#also if the bbc really cared about profits

[elodieunderglass]

It's not really my business, but honestly it feels like it would be advisable to hire a copyright lawyer. Like I don't feel like you're in it for the money, but it might be gratifying to have the guy milking your idea at least have to formally acknowledge you. I think I'd do it just for the peace of mind to know if I've been "legally" wronged or not. Either way, hope you continue to inspire, and live out a peaceful life.

(In reference to this post about the guy who pretends to have invented “Elder Teletubbies,” specifically how he is now kickstarting DnD minis of them.)

Ha, well, it��s all a little tricky I think. I might, hilariously, post on the r/legaladvice Reddit (even though they’re all cops lol) because the only thing I want here is for him to stop selling my “transformative work,” and ideally to stop pretending he invented it (which might be difficult as he appears to fully believe his work is creatively independent.)

I think if anything, my post counts as protected commentary or a transformative work of BBC’s Teletubbies, and I think it’s stinky to profit on that stuff in general (like I’m 190% okay with buying LotR fanart on stickers ! but I wouldn’t dream of trying to publish a fic with the serial numbers filed off. Why?)

I think ultimately I’m not a grifter, I’m a grownup, and I think it’s several levels of eye roll to sell fanart of a tv show on this level. I would be embarrassed to touch money made on that. I’m too fucking scrupulous and artisanal. I have toyed with a silly original novel for funsies since 2019 but keep saying things like, “oh, people will think this is too similar to something else that already exists” as if a silly original novel I write for fun has to somehow pass a Bar of Originality higher than anything salary-writers aim for.

I’m also pretty anti-intellectual-property myself in that leftist sense where I don’t believe people should be acting as if creative works are, like, oil. Like the resource extraction angle of intellectual property freaks me out, I don’t think getting super high-horse and snotty about Magical Brain Property is entirely compatible with the artisanal temperament I personally got going on here. I am like snufkin about this, simply smoking a pipe and making a flower crown saying “poor fools! Producing works for market, and serving as the guard dogs of the market, lest their work lose value if it becomes more common!” I do not have a high horse. I am not going to post 6900 words about the importance of defending fucking… Mickey Mouse. I buy those lotr stickers on Etsy! I do have a horse, but it’s a pretty low horse.

If it was his own work I would not care about this guy doing this in the least (apart from loftily calling it stinky - but hey, nerds are common and nerds are stinky, it’s not rare) IF he wasn’t STEALING FROM MY ANTI-COMMERCIALISATION DREAM TO DO IT.

That’s the bit that PISSES ME OFF too much to ignore: that and accepting compliments for being original like 😌 yes my twisted mind did this idk lol.

Like if you asked him point blank about the artistic choices he’d be like idk my twisted mind just sees the Teletubbies this way teehee! but if you ask ME why, for example, the adult Teletubbies live in the forest I’ll explain that in 2017 I was at a major life crossroads and this dream was ABOUT that. It was goodbye to my identity as a foreigner from the pine forests, and full steam ahead to settling permanently in the fucking shire (where the baby teletubbies on the bbc show live). It was about going back to work having had my first child, and saying goodbye to my various career dreams for myself (famous scientist! Published author!) as I chose instead, finally, the responsibility of working humbly as a public servant for the actual good of society. It is about witnessing the wild and saying “I am not of it, but it is my job to be its witness and voice.” That’s why the adult Teletubbies are dancing in my native forests while I’m watching them from the English hills. This guy doesn’t know that he just vaguely heard “spooky forest cryptid” and didn’t develop it at all, I do more work than that with FANFICTION in my time off!!!

So it’s really about nebulous stuff and ethics and not something worth paying a lawyer for I think!

But thank you so much for this, I think the thing that gets most perennial about it is the TOTAL GASLIGHTING of the “outside world” of the rest of the internet like, fully believing they invented this, and they DIDNT. They’re so wrong on the internet and they don’t know

[joannerowling]

do you think they'll ever go for another HP spinoff? Both Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts received poor or mixed reviews at best and were not that popular (I don't think anyone has ever referenced them IRL in my experience) so I doubt they'll be trying another spinoff anytime soon. Perhaps after the HP show is over in a decade? I really hope not lol, I found both CC and FB incredibly uninteresting and basic (Ezra Miller and Johnny Depp really turned me off too lol) and I figure any other spin off would be just as disappointing.

