#''authors have to be influencers in order to be published''

[boxfullaturtles]

🚀📗💌

Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

Depends. When it's a one shot, I usually have the broad strokes of what I want to do, maybe a specific scene in mind, and usually pants it from there.

But for longer stuff, like Mortal Shell or Adagio in Green, those get outlines. In fact, Adagio now has one of the most extensive outlines I have ever done for a fan fiction. I drew diagrams and floor plans. The notes and ideas have their own notebook.

Like, look at this. This is just a small sampling of my layers of notes and outline and shit that I am doing to try and keep track of everything in Adagio.

I love this fic but boy howdy...

Do you want to write something outside of fan fiction? If so, what about?

I have an embarrassingly large number of story ideas that I want to write and they're all fantasy/urban fantasy because I am nothing if not predictable. Whether I actually finish one of them or not well...

The only one that's really made it past the outline stage and is a partially written rough draft. It's called "A Box Full of Void" and I started writing it when I was in a really, really bad way. But it's weirdly hopeful and cathartic, despite the spooky themes and existentialism. Basic plot summary:

Cecil "Rabbit" Downs and his friends live in the city of Hollowfort. It's a normal city. Until it's not. It starts with a sinkhole opening up in a local cemetery, disturbing hundreds of graves with a hole that disappears into the black earth. And then things get worse. A theater is trashed, a construction site collapses, animals go missing or are found dead in awful ways, and there are eerie sightings all over the city. And then a body gets up at a funeral and attacks a priest. Things are going very, very, VERY wrong in Hollowfort. But Rabbit and their friends aren't looking to be heroes or save the day. They just want to survive.

And it's NOT zombies, before you ask. Or aliens. Anyway, it's got a little bit of body horror, a little bit of gore, and lots of my purple prose metaphor bullshit that I use to try and describe things beyond the scope of human comprehension. There's a little bit of romance, but mostly a lot of darkness and weird, slightly philosophical talks about mental health, the nature of "good and bad", and some weird dogs.

I've got a bunch of short stories too. I keep meaning to submit them to places but I either forget or chicken out at the last second....

Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

Looks at my Bad Things Happen Bingo. Looks at you.

Non-Consensual Body Modifications.

Especially if there's mad science, torture, medical horror/trauma, and painful transformations involved.

Again, I am nothing if not predictable.

[hayatheauthor]

12 Red Herrings to Keep Your Readers Distracted

I’ve seen mystery/thriller authors use the same handful of red herrings too many times to count. So here are some (hopefully not as common) red herrings for your writing. 

1. The Unreliable Narrator's Bias

Your narrator can play favourites and scheme and twist the way your readers interpret the story. Use this to your advantage! A character portrayed as untrustworthy can really be someone innocent the narrator framed, vice versa. 

2. The Loyal Traitor

A character with a history of betrayal or questionable loyalty is an obvious suspect. They did it once, they could do it again, right? Wrong! They’ve actually changed and the real traitor is someone you trusted. 

3. The Conflicted Expert

An expert—like a detective, scientist, or historian—analyses a piece of evidence. They’re ultimately wrong, either due to bias, missing data, or pressure to provide quick answers.

4. The Overly Competent Ally

You know that one sidekick or ally who’s somehow always ahead of the curve? They’re just really knowledgeable, your characters know this, but it makes it hard to trust them. Perfection is suspicious! But in this case, they’re actually just perfect. 

5. The Misleading Emotional Clue

Maybe one of your characters is seen crying, angry, or suspiciously happy after xyz event. Characters suspect them, but turns out they’re just having a personal issue. (People have lives outside of yours MC smh). Or it could be a cover-up. 

6. A Misleading Alibi

At first this character’s alibi seems perfect but once the protag digs into it, it has a major hole/lie. Maybe they were in a different location or the person they claimed to be with was out of town. 

7. The Odd Pattern

Have a seemingly significant pattern—symbols left at crime scenes, items stolen in a specific order, crimes on specific dates. Then make it deliberately planted to mislead.

8. The Misinterpreted Relationship

A character was secretly close to a victim/suspect, making them a suspect. Turns out they were hiding a completely unrelated secret; an affair, hidden family connection, etc.

9. A Forgotten Grudge

Create a grudge or past feud and use it to cast suspicion on an innocent character. Introducing an aspect of their past also helps flesh out their character and dynamics as a group + plant distrust. 

10. The Faked Death

Luke Castellan, need I say more (I will)? A supposedly innocent character dies, but turns out they faked it and were never a victim in the first place. They just needed to be out of the picture. 

11. The Mistaken Eavesdropper 

A character overhears a threat, argument, etc. They suspect B based on this convo, but turns out they just came to a false conclusion. (Or did they?)

12. The Forgetful Alibi 

Someone confesses to hearing/seeing a clue, but turns out they were mistaken. Maybe they thought they heard a certain ringtone, or saw xyz which C always wears, but their memory was faulty or influenced by stress.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

Instagram Tiktok

[foragerknits]

Sometimes I think about how in order to be a writer today you cannot have internet privacy. I was reading an article in which a journalist recalls collaborating with Mary Oliver, who was notoriously private. Oliver refused to communicate with them through fax or email and said (through her publisher) that she would hand them written notes at an event she was doing in New York City. It struck me that Mary Oliver in 2024 would have almost no chance of becoming a successful poet. Writers today have to have a social media presence to have a built in audience so publishers can be assured that they will get sales and to bear the brunt of social media marketing. They have to be available and put themselves on the internet in every way possible.

More and more I read interviews from artists across many mediums talk about how if you cannot market on Tik Tok your chances of success diminish. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be an online influencer and I am surely not saying that the author-influencer is a new phenomenon, but it should not be a pre-requisite for being a successful writer. I love that writers like Mary Oliver, Elena Ferrante, and Donna Tart exist, and it is not talked enough about how they could not begin a career in 2024 and achieve the same amount of success unless they were well connected or extremely lucky. It makes me sad that this is the state of publishing.

[sailoryooons]

I am going to say something that has really been bothering me that not everyone may agree with, which is totally okay, everyone is entirely valid to disagree with me: There is a fast fashion problem in fandom, specifically fanfiction.

Disclaimer: This conversation is not about broadly writing the same tropes, genres, and ideas. I am not talking about people writing fics with similar themes or the same name. I am specifically talking about people writing fics that are very obviously heavily influenced by other fics. This is not me talking about: I wrote __ character as enemies to lovers vampires and so did this person so they stole. Please do not trivialize this conversation with instances that are very obviously not what I'm talking about.

As someone who exists in the fanfiction space, I want to express what I have seen specifically in this space in my own experience, my mutuals experiences, and random experiences I have seen on my dash.

Recently, it seems like there is a reoccurring theme of writers (often new writers) taking "inspiration" from fanfics that they love and value and essentially creating their own version of that story to the point it is bordering on plagiarism. I say bordering on plagiarism because while people may not be copying line for line or entire scenes in order, you can tell that it is a re-arranged duplicate of another story.

I am not talking about writing similar tropes and dynamics. No one owns a trope or a dynamic. I am specifically talking about people taking the plots, scenes, concept and core of fanfics and recreating it and changing some plot elements or placing it in a different alternate universe and calling it their own, when at the heart of that fanfic, it is taken from someone else's creation.

This to me, reads like people who read a work, fall in love with it, but think 'this is easy to do, I can do this myself' and they end up making a replica of a fic that you can tell is a replica of another fic, despite adding some changes. Nine times out of ten, these inspired fics lack the obvious thought and heart the original writer put into it.

Which, begs the question: How is this different than fanfic writers taking inspiration from media (i.e. published books, movies, music, shows)? Because fanfiction is meant to replicate a specific something from published media. It is not meant to duplicate an already established fanfiction contribution.

I know that the nuance between that line is very ambiguous and it brings up the discourse on 'should there be fanfiction of fanfiction' - to which my response is it is, generally, pretty obvious what the difference between being inspired by a fic and copying a fic are.

In the last few months, I have lost count of how many times I or mutuals have a) discovered someone has been writing a story based off of their fic 2) have been asked to use an already written work to make their own or 3) already have started writing works modeled after an already written work and in hindsight asked the author if they could keep doing so (this third instance almost always happens after someone accuses them of stealing another work).

This feels like the fast fashion industry. Someone finds a story that is popular (whatever that means to the individual), takes all of the elements they think makes the story works, rearranges it, posts it as their own and and says they were 'inspired' (if they credit the original story at all).

This is why so many works that readers are coming across feel like they are the same thing. It is the same A + B + C = D over and over and over again, because people are outright just taking what they think works from other stories and using it.

Again - I am not talking about people who come across a trope, AU, genre or dynamic they like and add something similar to their story. I am talking about the people who are very intentionally and obviously writing the same exact fic with their own 'twist' (whatever that means).

Why is this a problem (beyond the fact that it's essentially roundabout plagiarism)? You're taking the heart, soul, and creativity someone poured into something and posting it on your own and robbing it of the originality, the essence, and the intention behind it. You cannot replicate a writer's feelings and obvious emotions that they have poured into the original work, and it shows. And it is gutting to the original authors who are finding remixes of their work across the fanfiction space.

Please consider whether or not you are inspired by a story or if you are redoing it in your own image. If you find yourself worried enough about your story that you feel like you have to publicly credit someone to avoid scrutiny, perhaps the question needs to be asked of whether you're just redoing what someone else already wrote.

