#Truth about Traditional Publishing

[ranjith11]

Truth about Traditional Publishing | SummitPressPublishers

Traditional publishing refers to the conventional model of publishing books, where authors submit their manuscripts to established publishing houses for consideration and potential publication. In this process, the publishing house takes care of various aspects, including editing, cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing of the book.

[damonp304]

Truth about Traditional Publishing | SummitPressPublishers

Traditional publishing refers to the conventional model of publishing books, where authors submit their manuscripts to established publishing houses for consideration and potential publication. In this process, the publishing house takes care of various aspects, including editing, cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing of the book.

[monicascot]

Truth about Traditional Publishing | SummitPressPublishers

Traditional publishing refers to the conventional model of publishing books, where authors submit their manuscripts to established publishing houses for consideration and potential publication. In this process, the publishing house takes care of various aspects, including editing, cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing of the book.

[ghostzzy]

i do think im dragging my feet on cursedwip just a little because i wanna go back and revise things. rghggggg.

[fairuzfan]

I mentioned this before but the one thing I cannot stand is selfishness which is where a lot of zionist talking points come from even when they *are* advocating for "peace" and "coexistence" because it centers ISRAELI safety and only thinks of Palestinian safety as secondary and indecental to Israeli (ie: the only way Israelis get safety is if their Palestinian """"neighbors"""" get safety which is such a selfish way to view the imprisonment and oppression of Palestinians) but then again they publish literal thinkpieces about the guilt Israeli soldiers feel when they eat food left behind by starving Palestinians — who, again, are starving BECAUSE OF ISRAELIS WHO ARE THE OPPRESSORS — so there's no way mainstream Israeli society will ever make changes to their language they they carefully curate to not include Palestinians (Haaretz is a beautiful example of this — take a look at their editorial staff list) because they all feed into their own sense of self pity and self righteousness rather than actually uplifting the voices of the oppressed. But then PALESTINIANS are the ones in this scenario who are accused of bias because they advocate and fight for their stories to be heard. Israelis do not have to find alternative means to put out their stories — has it occurred to you why Palestinians have had to use SOCIAL MEDIA to share their stories rather than traditional networks? It's because no one gives us the time of day. So we developed our platform through social media, even on here where @el-shab-hussein has been documenting FOR YEARS the human rights abuses perpetuated by Israelis on Palestinians because we know that's how anyone learns the truth about Palestine. So when people are trying to take down tiktok specifically, it's sinophobia and also fueled in recent months by antiPalestinian sentiments.

Sudan is like this too — the news we get about Sudan are from people who are on the ground because they've largely been abandoned by human rights orgs and by news stations. We learn the most about Sudan from people like @/bsonblast and Ze on Twitter.

Then people like come on here and make fun of people who get their news from social media (which is code for "Palestinians," they always mean it as code for Palestinians) as if "professional" media takes anyone from the Global South seriously or gives them space to talk about their stories and when they DO, people say things like "hamas run media" or whatever lol like these people have never had to doubt what they see on public media before and it shows! No one takes you seriously when you say the words "islamofascist state" about Gaza when CNN publicly admits to having their content reviewed by the IOF! Hypocritical at best!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sandra Newman’s “Julia”

The first chapter of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a fantastic joke that nearly everyone misses: when Julia, Winston Smith's love interest, is introduced, she has oily hands and a giant wrench, which she uses in her "mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines":

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

That line just kills me every time I re-read the book – Orwell, a novelist, writing a dystopian future in which novels are written by giant, clanking mechanisms. Later on, when Winston and Julia begin their illicit affair, we get more detail:

She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

I always assumed Orwell was subtweeting his publishers and editors here, and you can only imagine that the editor who asked Orwell to tweak the 1984 manuscript must have felt an uncomfortable parallel between their requests and the notional Planning Committee and Rewrite Squad at the Ministry of Truth.

I first read 1984 in the early winter of, well, 1984, when I was thirteen years old. I was on a family trip that included as visit to my relatives in Leningrad, and the novel made a significant impact on me. I immediately connected it to the canon of dystopian science fiction that I was already avidly consuming, and to the geopolitics of a world that seemed on the brink of nuclear devastation. I also connected it to my own hopes for the nascent field of personal computing, which I'd gotten an early start on, when my father – then a computer science student – started bringing home dumb terminals and acoustic couplers from his university in the mid-1970s. Orwell crystallized my nascent horror at the oppressive uses of technology (such as the automated Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear systems that haunted my nightmares) and my dreams of the better worlds we could have with computers.