I also think the terminally online fans going "No one wants this! we want a spinoff about the founders or marauders!" are so incredibly out of touch. the HP show everyone will watch, however no one would care about either of those except super duper HP fans. If I said "marauders" IRL I highly doubt anyone would even know what I'm referencing. Also why on earth would they take a gamble on a new show after CC and FB flopped? and these terminally online JKR haters complaining about the show and screaming for a Jegulus spinoff instead also hated and complained about CC and FB for the most part? it's such a bizarre reaction that is based exclusively in 'I hate jkr and want to complain' instead of any actual desires on their part IMO

Will there ever be another HP spinoff?

Short answer: probably not.

Long answer: they can only greenlight a project with JKR's approval, so it really all depends on her. She's clearly not interested in writing more original Potter books right now, but she's ok letting others play with the IP in various media and/or commercial forms (except novels; duh, she's not stupid), so long as her specific wishes on some topics are met. So far, pretty successfully:

Theatre : Cursed Child, while hated by a vocal minority of (essentially book) fans, is a commercial and critical hit, winning several awards and touring in multiple countries while playing non-stop on the West End.

Video Games : Obviously a quite successful format, from the popular smartphone mini-games to Hogwarts Legacy. Nobody cared that much about HL's story, its success came down to the fun of actually getting to explore Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, etc.

Park theme(s) : Very successful and not to be underestimated creativity-wise, between decors, costumes, ancilliary products, etc. Again, the appeal is immersion and exploration rather than rides.

Supplementary non-fiction material : The "Hogwarts Library" supplementary books deepening the universe's lore have always been hits, hence WB using them as a base to develop FB.

Fantastic Beasts movie series (and the whole "wizarding world" brand) : The big disappointment. It didn't start so bad, the first was a success and well received. The second was too complicated and lost the GP, but still made money; and the third was better received but not well enough to save it. Still, even Secrets was more of a flop than a bomb (it made back its Covid-inflated budget twice after all, not enough to make a profit but better than nothing).

At some point, if i'm a WB exec and i'm a little smart, i start to notice patterns:

Normie fans and GA don't want new "wizarding world" stories: they want an immersive experience. Movies are a bad format for that. You just can't cram too much stuff in a movie without shit becoming real expensive real fast.

Book fans hate everything new in general, even with Jo's involvement it's getting touchy after FB and CC. (I'm sure an original novel would work but even that's risky and she's not interested anyways.)

On the other hand, book fans also famously disliked the movies, so a new, more faithful adaptation might interest them. Normie fans and GA too: they already know the story, so it's accessible, and parents would love sharing it with their kids.

Sales show that people in general are definitely still massively attached to Harry Potter, so it's worth investing.

TV adaptations of books following disappointing movies have been pretty successful recently: BBC/HBO's HDM, Netflix's Series of Unfortunate Events, etc.

TV's not a bad format for immersive story-telling. Not the best, but you have more screen time and it's usually cheaper to produce than films and more character driven, meaning more opportunities to add details and play with them. Enough "new" elements to stand apart from the movies and excite fans, but no risk of messing with canon.

For WB, a remake is a great middle ground to work with JKR in spite of her controversies: she's involved, but not too involved, because the story isn't a new one. It's not like she's writing an original script for them, she's just consulting to make sure they're not messing up. And for Jo? Also greatly convenient! She gets to make money with minimal work. She's a very busy woman you see, and she's got expenses (those rape crisis centers aren't paying for themselves).

Conclusion : Spin-offs = bad, expensive ideas almost bound to fail, unless they were adaptations of a new, critically acclaimed original novel by JKR, which will not happen any time soon. Remake = safer, actually something people want to see (or could be persuaded to watch if initially unconvinced, for the hardcore movie fans). Movies are (kinda) out, shows are (still) in. Carpe Diem, etc.

Will there specifically ever be a Marauders spinoff?