Please do not confuse inspiration and recreation. 9 out of 10 authors will love that they inspired you to write, but would not love to find that you wrote a fic inspired by them that is a rearranged or hollowed-out version of the fic they wrote.

The fanfic space wants and needs more writers, but it does not need people unwilling to create their own art, instead taking bits and pieces from others and calling it a success.

Also adding: This problem also directly contributes to 'smaller' writers or more niche (often queer and bipoc) stories not getting the hype, readership, or recognition they deserve. On more than one occasion I've seen stories that had explicitly queer or bipoc characters taken and turned into heteronormative or white-presenting stories.

Note: This 1000% goes for actual visual art as well, including gifs etc. in fandom but I'm not well-versed there and thus, did not include it.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Bill Shaw

A new study in eClinicalMedicine has found that healthy volunteers infected with SARS-CoV-2 had measurably worse cognitive function for up to a year after infection when compared to uninfected controls. Significantly, infected controls did not report any symptoms related to these cognitive deficits, indicating that they were unaware of them. The net effect is that potentially billions of people worldwide with a history of COVID-19, but no symptoms of long COVID, could have persistent cognitive issues without knowing it.

The study’s lead author, Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King's College London, said:

"It … is the first study to apply detailed and sensitive assessments of cognitive performance from pre to post infection under controlled conditions. In this respect, the study provides unique insights into the changes that occurred in cognitive and memory function amongst those who had mild COVID-19 illness early in the pandemic."

This news comes as pandemic mitigation measures have all but been abandoned by governments across the globe. Public health practice has been decimated to the point where even surveillance data on SARS-CoV-2 infections and resulting hospitalizations, deaths, and other outcomes are barely collected let alone published.

The data that are available indicate, per the most recent modeling from the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) on September 23, that since the beginning of August there have been over 1 million infections per day in the US alone. This level of transmission is expected to persist through the remainder of September and all of October. For the months of August through October, these levels of transmission are the highest of the entire pandemic

The study on cognitive deficits has been shared widely across social media, with scientists and anti-COVID advocates drawing out its dire implications.

Australian researcher and head of the Burnet Institute, Dr. Brendan Crabb, who has previously advocated for a global elimination strategy to stop the pandemic, wrote:

"Ethical issues aside, this is a powerful addition to an already strong dataset on Covid-driven brain damage affecting cognition & memory. Given new (re)infections remain common, this work… should influence a re-think on current prevention/treatment approaches."

The study enrolled 36 healthy volunteers. These individuals had no history of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, no risk factors for severe COVID-19, and no history of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. The researchers determined whether the volunteers were seronegative prior to inoculation, meaning that they had no detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. If such antibodies were present, it would indicate past infection or vaccination.

These procedures resulted in a total of data from 34 volunteers being included for analysis. Two volunteers were excluded from analysis because they had seroconverted to positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies between the time of screening and inoculation. Notably, these two volunteers participated in all subsequent study activities, enabling a sensitivity analysis of the results that included them.

The researchers inoculated all 36 volunteers with SARS-CoV-2 virus in the nose and then quarantined them for at least 14 days. Volunteers only returned home once they had two consecutive daily nasal and throat swabs that were negative for virus. Thus, those volunteers who had an infection after inoculation spent the duration of their infection in quarantine. This quarantine was required by ethical study protocols, in order that the study itself not increase community transmission of the virus.

The researchers collected data on the volunteers daily during quarantine and at follow-up visits at 30, 90, 180, 270, and 360 days post-inoculation. The assessments included body temperature, viral loads from throat and nasal swabs, surveys on symptoms, and computer-based cognitive tests on 11 major cognitive tasks. The cognitive testing varied the particular exercise for each of the 11 tasks to avoid learning and memorization of solutions in subsequent sessions. Nevertheless, some tasks were more prone to learning so the researchers also studied the effect of infection on “learning” vs. “non-learning” tasks.

Of the 36 inoculated volunteers, 18 became infected and developed COVID-19 and 16 did not. The two groups did not differ significantly in key demographics. No volunteers required hospitalization or supplemental oxygen during the study. Every volunteer completed all five follow-up visits. 15 volunteers acquired a non-COVID upper respiratory tract infection in their community between the end of quarantine and the fifth visit at day 360.

The researchers found that the infected group had significantly lower average “baseline-corrected global composite cognitive score” (bcGCCS) than the uninfected group at all follow-up intervals. At baseline, the two groups did not differ significantly. The difference between the two groups did not significantly vary by time, meaning that the infected group’s bcGCCS did not improve during the nearly year-long study.

Because the bcGCCS was a composite based on individual scores for the 11 cognitive tasks, the researchers also looked at which tasks in particular were impacted. They found that the most affected task was related to immediate object memory, in particular, recall of the spatial orientation of the object. There was no difference in picking the correct object itself, just its spatial orientation. This means that infected individuals had a hard time choosing the correct spatial orientation of the object they had just seen, for example, erroneously picking a mirror image of the object they had just seen.

The results were not different based on sex, learning vs. non-learning tasks, or whether individuals received remdesivir or had community-acquired upper respiratory infections.

Because the investigators controlled for so many factors including the strain of SARS-CoV-2, timing of infection, quarantine, and lack of prior infection and vaccination, the study provides high confidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection was responsible for the cognitive defects. The control of the timing of infection also enabled clarification of whether and when cognitive deficits occurred and improved. The differences between the groups were apparent by day 14 of quarantine and as noted previously, the deficits in the infected group did not improve let alone resolve.

The symptom surveys did not differ between the two groups. None of the volunteers, infected or uninfected, reported subjective cognitive issues or symptoms. Thus the infected volunteers with measurable cognitive deficits at one year post-infection were not aware of these deficits.

The study reaffirms prior research into persistent cognitive deficits and brain damage associated with COVID-19, including other studies which have found deficits among patients without symptomatic long COVID. Building upon this prior research, the latest study indicates that basically every single unvaccinated individual with a history of acute COVID-19 is at risk for persistent, measurable cognitive deficits.

Given that other studies have shown that vaccination reduces one’s risk of long COVID by roughly half, similar measurable cognitive deficits are likely prevalent among vaccinated people who suffer “breakthrough” infection, albeit likely at reduced rates of decline.

The study raises the urgent questions about the level of protection provided by vaccination, whether strains since the original “wild type” SARS-CoV-2 strain have similar effects on cognition, and what is the impact of these cognitive deficits on people’s performance at home, work, and school.

The study also adds to the large body of damning evidence that the ruling class’ “forever COVID” policy is of immense criminal proportions. Enabling a dangerous, mind-damaging virus to circulate among humanity worldwide represents a scale of inhumanity and dereliction of duty that is practically unfathomable. The malignity of this intentional policy is underscored by the current situation where the U.S. alone has had over 1 million new infections per day since August, with levels not projected to drop below 1 million until November.

The working class must deepen the struggle to replace the capitalist system that prioritizes profit over lives with a world socialist society that places human needs first.

Study Link: www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370%2824%2900421-8/fulltext

[olderthannetfic]

Someone recently left a comment on one of my fics that they were disappointed I wasn't addressing any of the criticism or comments I got on Goodreads. After all, I reply to comments on the actual fic. Why am I ignoring the Goodreads commenters?

Well, 1. I didn't know there was a Goodreads page for my fanfic 2. I think if they wanted a reply they'd say it where I'm known to reply to every single comment without fail and 3. the kind of dumbass who treats 800k of free fanfics in a series like something they paid for is not the sort of person I want to engage with. If 800k of stories, with main stories, tie-ins, prequel asides, missing scenes, etc. for free wasn't to your liking, just... go read another? We have stories in this fandom whose whole series clock in at over a million words. We have stories where people have done fan songs and fanart and fancomics tying into their main work. We have stories with multiple timelines. You have so many options, all of them totally free and easy to access. If my stories, which I fully admit ares flawed and show some of my weaknesses as an author, don't do it for you, you have options. You have wonderful options.

If I had an editor and a publisher and my stories were actual books, I wouldn't have this reaction to this comment. But these stories have one person working on them total. I'm not making income off of this. This is what I write while working two jobs, for fun. As much as I do view writing fanfic as something that helps me learn the ins and outs of writing and put my all into it, it's going to be rougher than if I'd had help with it or had time to do more drafts than the three I normally do.

And if I was known for ducking criticism, I would get having comments on another site. There are authors in my fandom who delete anything that's not praise. But I have had long conversations with my haters in which I take everything in good faith and explain my writing choices, word choices and ideas. I have my tumblr which is just about my fandom stuff listed in the AN of every chapter. DMs are open and anon is on. My Dreamwidth account, also under the same name, also has DMs open. I have publicly stated when I have made shit narrative choices and owned that yes, sometimes I have genuinely dropped the ball. This has influenced later chapters where things go off of the original outline in order for the shit choice to have consequences in a way that makes sense and feels true to the characters in the story.

So "why are you hiding from the Goodreads commenters?!" feels like the most baffling thing I've ever been asked. I tried to be nice about it, but all I could think was, "why didn't the Goodreads commenters who wanted a reply post their comments where they know I 100% would've responded to it?"

--

Madness!

(Also, lol, half the pro shit with a lot of comments on Goodreads is barely edited. Maybe they were bitching about content? But if it was whining about craft, the bar is in the floor and they have nothing to complain about.)