It's not an overstatement to say that the rest of my life has been about this tension. It's no coincidence that I wrote a series of "Little Brother" novels whose protagonist calls himself w1n5t0n:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm

I didn't stop with Orwell, of course. I wrote a whole series of widely read, award-winning stories with the same titles as famous sf tales, starting with "Anda's Game" ("Ender's Game"):

https://www.salon.com/2004/11/15/andas_game/

And "I, Robot":

https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_I_Robot.html

"The Martian Chronicles":

https://escapepod.org/2019/10/03/escape-pod-700-martian-chronicles-part-1/

"True Names":

https://archive.org/details/TrueNames

"The Man Who Sold the Moon":

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

and "The Brave Little Toaster":

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212

Writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head is a very old and important literary tradition. As EL Doctorow (no relation) writes in his essay "Genesis," the Hebrews stole their Genesis story from the Babylonians, rewriting it to their specifications:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

As my "famous title" stories and Little Brother books show, this work needn't be confined to antiquity. Modern copyright may be draconian, but it contains exceptions ("fair use" in the US, "fair dealing" in many other places) that allow for this kind of creative reworking. One of the most important fair use cases concerns The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's 2001 retelling of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the enslaved characters, which was judged to be fair use after Mitchell's heirs tried to censor the book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suntrust_Bank_v._Houghton_Mifflin_Co.

In ruling for Randall, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals emphasized that she had "fully employed those conscripted elements from Gone With the Wind to make war against it." Randall used several of Mitchell's most famous lines, "but vest[ed] them with a completely new significance":

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/268/1257/608446/

The Wind Done Gone is an excellent book, and both its text and its legal controversy kept springing to mind as I read Sandra Newman's wonderful novel Julia, which retells 1984 from the perspective of Julia, she of the oily hands the novel-writing machine:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/julia-sandra-newman?variant=41467936636962

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both Wind Done gone and Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. For Winston, the world of 1984 is totalitarian: the Party knows all, controls all and misses nothing. To merely think a disloyal thought is to be doomed, because the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompetent Party will sense the thought and mark you for torture and "vaporization."

Orwell's readers experience all of 1984 through Winston's eyes and are encouraged to trust his assessment of his situation. But Newman brings in a second point of view, that of Julia, who is indeed far more worldly than Winston. But that's not because she's younger than him – it's because she's more provincial. Julia, we learn, grew up outside of the Home Counties, where the revolution was incomplete and where dissidents – like her parents – were sent into exile. Julia has experienced the periphery of the Party's power, the places where it is frayed and incomplete. For Julia, the Party may be ruthless and powerful, but it's hardly omnicompetent. Indeed, it's rather fumbling.

Which makes sense. After all, if we take Winston at his word and assume that every disloyal citizen of Oceania is arrested, tortured and murdered, where would that leave Oceania? Even Kim Jong Un can't murder everyone who hates him, or he'd get awfully lonely, and then awfully hungry.

Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

Julia is also perfectly positioned to uncover the vast blank spots in Winston's supposed intellectual curiosity, all the questions he doesn't ask – about her, about the Party, and about the world. I love this trope and used it myself, in Attack Surface, the third "Little Brother" book, which is told from the point of view of Marcus's frenemy Masha:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

Through Julia, we come to understand the seemingly omniscient, omnipotent Party as fumbling sadists. The Thought Police are like MI5, an Island of Misfit Toys where the paranoid, the stupid, the vicious and the thuggish come together to ruin the lives of thousands, in such a chaotic and pointless manner that their victims find themselves spinning devastatingly clever explanations for their behavior:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

And, as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia is a first-rate novel, expertly plotted, with fantastic, nail-biting suspense and many smart turns and clever phrases. Newman is doing Orwell, and, at times, outdoing him. In her hands, Orwell – like Winston – is revealed as a kind of overly credulous romantic who can't believe that anyone as obviously stupid and deranged as the state's representatives could be kicking his ass so very thoroughly.

This was, in many ways, the defining trauma and problem of Orwell's life, from his origin story, in which he is shot through the throat by a fascist: sniper during the Spanish Civil War:

https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

To his final days, when he developed a foolish crush on a British state spy and tried to impress her by turning his erstwhile comrades in to her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

Newman's feminist retelling of Orwell is as much about puncturing the myth of male competence as it is about revealing the inner life, agency, and personhood of swooning love-interests. As someone who loves Orwell – but not unconditionally – I was moved, impressed, and delighted by Julia.

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:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

[technofeudalism]

i've got one more wall of text in me for today. i'm sorry, but hopefully this helps more people than it annoys.

i understand the concerns people have about social media being captured to technofascist oligarchs and i share them.

however, and you can call me a boomer for this if you'd like, i am way more worried about the fact that we are watching a scarier replay of the 2016 hyper-normalization of Donald Trump already being carried out in mainstream/establishment news outlets.

Some political operatives on the right, who saw mainstream media coverage of Trump’s first term as overly hostile, say the way the press covered Trump’s first term unwittingly did him a favor.   “I do expect that the media coverage will be a little different in tone,” one national Republican strategist told The Hill this week. “Not because the media is all of a sudden planning on being more objective and less biased, but because they probably finally recognize that their over-the-top hysterical coverage has done nothing but help Trump politically.”  

there are many reason this freaks me out worse, but i can sum up a couple of them.

the rhetoric this time is a magnitude more insane and suddenly alarmingly expansionist. logic would suggest this would justify an even more critical evaluation from the media that they are seemingly neglecting to provide.