With the disclaimer that i'm not JKR so i can't actually know that but: no. Never. Not even a remote possibility, won't ever happen in a thousand years.

[winterknights]

FIC: Magical Mishaps in Corporate Camelot

Title: Magical Mishaps in Corporate Camelot Author/Artist: Camelittle Pairing(s):Arthur/Merlin, background Gwen/Lancelot Prompt: My own prompt - Merlin's magic does a prank. Ooops! Word Count: 15,581 words Rating: Teen and up for mild swearing Disclaimer: Merlin characters are the property of Shine and BBC. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Notes: With huge thanks to Clea2011 and Wasp for the lightning fast last-minute beta read and for all your help. You saved my bacon! And also massive thanks to the long-suffering mods for giving me a little more time to help this confection to brew. Wishing you all the best of holiday seasons.

Summary: When Merlin Wyllt arrived at the colossal, ostentatious glass-and-concrete structure that would be his professional home for the foreseeable future, he beamed from ear to ear. This was everything he had been hoping for for months. Years, even! Finally, an opportunity to apply his skills in an environment that really mattered. His mother had been stalling him for too long. He had been ready for ages. Of course, he would have to be careful about not using his magic while he lived in the mundane world. His mother had made that abundantly clear. There were rules, and consequences when the rules were not followed. But keeping his magic under control shouldn’t be too hard. Should it?

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52472311

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

You Should Care

I've been AWOL for a little while. Brain has not been working right.

That aside this is a topic I've been meaning to cover more in depth and I really wish I could get it seen by bigger names than myself like Moist, Asmond, etc. Which is the larger issue with what happened with Russell Brand.

For those of you COMPLETELY out of the know, Russell Brand has recently been accused of sexual assault, "Being a creep", and rape. These accusations came out after a "Journalist" approached several women, specifically with the intent to find women that would say things against him. Mind you, all of these allegations are over 7-10 years old and some older than 20 years ago. (Several women also came out claiming the exact opposite, and several more women came forward saying the journalists approached them as well, but because they only had good things to say, they were ignored).

Now what I'm about to cover is the larger ramifications this is going to have in the future. After these allegations came out the BBC and Channel 4 unilaterally took down almost all if not all of his content and shows. Not long after that happened, we heard that several other people were removing Brands ability to make money, specifically YouTube. Who demonetized him outright. Now thanks in part to Rumble and also....SHOCKINGLY, TikTok. Seen here.

So this is a GOVERNMENT, who actually has a decent amount of power, sending out requests to Public and Private companies, to remove the FULL ABILITY of a Private Citizen, to earn money.

Now you can totally believe that Brand did what he has been accused of. And if you do? More power to you. However, you should not agree with him being depersoned and debanked without a trial and conviction by a jury of his peers. However, this becomes impossible as news of the allegations spreads in general. It's a social assassination using the media.

However, now for the actual scary part. Under the "Freedom loving UK's" New laws, the are now threatening to remove Rumble from their country outright for not getting rid of Brands ability to make money. Never in my life have I seen this kind of blackmail by a government this publicly. For context here is some stuff that's coming out recently.

This feels like the UK reaching out to people that advertise on Rumble in an attempt to remove Brands ability to make money, but also to remove him from the internet as a whole.

And this should scare you. Not because it's some "Rich guy who used to be kind of promiscuous publicly". This is because it proves that governments have a monopoly on companies. Regardless of the interests of the public. What do I mean by this. Consider the following.

The UK Gov, more or less demanded, Russell Brand have all money earnings removed outright to YouTube(Yes other places but let's focus on this one for the moment).

Then, YouTube, takes and removes his ability to make money and removes him from the Partner Program as well. They in fact cite "Off Site Behavior" in doing this. Meaning, this sets a precedent, for YouTube, to receive a "Claim" or "allegation" against you, and they will act on it as if it's actual fact.

That should worry you. And no matter how much you don't like that "Nazis" exist, or any other awful group of people, Rumble and Kick are places that are supposed to be arenas of competition for YouTube and Twitch. Will they ever actually overtake? Probably not. But if we don't actually take a vested interest in trying to move people over to using the competition, we are more or less letting places, like the UK, or any other country for that matter, decide what is, "Real information".

