverxo and her friends! For this week, the fic is inspired by their moodboard below! Check out the challenge here

My Main Masterlist

I don’t consent to have any of my work published or featured on any third party app, website or translated. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but tumblr, it has been reposted without my permission. In that case, please do share the link and let me know.

...

Red. That was all that Steve saw when he entered the party. Red. Raw anger radiated from him like heat from an asphalt road on a hot summer day. Everyone at Tony's party looked at the angry Captain and gave him plenty of room, unwilling to bear the brunt of his temper.

He slowly walked across the room, his eyes searching for your silhouette. Finally, he found you talking to Pepper on the balcony of the Avengers tower. You were wearing his favourite dress, the white one with lace on the top and a little bit of flare at the knees. You were your usual charming self, making Pepper smile with your innocence. Huh, Steve snorted, if only they knew how petty you could be.

You looked at him as he stepped towards the balcony, feeling his presence. But, his expression made you stop. It was obvious he was furious, but why? As far as you knew, there were no new missions at the moment and the world was safe, at least for the time being. Apparently, Pepper noticed Steve's body language as well and slightly nodded when you excused yourself.

In the last year with Steve, you had gotten pretty good at handling his temperamental nature. In all the time you had shared with him, you had never seen Steve this furious. You followed him quietly into his apartment that you shared with him, and flinched when he closed the door with a BANG.

He glared at you from across the room, his nostrils flaring as if he could breathe fire. Fists clenched, he slowly started walking towards you. "How many times have I said that you will NEVER measure up to Peggy?" he spat.

"Al-almost everyday Steve," you stammered. Even after all these years, Peggy still claimed a special place in Steve's heart and he didn't miss any opportunity to bring it up. His words and his compass were a constant reminder that you would always hold a second place in his life. But you didn't mind though, because for you, Steve was the only one there could ever be.

"And how many times have I asked you to stay away from the compass?" he asked. "Many t-times Steve. W-what happened?" you asked, clearly nervous with Steve's demeanor.

"Why did I find my compass covered in red wine on the couch?" his voice dripping with anger. This was news to you as well. You had never touched the compass, knowing it would upset Steve.

Shaking your head, you tried to reason with him, "Steve this is the f-first time I am hearing about this. I-I promise you I had n-nothing to do with this. Should we ask F.R.I.D.A.Y? M-maybe she caught something on tape?"

"Do you honestly think I am that dumb?" Steve snapped as he stepped further, "Her tapes have been wiped clean. And only you have access to that, don't you? Ms. Head of Security?"

"Steve, please believe me, I did no such thing. Let's go to my office and we can figure this out," you pleaded with him.

"YOU disgust me. I can't even look at you. Make sure your stuff is cleared out of my apartment by tonight," he stormed out after the command.

You couldn't just stand there and watch the love of your life just breakup with you. And so, you rushed out after him, hoping to knock some sense into his arrogant brain.

In an attempt to get away from you, Steve headed to the party, with you almost near his heels.

"Steve," you called out to him, not wanting to create a scene, but he had already entered the party and was walking towards the bar near the pool. You almost sprinted to catch up to the man. When you finally did, you placed a small hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Steve please l-lis… ARGGHH!"

In an attempt to shake you off, Steve had pushed you. Now in his head, it was a light push, but for your petite body, the impact of the push threw you into the deep-end pool.

You fell with a loud splash. Panic gripped you as you kept sinking into the water, flailing your arms and legs around as you miserably tried to swim.

Almost instantly, you saw yourself being enveloped by a ball of red light, lifting you out of the water and onto the edge of the pool.

As you coughed up water, someone covered you with a blanket and started rubbing your back. You looked up to see Bruce's reassuring face.

"Good job Wanda," you heard, was it Clint? "Thank God this went better than the wine accident."

"Sshhhh," you guessed you heard Wanda shushing him.

"What do you mean by 'wine accident'?" Steve asked with authority.

"Uhhh," Clint fumbled for words as Wanda looked guilty, "Wanda and I were practising her powers in the living room when, by mistake, she kinda spilled red wine on your compass. So yeah… But it was closed…"

Steve fumed at Wanda, and received a silent apology in return.