the public, thanks to total dereliction of duty by the Democrats, are far more geared up for fascist shit than ever, but are totally ignorant to how this is going to happen (concentration camps)

speaking of the Democratic party: following a series of humiliating, high profile L's, the party finds themselves leaderless and less popular than they've been in 30 years at the worst time. when asked to name the leader of the Democratic Party, 49% of registered voters couldn’t name a person or said “nobody.”

before i continue, i know that there has been a dramatic decrease in people who get their news from traditional media and instead rely on social media, podcasts and the like. that makes sense. people aren't watching cable news anymore, chiefly because fewer and fewer people under the age of 30 even have cable TV and they definitely aren't paying for a New York Times subscription.

but what people fail to consider is that the "news" people consume via social media is often rehashed or half-baked, word of mouth versions of reporting conducted by the mainstream media or the journalists who work for them. there are still journalists working for these publications who take advantage of the increased exposure podcasts provide and go on them to talk about their writing.

people hear the same stories at the end of the day, but the way the issue is initially framed when the story first "breaks" and how it is approached by other outlets who follow up on it is significant. it's a lot less work to have to clean up and suppress news on your platform when the news is already favorable to your cause.

think along the lines of a massive disinformation campaign emerging from one outlet, social media being thrown into a complete frenzy and the only journalist who knows the truth from another outlet hesitating to speak out because of threats from his publisher to keep outrage revenue high or, perhaps more ominously, to directly serve the interest of the fascists in charge.

the US media has always been servile to whims of corporate interests because... well... they are owned by the corporate interests.

but up until today, i was holding out some sliver of hope that even if the NYT, for example, wasn't taking up antifascist actions, they would hold onto a tiny bit of reliability as a further watered down version of itself. an increasingly rare, delicate weapon against misinformation on social media, as opposed to being another tool wielded by fascists on aforementioned social media to grow legitimacy and manufacture consent.

then i saw this. my feeling is now that if the New York Times can't even write a headline - with THAT photograph underneath it - that says in plain English "Elon Musk Makes Nazi Salute Twice at Trump Inauguration," then there is going to be a frightening decrease in quality journalism being funded by mainstream outlets coming.

if you are not sure what to do and you want to be well informed, i have two suggestions. the first and most important, most difficult one that is a skill hard to master, is to develop decent media literacy and an ability to derive context from history.

the second is to build a network of trustworthy local, national and global sources that you can count on. ideally, they would be completely independent and free from editorial oversight or corporate control.

here are some of my recommendations. all of them are flawed. never rely on one source. do not immediately accept something as the truth from any single source. everyone is capable of accidentally getting a detail wrong, or even deliberately misleading.

Dropsite News - ran by Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept - sadly running out of money, alleged CIA ties

Democracy Now! - more center-left, better domestically

Jacobin - wide variety, sometimes shitty takes, Alex Press is great

The Grayzone - this one is controversial (mainly just to liberals) and they make no qualms about being committed to reporting from an anti-imperialist view of the world

Black Agenda Report - perspective from Black leftists. founded by Glen Ford (RIP), a Black Panther and accomplished investigative journalist

Hasan Piker - hate him, love him, neutral, doesn't matter. he's the largest independent political commentator on the left (by far), covering news and misinformation 9 hours a day. you can think he has shit takes, but he's still a reliable source and has been insanely accurate with his opinions

The Majority Report - been around forever, Sam Seder & Emma Vigeland are amazing, once home to the incredible Michael Jamal Brooks (RIP)

Breakthrough News

Labor Notes

Ben Norton @ Global Political Economy

Caitlin Johnstone (AUS)

these are just what i could come up with but there are many more if you do a little bit of digging using these as a baseline. just remember that the source ultimately is irrelevant and will have it's own biases. it is up to you to separate fact and fiction.

[taylor-titmouse]

SO i've mentioned it here in passing a few times that my day job is graphic novels, but i haven't much promoted anything because i was waiting to get closer to release, and also it's YA and about teenagers and not, you know. what i usually post about here. but now that the first book releases at the end of the month (Feb 25th!) i figured i should point you guys toward it! this is my ~debut~ in traditional publishing, a completely original work (in that i wrote and illustrated it myself) and, imo, very very good and you should get it.

right now until midnight 2/7 there is a sale on barnes & noble where if you use the code PREORDER25 you can get 25% off on a pre-order of it! i Highly recommend getting the hardcover, i just got a shipment of my comp copies and they're fckin gorgeous. but paperback and ebooks are also available.

anyway you're probably curious what it's about, so here's the sales copy!

