#I thought about editing and selling that novel

[evilfloralfoolery]

🥵 & 🌱

(Did the little tree in a previous ask! <3) 🥵 What’s the most self indulgent fic you’ve ever written, fetish wise or other? link it if you want 👀

LOL, I truly have no idea. Most of my stuff is self-indulgent! I wrote a reaaaaallly long literal novel about a fictional music professor, though. Like 120K type of situation. It's not posted anywhere. But I definitely went ham with that one. I used all of my experiences from music school in college and wrote a bunch of dramatic nonsense. There was snz in it, but it was mostly a bunch of musical blather with opera and symphonic stuff.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Linkrot

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Here's an underrated cognitive virtue: "object permanence" – that is, remembering how you perceived something previously. As Riley Quinn often reminds us, the left is the ideology of object permanence – to be a leftist is to hate and mistrust the CIA even when they're tormenting Trump for a brief instant, or to remember that it was once possible for a working person to support their family with their wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The thing is, object permanence is hard. Life comes at you quickly. It's very hard to remember facts, and the order in which those facts arrived – it's even harder to remember how you felt about those facts in the moment.

This is where blogging comes in – for me, at least. Back in 1997, Scott Edelman – editor of Science Fiction Age – asked me to take over the back page of the magazine by writing up ten links of interest for the nascent web. I wrote that column until the spring of 2000, then, in early 2001, Mark Frauenfelder asked me to guest-edit Boing Boing, whereupon the tempo of my web-logging went daily. I kept that up on Boing Boing for more than 19 years, writing about 54,000 posts. In February, 2020, I started Pluralistic.net, my solo project, a kind of blog/newsletter, and in the four-plus years since, I've written about 1,200 editions containing between one and twelve posts each.

This gigantic corpus of everything I ever considered to be noteworthy is immensely valuable to me. The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.

Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.

Then, the fact that all these fragments are also database entries – contained in the back-end of a WordPress installation that I can run complex queries on – comes into play, letting me swiftly and reliably confirm my memories of these long-gone phenomena. Inevitably, these queries turn up material that I've totally forgotten, and these make the result even richer, like adding homemade stock to a stew to bring out a rich and complicated flavor. Better still, many of these posts have been annotated by readers with supplemental materials or vigorous objections.

I call this all "The Memex Method" and it lets me write a lot (I wrote nine books during lockdown, as I used work to distract me from anxiety – something I stumbled into through a lifetime of chronic pain management):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Back in 2013, I started a new daily Boing Boing feature: "This Day In Blogging History," wherein I would look at the archive of posts for that day one, five and ten years previously:

https://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/this-day-in-blogging-history.html

With Pluralistic, I turned this into a daily newsletter feature, now stretching back to twenty, fifteen, ten, five and one year ago. Here's today's:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#retro

This is a tremendous adjunct to the Memex Method. It's a structured way to review everything I've ever thought about, in five-year increments, every single day. I liken this to working dough, where there's stuff at the edges getting dried out and crumbly, and so your fold it all back into the middle. All these old fragments naturally slip out of your thoughts and understanding, but you can revive their centrality by briefly paying attention to them for a few minutes every day.

This structured daily review is a wonderful way to maintain object permanence, reviewing your attitudes and beliefs over time. It's also a way to understand the long-forgotten origins of issues that are central to you today. Yesterday, I was reminded that I started thinking about automotive Right to Repair 15 years ago:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

Given that we're still fighting over this, that's some important perspective, a reminder of the likely timescales involved in more recent issues where I feel like little progress is being made.

Remember when we all got pissed off because the mustache-twirling evil CEO of Warners, David Zaslav, was shredding highly anticipated TV shows and movies prior to their release to get a tax-credit? Turns out that we started getting angry about this stuff twenty years ago, when Michael Eisner did it to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911":

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/us/disney-is-blocking-distribution-of-film-that-criticizes-bush.html

It's not just object permanence: this daily spelunk through my old records is also a way to continuously and methodically sound the web for linkrot: when old links go bad. Over the past five years, I've noticed a very sharp increase in linkrot, and even worse, in the odious practice of spammers taking over my dead friends' former blogs and turning them into AI spam-farms:

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/

The good people at the Pew Research Center have just released a careful, quantitative study of linkrot that confirms – and exceeds – my worst suspicions about the decay of the web:

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/

The headline finding from "When Online Content Disappears" is that 38% of the web of 2013 is gone today. Wikipedia references are especially hard-hit, with 23% of news links missing and 21% of government websites gone. The majority of Wikipedia entries have at least one broken link in their reference sections. Twitter is another industrial-scale oubliette: a fifth of English tweets disappear within a matter of months; for Turkish and Arabic tweets, it's 40%.

Thankfully, someone has plugged the web's memory-hole. Since 2001, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has allowed web users to see captures of web-pages, tracking their changes over time. I was at the Wayback Machine's launch party, and right away, I could see its value. Today, I make extensive use of Wayback Machine captures for my "This Day In History" posts, and when I find dead links on the web.

The Wayback Machine went public in 2001, but Archive founder Brewster Kahle started scraping the web in 1996. Today's post graphic – a modified Yahoo homepage from October 17, 1996 – is the oldest Yahoo capture on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19960501000000*/yahoo.com

Remember that the next time someone tells you that we must stamp out web-scraping for one reason or another. There are plenty of ugly ways to use scraping (looking at you, Clearview AI) that we should ban, but scraping itself is very good:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And so is the Internet Archive, which makes the legal threats it faces today all the more frightening. Lawsuits brought by the Big Five publishers and Big Three labels will, if successful, snuff out the Internet Archive altogether, and with it, the Wayback Machine – the only record we have of our ephemeral internet:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/

Libraries burn. The Internet Archive may seem like a sturdy and eternal repository for our collective object permanence about the internet, but it is very fragile, and could disappear like that.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#pew-pew-pew

[dailycass-cain]

Can you tell us more about Gabrych and the end of the 2000 run? Why was it cancelled?

Near the end of the comic book event "Infinite Crisis", Batgirl Vol. 1 was axed. This was not due to low sales (several DC Comics at the time were selling worse and continued on when the relaunch "One Year Later" program was to hit) but for a rather sexist reason.

Back in 2010, the inker for Batgirl Vol. 1, Jesse Delperdang, posted on Deviantart the real reason the series was canceled, "canceled to make room for the coming Batwoman."

That "coming Batwoman" was an ongoing series by Devin Grayson, and would never see the light of day (DC got cold feet when the character got more publicity than they realized and decided to retool the character (which we got with Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III over in Detective Comics a few years later).

Because more than "one female bat comic" was one too many. Not only that but just last year Dan DiDio posted on Facebook the original outline he had for "OYL" regarding Cass:

Of course, DiDio always changed his mind and instead, we got the racist caricature in OYL. Nor would this be the last time DiDio would change his thoughts on what to do with Cass (2009, 2011, and 2016. Each a can of worms of themselves).

So that's why Batgirl Vol. 1 was canceled, due to sexism.

As for Gabrych, he continued to work with DC until an Omega Men mini in 2006-2007 and began to go back to his life outside DC Comics. He did come back to write a 2010 graphic novel Frogtown for the Vertigo label.

The thing is, DC Editorial under DiDio was a nasty business. Sometimes you followed the edicts or didn't and walked altogether (Kelley Puckett for a brief run with Supergirl Vol. 5 in 2008 and Dylan Horrocks with the "War Games" event when he and Grayson objected to Stephanie Brown being brutally murdered and DC taking away Babs from the comic too). Or you got nasty pricks in editing to deal with like Eddie Berganza (a noted DiDio toadie). It was just a toxic culture altogether, and I'm glad it is over when DiDio got fired in early 2020.

Two have left comics altogether (Puckett & Gabrych) and Horrocks is doing indie comic work in his native New Zealand, but avoiding the Big 2 after the "War Games" experience.