You slowly stood up and started making your way towards the apartment, wanting to clear out your stuff before the night. You had never thought that Steve would get physical with you. All this time, you had patiently tolerated his temper, telling yourself that he led a hectic and violent life and that he probably needed an outlet to blow off his steam. But today he crossed a limit.

Steve saw you walking out, and stepped in your direction, hoping to follow you to the room. But he was stopped by Natasha, "Don't," she said sternly, "Let her go. She doesn't deserve to be treated this way."

…

It had been a year since that fateful day. You had quit your job at Stark Industries and moved out to California, where you were working with an international tech company.

Everyday, without fail, you had received a red rose, with a single note - I am sorry, written in Steve's almost illegible handwriting. It didn't matter where you went, you always received a rose, which you dutifully gave to your old neighbour, always managing to make him smile his toothy smile.

Today, however, you received a small package with the rose. Without a second thought, you threw the package in the garbage bin on your way to work. But as you entered your office, you found the same package on your desk. Again you threw it into the dustbin, immersing yourself in your work.

You reached home quite late, exhausted with day. As you entered your modest apartment, you found the package sitting on your living room table. Exhaling loudly, you picked it up and threw it out of the window.

"It's not nice to throw away somebody's gift," Steve said quietly from behind her.

"Yes but it is nice to throw your girlfriend into the swimming pool," you snorted, not surprised to see him there.

"I am sorry," he spoke with remorse, "I didn't mean to. You didn't deserve to be treated like that." "Wow, who managed to knock some sense into you?" you said with as much sarcasm as you could muster.

He blocked your way, careful not to touch you as you were headed for your bedroom. "Just open this once," he said, revealing the real box from behind him. "No. I don't want to have anything to do with you," you said crossing your arms.

Sighing in defeat, Steve opened the box to reveal his compass. "I hope this shows you how serious I am about you, about us. Here, open it," he offered you the compass.

"No," you again replied with defiance.

He huffed as he pressed the button to open the compass. Now, instead of Peggy, it was your image that adorned the metal inside. You raised your eyebrow at him as he looked at you expectantly.

"Do you really think this will make up for everything you have done?" you asked him incredulously. "No, I know it won't," he hung his head shamefully, "but at least it's a start. I am sorry. I know I hurt you, but please give me a second chance. I…" he sighed, "I need you."

Stepping away from him, you headed for your bedroom, "I honestly need time to think about this Steve. You cannot just expect me to move on with you like nothing happened just because you are sorry."

Turning the doorknob to the room, you said with spite, "You let yourself in my house, you can see yourself out Captain," and with that, you entered the bedroom and closed your door.

#captain america #steve rogers #captain steve rogers #captainsweeklychallenge #steve rogers angst #Steve Rogers x reader #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #captain America x reader #captain America x you #captain America x y/n #Avengers

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bellaslilpapercut · 3 years

Text

Oh boy New Moon! I've got some Thoughts a brewin' babey:

1. Smeyer: you do not need to remind your audience what happened last book, they aren't stupid. Imagine if SC started catching fire with ANOTHER explanation of what the hunger games are and that's the vibe of the first chapters of new moon. We remember james, we know what vampires are, we know that Bella is white, stop reminding us!

2. Bella has the worst self esteem of all time. Every bad thing that has happened to her since the Van Incident has been Edward's fault but she still blames herself and idk if this is Intentional Insecurity or if smeyer is protecting edward's "character" or both but gdamn it's depressing.

3. The reason I said Jasper was Inconsistently Written jumped out at me again. Smeyer dedicated a whole paragraph to pointing out how terrible jasper is at the diet or whatever but in the guide, smeyer tells us jasper actively tried to starve himself in the past because of how difficult his gift made feeding. He was one of only two Cullens to show bella empathy, he smelled her blood before, why does he attack her? The weakness of this decision is pointed out in the exposition: if it really were likely that Jasper would attack Bella, she wouldn't have needed a superfluous paragraph dedicated to telling us how bad he is at self control. If the story had convinced us of that beforehand, we would have believed the attack without the addendum.