A specter is haunting the Atlantic! After growing up together on the luxurious SS Lark, Neeta Pandey and Emery Botwright are ready to start their lives. Emery wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and sail the Lark forever, while Neeta yearns to travel the world. But neither will have any future at all if the Lark’s new owner, Mr. Honeycutt, has his way.   Mr. Honeycutt . . . The first-class passengers adore him, while he makes the ship a nightmare for the crew. Twisted by unnatural appetites, the rich are actually transforming into something less than human, and their insatiable demands soon push the staff toward a—quite literal— burnout.   Something otherworldly is undeniably aboard the SS Lark, something horribly hungry. But it’s not Wick Farley: vampire, secret agent, and paranormal investigator. Alone and at sea, with only Neeta and Emery to help him, he must uncover the truth about Mr. Honeycutt. And fast—before a ravenous craving for power consumes them all. 

i've been working really hard on this thing (first started developing it in 2019!) and it's super exciting to be able to hold it in my hands, and i want YOU to also hold it.

if you don't want to get it from b&n or miss the sale, you can also get it from bookshop.org, booksamillion, or just your local bookstore/library if you ask 'em. definitely do ask your library, that's still a sale for me!

anyway thank you for checking out this slight diversion from the usual fare. i'll try to have something more in line with the regular programming for tonight, but pwease buy my book :^) my first Real book :^)

[dalekowrites]

Hi lovelies! ♥

I'm an author of traditional and interactive fiction, and I'm currently working on two projects in ChoiceScript. One is a science-based apocalyptic horror, while the other is a romantic drama set in Naples, Italy. This blog will mostly be about my works in progress!

I have, however, already published a short introspective drama in ChoiceScript, which can be found here.

I will soon set up a page for each of them on here, but in the meantime, here is a brief introduction:

After Dark

While the heavy industry is more active than ever, the effects of global warming are evident, with higher temperatures, dying bees, and animals acting weird. After Dark is a scientifically accurate apocalyptic horror. You’re tired of zombies rising from the ground for no reason? You don’t believe in ghosts? Glittering vampires aren’t for you? Then you have to try one of the three different stories that unfold in After Dark. When a global pandemic starts to transform people into dangerous monsters, which path will you choose? Will you fight for humanity? Will you stay for your family? Or will you run away in search of a better future?

The In-Between

You’re an introverted college student, studying modern languages at a famous university based in Naples. You live a seemingly ordinary life with your parent and younger sibling, as no one knows the truth about your past side business—a dark, illegal one. You thought you had finally escaped that world, but when your younger sibling falls seriously ill, your only hope is your wealthy ex-lover: an attractive mobster, charming and dangerous in equal parts...

Tell me, which one appeals to you most? 😁

[vexwerewolf]

How would you add depth and complexity to the culture of the Purview?

Right now, the KTB gets way more attention both because of the two supplements dedicated to it and because the competing noble houses each with its different gimmick and political alignment make it so easy to come up with drama and intrigue.

Meanwhile the Purview seems, both in and out of fiction, flat and uniform. I'm sure its leadership would want to see it and have it seen that way, but given how much it keeps expanding, and therefore adding new cultures to itself, it would have to have a lot of diversity under the hood, even if it would like to pretend otherwise.

I definitely think the Purview has a harder time of it than the KTB, but that's largely because we have a Field Guide to the KTB, whereas the Field Guide to Harrison Armory never got published because of Miguel's non-compete.

There's also the problem that the KTB has this... glamour to it, in both the modern and traditional senses of the word. I've noticed this in a lot of sci-fi properties - that applying the veneer of nobility and monarchy to something can make people forget or forgive its transgressions more easily.

When Harrison Armory, the nationalist corprostate, does imperialist expansion, we can point at it and immediately say "that's a fascism" (even when it's actually... not? Imperialist expansion is always bad but it's not always necessarily fascistic). But somehow, when the KTB do the same or sometimes worse things, like using nanite terror weapons on Free Sanjak, I've noticed people are quicker to make excuses? Like, oh, yeah that's obviously bad but their society works different the KTB are a big place and like of course they're shitty traditionalists and that's really only the Hagiographs and at least the Karrakin have Republican elements who want change and reform and yeah it's bad but aren't Knightly Chivalrous Mechs Just So Gosh Darned Cool?!

I think the nuance of the KTB is also helped by the fact that they're explicitly depicted as non-monolithic. There are ten named Major Houses with their own distinct cultures, politics and homeworlds, and great pains are taken to ensure us that there's multifarious cultures and religions even on an individual world. HA suffers because to some extent it would be more monolithic - it's a nationalist corprostate with only 400 years of history, compared to the KTB's hybrid elective-monarchy neofeudal federation with 10,000.

HA is distinctly American in the way that the nation has become a brand, and a good citizen has to remain on-brand, so things would be more homogenized. To add to that, omninet and blinkgate technology has existed for the whole of HA's lifespan. The unique and distinct cultures of the KTB worlds came about largely because they spent millennia separated from one another by light years. HA has never had this issue, and likely never will. They have the option - and, more importantly, are motivated - to keep a homogenous culture across all of the Purview.

Lancer is fundamentally a game about examining and fighting against unjust structures of power that oppress people but also being larger-than-life heroes that have fun doing it, and the KTB has an innate leg up by virtue of the fact that it has what I'd call a really strong "initial sell:" YOU'RE A SPACE KNIGHT! SPACE KNIGHTS ARE COOL! (PLEASE DON'T EXAMINE SPACEE FEUDALISM!)

To make Harrison Armory compelling, you'd need a similarly strong initial sell for them. And I think I know just the thing.

FOR HUMANITY! FOR LIBERTY! FOR HARRISON! (Please don't examine space nationalism!)