The sad truth is, if you write a Batgirl ongoing there's a 75% chance you're gonna get out of the industry. Literally, there's only a handful of Batgirl writers who've done stories on the ongoings and not left.

We just got Bryan Q. Miller back to DC in a few months (they're also reprinting the Batgirl Vol. 3 run he did), and that's probably cause most of the old regime left (see an SDCC 2020 Batgirls panel he was on with Sarah Kuhn and others where he goes onto a tale regarding his clashes with the heads over Cass).

Puckett did do a new foreword to his Batman Adventures run which got an Omnibus recently. So MAYBE there's hope for him too.

I hope I answered your question to the fullest on why Batgirl Vol. 1 ended and why Gabrych left the industry.

[lostcauses-noregrets]

By Rafael Motamayor, New York Times, Nov. 5, 2023

On Saturday, the final episode of the anime adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s “Attack on Titan” premiered on Crunchyroll and Hulu, ending an epic tale that started back in 2013.

Like the manga, which ran from 2009 to 2021, the anime was an instant hit, becoming one of the defining shows of the modern anime era, with spinoffs, live-action and video game adaptations, and even a comic book crossover with Marvel’s “Spider-Man” and “Avengers” titles.

Since the fourth and final season started airing in 2020, “Attack on Titan” has been one of the most popular shows on the internet — episodes have routinely trended on social media, streaming servers have occasionally crashed, the opening theme song became a rare anime song to hit the U.S. Billboard charts. Parrot Analytics said it was the most “in-demand” show in the world in 2021, a metric based on analysis of streaming, social media, search and other online behaviors. The manga has continued to be popular as well, selling over 120 million copies worldwide, and several of the published volumes have charted on the New York Times graphic novels and manga best-seller list.

What started as a thrilling yet relatively simple tale of a young boy seeking revenge against the giant humanoid monsters that ate his mother quickly evolved into a thought-provoking war epic. The tonal shift in “Attack on Titan” also came with one of the biggest heel-turns in modern anime, with the protagonist, Eren Jaeger, devolving into a radicalized monster threatening worldwide genocide.

Since the manga ended in 2021, there has been plenty of speculation and debate over Eren’s antagonistic turn and what the story’s ending means. Ahead of the release of the final episode, the manga creator Hajime Isayama, speaking through an interpreter, David Higbee, talks about the restrictive nature of writing and the story’s dark ending. These are edited excerpts from the interview.

The manga ended a couple of years ago, and the anime is just finishing now. How do you feel about the story coming to an end?

For this anime to be made and for that to go beyond the borders of Japan and to reach a worldwide audience is something that’s been a very happy occurrence for me. In a sense, “Attack on Titan” has connected me to the world, and that’s something that I’m very glad happened.

How much of the ending from the manga did you have in mind when you first began writing “Attack on Titan”? And how much did it change along the way?

That was pretty much there from the beginning, the story that starts with the victim who then goes through this story and becomes the aggressor. That is something I had in mind right from the get-go. Along the way, certain aspects of the story didn’t go as expected, and I adapted and fleshed out certain aspects. But I would say the ending of the story didn’t change much

There’s a much-talked-about scene where Armin, who is struggling with Eren’s turn into a mass murderer, seems to thank him for his actions. Can you talk about the meaning behind that conversation?

My thinking there wasn’t really that Armin was trying to push Eren away for the sake of justice or whatnot. It was more that he wanted to, in a sense, take joint responsibility. He wanted to become an accomplice. In order to become an accomplice, Armin had to make sure that he used very strong wording so that he could take those sins upon himself. And so that was the intent behind it.

You have a scene where Eren apologizes to a kid for the carnage he’s going to commit and says he was disappointed in the world he saw beyond the walls. What does that say about his motivation?

I think that refers to the fact that Eren was dreaming of going to this world outside of the walls where there was nobody and there was nothing. There was an excitement about this world that was just empty, a clean slate. I don’t really know whether that’s a good or a bad thing, and I don’t really know why that was the ideal that I set up for Eren as a part of this story. But what I can say is that, when he does get across the wall at that point, he says he sees that the world is really not that different from what’s within the walls in the world that he already knows. I believe that’s probably the disappointment that I’m referring to in that specific scene.

Eren says in the final episode of the anime that he had no choice but to follow the future that he saw, that he was powerless against the powers of the Founding Titan. Armin even asks if he’s really free. Was he telling the truth or do you see this as him telling an excuse?

So the truth is the situation with Eren actually overlaps in a certain sense with my own story with this manga. When I first started this series, I was worried that it would probably be canceled. It was a work that no one knew about. But I had already started the story with the ending in mind. And the story ended up being read and watched by an incredible number of people, and it led to me being given a huge power that I didn’t quite feel comfortable with.

It would have been nice if I could have changed the ending. Writing manga is supposed to be freeing. But if I was completely free, then I should have been able to change the ending. I could have changed it and said I wanted to go in a different direction. But the fact is that I was tied down to what I had originally envisioned when I was young. And so, manga became a very restrictive art form for me, similar to how the massive powers that Eren acquired ended up restricting him.

You have been involved in the anime production for a little while, supervising the adaptation’s storyboards, and have been known for asking for changes to the story in the adaptation. Did you personally ask for anything for the final episode?

Yes. Absolutely. I checked the script, but the main thing was the storyboards. There were different things I suggested. When it comes down to it, it’s really the role of the production to make those decisions. But I wanted to at least give my input so that they could take those into account when they were making the final decisions.

The manga ends with you showing the future of Paradis and sort of the cycle of war continuing. Is there no end to the conflict and the cycle you present in the story?

I guess there could have been an ending where it was a happy ending and the war ended and everything was fine and dandy. I guess that could have been possible. At the same time, the end of fighting and the end of contention itself kind of seems hokey. It kind of seems like it’s not even believable. It’s just not plausible in the world we’re living in right now. And so, sadly, I had to give up on that kind of happy ending.

[New York Times, 5 November 2023]

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Better Novel Scrivener Template

BTW, If you liked the Settings Template, this has that plus more...

The Current Novel Template is out of date, the templates aren't really doing much for you. And the variety of icons is rather thin. I set out to fix this.

The template as a whole is PG-13 as the Character Template mentions "dangerous" things like "Kinks" and "Safe Words" OMG. I know. So terrible. So if you don't want to explain those things to anyone underage, don't download it.

As I am NB, and generally queer otherwise, I have included things like Sexual Orientation, Romantic Orientation and a whole load of things to think about when building CHARACTER, SETTING, WORLDBUILDING. I included things that people often forget by using my Uni and College knowledge.

Please, please read the "Read Me First" file if you want to avoid having to load missing icons. I give instructions.

In case you still opened it despite my warnings or it doesn't work, you'll have to load in the icons manually. In which case this is a reference:

The New Icons are: Domestic Products, Imported Goods, Exported Goods, Laws, and Social Stratification. I added extra icons for Weapons and Warfare in case you're not writing Fantasy. Laser Guns and a Historical Pistol.

I did my best to make it CULTURALLY NEUTRAL. If you want them specific, you're on your own.

I also added if you'd like to load them

All these Icons to the folder so You can finally color code your manuscripts to your heart's content. (My unending frustration with Scrivener).

I added an SVG file so if there is an exact shade I missed on the Spiral Notebook Colors or the Hardcover Books, you can add it.

The Composition Notebook file isn't included as it contains a pattern. However, I made pains to make sure it matches real life colors that exist in Composition Notebooks. You wanted the Settings Template? There are 2. One for City/Towns. One general one.

Zero Organization or Clue on Querying or Self pubbing?

I put up Organization Folders for you.

Here are the Templates you get. Everything is beefed up for you. I spent forever on these Templates and testing them. I also cued Styles to them so it's easy to change the colors. If you want to change something, as the About document says, turn on invisibles.

The Default Styles aren't useless anymore.

If you need a more Definitive Guide, I also made one in the file:

Download the Scrivener Template. It is a ZIP FILE Win Zip or other Zip app should be able to handle it.