[nieves-de-sugui]

A Quick History of BL

As someone who wrote a thesis on this very subject a few years ago, here is the short version of how BL has evolved throughout the years. For the new comers ❤ 

a minute of silence for the original form of this post that tumblr decied to not save right after I saved it

I am going to go with a chronological approach. Unfortunately, I cannot put everything in one post so if there’s any questions about this or that aspect of the history of BL that you want to know and it’s not talked about here, you are welcome to ask me directly :)

Context and influences - Japan in the 60′s

Before the US forced Japan to open its borders to the outside world in the 1800s, homosexual practices were common place between budist monks, samurais and kabuki actors. During the Edo period (1600s to 1800s) there was a very rich amount of poetry, art, books (such as Nanshoku Okagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love) by Ihara Saikaku) and codes of conduct about how to have a good master/aprentice relationship, kinda like the greeks if you know what I mean. However, with the arrival of western influences, in order to become a more “civilized” country, it was all put in the closet. 

Yet, in the 60′s Japan started to pick it up again through literature about young androginous beautiful boys (aka bishounen). On one hand, in 1961, the novel Koibitotachi no Mori (A Lover’s Forest) by Mari Mori was published. It tells the story of a young and beautiful 19 year old worker and a half french half japanese aristocrat, and their tragic romance. On the other hand, Taruho Inagaki wrote Shounen ai no Bigaku (The esthetics of boy-love), an essay on aesthetic eroticism (of which he wrote a lot of). All this was know as Tanbi (lit. aesthetic) literature. It generally refered to literature with implied homosexuality and homoeroticism such as works by Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, etc. And of course, Mori and Inagaki. 

In chinese tanbi is read as danmei (term used to refer to BL novels in china today, ie: The Untamed it’s all connected friends).

From the birth of Shonen Ai  to Yaoi - 70′s to the late 80′s

Around the beginning of the 70′s, shoujo was being revolutionized by the Year 24 Group, a generation of women manga authors (mangaka) who started to explore new themes. Among them, their interest in tanbi gave birth to a new subgenre: Shounen ai. 

Their most known manga were:

Kaze to Ki no Uta (The Ballad of the Wind and Trees) by Keiko Takemiya, and Toma no Shinzo (The Heart of Thomas) by Moto Hagio

Their stories are characterized by having suffering eurpoean bishounen in boarding schools, living an idealized perfect love (meaning passionate) that, despite the tragic end of one of them, lives forever in the other. 

As this genre starts getting popular, more and more fans of these stories start making their own self published manga, aka doujinshi, of the genre. It is around this time that the term Yaoi is coined. Meaning “YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi” (no climax, no fall, no meaning). Basically PWP fanfiction, for the most part. Doujinshis could be considered an equivalent of fanfiction in manga form.  It is also here that the term Fujoshi (aka Rotten Girl, for liking rotten things) starts being used to refer to women readers of yaoi. 

With this rise in popularity come the start of the commercialization of the genre. Which meant the publication of magazines dedicated solely to yaoi/shonen ai/BL. The most popular yaoi manga magazine at the time was June. The common trait of their stories being the therapeutic power of the love between the mains. The traumatized character would heal throught this newfound love.

Most of the stories at this time happened in the West (Europe or the States) as the exploration of these dark themes intertwined with homosexual romance and homoeroticism still feel safer to explore as a foreign concept. One example would be Banana Fish (1985).

Commercialization and Yaoi Ronso -  90′s 

As more publishing houses pick the genre up, the term Boys Love is used to include every type of manga about homosexuality made for women. 

The increasing amount of BL series sees a changes in its themes: 

the start of the “gay for you” trope where one mantains their heterosexuality despite being in a homsexual relationship, 

the uke/seme dynamic (mirroring hetero realtionships) also relating to physical appearence (one being more feminine, the other being more masculine), 

the use of rape as an act love (sexual violence has always been present but here it becomes a staple),

anal sex as the only type of sex, 

older and more masculine men start to appear 

they now happen in Japan

Good examples of the presence of these themes in manga are Gravitation (1996) or Yatteranneeze (1995).

However in 1992, Masaki Sato (a gay activist/drag queen) wrote a letter in a small scale feminist magazine attacking yaoi and pointing out how it “represented a kind of misappropriation or distortion of gay life that impacted negatively upon Japanese gay men”. The female readers of yaoi responded, defending the genre as a means to escape gender roles and explore sexual themes that was never meant to represent the realities of gay men. This is know as the Yaoi Ronso (Yaoi Debates).

The debate ended with both sides understanding more of each other, with mangakas starting to include queer views in their works. It also started the academic reasearch of BL. 

Yet, it is a debate that has been restarted more than once, as it is still relevant despite the evolution of the genre.

more on this on another post

Globalization and coining of BL - 2000′s 

By the beginning of the 2000s BL is being sold all over the world (like all manga), and has become a stable industry. We could say it has finally become it’s own genre. 

Some of the most well known manga series, to us (in the west), of the time are:

Junjou Romantica 2002 Koi Suru Boukun 2004 Love Pistols 2004 Haru wo Daiteita 1999

all of these have anime adaptations for the curious ones

We also start seeing short anime adaptations or special episodes of the most popular series, with questionable themes, such as: adoptive father x adoptive son  (Papa to Kiss in the Dark 2005), father x son’s friend (Kirepapa 2008), etc... 

However the themes remain more or less the same. Junjou Romantica’s love story starts with a non-con sex scene by the older one (masc, seme) to the younger one (more feminine, uke) addressed years later in the manga btw. Koi Suru Boukun’s love story is triggered by aphrodisiacs and rape. They’re still very present in the stories but slowly going away. A mangaka that represents this era could be Natsume Isaku (Candy Color Paradox 2010).

Change is slow in Japan. Even though the voices of LGBT+ people started to be taken into account in the genre it is not until later that we see it reflect in the mangas themselves. However, we can already see the start of this in Doukyusei (Classmates) (2006) by Asumiko Nakamura. Also Kinou Nani Tabeta? (2007) which is actually part of a more mature genre: Seinen.

It is my personal (subjective) theory that the BL of this era was the one that got popular outside of Japan, which is why we see lots of references to the themes, tropes and dynamics of this time in today’s BL series. 

The LGBTzation of BL and the rise of webtoons - 2010′s to 2020′s

Slowly but surely LGBT characters and themes enter the scene of BL. Existing simultaneously with the previous tropes and themes, we start seeing a shift in these stories. We now see:

characters that identify as gay or some type of queer

discussions about homophobia

more mature themes about life and romance

At the same time as we get the usual love stories with the usual themes, a new trend starts to take over. And we get simultaneously, cute, sometimes questionable but light love stories:

Love Stage 2010 Ashita wa Docchi da! 2011 Kieta Hatsukoi 2019

More profound stories and darker or more complex themes:

Blue Sky Complex 2013  Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai 2011 (mafias) Given 2013 (suicide) Hidamari ga Kikoeru 2013 (deafness)

And others that adress the queer experience in a more mature way (which might actually fall into the Seinen genre)

Itoshi no Nekokke 2010 (slice of life, queer characters) Smells like Green Spirit 2011 (two ways to deal with a homphobic society) Strange 2014 (relationships between men) Shimanami Tasogare 2015 (an LGBT group helps a closeted gay) Old Fashioned Cupcake 2019 (you know this one 😉) Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu 2020 (the end of the world)

As queer stories are explored, BL mangakas and mangakas from other genres start to consider more stories about queer people such as the Josei Genderless Danshi ni Aisaretemasu (My Androgynous Boyfriend) (2018) by Tamekou, or the Shoujo Goukon ni Itarra Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi (The story of when I went to a mixer and there were no women) (2021) by Nana Aokawa. 

Still, we can see two realities live side by side. Doukyuusei gets adapted into an impactful animated movie in 2016, meanwhile Banana Fish gets an anime adaptation that keeps the homoeroticism but not the homosexuality.  

For those who might be interested. Here are some of the authors that represent the first half of this era, where they start to include newer points of view:

Scarlet Beriko, HAYAKAWA Nojiko, KURAHASHI Tomo, OGERETSU Tanaka, Harada, KII Kanna (Stranger by the Sea), etc...

And authors that while keeping classical themes break the stereotypes in a subtle manner:

CTK, ZAKK, Jyanome, Cocomi, Hidebu Takahashi, SUZUMARU Minta, etc...

Mangakas also no longer stick to one genre only. They explore whichever of them they want, from BL to Seinen to others. 

ie: Tamekou, 

or Asumiko Nakamura

The curious case of Webtoons

With the digitalization of mangas, throught Renta and Lehzin, it has become easier (and more expensive) to access these stories. Korea makes and appearence with their webtoons. Through the lack of piracy protections and the majority of them being digital, manhwa (korean webtoons) sees a rise in popularity. Through the digital medium the influencee can be the influencer.

However, like many other East Asian countries they have consumed BL, without hearing about the conversations about BL. So they end up mantaining the older themes and stereotypes that newer BL is trying to leave behind. Therefore, we end up with a mix of old and new, ie:

Killing Stalking 2016 Cherry Blossoms After Winter 2017 Painter of The Night 2019

Additionally, it is also thanks to the easy access to internet that Omegaverse, with its higher dramatic stakes (that parallel hetero dynamics), enters the mangasphere in 2016. It has grown in popularity ever since.