4. The party is my least favorite part of the whole series and I will die on this hill: edward should have attacked bella. Bella should have tripped into something glass and edward should have lost it because he tasted her blood before and couldn't help himself. That way: edwards self loathing makes sense and he's forced to recon with his superiority complex from the ending chapters of twilight AND bella's self blame makes sense. A vamp who was able to starve himself before he even heard of the cullens should not have lost it around someone he spent days in close quarters with, building rapport and friendship. Edward got too high and mighty after he fed from Bella in Twilight, that should have had real consequence.

5. The writing is getting a little better as we near Edward leaving. "Better" isn't a good word actually but it's getting closer to the prose in twilight (which was flowery and annoying but at least it didn't constantly feel like being spoonfed exposition every paragraph). Hm wrote this blurb while I was still on chapter 3 and the vibe of being spoonfed reminders has not really dissipated lmfao.

We remember Sam Uley, smeyer, you introduced him four chapters ago. Just quick question: did anyone proofread this?? I think it's fair to say: when she isn't reminding us of things that we remember the prose is more similar to twilight. A little annoying but interesting enough to forgive the errors (or at least move past them easily enough lol).

6. I'm on chapter 8 now (I'm gonna break this up into three parts so I don't forget stuff like I did during the twilight reread) and there's a very heavy Vibe that smeyer is setting Jake up to be a parallel for twilight-era Bella. This line here is a pretty clear parallel for Bella telling Edward not to hold his breath in Twilight when he tells her she might get tired of him.

7. This line here "almost happy in a shallow kind of way" really jumped out. What Bella's narration says about Jacob versus her conversations with him (and her one paragraph about his happiness being effortlessly contagious) are at odds. It doesn't read like shallow happiness when she's with Jake. However, Smeyer is also a bad writer, she thinks the story she's telling us is literally what the narration says and not what the action shows and I think she realizes this in Eclipse (but obviously I'm not there yet so I can't say for sure).

8. I really can't get over the drop in writing quality. I know that she had already mostly finished Forever Dawn by the time Twilight was published (or was halfway done, I think her website said she had over 300 pages of forever dawn complete when she found out Twilight was getting published). I think the writing quality really reveals that she was not prepared to write New Moon. It's sloppier than Twilight in a way I'm not able to articulate (by that I mean I personally have a more intuitive than technical understanding of grammar and syntax so I don't have the language to break down the differences). Twilight itself is ripe with technical errors and plot errors and awkward exposition so it's not an overt drop in quality but I think it very much reads like a rushed writing job. She was committed to forever dawn, her publishers wanted New Moon, it shows.

9. I think New Moon was when I first started physically editing my copies of the saga lol. Even reading it now I'm so tempted to open up a word document and cut half of the useless shit out and fix all the grammatical mistakes. I can't even talk shit because I am also a comma-abuser but I hoped an editor would at least catch the errors before publishing. Guess not! Brevity is very clearly not meyers strong suit and this would have been a much stronger sequel if she had been able to reign herself in a bit. New Moon isn't supposed to be as narration heavy as twilight, there's already more action in the first seven chapters than the there was in the first 19 of twilight but she always delivers exposition via awkward dialogue or Bella's narration. Again, we already got a lot of the exposition in twilight, we know how vampires work et cetera. You can show us how bella feels instead of making her tell us and the story would run a lot more smoothly.

10. I'll end on a nice note! Little treat!

This is my favorite part of the book so far. I whited-out the useless dialogue tag because the line reads better without it ( line originally ends with "I emphasized" but she could have been brief and just ended the dialogue with an exclamation point for the same effect). The dialogue is natural and shows the J/B relationship that lives in my head way better than anything else I've seen on the page at this point. Like, I literally love this line more than any dialogue that preceded it (including twilight) lol.