Warning: Direct Download https://www.kimyoonmi.com/BetterNovelScrivenerTemplate.zip If you want to Skip the Template completely, but are wishing to add the Icons to your Scrivener:

https://www.kimyoonmi.com/ScrivenerIcons.zip

This template itself is not for sale or profit nor are the icons. Also don’t be the person that lies that says you made it. It’s a Creative Commons License Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivatives by Yoonmi Kim 2024. You may change it for personal use only. Any problems can be addressed directly to me at https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com. If you would like to translate this into other languages, let me know.

Don't be the ass that tries to sell my hard work, 'cause really, it's free. And I spent a lot of pains and time to make sure it's free and easy to use with a lot of subtle UX. Edit: I added even more stuff to the newest version.

Yes, a Pets Sketch, a Fauna Species Sketch a Flora Species Sketch, there is Literature added to the list of Art (I forgot it. lol I thought the mistake was silly, but yeah.)

And I added a Medicine Section with an icon to the technology section. There are two native icons already for Medicine--syringe and pill, but I kind of felt it didn't always give the feel of fantasy, so I made a Mortar and Pestle from scratch to add, but if you're doing sci-fi or contemporary, etc you can change to the syringe or pill.

I added explainers as well for the items to the guide.

Why?

'Cause. I would love to be able to see people put more thought into their worlds/worldbuilding, even if it doesn't show up. Maybe it won't be only horses for animals as pets. Or an occasional dog. Haha. Having a gay dog like Robin Williams would be great.

[thebroccolination]

I think fic writing is a storytelling experience you can’t get through selling (or trying to sell) your work.

Like, when I listen to people in my novel-writing course talk about certain obstacles they’re grappling with, I understand in theory.

“I wish someone would read my work and tell me I’m doing all right. I feel so isolated writing thousands of words alone.”

“I just don’t know what I’m doing right. I have no confidence in my writing because no one’s ever told me it’s good. I’m just hoping it is.”

“My dream is to hear someone tell me my book made them cry or laugh out loud.”

Like! Okay, right—

So much of storytelling is inherently tied to community. We tell stories to pass information, sustain culture, teach the next generation. Storytelling is hard to do in isolation because it’s not meant to be done in isolation.

And of course writing is even harder to do in isolation, because it involves learned skills like grammar and syntax and colloquialisms and analogies and narrative structure and all that important garbage. It involves creativity and logic and editing and blah blah blah. It’s hard.

But what makes fic writing different and fun is what’s made storytelling such a lasting and beloved pastime: community. We watch a show or a movie, read a book, listen to a podcast, what have you, and then we act on a tradition humans have been practicing for millennia: carrying those stories forward. Adjusting them, reshaping them, adding onto them. Fic writing is what happens when capitalists try to restrict what humans have always done with stories.

Why do it for free? Because we’re looking for community. Telling each other stories is how we connect, how we make sense of love and devastation and fear and awe. That’s why fic writers beg for comments and feedback. By posting fics, writers are basically throwing a hand up for a high five. We’re turning to readers and saying, “Can you imagine if ___?” We’re calling out into the dark hoping someone will answer.

The reason I’m still writing today is because I’ve spent most of my life in fic-writing communities. Strangers told a nine-year-old posting structurally terrible stories on FanFiction.net that they had a great time reading, and then that nine-year-old felt validated and excited to try again. People told that nine-year-old what parts they liked best, so that nine-year-old thought, “Oh,” and leaned into those parts.

Writing fic is safe and joyous for me because community after community sat around a bonfire with me and told me they enjoyed the stories I told them. Some of my fics have been translated into other languages and carried onto to new communities, some have been made into art and transformed into a different medium, and some have been read aloud and recorded. It’s all beautifully, magnificently centered around community.

And I wish more writers creating original work could experience this, because while there are always going to be conflicts wherever there are people, humans make the experience of living warmest when we build and maintain communities. When we tell each other stories for the simple satisfaction of knowing someone is smiling with anticipation as you start to tell them yours.

[redthefortuneteller]

Snake is not a human with snake genes. He's a snake with human genes.

𓆚 𓆚 𓆚 Edit: I've added at the bottom something else I had forgotten about. If you've read this post before, give it a read. Sorry about that! I've made other seperate posts related so that this one doesn't get so enormous. Here are the links: The Island of Queimada Grande The Snake Charming Flute A Pet Snake Feel free to give them a peek if you found this post interesting. These posts are much more brief than this one, I promise you! :D 𓆚 𓆚 𓆚 If you're at all familiar with the 1896 early science fiction novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H. G. Wells, the tittle surely might've brought it to mind. Indeed, I am basing this theory on this novel. "The Island of Dr. Moreau reflects the ethical, philosophical, and scientific concerns and controversies raised by the themes and ideas of Darwinian evolution, which were so disruptive to social norms in the late 1800s."

In brief, Doctor Moreau was an eminent physiologist (read: mad scientist) in London who ended up fleeing Great Britain due to his experiments in vivisection being publicly exposed. Vivisection is, for all intents and purposes, experimentation on live animals. What he accomplished with his experimenting was human-animal hybrids. But it's not as one would assume at first glance (as did the main protagonist in the novel), that he'd turn humans into animals, as is often portrayed in this sort of fiction or even in real-world folklore (think werewolves or berserkers).

Instead, Doctor Moreau turned animals into humans. And unfortunately, through means of extremely painful surgery, which fits in quite well with a dark story such as Kuroshitsuji.

Almost all of the beast-folk are named after "what they're made of". For example: Leopard-Man, Hyena-Swine, Wolf-Man, Fox-Bear Woman, etc… And he refers to them as his children. Children he holds hostage on an island. You know, like an orphanage? The orphanage, which is mentioned in Chapter 192, could very well be "the island" where the Doctor's children were being held at. After all, an island is just like a building where one can be held in, only the walls are a vast ocean. Snake (or Oscar) refers to it as "… a terrible place." and remembering the painful surgery part, I think that's an understatement.

In a 1996 film adaptation that slightly deviated from the original work, the beast-folk as they're called, need to take a serum in order to keep them from turning back into their original form. All except for one hybrid in particular, which the doctor refers to almost perfect or the closest he's gotten to perfection. I feel inclined to mention that in the film someone confronts the protagonist with something along the lines of "What do you intend to do once you get her out of the island? Sell her to a circus?" referring to that almost perfect hybrid. I believe it to be the case that Snake could be the perfect hybrid. The doctor mentions the fact that in turning animals into humans, he could create the perfect human, devoid of its human flaws, devoid of malice. I firmly believe Snake is devoid of malice.

The whole incident with Phelps was nothing but a mistake, and Snake's paying dearly for that mistake as he got his neck sliced in the same place Phelps had the mamba bite.

Whichever the case, the plan was not very well thought through: he was going to kill Smile without knowing the circus troupe was dead and without so much as asking Smile about it. He was going to kill Sebastian too, were he not a demon. As Smile was telling him that he had infiltrated the circus in order to investigate, Snake kept flip-flopping between getting shocked with the revelation that the troupe were kidnapers and getting aggravated, insisting Smile was lying. Probably due to the snakes' chattering each of their opinions. He's confused, but he's not evil. It's clear from his reactions.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because he was acting purely on impulse. Not much thought. Or at least, the thought he put into it wasn't much. It wasn't malice guiding his actions, but a sort of instinct. Snakes don't think much about attacking when they feel threatened. If they feel inclined to do so, they just do. No questions asked. No thinking about consequences.

In the film mentioned earlier, the doctor's office looks like a small library. The doctor is obviously quite literate. However, his "children" aren't.

There seems to be quite a bit of focus on Snake not knowing how to read. First mentioned on Yana's personal blog and most recently brought up in Chapter 195. It was quite common for people to be illiterate at the time Kuro takes place, but there was a focus on Snake from Yana's part, which I only find interesting because of how his snakes were named. After famous writers.