With the Thai BL Boom of 2020, Japan rediscovers its own BL market and starts investing in it more. Which is why we get live action adaptations of BL manga that was popular years ago (Candy Color Paradox was a manga from 2010), the more recent ones (The End of the World With You) or new anime adaptations (Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai in 2020). 

more on this in my japanese live action BL post

What has it become now? is it BL? ML? or Seinen? Or is it all just gay manga?

It is clear that Shoujo manga (with BL, Josei and Seinen) is exploring queer themes such as gender and sexuality more and more. Japan is interested in this conversation, not only in manga (Genderless fashion). Which brings up the current question in BL studies: Does it make sense to keep these categories?

As a response to BL, ML (Male Love), which is made by gay men for gay men, started happening (around the 70s too). And Bara (gay manga porn) in response to Yaoi. However both gay men and women read BL and ML. We also see other themes being explored through BL, such as friendship (in BL Metamorphose), food (in Kinou Nani Tabeta), male relationships of all kinds (in Strange), and different queer views on life and its challenges (in Shimanami Tasogare). More and more what is LGBT and what is BL is merging, the line is blurred. 

Conclusion

BL has been in my life for longer than it hasn't. It is through shoujo and BL that I have come to understand people and romance.

It is flawed, like everything else this life, but it's flourishing in many ways.

The genre feels old and new at the same time. 

We can still find shounen ai/tanbi elements in more modern manga (All About J). Or the gay for you in a new light (Itoshi no Nekkoke). Or more educational manga on queer issues (My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame). BL has around 50 years of existence but it is also being born anew in Thailand and Korea. 

BL manga will continue to evolve in acordance to Japanese tastes, as it is still a local market. Hopefully the korean webtoons that get popular will be the more daring ones in their themes. Who knows where it will go from here? The only thing we know for sure is that it will continue to change. Isn't it exciting?

A post on the evolution of live action BL in Japan is coming, to complement this post.  As well as a more detailed explanation of the Yaoi Debates and gay manga.

[no-where-new-hero]

omg I need your thoughts on the terminally o line author culture bc ngl it makes my eye TWITCH, there are authors I deliberately avoid even tho I've heard their stuff is good bc they're like that 🙈

HHHHH oh good lord, okay, from how I see it, there are two angles on this, both aggravating and sad: the official decree one and the spontaneous ecosystem one.

The officious one is that the nature of publishing nowadays demands an author have an online presence. You need Twitter/X. You need to let every potential reader know your book is coming out. You need engagement through reviews and pre-orders incentives (if you buy now you’ll get a special keychain!!) and word of mouth assurances from your peers that yes your book is as cool as you say it is. You need a newsletter with links (more buying! more voting on lists that are simply popularity contests!) and promises you’re still working on the next thing, don’t forget about me in the morass of everyone else doing the same thing. You need an Instagram and TikTok now to post pretty pictures and videos because one or two authors made it big off this kind of promotion and now everyone thinks it’s the ticket to the bestseller list (sadly, it seems to be working). You need an OnlyFans (a joke but I do recall a twt spat that was a joke/not joke about how rupi kaur will always be more beautiful than her critics and people who took issue with the conflation of beauty with talent). At the end of all this, you’re basically an influencer, a content creator creating content for the content you should be focusing on creating, the finished novel. And the novel itself seems to be disappearing behind the masks used to promote it (fanfic-style tropes, moodboards, playlists, memes) until I now no longer trust the book that I’ll pick up to have any resemblance to the enticements that brought me here. I’ve seen an author or two complain about the stress all this self-promotion generates, but it’s become such an entrenched part of the industry, I think people just accept it. And thus spend too much time online hoping that if they tweet just a little more, produce just one more reel, maybe that’ll be the difference between a sale and no sale.

The other side of this, distinct but obviously connected, is the ecosystem created by this panic of being perpetually visible coupled with the fact that so many of the new authors came of age during the rise of internet fandom culture. That opinionated community mindset that blurs the line between anonymity and friendship is the lens they bring to their own work. I mean, it makes sense I suppose—if you love yelling about characters and words, why wouldn’t you do that once you start to produce your own? This really came home to me hearing about that reviewbombgate “scandal” and how people involved were in reylo circles and that was used to provide receipts. You’re interacting with your readers and peers about your intimate work but they are also all strangers. They will not always give you the benefit of the doubt, and now—as opposed to the past when maybe the worst that could happen was a handful of bad reviews in newspapers—you will either be tagged in hate reviews, sub-tweeted, explicitly called out, demanded to atone for your sins. It’s no longer the morality of consumption but the morality of production. Of course, the easy answer is just log-off, touch some grass. But that can work only when you and everyone else are separated by anonymous accounts or when you have no platform to maintain. As an author trying to make your livelihood from this, suddenly it’s do or die. We’re in a strange moment of authorship bringing the Internet’s echo-chamber and claustrophobic into the real world (this is a lie: publishing now is no longer the real world. But it looks like it) and thus you can kind of no longer escape things.

Will the average reader who isn’t aware of all these machinations care about reviewbombgate? Would a reader browsing at Target think about the controversies around Lightlark? Very likely not. But the impression I’m getting more and more is that the average reader isn’t the one buying all the books. Or shall we say—a bestseller’s status relies on bookstore stock. Bookstore stock is only huge when they know a book will be a good investment. They’ll only know a book is a good investment if it and its author has street cred based on booktokkers, bookstagram, bloggers and reviewers (have you noticed how many books out these last maybe 1-3 years have these kinds of accounts thanked in the acknowledgments? Yeah), and THESE are also chronically online people who will Know. And decide the cast of fate.

Honestly, @batrachised, I see why you avoid these kinds of writers, though I wonder how long it’ll be before the disease becomes epidemic.

[thepaleys]

Marianne - The Most Scandalous of the von Pistohlkors Siblings

Marianne von Pistohlkors was born in 1890 and was known by many names throughout her life. Her family called her "Babaka", her friends called her "Malanya".

In 1908, at the age of 17, she married Lt. Col. Peter Petrovich Durnovo, the son of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Pyotr Durnovo, and a classmate of her older brother Alexander. They had one son, Kyrill, born in November 1908. During that time, she was known as Mrs. Durnovo.

There are different versions as to why the couple got divorced just three years after their marriage. Some say Durnovo had a drinking problem and was abusive, others say Marianne was having an affair with none other than Rasputin:

"She was married first to the guards hussar Durnovo. She was acquainted with Rasputin. Once Durnovo, having suddenly appeared at a small gathering of the Elder's admirers, caught the moment when the Elder was embracing his wife. With a strong blow the hussar knocked the Elder down, took his wife away, and Rasputin, lying down, shouted: "I will remember you" - A.I. Spiridonovich

Either way, the couple was divorced in 1911, but it didn't take long for 22-year-old Marianne to find a new husband: a year after her divorce, she married Christopher Ivanovich von Derfelden, another officer and collegue of her brother Alexander. From then on and during most of WWI, she was known as Marianne von Derfelden. And it would be under that name that she would be implicated in one of the most famous murders of history.

Marianne was considered a very attractive woman. She was also witty, inteligent and social, which made her very popular in Saint Petersburg high society in the final years leading up to World War One. One of her most famous stunts was to attend a costume ball given by Kleinmichel dressed as an Egyptian in which she performed a provocative dance with a naval officer (who was not her husband).

Two photographs of the evening were published in a famous social magazine and were a tremendous success.

At the time, Marianne was also an amateur actress and model.

After World War One started, Marianne became a nurse and drove ambulances around the city. On January 5, 1916, she received the St. George Medal for her efforts.

Since her mother and stepfather had returned to Russia in 1914, Marianne had also developed a close friendship (some even refer to it as flirtation) with her step-brother, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. They attended the same parties and had the same circle of friends. They also were among the Saint Petersburg aristocratic groups that hated Rasputin and thought he was a bad influence on the Empress.

This was a time when the rumours in Petrograd society were particularly wild and farfetched, so the nature of Dmitri and Marianne's relationship varies between "friendly", "flirtatious" to "they were lovers and took pictures of themselves reenacting Kamasutra positions" and "they participated in orgies thrown by Prince Felix Yussupov in his palace".

Whatever the nature of their relationship, the truth was that Marianne was deeply involved in the conspiracy to murder Rasputin. It had never been fully proved that she was the Yussupov Palace, but she knew about the plans and there were rumours that some of the meetings to organize the murder took place at her apartment.

When it was discovered that Dmitri was one of the co-conspirators and was sent to the Persian front as punishment, Marianne was one of the few people who went to the train station to say goodbye, which ultimatly alerted the authorities to her participation and Empress Alexandra ordered her house arrest. Her telephone was taken and her house was searched [apparently, when the guards asked for a key to open a closed drawer, she told them 'you'll only find love letters'], but nothing was discovered and she was set free on three days later.