If I were to write the Harrison Armory Field Guide (Tom and Miguel HMU - just kidding. Unless...?), I'd make it BIG and LOUD and OVER THE TOP and OBVIOUS PROPAGANDA with insertions of the actual truth from a HORUS hacker on the side. I'd put Harrison Armory's positioning as "liberators of the galaxy" front and center - "we dive feet-first into hell to save people from tyrants and slavers. We do the work even the UDoJ/HR won't do. Please do not examine our imperialism or social credit system."

[ranjith11]

Truth about Traditional Publishing | SummitPressPublishers

Traditional publishing refers to the conventional model of publishing books, where authors submit their manuscripts to established publishing houses for consideration and potential publication. In this process, the publishing house takes care of various aspects, including editing, cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing of the book.

[monicascot]

Truth about Traditional Publishing | SummitPressPublishers

Traditional publishing refers to the conventional model of publishing books, where authors submit their manuscripts to established publishing houses for consideration and potential publication. In this process, the publishing house takes care of various aspects, including editing, cover design, printing, distribution, and marketing of the book.

[thealchemistbae]

SUN - URANUS CAZIMI IN TAURUS PREDICTIONS FOR RISING SIGNS 🌞🌪️

The Sun-Uranus Cazimi (exact conjunction) in Taurus is a shockwave of breakthroughs, liberation, and unexpected change ESPECIALLY in areas tied to security, money, pleasure, values, and embodiment. Since it’s in Taurus, the vibe is about shaking up comfort zones so you can level up. Here’s how it could actually hit for each rising sign: (TROPICAL) .

Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only.

thealchemistbae © do not copy, redistribute, or edit my content.

If you enjoyed this post, you can leave me a tip via PayPal at goddessguapa@gmail.com or via Venmo @goddessguapa. Thank you.

🌪️: Aries Rising -> Money moves, baby. You could get a surprise check, raise, or a wild idea that turns into income. BUT it might also shake up your spending habits. You’re being pushed to create more financial freedom, not rely on the old hustle grind. Sudden value shifts too; what mattered yesterday may feel irrelevant now.

🌪️: Taurus Rising -> You’re the main character of this plot twist. Your identity, appearance, and self concept could go through a glow up or total reinvention. You may feel restless AF; itching to break free from anything or anyone limiting you. People might say you’re acting “different”. You are. You’re becoming more you.

🌪️: Gemini Rising -> Spiritual awakenings, intuitive downloads, and secret revelations are on deck. You might feel called to go ghost for a bit or cut off low vibe energy. Dreams could be intense and eye opening. A hidden truth could drop like a bomb and set you free. Spiritual clean out time.

🌪️: Cancer Rising -> A friend, follower, or group might shake things up either by inspiring a bold new dream or showing their true colors. You could go viral unexpectedly or get involved with a radical new community that aligns more with who you’re becoming. Expect the unexpected with social media & networking.

🌪️: Leo Rising -> Big boss energy! Your public image, career path, or authority figure could shift overnight. You may get shocking recognition, quit a job out of nowhere, or launch something bold. People are watching so be ready to shock and awe in the best way. You’re stepping into your true calling.

🌪️: Virgo Rising -> Your beliefs, worldview, or even your literal location could shift. This is “I booked a one-way flight” energy. You may feel the urge to break free from rigid thinking or traditions. School, teaching, publishing, or travel plans could pop off or change last minute. Major spiritual awakening energy too.

🌪️: Libra Rising -> Rebirth time. You’re not just transforming, you’re mutating. This hits your 8th house of intimacy, sex, shared money, and deep fears. You may cut cords, receive unexpected cash, or dive into something taboo. It’s a shedding of the old skin, especially around power dynamics and emotional bonds.

🌪️: Scorpio Rising -> Plot twists in love, contracts, or key partnerships. A sudden breakup, meet-cute, or redefinition of “relationship goals” could shake things up. You’re craving freedom and authenticity in how you relate. If it’s not aligned, it’s gone. If it’s electric and real then it’s on.

🌪️: Sagittarius Rising -> Your daily routine, job, or health habits could change out of nowhere either by force or by epiphany. Maybe you quit the 9-5. Maybe you start biohacking. Your body is a messenger right now so listen to it. You’re learning how to rebel against burnout and find balance in chaos.

🌪️: Capricorn Rising -> This is your wild creative spark moment. Love, fun, and your inner child are lit up. An unexpected crush, pregnancy news, or passion project could swoop in. You’re being urged to create from a place of freedom, not perfection. Life is about joy, not just legacy.

🌪️: Aquarius Rising -> Your home, family, or emotional world is getting a shake-up. You could suddenly move, redecorate, or confront ancestral patterns that need breaking. An emotional breakthrough could rock your foundation in the best way. You’re creating a safe space that honors your individuality.

🌪️: Pisces Rising -> Your voice is electric right now; don’t sleep on your power to shock, teach, or inspire with your words. Sudden news, a random DM, or a wild convo could be life-altering. If you’ve felt muted, this is your throat chakra going supernova. Speak your truth even if it surprises people.

Where is this Sun-Uranus Cazimi happening in your life ?

thealchemistbae © do not copy, redistribute, or edit my content.