Could the doctor have named the other snakes but not him, as he was the first snake? The Snake. Or could Snake have named the others because he himself didn't have a name? It's funny that among all his family, the one human is simply named "snake" while the ones that would be naturally referred to as snakes are named quite fancifully. It's also quite comical if you consider chapter 51, when Finnian thought Snake was "Mister Oscar" as he introduced himself with "I'm Snake…", "- Says Oscar."

If you'd like to consider going a little further and going a bit crazy on these what ifs: consider that his snakes are the others who didn't make it or reverted back to normal. The panel in chapter 195 (page 7) where Snake has himself a little dilemma (in space!) with all the snakes chiming in in his head? I know it might sound a little out there, but I think the reason those three Snakes are shown naked could be because they're not Snake, they really might be Keats, Emily, and Wilde. Either the Snake-Man hybrids all look the same, or this is how Snake visualizes them speaking, as he himself is a snake like them. The difference is that he can use human speech, so if they were to use it as well, they too would look like him… right?

In fact, he often makes little distinction. He's said this in chapter 202 when Arty asks if he's a snake charmer, to which he firmly responds, "No. Snake and us are family. - says Dan." and "We are all footmen. - Says Goethe." Before this, he says "We're all here. - says everyone." He refers to them as "us". He makes little separation between himself and the other snakes. He understands and talks to snakes because, naturally, he is a snake. And he's the only snake who can talk to humans—the only one who is also human. He's the spokesperson (spokesnake, lol) of the group. Edit: He makes different voices for different snakes. Each snake has their own voice. What if those were really their voices at some point in time? The first idea one gets from Snake is that the snakes are like parts of his personality that he's expressing through them. However, this isn't true (or entirely true) because they do really do communicate with him, as proven undeniably by Oscar sneaking into the castle basement in the Green Witch arc and bringing back information Snake had no way of knowing (and couldn't really explain very well when Bard asked for details).

In chapter 53, he's sneaked down to the cargo to share the food with "everyone" as he says. I always found it a little odd to share human food with snakes, who only eat whole animals. On the plate, there were some leaves. There are no herbivorous snakes; they're all exclusively carnivorous (insectivorous, too). Of course, the lettuce, or whatever it is, is intact. But still, snakes don't eat breaded chicken or liver pâté either… It's just odd that Snake, who's been seen feeding his snakes mice twice, suddenly thinks they'd be interested in this gourmet, first-class dish. I believe he thinks, since it's delicious to him, surely they might think so too. After all, they're all snakes. Could he get a little confused sometimes?

He's also never showed any fear of the werewolf forest while the other servants were scared as they made their way to the village in the Emerald Witch arc. He doesn't seem phased by the idea of wolf-men. He was freaked out by the torture instruments in the village though, meaning some things are scary, just not the werewolves.

Edit: I forgot to mention an interesting passage from the Kuroshitsuji Original Picture Drama live reading from 2015. As far as I know, the script was written by Yana Toboso. It's all done mainly for comedic purposes. However, there's a part where the characters are drinking and chatting and eventually some get a little tipsy. What Snake says in a drunken crying fit is "I'm a snake! I feel better if I drink a lot of sake!" Interesting, isn't it? ;) Go ahead and watch it yourself here if you feel like it: https://youtu.be/xMmrWsHLaqc?si=ozkAfssE_fLOOoaM&t=506

To end I'd also like to call attention to the cover art from Chapter 196. Him being confused about a lemon cake and a lemon tart being different snacks when they're both sweet and both cakes made it to the cover art. He's having trouble grasping how a lemon flavored dessert can be different from another lemon flavored dessert.

I think that sums it up nicely, although I might have forgotten some things. I do apologize if anyone has already made this correlation between this work by H. G. Wells and Snake's possible origins, I couldn't find anything related.

Of course it can all be explained easily by just saying he sees the snakes as family and as "us" because he has a connection to them. However, it's the "how he came to be" part that is my main motive behind the theory.

I put a lot of love and care into this theory and since Snake's flashbacks might be coming up soon, I thought I'd share it just so that it's out there for all it's worth.

Thank you so much for reading. Have a lovely day. Red

[mooncakescomic]

Wow! Hi! Announcement about MOONCAKES (that might be new to some)

Hi guys! Wendy here.

It's been a few years-- I actually logged back onto tumblr to fix the stupid AI settings to avoid this blog getting scraped, specifically with this as Mooncakes started as a webcomic and is now a published graphic novel under copyright (please update your blog settings to avoid your own blog getting scraped)

That's right! I thought that since we had published as a book back in 2019, people would stop following this blog, but looking at the notifications, people are still landing here.

So this is to say that Mooncakes is a graphic novel that you can buy wherever books are sold (might I suggest your local indie) and we have several different editions, including a special edition hardcover and a Spanish edition. To finish reading what happens to Nova and Tam that ended at Chapter 6 here, please get the book! If you don't wanna buy it, please support your local library and request it or check it out there!

You can find me over on instagram @artofwendyxu and on my website. I sell Procreate brushes and short fantasy comics on my ko-fi , and these days I'm a full time comics artist with MOONCAKES out from Oni Press, TIDESONG and INFINITY PARTICLE from HarperCollins Quilltree, and more to come, all available wherever books are sold and at your local library.

You can find Suzanne over on her website (she isn't on social media much these days). She's written for Star Wars and short fiction magazines, with a novel in the works!

Joamette, our letterer, is also the EIC and publisher over at Power and Magic Press, for more comics about queer witches and fantasy of color-- books also available for sale and at your libraries.

Thank you so much for your support, and I hope you'll continue to follow us on our journeys.

[blue-asher]

Percy Weasley X Squib!Reader

Summary: when you try to buy a book by a Squib author Percy shields you from the discrimination of the bookshop owner.

Let's say that the Weasley family and the Golden Trio decided to go to Diagon Alley to buy supplies for the new school year and they invite you and your siblings (who attend Hogwarts; that's how you met them) to come along.

Their first stop was a library where they got the essentials like paper and quills. There you decided to treat the trio and bought some matching pens that had witches' hats on them. Ron was the most intrigued out of the three.

Then you go to a bookshop with the list of required books in hand. It was then that problems arrised.

Once you enter the bookshop you all part different ways to find your things: Hermione goes straight to grab the school books so as to check out the novels later, Ron and Harry go the adventure books first so as to go for the school ones later, Ginny and her mother look into the new Lockheart's novel and Mr. Weasley went to look after the twins (as instructed by his wife) but soon lost track of them.

And, although you didn't notice at first, Percy decides to look out for you (his words, what if you got lost in all the sections and ended up in a shopping spree) and see if you actually had good taste in books at all—not because he was taking notes for next birthday presents, of course. He also didn't want to leave you alone. The rest of the lot had actual things to do in there and went straight to crossing names from their lists. All of them walked in different directions with confidence, like men on a mission. So he was fairly surprised when you did as well. He wanted to know what you were up to.

He considered going up to you and ask you what you thought about the bookshop after 15 minutes of just watching how you read the tilted of a couple books in sale. Until he saw you grab, rather excited, a particular book. Then the bookseller appeared.

"Good evening, young lady! I'm sorry to bother you but I couldn't help but notice that you picked up a particular book" the bookseller said anxiously "Memories of a forgotten kind. I hope it struck your interest, of course! but I must insist you buy it nonetheless" Y/N was quite shocked at the sudden approach and rambling of the man but she was just about to ask for more information about the magnificent book so she was glad the man came just in time.

The book in question is an elegant hard cover edition with beautiful art work in the front about philosophy. It was from a squib author that discussed the problems with Squib identity and how they perceived themselves in a world that seemed to want to label them one way or the other, essencially robbing them of the core of their existance: the middle. The author also included some biographical aspects in it to help make a point of his stand. You, being the same as him, were very excited to have found it as not only it spoke about an issue that had revolved around your self-confidence all your life (you had to admit you were just a tiny bit jealous of your siblings' magic) but because it was also a rare occurrence to find a squib author in general. Sadly, they rarely got published.