A few days after Dmitri's departure, the French Ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, met Marianne at a restaurant and this was what he wrote about the meeting in his memoirs:

Dining at the Restaurant Contant this evening, I saw pretty Madame D----- at the next table with three officers of the Chevaliers-Gardes; she was in mourning. During the night of January 6-7, she was arrested on suspicion of having taken part in the murder of Rasputin, or at any rate known of the preparations. Thanks to the high influences which protect her, she was simply kept under observation in her flat and released three days later. When a police officer asked her for the key of her bureau in order to secure her papers, she replied sweetly and simply: "You'll only find love-letters." The remark is Madame D----- personified. Twenty-six years of age, divorced, remarried at once, then separated from her second husband, she leads a wild life. Every evening, or rather every night, she holds high revel until morning: theatre, ballet, supper, gypsy singers, tango, champagne, etc. And yet it would be a great mistake to judge her solely by this tawdry dissipation; at bottom she is warm-hearted, proud and an enthusiast. Rasputin's murder, of the preparations for which she knew, came as a thunderbolt to her. The Grand Duke Dimitri seemed to her a hero, the saviour of Russia. She went into mourning on learning the news of his arrest. When she heard that he had been sent to the Russian army front in Persia, she swore to continue his patriotic work and avenge him. Since the police evacuated her residence four days ago, she has been concerned in all the ramifications of the plot against the Emperor, carrying letters to some and passwords to others. Yesterday she called on two colonels of the guard to win them over to the good cause. She knows that the agents of the terrible Okhrana are watching her, and is fertile in resources to throw them off the scent. Any night she expects to be incarcerated in the fortress or sent to Siberia; but she has never been so happy before. The heroines of the Fronde, Madame de Longueville, Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Lesdiguières must have known this unreal exaltation, by virtue of which the conscientiousness of a great peril rekindles a great love. When she finished dinner she passed close to my table, followed by her three officers. She came up to me. I rose to shake hands. In rapid tones she said: "I know that our mutual friend came to see you yesterday and told you everything . . . He's extremely anxious about me. It's only natural . . . he loves me so much! Anyhow, he thought you would be ready to help me in case of disaster and was anxious to make certain. But I knew what you'd say. What could you do for me if things went badly? Nothing; that's obvious . . . . But I'm grateful for the nice things you've said about me, and I'm sure that at the bottom of your heart---though not as ambassador---I have your approval . . . We may never meet again. Good-bye!" And with these words she sped away swiftly and silently, escorted by her chevaliers-gardes.

As mentioned in the quote above, by 1916, Marianne was already separated from her second husband and would soon marry again, this time in October 1917 to Count Nikolai Konstantinovich von Zarnekau, a son of Prince Konstantin of Oldenburg.

Perhaps because of the preassures of the revolution [Marianne later revealed that her life with Nikolai was marked by poverty], this marriage was even shorter than the others and, by 1918, she was already in a relationship with Andrei Nikolaevich Lavrentiev, a Russian actor and theater director.

According to her mother’s recollections, Marianne warned her family several times about the impending arrest, having received information from a commissar who was infatuated with her. “She was quick, … tactfully and easily met Kuzmin. He fell madly in love with her. And he freed us for her sake,” wrote Olga Paley. On August 9, 1918, the Danish envoy H. Scavenius proposed a plan through Marianne to save the Grand Duke: Pavel Alexandrovich, dressed in an Austro-Hungarian uniform, was to hide in the Austro-Hungarian embassy, ​​but the latter refused to change into the uniform of a state hostile to the Russian Empire. Despite all her efforts, she still failed to save her family.

After the death of her son and husband, Olga Valerianovna and her younger daughters illegally emigrated to Finland with the assistance of P. P. Durnovo, Marianna's first husband. Her father and brother Alexander left the country with their families.

Marianne, however, remained in Russia until 1921. She became an actress at the Bolshoi Theater under the stage name Maria Pavlovna in honour of her late stepfather. In 1921, she moved with her lover to Riga, where they remained for several years. In 1936, under the stage name Marianne Fiori, Marianne moved to New York and would remain in the United States until her death. In 1961, she was married for the fourth time to Mikhail Aleksandrovich Paltov, the son of chamberlain Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Paltov , formerly a captain of the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Anonymous asked: I have a few questions as an aspiring writer and a current fanfic writer who publishes.

Okay! But if you write fan-fiction, you're already a writer! I'm guessing you mean an aspiring author? ♥

How would you help with distractions and writer's block? I try to dedicate myself to writing, but then I wander off to other stuff and my motivation wanes.

This is not uncommon and there can be a lot of different reasons for why it happens. Understanding the reason behind why it's happening is important for knowing how to fix it. I have a couple posts that will help with this:

5 Reasons You Lost Interest in Your WIP, Plus Fixes! Feeling Unmotivated with WIP Writer’s Block

How do you advise me outlining a huge original story plot with world-building in an organized way that isn't just scattered?

Outlining is really just any method that helps you get all the important pieces of the story out, in order, so that you can use it as a reference while writing. Some people use one big beginning to end summary. Some people like scene lists or timelines. Other people like scene cards or mind maps... Different things work for different people, so part of the work you need to do as a writer is figure out which method/methods work best for you.

I often find, though, that the struggle people have with outlining is less about what method to use and more about how to actually fill out the details, which brings me around to plot and story structure. All stories have structure. Fan-fiction is often short, character-driven fiction, which gives it a different structure from the average novel. That said, even if you're a prolific fan-fiction writer, you may still need to take some time to learn about plot and story structure. I'll link a few posts that will help, but once you understand story structure (all the specific plot points a story should go through), it becomes much easier to know how to outline it.

Guide: How to Outline a Plot Guide: Starting a New (Long Fiction) Story Basic Story Structure Beginning a New Story How to Move a Story Forward Plot Driven vs Character Driven Stories Understanding Goals and Conflict

What advice would you give for writing fictional religions and mythology?

First and foremost, it's important to understand the role religion and mythology play in your story... how do they feed into your characters' beliefs? How do they influence your characters' actions and behavior? How do they guide the forces of power in your story's world? How do they impact the story's conflict/s and plot? Ultimately, you don't want to put a lot of time into creating and fleshing out a religion or mythology that's ultimately unimportant to the story. It helps to focus most on the aspects that truly matter.

Also, you might consider using real world mythology and religions as inspiration... just be careful about cultural appropriation. It's best not to use anything that belongs to an active culture or religion unless it's yours, or unless you do intense research and consult with sensitivity readers to make sure you don't do anything harmful.

And lastly, what sources do you recommend to accurately describe buildings (especially castles and manors) battlefields, geographical locations especially when it comes to mountains and rivers, etc), dresses and clothing especially if it isn't modern, and fighting techniques that are believable (for example, how a smaller woman would fight a larger man without being unrealistic)?

1 - Find Inspiration Sources - No matter when and where your story is set, it's important to find inspiration sources for the places in your story, whether that's buildings, towns, regions, whatever. Not only will this help you imagine and describe what you're envisioning, it will help you immensely with research on specific details.

2 - Time and Place Are Important - Many descriptive details are specific to time and place, so make sure you know that about your inspiration sources and/or the elements in your story. You can do a Google search for layout, architecture, and design (along with relevant location and era information) to find the details you need. For example, "medieval European castle layout" or "Victorian era manor house architectural details." Likewise, you can look for "Tudor era menswear" or "Victorian era dress details."

3 - Fighting Techniques - This again will tie into the time and place when your story is set. However, some fighting techniques will be somewhat timeless. I would strongly suggest heading over to @howtofightwrite for the best information and resources about portraying fighting techniques in writing.

Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[brokehorrorfan]

Seasonal Screams: A History of Holiday Horror will be published in paperback and e-book on October 31 by author Adrian Roe (First Scream to the Last: The Definitive Guide to '80s Horror). Graham Humphreys designed the cover art.

It features exclusive interviews with Neil Marshall (The Descent), Melissa Anderson (Happy Birthday to Me), Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism), Barney Cohen (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter), Ellie Cornell (Halloween 4 & 5), Linnea Quigley (Silent Night, Deadly Night), Jeff Lieberman (Satan’s Little Helper), and Michael Gilio (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves).

Whether it’s the dry autumnal leaves that shatter under your feet with every step during Halloween, or the cold crisp snow turning the world white over Christmas, there has always been a special relationship with film and the changing seasons. Or more specifically, with the public holidays that are celebrated during these traditional and familiar dates marked by default on our calendars. To some, these moments represent something far more profound, an annual reminder of where we were, who we were with, as the memories of yesteryear are invoked during holidays that we have become accustomed to since childhood. For varying reasons there has also been a creative bond between film and these annual events for almost as long as the medium has existed. We can trace holiday themed movies back to 1898, with the release of George Albert Smith’s Santa Claus, which is believed to be the first ever “Christmas Movie”. Smith would also direct the short The Old Maid’s Valentine in 1900, which would use February the 14th to deliver a surprise. Victor Sjöström’s silent movie, The Phantom Carriage (1921), would use New Year’s Eve as the backdrop for its haunting premise, while holidays such as Halloween and Easter have been channeled through film on countless occasions. Although no genre is immune to the adaptability and pulling power of the holiday themed concept, no other has used this narrative quite as effectively as the horror genre. Maybe it’s the irony of chaos, bloodshed, and fear during what is traditionally perceived as a happy and joyous occasion, regardless of the celebration in question. Perhaps the alluring promise of a villain so deranged that they are willing to use the happiest of days for such pain and carnage takes that fear factor to another level. There is another clear benefit of this creative allegiance, which is possibly the strongest explanation of them all - the repeat offender. Creating a horror movie that happens to coincide with a familiar annual event not only opens the door for sequels but gives us a horror villain who will become synonymous with our favorite holiday– a filmmaker’s dream, if you will. A guaranteed audience hungry to revisit their favorite holiday villain, whatever the occasion. The horror fan is a loyal breed, and I can’t think of an annual holiday where moviegoers aren’t searching for that perfect holiday horror movie to mark the occasion. Whatever the reason, film would not be what it is without the “Holiday Horror” subgenre, which has managed to influence and evolve due to this most unlikely convergence.