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[yazthebookish]

Maybe I'll spoil you guys and talk about Gwynriel and ACOTAR5 and anything related to it overall. I recently finished my HOFAS reread and have some fresh thoughts. I'll let my thoughts guide me and some of these points I've already addressed in my insta stories yesterday. I just rather share a lengthy post here since I'll only tag under #gwynriel.

I often see arguments about how Gwyn and Azriel can't move the plot forward because the series is centered on the Archeron sisters.

First, that's not true because Sarah is following what she called "a traditional romance route". She's following the same patterns of Nalini Singh, Kresley Cole, and Lisa Kleypas where they publish multiple books in the same series following different couples.

This is fitting for a series like ACOTAR because it's romance-centered. And Sarah have already said that each couple is getting one book and there will likely be more books beyond ACOTAR6.

Saying that doesn't dismiss the importance of the sisters to the story, Feyre already has a trilogy centered on her. The spin-off just follows different characters including the sisters.

I won't try hard to convince people on this because I've already posted almost everything Sarah said about the spin-off series and what's it's about. So if the next book is not centered on an Archeron sister, that's for Sarah to bamboozle the fandom with.

One thing that stuck out to me is when I compared the ending of ACOSF with the scene of Bryce giving Nesta Gwydion and seeming like she left Nesta with a new quest.

First, this is what the text says, and this is Chapter 80, the very last chapter in ACOSF:

Succeeding in the Blood Rite didn't mean the training stopped. No, after she and her friends told Cassian and Azriel most of the details of their ordeal, the two commanders had compiled a long list of mistakes that the three of them had made that needed to be corrected, and the others wanted to learn from them, too. So they would keep training, until they were all well and truly Valkyries. Gwyn, despite the Rite, had returned to living in the library.

1. The Valkyries are not yet a unit.

2. SJM only and specifically highlighted that Gwyn, despite the Rite, returned to living in the library. It was like "hey, remember all the talk Gwyn did about wanting to leave the library after two years? Yeah that's on hold a bit but keep that in mind". She didnt even add Emerie or the other priestesses to that sentence.

With Nesta being left with Gwydion to find out why the 8-pointed star was tattooed on her, I don't think the next book will start with "hey Elain take this sword and deal with it". Who are Nesta's main companions now? Gwyn and Emerie.

I'll be back to the Valkyries but let's just talk about Azriel for a bit.

It is so painfully obvious to me that Azriel is being handed the Illyrian plot on a golden platter. How big or small of a plot it is depends on SJM, but it's important based on the fact that she fleshed out the Illyrian's origins and tied them to the crossover AND making Truth-teller the knife of Enalius.

That is a big deal for an Illyrian like Azriel.

And I quote my friend Lacie on this, it is very poetic for Azriel to be the owner of the knife that originally belonged to the person who freed his own people from the Daglan's clutches, perhaps because he saw his people are more than just slaves to the Daglan—how powerful would it be for Azriel, who loathes his own people, to parallel Enalius.

And for years some people were against Azriel dealing with this plot because he shouldn't make peace with his "abusers", its true his own family and some Illyrians failed him but he is condemning an entire population. Good people like Emerie and Balthazar. Even Rhys's mother, who had valid reasons to hate her people especially as a female, still made sure to make Rhysand connect with his Illyrian heritage and he even goes on to say that his mother didn't forget what they did to her but still loved her people.

If both Cassian and Rhysand (and by extension the author) continue to flag Azriel's hatred of the Illyrians as an issue—then it is a damn big issue for it to be addressed repeatedly.

Okay so to address my final point about Gwyn and Azriel and how they can move the plot forward.

Now I didn't detail out much about what the next book will deal with because that's another post (and I already have a post on that).

All of our theories and predictions are based on information that is available to us. Saying Azriel and Gwyn cannot move the plot forward does not make any sense because the central plot is tied to multiple characters, Archeron or not.

If SJM wants to make a character move the next book's plot forward, she can do it because she's in control of the story. She's in control of the narrative. She's in control of the characters.

The characters are puppets and this is an unfinished story. If some characters would add more value and make for a more interesting story before the others, she can decide on that. If she wants to make Eris the protagonist of the next book, she can easily do that whether the fandom wants it or not.

Let me give you an example of minor characters that pushed the plot forward and became main characters: Yrene Towers and the Hind. These kind of arguments could've been used for them in HOEAB or HOSAB and Pre-TOD. Before HOSAB/HOFAS and TOD, could we have predicted that they would have played a crucial role before those books? Not likely because they had minimal appearances and were not part of the main cast. This is what I'm talking about.

You can't know how a character will contribute to a story until you see how it all unfolds. We can make guesses on the information we have which is why I believe three characters are likely to join the main cast: Gwyn, Emerie, and Eris.

Why is it so easy to accept that Emerie might be sharing a book with an original character like Mor but it's hard to comprehend the fact that Gwyn could also share a book with Azriel? Because Emerie showed up in ACOFAS? To me that's not really a strong argument based on Sarah's writing and what we have in the books, she doesn't really pick based on who showed up the earliest. Here's a good example: Hypaxia, who showed up earlier, didn't even get her own chapters but the Hind did.