"You see, I've been having a real hard time to sell them. No one wants them—nobody could ever want them, really." His sudden statement quickly pulled you out of your thoughts as you were thinking about what to ask him first. You had just decided to ask whether the guy had written other books when he screamed that first statement.

"I shouldn't have made a deal with the man. I tried to diversify my collection, you know, my partner told me to. But I told him it was a bad idea, he just wouldn't listen" he continued rapidly ". I know everyone wants to say we are in modern times but business are business. You get me"

It was as if he was trying to excuse himself for even having the books in the shop; he didn't even stop to breath. You got concerned. Why was it difficult to sell? Had the writer been in some sort of scandal? Was the information in the book no longer valid? You didn't remember if you looked at the year of publishing but the book seemed brand new. Why was it in sale? It seemed like half the price a book so pretty.

"You don't seem too convinced. That's all right, I understand" you tried to pich in and tell him that he didn't understand at all because not even you understood what he was talking about. But he kept going "I'll make you a deal, just for you. You seemed like a lady of culture. How much is it? 400 sickles? I'll leave it to 300, what do you say?"

'I'll be damned' you thought. Shouldn't it be the other way around? What would he even gain from that amount? You finally got a moment to ask:

"I'm confused, It's such a beautiful edition with great quality, why is it so cheap? Did the author do something?"

You waited for his answer.

The bookseller looked at you like you just grew an extra head but quickly changed his expression to one of realisation "My apologies, ma'am. You mustn't have notice, how silly of me!" He spoke as if the fact was obvious but you still didn't understand. He composed himself and in a more calmer manner said "The author's a squib"

That's all he said.

And Percy thought he had already said enough.

You were stil expecting to hear something more, an aclaration, because clearly it didn't seem like a logical reason. What does that have to do with anything? You didn't have time to say anything else as Percy suddenly appeared beside you and put his hand on your shoulder. You looked at him but his gazed was fixed from above into the bookseller's eyes.

"I think we have heard enough desperate rambling from you. No wonder you can't sell a book for the life of it." His tone was cold and it shocked you greatly. You hadn't seen Percy this angry before, you hadn't ever heard him insult another adult like that.

The bookseller went off pretty angry and told the both of you to not bother coming back if you weren't going to buy a proper book. You were pretty sure you heard him say something about you only looking into the Sale section, most likely an insult.

However, you thought it had all went down hill unnecessarily and were about to question Percy's sudden change of attitude but when you turned you noticed that he was already looking at you. With a sad warmness in his gaze.

"He meant the writer, Y/N"

You stared at him for a few seconds and blinked "What?"

"He meant that the books didn't sell because the writer's a squib"

You felt embarrassed because of how long it took you to pick up on the que. Angry embarrassed. You had just made a fool of yourself, in front of Percy! Just when you thought you had dominated that kind of anti-squib talking.

In the end everyone left without buying a single textbook from the place, not wanting to support such a prick. But not before your siblings gave the bookseller a piece of their mind and spoke every insult the could come up with.

You insisted to the Weasleys that they didn't have to leave: they needed the books and the other bookshop was a good 20 minutes away. Hermione gave a nasty look to anyone who seemed tempted on the idea of buying the books and get the shopping over with. 'Anyone' being Ron -but just for a quick second.

Quickly you started making jokes about how you should have bought it either way because "Where else will I find a book so amazingly cheap? No, Y/N! You mustn't succumb to capitalism!! You have to support the writers" Your antics successfully made the trio and twins laugh and it was only then, when you wanted to raise your fist at the sky in a dramatic way, that you noticed that Percy had been holding your hand. Probably had since you left the bookshop. When you looked at him he sheepishly let go while giving you a shy smile.

You wished he hadn't.

A couple of days later you family had the Weasleys over for a farewell dinner since everyone left the following day for Hogwarts.

Just when everyone had left and you were making yourself comfortable in your room, you noticed a wrapped package in your bed. A gift that was not there before. It was very clearly a book but it didn't have any note as to who might have left it. Did the Weasleys leave a gift for you? You didn't see anyone entering your room.

Dying with curiosity, you opened to see what it was and find a clue of who your mystery friend might be.

It was the philosophy book you had tried to buy a few days ago! You were admiring it with delight when you noticed something falling from the inside of it.

A piece of paper had fallen, it was receipt! From a library you didn't know and where it stated that the book had been purchased at a price much suitable for its quality; probably the original price that the bookseller had tried reducing to nothingness the other day.

But there was something else written at the back of the receipt, something in handwriting.

"Proof that I've bought it at full price.

Found a new bookshop with a section dedicated to squib writers, mind if we explore it together some time?"

You would recognize that handwriting anywhere, and would make sure to send Percy a package of his favourite chocolates with your next letter.

[danjaley]

One of my random book posts:

My long history with Anne of Green Gables

(and that series' unfortunate publishing history in Germany)

My first encounter with Anne of Green Gables was when the girl who bullied me in elementary school held her presentation "My favourite book" about it. The gist of her summary was: "This is a funny book about a girl who likes to pull pranks on everybody". Safe to say, she was not a kindred spirit.

This was in the late nineties, where the only way to buy books was to go to a bookshop and browse the shelves. Somehow, the only place in Germany where L.M. Montgomery seemed to sell were North-Sea holiday resorts. Probably because of the maritime setting. You can even tell by the covers that these books were supposed to be bought by seaside-tourists. Anyway, my mother bought three volumes on a holiday at the North Sea, containing everything up to Anne of Ingleside.

Until around 2000, the "whole series" in Germany consisted of three volumes containing two novels each. Some time in the 80s, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island and Anne of Ingleside also had covers of their own, but they've become rarities. In only own Anne of Avonlea as a single volume. For some odd reason this is yet another cover than the "official" one.

It took me years to really grow fond of the books. The first one I associated with my enemy from school. But at least I could relate to imagining things with your friend (yes, I had friends too). The others scared and confused me. I didn't want to leave home as a teenager to go to college and be a teacher before I was twenty! And I wasn't used to books in which people died. 😥

I think it was an airing of the Animé adaptation on television that made me read the series again at around 16. It became one of my favourite works of fiction. I love books which depict everyday life, making it interesting without overdramatizing. It's something I also try to do in my stories. In this context: Matthew McCarric is partly named after Matthew Cuthbert.

Until I was around 18 I thought Anne of Ingleside was the end of the series. Then, in another bookshop (this time in Munich), I stumbled upon the one called "Anne&Rilla", which is Rilla of Ingleside. It's a very rare experience to find that an author who's known to have died decades ago just publishes a sequel! And since Anne of Ingleside was actually written after Rilla of Ingleside, it was amazing to see that all the hints in it actually led somewhere! I'd never have thought I'd actually meet Monday the Dog! Also it was the first book I read that emotionalized World War I. I only knew books about World War II, usually written long afterwards with a didactic intention. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it sparked my interest in contemporary literature about the World Wars.

The German subtitle "Zum ersten Mal verliebt" ("In love for the first time") is of course one of the worst title translations I've ever seen, surpassing even the other two. Yes, they had already used the classic "Fateful Years", but couldn't they at least have put something with "hard times"? Also note that the sub-subtitle promises two novels in one volume.

Then I wanted to read the Emily books. They had also been published as North-Sea holiday-books, but were even rarer to find. I had bought and read the third on another North-Sea-holiday, but I couldn't warm up to characters who had a history I didn't know. The first one has been out of print for so long that it's quite expensive as a collectible. So I used this new thing, The Internet, and bought it in English. It was a mind-blowing experience and I was like "Never ever will I go back to those dated sentimental translations!" In fact I only keep the German editions because of their covers. They may sometimes forget it's set in the 1900s, but I still think they're pretty.