Pre-order Seasonal Screams by author Adrian Roe.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Michael Rubin

Secretary of State Antony Blinken smells like desperation. After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for more than two hours, Blinken said the current proposal to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and win the release of Hamas-held hostages is "maybe the last" opportunity.

Blinken is wrong. The last opportunity to win a ceasefire and release Hamas captives came when he agreed to negotiate with a terrorist group whose covenant embraces genocide and whose ideology envisions Islamic rule with religious and sexual minorities condemned to second-class status if not slavery or death.

When diplomats fall back on process, too often they lose sight of the forest through the trees. The fact remains: Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during a ceasefire to which the terrorist group had agreed. Its members raped, slaughtered, and took civilians hostage. The return of those hostages should always have been the precondition to negotiations rather than the conclusion. If Palestinians in Gaza did not want to see their territories' collateral destruction, they could return hostages under their control or inform about their whereabouts. This is not farfetched considering that Hamas has kept hostages in supposedly civilian hospitals, in private homes, and even with U.N. employees.

To negotiate with Hamas over its blatant violation of humanitarian law not only empowers Hamas, but it permanently degrades international law.

Blinken's second mistake was his choice of mediator. A good rule of thumb: Never place strategic interests in a mediator ideologically committed to your destruction. Egyptians may be aloof and, as the tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor show, double-dealing, but Qatar too often uses its vast wealth to promote the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology that at its core rejects all aspects of Western liberalism and democracy.

Blinken has also tried to include Turkey in any post-conflict order. This, too, is bizarre. Years of pandering to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan combined with the Turkish despot's similar Muslim Brotherhood-infused ideology makes Turkey far less a partner for peace than an undesignated sponsor of terrorism. To offer Erdogan influence over post-Hamas Gaza would be akin to putting white supremacist David Duke in charge of post-apartheid South Africa.

Blinken's third mistake is treating the Palestinian Authority as a moderate alternative to Hamas. Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is now in the third decade of his four-year presidential term. As Blinken has restored funding to Abbas, Abbas has shown his true colors. Speaking in Turkey just the other day, Abbas declared, "America is the plague and the plague is America."

There is no substitute for moral clarity. Moral compromise, meanwhile, substitutes groveling for justice.

After Iran released its 52 American hostages on President Ronald Reagan's first day in office, former Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher published a collection of essays by Carter administration alumni crowing triumphant for their success. Their thesis? The persistence of diplomacy led Ayatollah Khomeini to release his prisoners. Peter Rodman, a former Kissinger aide, responded in an article that Christopher and crew got it backward: The Islamic Republic let its hostages go when the cost of their captivity grew too high to bear.

Rather than pressure Netanyahu and have aides, underlings, and surrogates slime a duly elected leader, Blinken should be introspective. Had Blinken at every opportunity not indulged Hamas's conceits or played into the agenda of the group's enablers such as Qatar and Turkey, the hostages today might be free and the Hamas-imposed war over. President Joe Biden's base might hand wring and indulge in an orgy of antisemitism, but the road to peace rests on bringing so much pain to bear on Hamas that it has no choice but to release its captives and end its reign of terrorism over Gaza's 2.5 million Palestinians.

[stashandtell]

Some Recommendations for Fics That Influenced My Weasley-Ship Rankings

I ranked all my favorite Hermione/X Weasley Sibiling in my most recent post Nobody Asked For This: My Rankings of the Hermione x Weasley Ships with REASONS. Here are some recs to back my completely biased opinons. And now, you can read my fic, Ranking the Weasleys on AO3! - - - - As I sometimes mention on the internet, I keep a WILDLY long and fairly detailed spreadsheet of all the fanfics I've read. I've not been in the fandom long at all but due to life circumstances, I've had too much time on my hands since diving in and have allowed this special interest to wash over me and my whole life like the warm, scented water in the Prefects' giant bathtub. (I hit over 800 works read on my spreadsheet a few days ago and am going to do a numerical analysis and breakdown no one requested, so come back for the data if you're curious.) I've pulled some of my fave fics for my main Hermione x Weasley Sibling pairings -- though I have SO MANY MORE. All of these are mid-length to longfics (~30K-100k+ words, except for one) and are complete, unless noted. Normally I'd copy-and-paste the author's summary but since I'm going to be recommending many here-- I'll give you my 1-3 sentence take on the fic and encourage you to read the author's summary and tags. We're going in descending birth-order by sibling here to keep things tidy: Billmione: What's nuts to me about the Billmione ship is that I don't have a ton of fics I would enthusiastically recommend that explain why I love this pairing so much. I'm not a huge werewolf-ish fan, the age-gap isn't something that inspires my reading that much, and, to be completely honest, sometimes Bill is dry toast in a fic and replaceable with almost any other character. That said, for those of us who love a rare-pair, we feast on the scraps. We love the moments that fuel our headcanons and it's the cumulative experience of developing our own understanding of these characters that drives us into the arms of these fics more than anything. I had a difficult time pulling general recs for this ship, only because so few encapsulate what's I love about Hermione and Bill together (in my mind) in a singular work. I'll keep searching though and plug away at adding my 3 Billmione WIPs to offerings out there, to keep the flag flying. To be perfectly clear: These are GREAT fics I highly recommend. I just don't think of any one of them as the touchstone fic for my love of this pair (imo.) Still Strong by DietCokeofEvil, inspired by I Am Strong by floatsdelicately

Word Count: 38,780 / 19 Chapters

Summary: When Ron leaves Hermione without an explanation a month before their wedding, Bill returns the friendship and care she gave him when he and Fleur separated. They fall in love and build a life together.

My Comments: I read I Am Strong first and I have to say, I loved the two stories together. It's maybe even worth reading I Am Strong before Still Strong because that's how the publishing/inspiration-order goes.

Through the Ages by LadyBlack3

Word Count: 30,301 / 11 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Bill team up to help research possible causes for a disease spreading through Charlie's dragon reserve and find themselves drawn to each other.

My Comments: This is a fun fic with a plot that keeps things moving. I love them coming together as full-fledged adults with their own lives.

I was torn on recommending Cairo Nights by GillianSteele instead of Through the Ages because they're both excellent examples of this ship, so I'll drop it here as an honorable mention if you're looking for more!

- - - - Charmione: There are SO MANY good Charmiones on my list but I need limits. I would say none of these are exactly emblematic of the typical well-loved Charmione fics, as they don't spend time on the Reserve-- but if you're looking for more recs, feel free to ask me on tumblr or leave a comment and I can happily suggest many more. Last Christmas by KittenShift17

Word Count: 17,079 / One Shot

Summary: Last Christmas, Hermione drunkenly snogged Charlie when she mistook him for Ron and shortly after she broke up with him. This Christmas, she's back at the Burrow and anxious to see Charlie again after thinking about him all year.

My Comments: This was one of the very first Charmione works I read and I recommend it to most my friends looking to get into the ship. As a hefty one-shot, it's a pretty satisfying fic with great Weasley banter and it's on my list of fics to re-read this winter when it's time to get cozy around the holidays. If you like this, check out I Saw Mummy (mind the tag) by Amebb42. Last Christmas is the shortest of all the fics I'm recommending.

Creature Comforts by neilstic

Word Count: 34,588 / 5 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Charlie are both Hogwarts professors and are into each other. They are also good friends who get to do some fun time travel exploration thanks to the secrets of the castle.

My Comments: This fic is SO well written and snort-out-loud funny. I think of it often and it's not the typical Charmione fic, which is why I wanted to shout it out.

The Eventually Ever After Series by Huffleclaws19 deserves an appreciation post on its own and I HIGHLY recommend it of you're a fan of Charmione and Theomione. It's worth reading it in order. Merry Christmas to Me (the first in the series) is already on my Top-Tier List of all-time faves but the whole series arc is so, so good. Consider this a MOST honorable mention.

- - - - Permione: The Always Series by Simply_Lovely_Reader consists of two stories: Unlikely, which is Hermione's POV and Possibly, which is Percy's.

Word Count: Unlikely - 15,537 / 11 Chapters Possibly - 26,754 / 13 Chapters

Summary: Percy catches Hermione pleasuring herself to thoughts of him in his bed in the Burrow immediately before they start working together at the Ministry. Romance and pining occur.

My Comments: I was overjoyed to find that there was a Percy POV fic for this story but if you only pick one, read Unlikley, which is Hermione's POV.

Reflector by Calebski

Word Count: 39,692 / 7 Chapters

Summary: Hermione seeks Percy's help in finding career her path after the war they're both so changed by. He finds himself seeking her out as well as they develop a friendship and so much more.

My Comments: This author wrote one of my all-time top 3, won't-shut-up-about-my-love-for-it fics, Flourishing Devotion, a Nevmione canon re-write. I really dig their style (Venus Flytrap, another Nevmione is great too.) This Permione delivered.

- - - - Fremione: Fremione recommendations tend to fall in to a few buckets, which often overlap 1) Fred Lives 2) Fred Dies, per the canon 3) Canon rewrites of Fred & Hermione developing feelings during the Hogwarts years There are several WONDERFUL canon re-writes I'll include a few as honorable mentions.