And there's one argument I recall about how I need to rely on Nesta to have a plot focused on Gwyn or the Valkyries in the next book. Nesta's arc is clearly not over based on HOFAS, but does that mean she's getting a POV? Not necessarily. I don't think she is. Gwyn is the perfect candidate for us to see what's going on with Nesta post-HOFAS and how they all deal with the Valkyries and whatever Sarah will set up with them.

There is this whole Valkyrie/Illyrian conflict that could be triggered as a result of the Blood Rite, with Ramiel definitely being an important location to explore in the next book, we also have the Pegasi and the Prison and the implications of the crossover. It makes sense to have an Illyrian and a Valkyrie POV to deal with some plots in the next book.

"Gwyn contributes to nothing" we can't know until the book is out. How sure are we that maybe SJM won't connect her to the crossover by making her mysterious father a Worldwalker? Or Prince of Hel? Or an Asteri? Maybe I'm right maybe I'm wrong.

"But Koschei! And the Human Queens!" Koschei will always be a background player pulling on the strings until the final book as it's obvious he is the big bad in the series, unless someone even worse is revealed. But no one is dismissing Koschei or the Human Queens messing around.

Literally what's the point of the story or the fun elements of surprises or plot twists if you need Sarah to list down everything that the next books will deal with. That's not how a story develops to me. I don't need to know everything in advance to just know how it will go. That's like knowing spoilers early on and checking off with each book what happened and what didn't happen. I feel like it's close to how a lot of readers were disappointed with not having enough ACOTAR in HOFAS, because Sarah implied half of the book would be set in Prythian. So by the time the book came out and it wasn't that, people were vocal about it.

In my opinion, SJM set a good foundation for Gwyn's arc to build up on in ACOSF and her arc is not over. We won't get mentions of her still carrying the guilt of her sister's death or not leaving the library after she said she's sick of being there for two years without us seeing resolution for that. She wouldn't be in Azriel's bonus chapter if she is not involved with him.

To conclude, my reread still affirms to me that the next book with an Azriel/Gwyn book. Azriel is clearly being set in the forefront.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Why was couthon paralyzed? And since when did he start to get weaker until he couldn't walk no more?

The traditional story goes that Couthon got paralyzed due to being a very naughty boy… Here is the story as given in the foreword of Correspondance de Georges Couthon,député du Puy-de-Dome à l'Assemblée législative et à la Convention nationale (1872) by A. Aubry, who in his turn claimed to have gotten it from one of Couthon’s relatives:

Since a time we cannot specify, probably 1788 or 1789, Couthon had been deprived of the use of one of his legs and could not walk without the support of the arm of another person. Much has been said about this infirmity. It has been said that it came to be because he had spent an entire night in a damp place waiting for the opportunity to enter the home of a woman he loved. The truth, that we got from one of his daughter-in-laws, is that having gone to Mont-Dore to cure himself of some rheumatism acquired while he was courting his wife, Couthon thought it appropriate to take a rather long bath in a pool fed by the hottest spring, the spring of Caesar's baths: it was following this excessively hot bath that he was no longer able to use one of his legs. — Later on, he tried different treatments, electricity, the baths of Néris, the mud of St-Amand, etc. But nothing could cure him, and his condition only worsened.

If doctors today agree that this is indeed how rheumatism comes to be and that you can get paralyzed from taking too hot of a bath I will leave unsaid…

As for when Couthon’s condition worsened, in a letter dated September 29 1791 (the earliest one conserved from him included in the correspondence published by Abray), he writes that he’s able to walk from his new home on Rue Saint-Honoré to the Legislative Assembly on foot. In the article The Evolution of a Terrorist: Georges Auguste Couthon (1930), Geoffrey Bruun adds that Couthon used a cane at this point, I do however not get any result when searching for the words ”canne” or ”béquilles” within the published correspondence…  Almost exactly five months later, March 1 1792, Couthon writes another letter where he reports his situation has gotten worse: ”My legs are completely lost: when my pains allow me to go to the Assembly, I am obliged to have someone carry me right into the sanctuary.” So I would say he lost the ability to walk either in the fall of 1791 or the winter of 1792.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation

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/2024/12/12/the-view-from-somewhere/#abolish-rogan

As unbearably cringe as the hunt for a "leftist Joe Rogan" is, it is (to use a shopworn phrase), "directionally correct." Democrats suck at getting their message out, and that exacts a high electoral cost.

The right has an extremely well-funded media ecosystem of high-paid bullshitters backed by algorithm-gaming SEO dickheads. This system isn't necessarily supposed to turn a profit or even break even: the point of Prageru isn't to score ad revenue, it's to ensure that anyone who googles "what the fuck causes inflation" gets 25 minutes of relatable, upbeat, cheerfully sociopathic Austrian economics jammed into their eyeballs. Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies. It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have historically relied on the "traditional media" to carry their messages, on the ground that reality has a well-known leftist bias, so any news outlet that hews to "journalistic ethics" will publish the truth, and the truth will weigh in favor of Democratic positions: trans people are humans, racism is real, abortion isn't murder, housing is a market failure, the planet is on fire, etc, etc, etc.