So I went online again and ordered the Anne and Emily books in English. It was then that I discovered, there was another book of the Anne-Series, I hadn't known about. This was in 2010, and Rainbow Valley was never translated into German until 2013. It's rare to find a sequel written by a dead author, but this is the only case where it happened to me twice.

Now, remember the German Paperbacks always contained two volumes. To disguise the fact that Rainbow Valley was missing, Rilla of Ingleside had been chopped in half, and has actually been sold as two separate novels in the past. I later bought one of these in a library jumble-sale, just as a curiosity. I've also come to appreciate that English publishers don't waste our space in the shelves. The blue book has half the content of the purple and is nearly twice its size!

By the way, the Emily series did not get chopped apart, but you can see the red label on the back of "Emily in Blair Water", which passes it off as a double volume.

I had already noticed that the German translations were strongly sentimental, but what's worse, they're also incomplete. Anne of Green Gables and of Avonlea are all right, but the lady who took over then (some time in the 1980s) had her own ideas. There were several scenes cut, for what I can only guess was considered inappropriate content. Among other things, all references to men wearing female hats or other female clothing were removed (of which there are surprisingly many). What's worse, the translator even added some dialogues of her own, usually in romantic scenes, to make them more kitschy.

There have been some signs of improvement in recent years. Rainbow Valley was finally translated in 2013. There are also new translations of the first two books, which I'm reading at the moment as a e-books. I like that it's fun and modern, but sometimes so eager to write something new, that it's not exactly the meaning of the English text any more. But I'm sure readers who happen not to have studied History and English won't mind. I guess it will be some more decades until the copyright expires for the volumes which really need a retranslation.

Well, and then I became an art historian, specializing in ceiling painting and book history. If you really want to know a book, read it in several editions. You'll be surprised about the things you'll find!

[notstilinski]

Book Lovers Starters !

Taken from the 2022 novel by Emily Henry, Book Lovers! Some of these have already been edited. You can change them however you see fit!

“Is she a baker? The woman you’re leaving me for.”

“What went wrong is that, in a past life, I betrayed a very powerful witch, and that put a curse on my love life.”

“All I need from them is a full credit report, psych evaluation, and a blood oath.”

“Oh my god, what is that? Are you planning a bank robbery?”

“FOR ALL I KNOW, YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE FEELINGS.”

“I could tie a bedsheet around your ankle and drag you up.”

“I’m a grown adult, (Name). I can buy my own Bigfoot erotica, thank you very much.”

“You are in control. You won’t let anything bad happen to them ever again.”

“I wouldn’t call it bloodlust. I don’t revel in exsanguination. I do it for my clients.”

“(Name) is here. Everything must be okay.”

“You really are sickeningly good at everything, you know that, right?”

“If you offer to lend me your Crocs again, I’m going to sue you for emotional damages.”

“To be known isn’t necessarily to be admired.”

“If I knew the answer to that, (Name), I’d have ascended to a higher plane.”

“Yeah, well, you should try almost marrying then and see if that helps.”

“If you’re into cat pee and gasoline.”

“I’m going to be up all night making diagrams and charts, trying to figure out what you just said.”

“You are much weirder than I thought.”

“Do they eat outsiders?”

“Can it really be called fanfiction if the author clearly isn’t a fan?”

“I can tell you’re pleased with yourself when your eyes go all predatory like that.”

“(Name) will listen to you. You could sell snake oil to a snake oil salesman.”

“The ship of their disappointment in me set sail a long time ago. I’d have to do something WAY sluttier to let them down now.”

“Right. There will make it easier to knock them out and empty his pockets. What should our signal be?”

“If you’re looking for your dignity, you won’t find it here.”

“Does that mean you want to date my bullies, or to humiliate them?”

“And that’s how they discovered your passion for serial killing.”

“So I’ve found the key to (Name)’s joy. My sexual humiliation.”

“Is it possible you don’t have any pain receptors?”

“You’re right. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to accept this can’t be anything.”

“Next time try not to look so excited at the thought of misery. It’ll help you blend in better.”

“Yes, together we add up to one emotionally competent human, a real accomplishment.”

“I would be adorable in Daisy Dukes and pigtails.”

“What do you think the age gap is between these actors? Sixty-eight years?”

“There are far worse things to be. Normal is a badge I wear proudly.”

“And by you’ve seen me, you mean you’ve watched me.”

“You’re not a disappointment. You’re not wrong.”

“I’ll remember you begging until my last dying breath.”

“You fucking undo me.”

“I just don’t want to be here anymore. I want it to stop.”

“You look like you haven’t slept in years.”

“You’re not useless, (Name). I mean, look at all this.”

“If we stay together, every single day for the rest of our lives is going to be the same.”

“I once had a sex dream about the green M&M.”

“If (Name) had known how hot the reverend is, they probably would’ve made it down here sooner.”

“If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time. You take care of shit.”

“I wanted to help. I wanted to take care of you.”

“See? I’m perfectly harmless over here.”

“Yes, you have lost something but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.”

“What about what you want? Who’s making sure you’re happy, (Name)?”

“You do have me, (Name). I never stood a chance.”

“I had no idea it was possible for you to want me as much as I want you.”

“(Name). You shouldn’t have to be alone through that.”

“It’s just… Ever since then, it’s been hard to imagine letting anyone close like that. Not when I’m so fucking broken I can’t sleep anywhere but my own bed.”

“Don’t be sorry. Please don’t apologize for letting me know you.”

“For what it’s worth, I doubt I will ever like anyone else in the world as much as I like you.”

“Sometimes the first act is the fun part, and then everything gets too complicated.”

“A week ago I liked you so much I would have wanted to try to make this work. But now I think I might love you too much for that.”

“If anyone could be enough, I think it might be you.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Quinque gazump linkdump

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

It's Saturday and any fule kno that this is the day for a linkdump, in which the links that couldn't be squeezed into the week's newsletter editions get their own showcase. Here's the previous 23 linkdumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Start your weekend with some child's play! Ada & Zangemann is a picture book by Matthias Kirschner and Sandra Brandstätter of Free Software Foundation Europe, telling the story of a greedy inventor who ensnares a town with his proprietary, remote-brickable gadgets, and Ada, his nemesis, a young girl who reverse engineers them and lets their users seize the means of computation:

https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/index.en.html

Ada & Zangemann is open access – you can share it, adapt it, and sell it as you see fit – and has been translated into several languages. Now, there's a cartoon version, an animated adaptation that is likewise open access, with digital assets for your remixing pleasure:

https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann//movie

Figuring out how to talk to kids about important subjects is a clarifying exercise. Back in the glory days of SNL, Eddie Murphy lampooned Fred "Mr" Rogers style of talking to kids, and it was indeed very funny:

https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Robinson

But Mr Rogers' rhetorical style wasn't as simple as "talk slowly and use small words" – the "Fredish" dialect that Mr Rogers created was thoughtful, empathic, inclusive, and very effective:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/09/the-nine-rules-of-freddish-the-positive-inclusive-empathic-language-of-mr-rogers/

Lots of writers have used the sing-songy fairytale style of children's stories to make serious political points (see, e.g. Animal Farm). My own attempt at this was my 2011 short story "The Brave Little Toaster," for MIT Tech Review's annual sf series. If the title sounds familiar, that's because I nicked it from Tom Disch's tale of the same name, as part of my series of stolen title stories:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

My Toaster story is a tale of IoT gone wild, in which the nightmare of a world of "smart" devices that exert control over their owners is shown to be a nightmare. A work colleague sent me this adaptation of the story as part of an English textbook, with lots of worksheet-style exercises. I'd never seen this before, and it's very fun:

http://ourenglishclass.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/bravetoaster.pdf

If you like my "Brave Little Toaster," you'll likely enjoy my novella "Unauthorized Bread," which appears in my 2019 collection Radicalized and is currently being adapted as a middle-grades graphic novel by Blue Delliquanti for Firstsecond:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Childlike parables have their place, but just because something fits in a "just so" story, that doesn't make it true. Cryptocurrency weirdos desperately need to learn this lesson. The foundation of cryptocurrency is a fairytale about the origin of money, a mythological marketplace in which freely trading individuals who struggled to find a "confluence of needs." If you wanted to trade one third of your cow for two and a half of my chickens, how could we complete the transaction?