Salve Amor by moonfairy13

Word Count: 31,974 / 20 Chapters

Summary: Hermione saves Fred's life with a bonding spell that can only be cast by someone who carries love for the person they're saving. She doesn't want Fred to know or feel tied to her so of course miscommunications and meddling ensue.

My Comments: The author, moonfairy13, has so many great fics worth checking out. What was great about this one is that the whole fic centers around the Fred Lives turning point.

I Can Love You Like That by LSU Sweetie

Word Count: 31,357 / 12 Chapters

Summary: Fred and Hermione are the last two single people in their friend group at the winter holidays. Hermione wants a relationship and is interested in Fred but has also started to get gifts from a secret admirer.

My Comments: I love a grown-up Fred and Hermione. LSUsweetie has some great works with different pairings and I particularly absolutely freaking loved Festive Fates. This is worth reading because the pairing is undisclosed, so you gotta read it to find out. Paraphrasing the author's summary: Hermione ends up pregnant after a night with a mystery man at New Year's Eve masquerade party right before she has to leave for a year-long work assignment. When she returns the following Christmas, she brings a baby with red hair to the Burrow and hopes to find answers.

Honorable Mentions, Canon Rewrites:

Don't You Know You've Got the Best of Me by raquains

Deal or No Deal by LetticeDouffet

Steel and Soft Smiles by TricksterGhost7 and its companion work, Little Glimpses

Oh So Many Years by fanfictionaries*

The Two Dropouts by tryingsss*

*Denotes a partial canon rewrite (aka ends early or starts later) - - - - Geormione: There were several great Geormione pieces I wanted to recommend but both of my recs relate to navigating Fred's death in very personal ways. That has tended to be the majority of what I've been reading in the Geormione space though there are other dimensions to this ship worth checking out. Like Fremione, there are some great canon-rewrites as well.

I have not started tackling the behemoth that is The Arithmancer by White_Squirrel yet or the rest of the series, though it's queued up as a reward once I finish some very longfics I'm working through... so I know I've read a lower % of the total completed fics on AO3 in the "Hermione Granger/George Weasley" relationship tag than Billmione, Charmione, and Fremione.

To Those Who Wait by Fictionallizzy

Word Count: 56,233 / 9 Chapters

Summary: After Fred's death, Hermione and George spend a forbidden night together which leads to much more than they both expected.

My Comments: In my ridiculous spreadsheet, I give a rating for my personal love of the story and another for the spice level. This is one that has 5/5 on both counts, the smut smuts 💋 and there's some juicy angst in there (my fave.)

In Case You Don't Life Forever by xLoveMx

Word Count: 24,724 / 12 Chapters

Summary: After the battle, Hermione and George are together and apart in their grief. She tries to prepare WWW to reopen and they finds she has to deal with Fred's ghost literally and metaphorically.

My Comments: I've read a few ghost!fred fics but I really loved this one. It was hard to select just one George-Falling-In-Love-While-Grieving fic and the extra dimension Fred's ghost added to this story made it stand out for a recommendation.

- - - - Multi-Weasley Pairings: In fics with multi-Weasley ships, they tend to fall into three buckets: 1) Siblings in competition 2) Love triangle or triad (v-shaped or triangle-shaped) 3) Reverse harems or multiple hookup partners I basically had to read through the majority of all the enticing completed long fics with ALL of the individual siblings I wanted to read paired with Hermione before I started reading multi-Weasley fics. BUT I'm glad I went there because there are some really interesting works that I enjoyed. Here's a fic rec for each bucket: 1) Siblings in Competition: Yours Til The Stars Fall From The Sky by Ronsboggart

Pairings: Fremione, Charmione

Word Count: 64,178 / 7 Chapters

Summary: Hermione and Fred are going to be together until a chance meeting at the World Quidditch Cups finds her and Charlie inexplicably drawn to each other.

My Comments: Mind the tags! This fic definitely has the underage warning on it, which I totally understand isn't everyone's thing. That said, the story of Fred and Hermione falling for each other despite the magnet-pull of Charlie really got me on board with reading Fremione works. Truthfully, I sort of didn't "get" the appeal of Fred until I read this story and for that I'm so grateful. I ended up loving the characterization of Fred and Hermione's love so much in this fic, it's definitely worth it imo.

Honorable Mention: Hot Girl Summer (shorter one-shot) by Anonymous 2) Love Triangle / Triad (V-Shaped): Hic Scunt Dracones by Amebb42 & ShadowAlt

Pairings: Billmione, Charmione

Word Count: 118,498 / 29 Chapters

Summary: On a curse-breaking expedition in a tropical paradise, Charlie, Bill, and Hermione find themselves working a case that puts them face to face with old magic. Both brothers find they care for the same woman and try to encourage her to choose between them.

My Comments: If you read my Ranking the Weasleys post, you know that I don't give a toss about dragons half the time and I REALLY loved the dragon storyline here. I sing the praises of Amebb42 in just a bit but ShadowAlt also has great stories. I enjoyed reading their author's notes in this too.

3) Reverse Harem: Where the Heart Is by Mother_of_Chaos

Pairings: Billmione, Charmione, Fremione, Geormione

Word Count: 40827 / 12 Chapters

Summary: Hermione, who has special abilities and works as an Unspeakable, receives a claiming werewolf bite while helping save a member of the Weasley family and becomes part of their pack.

My Comments: This work was recently completed this past August and was inspired by The Weasley Pack by Mrsmarauders02. Both are worth reading and center around werewolf and pack power. Mind the tags!

Reverse Harem Honorable Mention: Weasley Magic by Amebb42 I included only completed fics here but I have to shoutout the WIP that lives in head rent-free on a regular basis and that's Weasley Magic by Amebb42. This author has so many great works worth reading but this fic completely sold me on the Weasley reverse harem structure and inspired me to give other works a try. Plus, it's not based on a werewolf pack. Yes, the smut is smutty which is great fun, however, all of the characters are so well developed in this massive ensemble work. The Molly bashing-to-redemption is one of my favorite kinds of family angst and there are more relationships beyond Hermione + all of the Weasley siblings that adds delicious complexity to the story. Most importantly, the world mechanics, especially when it come to the Wizengamot, the inherited Weasley family magic itself, and Bill's new status is so, so interesting! I live for this fic . - - - - As For All The Other Hermione x Weasley Family Member Ships: You'll note from my post "Nobody Asked For This: My Rankings of the Hermione x Weasley Ships With REASONS" I don't consider myself well-read in ships with Hermione/Ginny or Hermione/Ron or some of the other family members, so no recommendations at this time. If you have recs, please share! I'd love to know what I'm missing out on or what your fave works are for different pairings.

Don't forget to check out the newest fic, Ranking the Weasleys on AO3!

[lenbryant]

(long post from The Atlantic) I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is

What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email.

October 10, 2024

Updated at 9:43 a.m. ET on October 11, 2024

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”

As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.

Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.

Read: November will be worse

Some of the lies and obfuscation are politically motivated, such as the claim that FEMA is offering only $750 in total to hurricane victims who have lost their home. (In reality, FEMA offers $750 as immediate “Serious Needs Assistance” to help people get basic supplies such as food and water.) Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Fox News have all repeated that lie. Trump also posted (and later deleted) on Truth Social that FEMA money was given to undocumented migrants, which is untrue. Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.” That post has been viewed more than 40 million times. Other influencers, such as the Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, have urged their followers to disrupt the disaster agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims. “Do not comply with FEMA,” she posted on X. “This is a matter of survival.”

The result of this fearmongering is what you might expect. Angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees. According to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an extremism-research group, “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” including “calls to send militias to face down FEMA.” The study also found that 30 percent of the X posts analyzed by ISD “contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the FEMA Director of Public Affairs; and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” The posts received a collective 17.1 million views as of October 7.

Online, first responders are pleading with residents, asking for their help to combat the flood of lies and conspiracy theories. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the volume of misinformation could hamper relief efforts. “If it creates so much fear that my staff doesn’t want to go out in the field, then we’re not going to be in a position where we can help people,” she said in a news conference on Tuesday. In Pensacola, North Carolina, Assistant Fire Chief Bradley Boone vented his frustrations on Facebook: “I’m trying to rescue my community,” he said in a livestream. “I ain’t got time. I ain’t got time to chase down every Facebook rumor … We’ve been through enough.”

It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”

Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.

This has all been building for more than a decade. On The Colbert Report, back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creationopportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. But the misinformation crisis is not always what we think it is.

Read: Florida’s risky bet

So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. What is clear from comments such as Kremer’s is that she is not a dupe; although she may come off as deeply incurious and shameless, she is publicly admitting to being an active participant in the far right’s world-building project, where feel is always greater than real.

What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.

In one sense, these attacks—and their increased desperation—make sense. The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.

This article previously stated that Bradley Boone is the assistant fire chief in Pensacola, Florida. In fact, he is based in Pensacola, North Carolina.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)

By Elizabeth Hlavinka

“It is critical to maintain, or rebuild where necessary, trust in public health,” the study authors warned

Across the U.S., 35% of adults reported that they did not trust COVID-19 vaccines, without much variation across years 2021-2023, according to a survey published in the journal Vaccine: X this week. Vaccine hesitancy is one piece of a growing distrust in public health exacerbated by the government’s pandemic response that many experts fear will only deepen with the new Trump Administration.