#new moon reread #its taken me so long to get through these first chapters because its physically painful lmfao #i think when jacob comes in it gets more enjoyable if im remembering correctly #though im sure the writing quality will be equal to twilight at best #i wish anyone else in the world had written jacob black #everything about his character from the jump has been to serve bella's story #and everything about bella was to serve edward #i think i will write a meta on that eventually

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pantstomatch · 3 years

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I love your writing, and (the cliche, it burns) one day I'd like to publish too. But a lot of things have changed since the last time I was confident in trying to do this, and I wondered if you would talk about the process (getting an agent, that sort of thing) if you're comfortable and have the time. It's also cool if you privately respond, if you'd prefer, I'm just trying to figure out how to get started again? And so many tips are "publish on Amazon!"

Thank you!!!! Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m probably not the best person to ask about this, because I’m actually really bad at being published, but I can tell you some stuff that I’ve learned? That might be helpful? I ended up being long-winded, so (if tumblr works right here) everything is under the cut...

1. Querying!

So in general, querying sucks balls. Like… it’s probably the worst thing you’ll ever have to do. You’re gonna want to research what agents are looking for the kind of stuff you want to write or have written. Some are looking for certain genres or what they think is marketable, and you want to send your query to someone who’s open to what you have, or it’s a waste. Most likely the agency website or the agents “I’m looking for…” page or whatever will give you specific instructions on what to include in your query email - how the subject should be written, what they’re looking for, how many pages of your manuscript they want to see, how to attach it to the email and in what form, and if they want a synopsis of your novel. Some agents use Query Manager, which is basically a form you fill out and attach all the things they want, and you can go back in and edit it and it’s a nice way to keep track of your query. Next, they’re gonna (hopefully; some just never respond) either say no thank you very politely, or ask you for the full manuscript. Most of these agents will also give you a general timeline for a response, and if they’re open to a nudge from you or not. After that, they’ll either say no to the full manuscript, or welcome you aboard!

Most places allow you to send multiple queries out for the same work, meaning they’re not “exclusive,” except within their own agency. If they ask for a full manuscript, but before they get back to you, another agent has snapped you up, they’ll want you to let them know so they don’t waste their time on it. Occasionally, if they want to see your full manuscript, they’ll ask for you to not send the full manuscript to someone else until they’re done, or for you to tell them if someone else is looking at the full manuscript. You can also change your mind! You can email them and let them know you’ve decided to pull the novel out of consideration, maybe if you think it needs more editing.

I have never successfully queried. I found the whole thing demoralizing, and I did my first contract on my own, without an agent. This is something I don’t recommend because I had to figure out a lot of confusing shit on my own that I still don’t fully understand. And it also made me doubt my writing after the fact, because agents don’t give a shit if you’re already published, they’re focused solely on whatever you’re presenting them with. And then after that, I figured if I got another book out of my current editor, would I want to present that to the people who already didn’t like my writing? I have an agent for another project I’m working on, and the only reason I have her is because someone introduced us and told her I desperately needed help.

1a. So you found the agent(s) you think you like!

Other than the instructions/guidelines written out by the agency/agents that you’re interested in, you’re gonna need the most complete and fully edited version of your novel in hand. If they ask for your full manuscript, you absolutely should not say it’s not done. Make sure it’s finished, and preferably edited, before you send your query in. If they ask for a synopsis, hard pass. Ha ha ha, just kidding. No, really, arguably, this is going to be the hardest thing to write. A synopsis will suck your soul out of your body and make you weep blood. The only thing worse than querying is writing a synopsis for that query. I have never written a synopsis that I didn’t think was utter shit. I hate them.

Querytracker is a cool place to look up agents that you want to query and see how responsive (and nice) they are. It took me a little bit to figure out the abbreviations, though.

2. Pick your genre carefully

Unless you are a best selling author, they are never ever ever going to let you change genres. I mean, maybe if you wrote under a different name. Maybe. But they’ve bought your book based on how they think it will sell, and they’re going to want to sell you, too, and genre jumping is usually a no-go. This is, basically, one of the biggest things I hate, and one of the greatest things I love about fanfiction, that I can write whatever the fuck I feel like writing. So, you know, make sure you really really really want to write about what your first book is going to be about, because you’re going to be writing about that forever. And I don’t mean just YA vs New Adult vs Adult, although you need to take that into account too. I mean if you’re writing about high school regular kids, you probably can’t write about supernatural high school kids. You can’t write about high school kids in space. You can only write about regular high school kids. So.. think sci -fi vs fantasy vs historical vs contemporary, etc.