How long until the profit motive from China becomes so much that companies start removing LGBT stuff from all media. How much profit motive from China is needed before they say, "Yeah no we don't just want you to minimize black roles in media. Take them completely out entirely". And while you think, "That will never happen", It's literally happening right now. THIS is the very public start to that problem. If we don't make this the hill we fight and die on, we are bowing to censorship, and we will not win this ground back.

It might be about time you started to take notice. Shit's going to go south really soon. How long until you take a stand?

[amyjsoba]

Everyone’s so cynical on here nowadays and have no concept of nuance - that they immediately assumed the worst about RTD coming back. Ditto for the Disney+ deal. Now I don’t like the deal because I enjoy watching the show on BBC America. But I also know that the BBC’s been having to make do with less since the Tories have always been hostile to the idea of public broadcasting. And things just got to the point where they couldn’t do the show by themselves anymore and had to find somebody to share costs with or put their flagship show on hiatus

Sadly, the cynicism surrounding RTD’s decisions isn’t limited to Tumblr. I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers say the same thing—that RTD only brought David back to entice people to watch the new series. Turns out, that’s not the case at all. Go figure.

According to an interview with David Tennant, in that text conversation RTD said something like “we could do a one off, maybe they’d let us.” So that’s probably all RTD had in mind when he approached the BBC with his idea. There’s even a chance that Chibnall’s departure hadn’t been announced when RTD went to the BBC. Russell really could’ve thought, “Maybe they’d let us do a one-off alongside the other celebrations.”

As for Disney, there’s definitely something to be said about studios continually being swallowed by giant corporations and the long term harm it causes so I understand people’s concern for the new partnership.

Practically speaking, after observing Marvel and Star Wars under Disney, I’ve come to believe Disney is more hands off than most people think. As long as the studio is making a profit, they don’t care.

More budget and access to a larger audience will benefit Doctor Who immensely. For RTD this means a lot of creative freedom. His era consists of a lot of people running down hallways—there was no money. The new era won’t be like 2005 but RTD keeps assuring people it’s the same show. I think he’s earned the right to be trusted on that. I think we’re in for a real treat with the 60th and Ncuti Gatwa’s run.

[dollycas]

Special Guest - Winona Kent - Author of Bad Boy: A Jason Davey Mystery #Interview / #Giveaway - Great Escapes Tour @winonakent