In the "money story" fairy tale, we spontaneously decided that we would use gold, for a bunch of nonsensical reasons that don't bear even cursory scrutiny. And so coin money sprang into existence, and we all merrily traded our gold with one another until a wicked government came and stole our gold with (cue scary voice) taaaaaaxes.

There is zero evidence for this. It's literally a fairy tale. There is a rich history of where money came from, and the answer, in short is, governments created it through taxes, and money doesn't exist without taxation:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

The money story is a lie, and it's a consequential one. The belief that money arises spontaneously out of the needs of freely trading people who voluntarily accept an arbitrary token as a store of value, unit of account, and unit of exchange (coupled with a childish, reactionary aversion to taxation) inspired cryptocurrency, and with it, the scams that allowed unscrupulous huxters to steal billions from everyday people who trusted Matt Damon, Spike Lee and Larry David when they told them that cryptocurrency was a sure path to financial security:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

It turns out that private money, far from being a tool of liberation, is rather just a dismal tool for ripping off the unsuspecting, and that goes double for crypto, where complexity can be weaponized by swindlers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

We don't hear nearly as much about crypto these days – many of the pump-and-dump set have moved on to pitching AI stock – but there's still billions tied up in the scam, and new shitcoins are still being minted at speed. The FBI actually created a sting operation to expose the dirtiness of the crypto "ecosystem":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24267098/fbi-coin-crypto-token-nexgenai-sec-doj-fraud-investigation

They found that the exchanges, "market makers" and other seemingly rock-ribbed institutions where suckers are enticed to buy, sell, track and price cryptos are classic Big Store cons:

http://www.amyreading.com/the-9-stages-of-the-big-con.html

When you, the unsuspecting retail investor, enter one of these mirror-palaces, you are the only audience member in a play that everyone else is in on. Those vigorous trades that see the shitcoin you're being hustled with skyrocketing in value? They're "wash trades," where insiders buy and sell the same asset to one another, without real money ever changing hands, just to create the appearance of a rapidly appreciating asset that you had best get in on before you are priced out of the market.

This scam is as old as con games themselves and, as with other scams- S&Ls, Enron, subprime – the con artists have parlayed their winnings into social respectability and are now flushing them into the political system, to punish lawmakers who threaten their ability to rip off you and your neighbors. A massive, terrifying investigative story in The New Yorker shows how crypto billionaires stole the Democratic nomination from Katie Porter, one of the most effective anti-scam lawmakers in recent history:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster

Big Tech – like every corrupt cartel in history – is desperate to conjure a kleptocracy into existence, whose officials they can corrupt in order to keep the machine going until they've maximized their gains and achieved escape velocity from consequences.

No surprise, then, that tech companies have adopted the same spin tactics that sowed doubt about the tobacco-cancer link, in order to keep the US from updating its anemic privacy laws. The last time Congress gave us a new consumer privacy law was 1988, when they banned video store clerks from disclosing our VHS rental history to newspapers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

By preventing confining privacy law to the VCR era, Big Tech has been able to plunder our data with impunity – aided by cops and spies who love the fact that there's a source of cheap, off-the-books, warrantless surveillance data that would be illegal for them to collect.

Writing for Tech Policy Press, the Norcal ACLU's Jake Snow connects the tobacco industry fight over "pre-emption" to the modern fight over privacy laws:

https://www.techpolicy.press/big-tech-is-trying-to-burn-privacy-to-the-ground-and-theyre-using-big-tobaccos-strategy-to-do-it/

In the 1990s, Big Tobacco went to war against state anti-smoking laws, arguing that the federal government had the right – nay, the duty – to create a "harmonized" national system of smoking laws that would preempt state laws. Strangely, politicians who love "states' rights" when it comes to banning abortion, tax-base erosion and "right to work" anti-union laws suddenly discovered federal religion when their campaign donors from the Cancer-Industrial Complex decided that states shouldn't use those rights to limit smoking.

This is exactly the tack that Big Tech has taken on privacy, arguing that any update to federal privacy law should abolish muscular state-level laws, like Illinois's best-in-class biometric privacy rules, or California's CPPA.

Like Big Tobacco, Big Tech has "funded front groups, hired an armada of lobbyists, donated millions to campaigns, and opened a firehose of lobbying money," with the goal of replacing "real privacy laws with fake industry alternatives as ineffective as non-smoking sections."

Whether it's understanding the origin of money or the Big Tobacco playbook, knowing history can protect you from all kinds of predatory behavior. But history isn't merely a sword and shield, it's also just a delight. Internet pioneer Ethan Zuckerman is road-tripping around America, and in August, he got to Columbus, IN, home to some of the country's most beautiful and important architectural treasures:

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2024/08/29/road-trip-the-company-town-and-the-corn-fields/

The buildings – clustered in within a few, walkable blocks – are the legacy of the diesel engine manufacturing titan Cummins, whose postwar president J Irwin Miller used the company's wartime profits to commission a string of gorgeous structures from starchitects like the Saarinens, IM Pei, Kevin Roche, Richard Meier, Harry Weese, César Pelli, Gunnar Birkerts, and Skidmore. I had no idea about any of this, and now I want to visit Columbus!

I'm planning a book tour right now (for my next novel, Picks and Shovels, which is out in February) and there's a little wiggle-room in the midwestern part of the tour. There's a possibility that I'll end up in the vicinity, and if that happens, I'm definitely gonna find time for a little detour!

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

[web-novel-polls]

Hidden Web Novel Character Submissions

Last Checked: October 22nd, 2024 - Please check the original post for updates

Death to popularity bias! Submit any character you'd like, and they'll compete completely anonymously.

Rules

Must be a character from a web novel or similar

Propaganda must be sufficient to judge without giving away the character (just do your best, no stress)

Write the propaganda with the character's name, and I'll edit it out for the tournament itself

No limits or rules for the length of the propaganda. Either people read it or they don't

Please do not reveal a character’s identity if you guess it. If you want to guess anonymously and/or submit additional propaganda, you can do so here:

Based on:

@guess-that-ship

@mysterycharacterflowers

& others I can't find

Tag: #hidden wn character tournament

Alcoholic

Submission:

[Alcoholic] woke up in the body of a guy on Earth some years in the past and decided(read got forced) to go into the entertainment industry.  This guy egosurfs a lot, was an alcoholic and got an intervention for it. Plus he goes to therapy!! Also got kidnapped once and escaped by beating up the kidnapper . There was also the one time he went into a parallel universe.

Mod Propaganda: [Alcoholic] (seemingly) starts the novel with a “I’ll do anything to survive” mindset but grows to genuinely care about and for his friends while dealing with a LOT. He’s smart and calculating, which also manifests itself in supporting his friends and the people around him AS WELL AS himself.

Boccia

Submission (Edited to remove identifying info): 

He’s a demon. He wanders the human realm to find little human trinkets, possibly to sell them. He is a good boy who wants to make a living, and deserves to be acknowledged.

Farmer Guy

Submission: [Farmer Guy] was reborn in a xianxia world after living a boring life as a civic engineer in Canada. He spent about 24 hours in a cultivation sect before quitting due to bullying and corruption in the sect, and decided to move to bumfuck nowhere to take up farming instead. After all, superstrenght & endurance makes it way easier to pull a plow, put up buildings & so on. So why is his chicken starting to do martial arts?