This is a stupid policy, and it has failed. The "respectable" news media hews to a self-imposed code of "balance" and "neutrality" that is easily gamed: "some people say that Hatians don't eat pet dogs, some people do, let's report both sides!" This is called "the view from nowhere" and it gets Democrats precisely nowhere:

http://archive.pressthink.org/2008/03/14/pincus_neutrality.html

Balance and neutrality are bullshit, an excuse that has been so thoroughly weaponized by billionaires and their lickspittles that anyone who takes it seriously demonstrates comprehensively that they, themselves, are deeply unserious:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/10/la-times-billionaire-owner-hilariously-thinks-he-can-solve-media-bias-with-ai/

Press neutrality – the view from nowhere – isn't some eternal verity. In terms of the history of the press, it's an idea that's about ten seconds old. The glory days of the news were dominated by papers with names like The Smallville Democrat and The Ruling Class Republican. Most of the world boggles at the idea that a news outlet wouldn't declare its political posture. Britons know that the Telegraph is the Torygraph; that the Guardian is in the tank for Labour (and specifically, committed to enabling Blairite/Starmerite purges of the left); the Mirror is a leftist tabloid; and the Mail is so far right that its editorial board considers Attila the Hun "woke."

Writing for The American Prospect – an excellent leftist news outlet – Ryan Cooper proposes a solution to the Democratic media gap that's way better than the hunt for the elusive "leftist Joe Rogan": sponsoring explicitly Democrat news outlets:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-12-democrats-lost-propaganda-war/

The country is a bleak landscape of news deserts where voters literally didn't hear about what Trump was saying he would do, and, if they heard about it, they didn't hear from anyone who could explain what it meant. The average normie voter doesn't know what a "tariff" is, and chances are they think it's a tax that other countries inexplicably pay for the privilege of selling very cheap things to Americans.

Ironically, this news desert is also a crowded field of hungry, unemployed, talented journalists. What if Dems funded free newsgathering and publication in news deserts that told the truth? What if these news outlets, by dint of being an explicitly partisan, party-subsidized project, refused to adopt all the anti-reader practices of other websites, like disgusting surveillance, intrusive advertising, AI slop, email-soliciting pop-ups, and all the other crap that makes the news worse and worse every day?

Cooper recounts how this was actually tried on a small scale, to modest good effect, when the Center for American Progress subsidized Thinkprogress, an explicitly leftist news outlet. This was going great until 2019, when corporate Dems and their megadonors killed it because Thinkprogress had the temerity to report on their corrupt dealings:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/thinkprogress-a-top-progressive-news-site-is-shutting-down/

And, Cooper points out, this isn't what happens with far-right subsidy news. Right wing influencers, personalities and writers can stray pretty far from the party line without getting shut down.

I love the idea of a disenshittified, explicitly political leftist Democratic news media. Imagine a newsroom whose purpose is to get its message repeated as widely as possible. It wouldn't have a paywall – it would be Creative Commons Attribution-only, allowing for commercial republication by anyone who wants to reprint it, so long as they link back to it. It wouldn't wring its hands over AI ingestion or whether a slop site that rewrote its articles got to the top of Google News. That's fine! If the point is to get people to understand your point of view – and not to attract clicks or eyeballs – other people repackaging your content and finding ways to spread it is a feature, not a bug.

Back in the Napster Wars, entertainment industry shills – like Hillary Rosen, who oversaw a campaign to sue tens of thousands of children before becoming a major Democratic Party power-broker – used to tell us that "you can't compete with free." That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false, either. If your news is a loss-leader for a democratic society that addresses human flourishing and a habitable planet, then you can make that news free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer, and avoid all the suckitude that makes reading "real" news so fucking garbage.

For the past five years, I've been publishing a newsletter – this thing you're reading now – that has no analytics, ads, tracking, pop-ups, or other trash. As a writer, it's profoundly satisfying and liberating, because all I have to care about is whether people engage with my ideas. I literally have no idea how many people read this, but I know everything people say about it.

That's how the news worked back in the good old days that everyone says we need to return to. Writers and editors measured the success of a story based on how the public reacted to it, not based on clicks or metrics that told you how far someone scrolled before they gave up on it. The supposed benefits of "data-driven" editorial policy have not materialized – the "data-driven" part is the search for an equilibrium between how surveillant and obnoxious a website can be and your decision to stop reading it forever.

Outlets like Propublica have done well by adopting much of this program, albeit without any explicit leftist agenda (the fact that they seem leftist reflects nothing more than their commitment to reporting the truth, e.g., Clarence Thomas is a lavishly corrupt puppet of billionaires who've showered him with riches).

The fact that they've been as successful as they are on a national beat – and partnering with the scant few regional papers to do some local coverage – just proves the point. The Democratic Party doesn't need its own Joe Rogan – they need a nationwide network of local outlets, sponsored by the party, committed to never enshittifying, bringing relevant, timely news to a nation in desperate need of it.