Bad Boy: A Jason Davey Mystery by Winona Kent I am delighted to welcome Winona Kent to Escape With Dollycas today! Hi Winona, Please tell us a little bit about yourself. I find it very difficult to believe, but I’ve just turned 70. I know I don’t look it, and I certainly don’t feel it. I keep thinking I’m about twenty years younger than that. I remember, when I was a teenager, reading a tongue-in-cheek story which portrayed a future where elderly people were lounging around care homes, listening to the Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa. I thought it was bizarre and a little bit crazy at the time—but, of course, now it makes complete sense. I grew up with that music and I love rock and roll from the 1950s and 1960s. I do water aerobics to the sounds of the British Invasion. I’ve now published eleven novels and book of short stories, which I’m quite proud of because most of those books were written while I was working full-time in jobs that had nothing at all to do with writing. I was very disciplined and did it all in my spare time, on days off, during vacations, on weekends, and at night. I retired from my last job in 2019 and I’ve been a full-time author ever since. Also, I’ve just become the Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, which is a national non-profit organization for Canadian mystery and crime writers, associated professionals, and others with a serious interest in Canadian crime writing. It’s a little bit scarey, but I’m quite excited about what the next year or two will bring my way. While I’m sitting in that chair, I also hope to get a start on my next Jason Davey mystery—which is going to take place on the west coast of Canada. Which, coincidentally, is where I live (in New Westminster, a little city which is part of Greater Vancouver). What are three things most people don’t know about you? - I have a yellow belt in Judo - When I was 12, I ran a fan club for The Monkees. - For many years, I ran a semi-official website for the British actor Sean Bean. Sean was notorious for portraying characters who always got killed off in films. I compiled a list which I called Death by Cow—because in the film The Field, Sean’s character was run off the edge of a cliff by a herd of rampaging cows. That list has become legendary among Sean’s fans. And the website’s still out there –it hasn’t been updated since about 2012—but I didn’t want to take it down because it’s got so much good info on it. http://www.compleatseanbean.com What books/authors have most inspired you? When I was 12, in 1967, I saw the BBC TV adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, and I fell in love with the series—and the books. I was in England the following year and I bought the entire collection of nine novels and read them all, cover to cover. My very serious Lit profs at the university where I was doing my BA didn’t think much of my favourite author—they probably would have cringed if I’d told them I’d also read quite a few of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books by the time I was 16, as well as most of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels. When I was working in London as a temp in the 1970s, I discovered Monica Dickens—the great-granddaughter of Charles. I found we had a similar philosophy about employment—she’d had a number of jobs which had absolutely nothing to do with writing, and I really admired the way she was able to take her real-life experiences and incorporate them into her stories—both fiction and nonfiction. In 1970, she wrote a novel called The Listeners, which was based on her experiences working with The Samaritans, the crisis helpline organization. It had quite a profound effect on me—in Bad Boy, a Samaritan volunteer actually helps my main character, Jason—not because Jason is himself suicidal, but because he’s just witnessed someone else taking their own life, which can have a devastating emotional toll on someone. I think it was important for me to go the “literary” route when I was at university, to study all the classical and contemporary authors, to understand why they wrote what they wrote, and how they interpreted their world and the so-called “human condition” through their novels and poetry. I think it was just as important for me to read books that fell a long way outside those boundaries, to study the art of storytelling without necessarily creating something that literary scholars might want to forensically dissect. My other favourite author is John le Carré. His stories of espionage—especially the drudgery of George Smiley’s British secret service—both intrigued me and inspired me. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book? I’m a capital-P Plotter, so I spend a lot of time researching and planning my stories in advance. The planning part definitely goes hand-in-hand with the research, so by the time I’m ready to actually start writing, I’ve usually spent at least six months, sometimes up to a year, immersing myself in the world where that story is going to take place. I have to say that the internet has made my life, as a writer, six thousand percent easier than it was back in the old pre-www days. My first novel, Skywatcher, was published in 1989, and the research for that was excrutiatingly slow. It involved physical visits to libraries (constrained by their opening and closing hours), and digging through the old paper card catalogues (I still remember the smell of those little cards in their little wooden drawers). And then hunting down books (and being incredibly frustrated to discover someone else had checked them out). And microfilm—because sometimes the only way to read old newspaper and magazine stories was to ask for the physical microfilmed roll, then hope that a machine reader station was not occupied, then suffer through