3. I hope you don’t hate people!

Do you want to go to a bookstore and talk in front of a crowd? Do you want to go to cons and network with other authors? Do you want to call up publications and volunteer for interviews? Do you want to talk about your books with strangers? Because I sure don’t. Publishing houses do the bare minimum of publicity for you for your book. First book, they’ll probably help set up some store signings. Going forward, if you weren’t proactive the first time around, they’re probably not going to do anything. If you’ve got some really good advance reviews, they’ll do ads. They’ll probably do the rote social media posts. But basically, you’re going to have to advocate for your book. You’re going to have to create your own brand. You’re going to have to make swag and send it out, call up bookstores, post constantly about it on twitter, buddy up to other authors, go places where you can network. And I will tell you that all of that is my nightmare. I don’t want to do any of that. I don’t like meeting new people. I had several panic attacks leading up my book signing, and the book signing itself was pretty bad. I’m just… not good with people. And, honestly, at my age, I don’t want to be any better. All it does is give me stress and hives, and to get over that I’d really really have to want to do it.

4. Personal perks?

Editors! I’ve worked with two awesome editors, and it’s amazing having someone to tell you how to fix things in a way that makes sense. By far, one of the only perks of being published for me. I absolutely don’t know for sure, but I always got the feeling that they expected more push back from me with their suggestions, but nope. I was open to everything, and that’s probably why the books worked so well, because editors absolutely know what they’re doing and only want what’s best for the book.

Holding a solid book of my work! Always awesome to hold that first book in your hands, with the beautiful cover work and everything. The fact that other people can read it and know it was me who wrote those words only counters that by about a half.

Money! Advances vary drastically, but, listen, the money kind of made the panic attacks worth it. A little.

5. Advances and royalties

The things I’ve read about advances is that too little, and you might think they have less confidence in you, and too much and you’re panicking about selling, because if you don’t earn out your advance, there’s a chance they won’t want to invest in you in the future. Generally, the way they work is they offer you a contract with the amount they are willing to “advance” you. This is basically saying, we think this book will give us this amount of money, and this is your share of that amount of money. You earn this out with royalties. When you sign the contract, you will get a certain amount of money, usually half of your offered advance. When you deliver the finished manuscript, after your editor and you have gone over it and it’s been approved, you’ll get the other half. A two book deal would be split into 4 parts, and you’d get the first 2 parts for signing the contract (1/4th for each book), the next part for the first finished manuscript, and then the last part for the second finished manuscript, generally after the first book is already published. After that, you won’t see any money until your royalties reach the amount they already paid you in advance. Unless otherwise negotiated, you’d get a royalty check twice a year. Your earnings from January to July would be sent to you in October, and your earnings for July to December would be sent to you in April. Since any books sold to bookstores and online stores can be returned to the publisher if unsold, they will usually “hold back” a certain amount at first, to make sure you’re really earning that royalty. Royalty statements themselves are a hot mess and I’ve never been able to read them, which is also a good reason to have an agent. An agent will get your money sent to them, make sure it’s the correct amount, take their cut, and then send you a check from them.

6. Self publishing

Okay, I know nothing about self publishing, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it if you have the right support system (ie editors). If you’re going to have to do a lot of the marketing yourself anyway, I don’t see how this is much different. Biggest thing would be the upfront cost, and making sure you make that cost worth it. Independent author S Usher Evans has some good advice for self publishing - Sush’s worked very hard at it, and started her own publishing company. Also, @qwanderer might be a good resource, I think they use Lulu, which is a really cool self publishing site.

Uhhhh, so that’s a lot of info and also not a lot of info, so please feel free to ask me anything else, and I really hope I haven’t made this harder for you to get started ha ha ha. I think the best thing to do is to figure out what you want to write and write it and just… go from there. If you really love what you have, someone else is going to love it, too.

And if anyone’s had a different experience or thinks I got something wrong or has more/better advice for @heyninja, let me know!

#heyninja #replies #publishing advice #my two cents #writing

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