Moonlight

Submission: 

[Moonlight] is the boy of all time. From his perspective, he successfully scouted out a talented new coworker, got blatantly propositioned while the ink was still wet on the contract, thought "wow, this guy is forward, but we really need his skills so... okay," within a month had fully progressed to, "it's fine to get married first and fall in love later," and then just. fell SO HARD. for a guy who, in his own POV sections, HAD NO IDEA his behavior even could be interpreted as flirty. For his actual character, the gap moe between "doting thinks-he's-a-boyfriend" and "super serious taskmaster" is adorable. 

RPF Guy

Submission: [RPF Guy] is an interesting little guy. He reads RPF of his friends/associates/strangers and decides that his love interest is actually pretty stupid and bullies her but he ends up doing her a solid (making her not end up with her first love interest) because he’s like “damn I owe this idiot karmically”

Sunshine

Submission: 

My sunshine son!! Got isekai'd into another world pretty similar to his original one, and basically just went "welp, time to restart my career from the bottom! I did it once, I can do it again!"  Re: the differences from his original world, he straight-up just asks people questions and takes notes in front of them? And when they're like "how do you not know this, this is preschool level knowledge," he just laughs and goes, "yeah, I'm really forgetful and didn't pay attention in school." Iconic, honestly. Still doesn't stop him from mistaking social cues so thoroughly that he  accidentally gets into a romantic relationship without realizing it, due to having multiple chicken-and-duck conversations with his would-be boyfriend. (He got into the situation by basically propositioning the guy without noticing, having not paid attention to the social differences between worlds.)

Poor Single Dog

Submission: 

[Poor Single Dog]! My brilliant dumbass son! He's so book smart, yet can't see what's right in front of his face. He's really concerned about losing his Best Friend Status when the protags start spending time together (read: going out, because they're in love). There is no level of PDA he can't misunderstand as mere friendship. When he FINALLY gets hit by a clue-by-four (read: walks in on the main couple cuddling while doing the dishes, and one of them says, quote, "This is EXACTLY what it looks like!") his reaction is: [Poor Single Dog] remained silent for what seemed like a century. Finally, amidst his chaotic thoughts, he said: “You….so….then, am I still your best friend?”

[barbwritesstuff]

I really enjoyed Crying Wolf (after about one page of being a bit scared cause the words "prison" and "romance" used together can be really...not good in the hands of other people lol) so i'll be buying any book you were to publish. :D

Okay.

Story time.

Perhaps also rant time.

I don't know. We'll see where this takes us.

For those that don't know, Crying Wolf is a novel I wrote that was published in 2021. It's about twin brothers who get sent to prison for a crime only one of them committed. They're also werewolves.

You can buy it here if you're interested.

Now for the drama.

Crying Wolf is not a romance. At least, I never intended it to be a romance when I wrote it. It was inspired by the Australian TV show Wentworth (which is a prison drama) and me wanting to explore werewolves in a world where their existence is not secret.

But, peeling back another layer, it was really about me missing my sibling who I'd previously been very close to who suddenly moved to the other side of the planet, and processing some feelings I had about being in intimidating environments.

Ali's romance with Morgan was not nearly as explicit or important to the story in the first draft, and Amir's relationship with Ben was much more queer platonic.

But, I was told very unambiguously by several people, that I needed to increase the romantic elements. A lot of early readers felt the drama between the brothers wasn't enough to hold their interest.

Which is fair enough. I made the romances a bigger part of the story, but they still aren't the story. The story is still the brothers surviving a very dangerous environment while learning to let each other go.

It was, even then, still not a romance.

I never once tried to sell it to publishers as a romance. I always said it was a family drama. I distinctly remember making a point about this because I didn't want publishers to be disappointed.

But family dramas set in prisons which also happen to be full of werewolves isn't really a marketable category. Gay paranormal prison romance is.

I think this is was even more true back in 2018 when I signed Crying Wolf's publishing contract.

I noticed during the editing process that my editors really wanted to increase the romantic elements of the story even more, but that didn't really bother me. I don't think I 100% realised they intended to market it as a romance until later.

And I don't hate that. I guess I can see why they did it. And, with the edits, there is very much a romantic feel to it now. But, I still don't think it fits well within the category.

The literal climax of the story is about the brothers calling out to each other and giving each other strength from a distance, even if they can't be together in person. It's not about the kissing.

I don't know how readers feel, but that's how I feel. Especially considering how dark prison romances can be, I just don't think it fits the label.

Ultimately, Crying Wolf did not sell very well. Sure, there are a few hundred copies floating around out there, but it doesn't pay any bills. A part of that, I think, is it came out at a weird time in a weird market. COVID changed a lot of things. However, I also think some people picked it up thinking it was a dark romance and were disappointed... while others who may have liked it didn't buy it because they thought it was a dark romance.

Or maybe it just isn't the sort of thing a ton of people would be interested in. I dunno.

I still really like it. I think I did a good job writing it and reread parts of it from time to time. But, personally, for me, it isn't a romance.

It's about twin werewolf brothers being bad at emotions in a very fucked up situation.

Anyway, I'm really glad you enjoyed it, and would buy other things I publish. I hope you'll get that opportunity and I hope this sort of cleared up the marketing weirdness with Crying Wolf. 💙

[allanhildon]

Hello there, I would love to know your thoughts on 'Wingmen', what you liked about the book, why more people need to read it, or whatever struck you about it! It will be so nice to hear your perspective as someone who almost certainly has more understanding of the historical/military background than I did 😊

Hello, I enjoyed reading the book, and I can understand why it appealed to a generation of American men who had some collective memory of WW2. Ensan Case clearly invested a lot of effort to embed historical accuracy to his description of CAG operations and shipboard life on the aircraft carriers. Nonetheless, I was hoping to find more character development in the novel. The penultimate chapter and the epilogue are by far the most moving and insightful chapters, but I feel sad that Case condemned Fred and Jack to such a closeted existence in the post war years. Yes, most "gay" war veterans were shunned and disowned by society in the US in the post war years, but many embraced their gay identity in the 1970s when Case was writing Wingmen. I have fond memories of meeting ex-service men in the 1990s in the US who had offered two fingers to the arbiters of respectability and embraced a gay lifestyle as a result of the gay civil rights movement in the 1960s.

I suppose I should add that the book is now a treasured possession. A little trivia: the cover shows the book sold for $2.50 in 1979; a second edition copy is currently for sale from an Amazon trader for £1,500. I shan't be selling.

[mouseonamoose]

I'd love to read your novel! (Responding to the post about it, you said to send a direct message.)

This community is so wonderful that I decided to write my own GO fanfic. The plot is total fluff, but I am really enjoying the process. I used to love writing, but this is the first I've written fiction in 20 years.

It's a reminder that when we do what we love, we inspire others to be a more authentic version of themselves. I never thought I'd like fanfiction, much less write it until I read your stories. So thank you!

Yes! Thank you! I am so glad you are writing! And, also, I am very fortunate that I received your ask right when I did.

My first GO fic was the first piece of fiction I had written in about 15 years. And writing it was so good, so fun. That little story was just some silly fluff, but I put effort and care into it. I was letting myself be creative and share it with people who I thought might also like it.

You know, I made my AO3 account to post that little fic. I didn't even know how the site worked (actually, I had to Google "AO3" to learn what the acronym meant, so I could actually find the site). I knew that kudos existed, but I didn't know that there were comments. That came as a surprise. I was hoping that maybe a handful of people would read my little piece and find some enjoyment in it.

And now here is where I am: I just posted the first chapter of my very first non-GO piece of fanfic.

I was editing it up, when you sent your ask, and I was feeling a lot of anxiety about posting it. It's in a much smaller fandom (for an indie video game from 5 years ago), and outsider POVs are always a hard sell, and I just don't know if this thing I'm writing will appeal to anyone other than me at all. But then I got your ask, and you reminded me how little of those anxieties are what matter. I'm writing something because it's fun to write, and I'm sharing it with the hopes that at least a couple of people out there might have some fun with it, along with me.

So, thank you for the reminder! And thank you for writing your fanfic, too!