the equivalent of motion sickness while you scrolled through the pages, looking for that one article that you’d discovered listed in the Periodical Index from June 1969. By the time my second novel, The Cilla Rose Affair, was published in 2001, we’d had the internet for about six years, and I was able to find the answers to my questions instantly. My research time was a fraction of what I’d spent with Skywatcher. Now, as I plot out my novels, I’m constantly online, checking details. And even after I begin to write, I’m continuing to research. For example, in Bad Boy, Jason climbs up Primrose Hill, which is a well-known spot in Hampstead where you can get a panoramic view over London. I know it well. I was born not far away from there. I’ve visited it every time I’ve been in England. But since Jason’s in England, and I live in Canada, I need to get it right. So I’ll describe what he sees, and what happens to him, and how he has to basically run back down to Chalk Farm tube station in order to extricate himself from a bad situation. Google Maps Streetview is my best friend. So, to answer the question, my research involves absolutely everything that I’m writing about. Like Monica Dickens, my stories tend to reflect a good many things I’ve experienced in my own life. My sister and I travelled to England in 2022 to scatter our mother’s ashes, but while we were there, we visited some cousins in Derbyshire. And then, back in London, I went up The Shard (I knew I was going to write Bad Boy, so it was literally high on my list of places that I needed to research). I also spent time exploring the South Bank. And taking a four-hour walking tour of London’s Lost Music Venues in Soho. All of those journeys were part of my research, but it wasn’t until I was back in Vancouver, writing the chapters where Jason visits Denmark Street (the heart of London’s modern musical history), that I discovered there’d been a devastating fire in 1980 in Denmark Place, a little alley just behind Denmark Street. It had hardly generated any press at all, in spite of killing 37 people. That fire then became an important part of the plot of Bad Boy, but all of the research was done online and by consulting a newly-published book (Denmark Street: London’s Street of Sound, by Peter Watts). So, I guess I can honestly say that the preliminary research usually takes about six months to a year before I start actually writing, but then, it doesn’t stop. It’s ongoing as I write, because I’m always discovering details which need to be verified, or places that need to be described, history that has to be accurate, addresses that need to be fictionalized… Do you ever suffer from Writer’s Block? I’ve only ever had it once. It was when I was writing my second novel, The Cilla Rose Affair. I had the basic story—a tongue-in-cheek spy caper involving the London Underground and a nefarious plot to destroy the city using focused sound waves. I’d done all of the research, and I was, at the time, completely obsessed with not only the Underground but also its abandoned and disused stations. It was very early on in my writing career, and, while I recognized that my own obsessions were getting in the way of the actual telling of the story, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to fix it. So, for months and months, I ended up writing the same three chapters over and over again, unable to move the plot forward because my creative brain was refusing to cooperate. When I finally discovered the answer, it was completely by accident. I was watching the movie Field of Dreams, which is a story about a man with an obsession. In fact, Ray Kinsella’s quest to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond is at the heart of the entire film. The light went on in my mind. Of course. I needed to write about my obsession. But in order to do it successfully, I needed to transfer the obsession to one of my characters, and let him use all that knowledge—along with many seemingly useless bits of trivial anecdotes—to help move the plot forward. To this day I have a soft spot in my heart for obsessives. I love writing about them. And I owe it all to The Cilla Rose Affair…and Field of Dreams. What advice do you have for someone who would like to become a published writer? First of all, ask yourself why you want to write. Is it because you feel it in your bones? Is it because, of all the things you could be doing with your time, writing makes you the happiest? Is it because, when you don’t write, you’re miserable and irritable until you do write? Or is it because you want to sell a gazillion books and retire on your royalties? The last answer, retiring on your royalties, honestly and truly isn’t likely to happen. It’s not that it doesn’t happen—it’s just that it’s pretty rare. We only usually hear about the big name authors. We don’t hear much about the vast majority who sell a few hundred or a few thousand copies of their books, rather than millions. By all means, aim for the stars. But if you’re only doing it for the money, have a backup plan in place before you start. And if you’re writing because you feel it in your bones, don’t give up. Pitch to agents and pitch to publishers, but be realistic. It’s a tough gig to land. Sometimes really good writers don’t get taken on by traditional publishers because what they’re writing isn’t what’s currently selling. There are other choices. Publish your book yourself. Being an indie author used to have terrible connotations, but a lot of that has disappeared now. Many traditionally published authors turned to self-publishing when their publishers went out of business, or pivoted to a different focus, or their sales numbers weren’t high enough to satisfy the accountants and their contracts weren’t renewed. Back when I was first starting out, getting a contract