About 81% of Americans got at least one COVID vaccination, which helped the country build up enough herd immunity that most people could return to their daily activities without some of the health interventions like mask mandates and stay-at-home orders that had been issued to keep communities safe. Though the vaccines can have side effects and sometimes harm people, these outcomes are very rare and no match for the damage the virus itself does to the body. The vaccines are considered extremely safe.

Of course, life didn’t go back to normal for millions of people who lost family members to COVID or who are still dealing with debilitating symptoms of long COVID, in which the symptoms of infection can linger for months or even years. In another study published this week, this time in the journal Vaccine, COVID vaccination was associated with a reduced risk for developing long COVID.

The Trump Administration rolled out the vaccines in record-time through Operation Warp Speed, but the expediency of the process, along with misinformation circulating online, left many dubious of them. Mixed messaging from the government also led to the politicization of public health, which added gasoline to an already flaming issue. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended masks while Trump refused to wear one, and the same agency recommended social distancing but Trump encouraged supporters to protest virus restrictions in large groups.

Counties that voted Republican had significantly more deaths from COVID-19 than counties that voted Democratic, in part due to reduced vaccine uptake. The study published this week did not measure how political parties influenced trust in the vaccines, though it did find that trust in the CDC was tied with higher trust in the vaccine. Loss of a family member to COVID was also associated with this trust.

“It is critical to maintain, or rebuild where necessary, trust in public health information sources,” the authors wrote.

[actuallyadhd]

Book: The Procrastination Equation Subtitle: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done Author: Piers Steel, PhD Publisher: Random House Canada Year: 2010

This isn't going to be a really formal book review or anything, I just thought I'd provide you guys with the pertinent information, in case you want to read it yourselves. :)

So, basically, Piers Steel is an industrial psychologist who specializes in procrastination. He teaches at the University of Calgary, in the Haskayne School of Business. He started studying procrastination because he procrastinated, so once again we have an expert who used his own problems to influence his studies. :D

The procrastination equation isn't a real equation - that is, it's not something you can plug actual numbers into and figure out what your procrastination number is. It's more of a theoretical approach to the definition of procrastination, that explains how and why people procrastinate. Written as a mathematical equation, it looks like the picture at the top of this post.

In other words, what we expect to receive for a task, multiplied by its intrinsic value (to us), all divided by how impulsive we are times how far away the due date is, equals how motivated we are to actually work on the task in question. The less motivated we are, the more we're going to put it off. This is why so many post-secondary papers are written the night before they're due: the papers are assigned months ahead of time, there is no certain expectancy of a good grade, and young adults are rather impulsive and don't really like working hard on things anyway. So the motivation to write the paper is really low until just before it's due.

One of the things I found really interesting about this book was the stuff about how brain function affects procrastination. Basically, it's the conflict between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex that buggers us up. In reading about this, I kept thinking to myself, "he's describing ADHD!" but he never uses the term once, in the entire book.

The limbic system is the part of our brain that makes us do things when we want to do them. It's basically the seat of impulsivity. (Oh, by the way, he uses the word "impulsiveness" throughout the book. I prefer "impulsivity," even if my spell checker doesn't believe it's a word.) The limbic system is perfect for a hunter-gatherer society. Of course, evolution means that we are always perfectly designed for the environment we no longer live in. :)

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that deals with executive functioning. It's where we make plans, follow through on plans, and all that other great stuff that is basically contrary to the nature of the limbic system.

On to the practical stuff...

First there was a self-assessment quiz (it's in chapter two, if you decide to read the book). People procrastinate because they have low expectancy, low value, or high impulsivity. As it turns out, my problem is mostly with impulsivity. In other words, I postpone doing things until the last minute because other stuff keeps catching my attention. I do the other things first, not because I don't think the first tasks are important (value) or will pay off in the end (expectancy) but because whatever it is that I end up doing instead is just way more interesting in the moment--long-term thinking just isn't my strong suit. (I'm pretty sure this is due to ADHD because I would always do all the research for a paper right when it was assigned, and then sit on my notes and let things percolate until the night before it was due. So I'd be completely prepared for the assignment and not complete it, even though I had everything I needed in order to do so.)

Chapters 7-9 are the ones that have the actual practical approaches to combat procrastination. I took notes on all of them, but of course not all of them are techniques that are going to be useful for me. I'm going to copy my notes anyway, though, because some of you guys might get something out of it, too. :)

Each bold header below has to do with a reason for doing something; the italicized sub-headers are the names of the ways you can deal with problems in that area, and are followed by explanations of how the methods work.

Expectancy

Success Spirals (+)

Set an ongoing series of challenging but ultimately achievable goals; maximize motivation and make the achievement meaningful.

Think of an area of life of real interest and strive to improve just a little beyond your current skill set.

Break town the tasks that daunt you into smaller and smaller pieces. Keep formal track of your progress. Count your successes.

Vicarious Victory (+)

Find an inspirational role model and/or a positive social peer group.

Seek inspiration from stories or others; it is easier to believe in yourself if you are surrounded by people who believe in themselves--or you!

Join a community, service, or professional organization.

Start your own support group; can be anyone, as long as it is mutually encouraging friends.

Wish Fulfillment (+)

Visualization, either mental contrasting (what you want vs what you have) or creative visualization (what you want, as per The Secret; not as effective as contrasting).

Think about the life you want; focus on just one aspect (break it down!); elaborate on what makes it attractive (e.g., diary, collage, quiet concentration); mentally contrast future with present, focusing on the gap.

Plan for the Worst, hope for the Best (-)

Rather than believing you can entirely and easily beat the problem of procrastination, believe that you can beat it down.

Determine what could go wrong, reflect honestly on past experiences, and ask for advice; list ways you habitually procrastinate and post it where you work; avoid pre-determined risks as much as possible; develop a recovery plan ahead of time; use the recovery plan.

Accept that You're Addicted to Delay (-)

Acknowledge powerlessness over procrastination: truly acknowledging that any single failure of willpower inevitably leads to the collapse of all your self-control gives you far more motivation than believing that occasional lapses can be safely contained.

Keep a daily log of procrastination habits; acknowledge that a weak will is the biggest problem, and "just once" is the beginning of the end; accept that the first delay justifies all the rest of them.

Value

Games and Goals

Finding the balance between the difficulty of your task and your ability to do it is a key component for creating flow, a state of total engagement.

The rist of procrastination diminishes when tasks are relevant, instrumentally connected to topics and goals of personal significance.

You need a string of future goals that you find intrinsically motivating to hook your present responsibilities onto.

Frame long-term goals in terms of the success you want to achieve (approach goal) rather than the failure you want to prevent (avoidance goal).

Make tasks more challenging; connect tasks to long-term goals (what you find intrinsically motivating); frame goals in terms of what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid.

Energy Crisis

Spoons (mental and physical).

Do difficult tasks at peak performance times; don't get hungry; exercise lots; make sleep predictable; respect your limitations.

You Should See the Task I'm Avoiding

Doing other things instead of the thing we're supposed to be doing - getting things done, but not the "right" thing.

Identify something you've been putting off, then things that are more enjoyable and do them instead/first.

Double or Nothing

Procrastinators tend not to reward themselves for getting things done.

Anticipated rewards make the work more enjoyable, which helps winning.

List rewards you can self-administer, promise yourself these rewards; consider ways of making tasks more enjoyable (pairing) without overriding the work.

Let Your Passion be Your Vocation

Finding work you want to do is a major step toward avoiding procrastination.

http://online.onetcenter.org/find/descriptor/browse/Interests

Look at careers involving activities you love or like doing; filter out all the occupations for which you don't possess skill or ability; rank by demand.

http://careervision.org

Impulsivity

Commit Now to Bondage, Satiation, and Poison

As you get closer to a temptation, your desire for it peaks, allowing the temptation to trump later but better options.

Throw away the key: eliminate the alternatives.

SatiationL meet your needs in a safe and managed manner before they intensify and take control (schedule recreational activities first, then add chores - "unschedule").

Try poison: punish failure.

http://www.stickk.com/

Identify your temptations, then...

Put them out of reach or far away;

Satisfy your needs first; or

Add disincentives to make them unattractive.

Making Paying Attention Pay

Inside out: pay attention please!

Frame in terms of abstract and symbolic features.

Ascribe negative qualities and consequences.

Outside in: now you see it, now you don't.

Regain stimulus control by making it harder to access or even notice the temptations.

Declutter and replace the clutter with triggers for tasks you usually procrastinate on.

Make workplace a cue by working until motivation disappears; then go elsewhere to goof off (this could be just another profile ont he same computer so you have to log off and back in if you are going to goof off).

Use covert sensitization to make distractions less inviting; focus on abstract aspects of temptations; eliminate cues; replace distraction cues with work-related cues; compartmentalize work and play as much as possible.

Scoring Goals

The finish line is just ahead.

Set corporeal goals with real deadlines, use mini-goals to get started on a task, structure the goals so that they are appealing (i.e., inputs [time invested] vs outputs [what's produced]).

Full automatic.

Intentionally adopt a routine; make an explicit intention to act (if-then is pretty good for this).

Frame your goals in specific terms so that you know precisely when you have to achieve them; break down long-term goals into a series of short-term objectives; organize your goals into routines that occur regularly at the same time and place.

"Optimal self-control involves not the denial of emotions but a respect for them."