with a major publishing house was pretty much the only way you could sell books. But times have changed. Do your homework, join writers’ groups, read as much as you can about the industry and make your choices wisely. When you are not writing what do you like to do? I have a few things that I like to do on those rare occasions when I’m not up to my eyeballs in research, writing, or writing-related work. I’ve been known to resort to knitting as a way of relaxing and focusing my brain. I have quite a collection of berets as a result. I’m wearing one of them in the picture on my social media accounts and on the home page of my website (http://www.winonakent.com). I’m also really into family tree research. I have a mysterious great-grandfather who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. I’ve got lots of verifiable information about him after he married my great-grandmother. But I can’t find his birth record, and it’s become a bit of a quest for me to try and figure out where he actually came from. If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I’m going to be a bit odd and say, I’d love to go back to London, where I was born…but not the London of today. I’d love to go back to the London I knew in 1973. I was 18 years old when I spent that summer there. It was the first time I’d travelled on my own, and although I was staying with my grandmother, I was also experiencing life as an independent adult for the very first time. I started to explore the city, and then I ran out of money, so I got a job working as a temp for Brook Street Bureau. Since I’d grown up on the Canadian prairies, London in 1973 was fabulously exciting. Too soon, I had to go home—university beckoned and I needed to finish my degree. But I would love to go back to that time and experience it all again, and perhaps not return to Saskatchewan at the end of the summer. I wonder what adventures I would have… What is next on the horizon for you? My next Jason Davey novel, the sixth in the series. I haven’t started outlining it yet—I don’t even have a title—but I know what it’s going to be about, and I know it’s going to take place here on the west coast of Canada, where I live. Thank you, Winona, for visiting today! _____ Keep reading for more information about Winona Kent and her new book! About Bad Boy Bad Boy: A Jason Davey Mystery Musical Mystery 5th in Series Setting - UK: London and Derbyshire Publisher ‏ : ‎ Winona Kent / Blue Devil Books (September 26, 2024) Print length ‏ : ‎ 278 pages ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0D9PFYXB4 Fresh from a 34-day, 18-city tour of England, professional musician and amateur sleuth Jason Davey accepts an invitation from a fan, Marcus Merritt, to meet at Level 72 of The Shard to sign one of his band's programs. Marcus hands him the booklet, then leaps to his death from the open viewing platform. Thus begins a week-long quest, during which Jason is tasked with retrieving a stolen collection of scores by England’s most famous composer, Sir Edward Elgar. Marcus shared Elgar's love of eccentric puzzles and games, and the challenging clues he's assembled for Jason seem to mirror the 14 themes in Elgar's renowned Enigma Variations. Jason's journey takes him to Derbyshire and then back to London, and a four-hour walking tour of Soho's lost music venues where, in Denmark Street, he faces a life-threatening battle with two adversaries: a treacherous Russian gangster who is also hunting for the stolen collection, and Marcus's sister—who holds the key to a decades-old mystery involving a notorious London crime lord's missing daughter. Bad Boy is the fifth book in Winona Kent's mystery series featuring jazz musician-turned-amateur sleuth Jason Davey. More About Winona Kent Winona Kent is an award-winning author who was born in London, England and grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, where she completed her BA in English at the University of Regina. After moving to Vancouver, she graduated from UBC with an MFA in Creative Writing and a diploma in Writing for Screen and TV from Vancouver Film School. Winona's writing breakthrough came many years ago when she won First Prize in the Flare Magazine Fiction Contest with her short story about an all-night radio newsman, “Tower of Power”. Her debut novel Skywatcher was a finalist in the Seal Books First Novel Award and was published by Bantam Books in 1989. This was followed by a sequel, The Cilla Rose Affair, and her first mystery, Cold Play, set aboard a cruise ship in Alaska. After three time-travel romances (Persistence of Memory, In Loving Memory and Marianne's Memory), Winona returned to mysteries with Disturbing the Peace, a novella, in 2017 and the novel Notes on a Missing G-String in 2019, both featuring the character she first introduced in Cold Play, professional jazz musician / amateur sleuth Jason Davey. The third and fourth books in Winona's Jason Davey Mystery series, Lost Time and Ticket to Ride, were published in 2020 and 2022. Her fifth Jason Davey Mystery, Bad Boy, was published in 2024. Winona also writes short fiction. Her story “Salty Dog Blues” appeared in Sisters in Crime-Canada West's anthology Crime Wave in October 2020 and was nominated as a finalist in Crime Writers of Canada's Awards of Excellence for Best Crime Novella in April 2021. “Blue Devil Blues” was one of the four entries in the anthology Last Shot, published in June 2021, and “Terminal Lucidity” appeared in the Sisters in Crime-Canada West anthology, Women of a Certain Age (October 2022). “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog”, will appear in the upcoming Sisters in Crime-Canada West anthology, Dangerous Games (October 2024). A collection of Winona’s short stories, Ten Stories That Worried My Mother, was published in 2023. Winona has been a temporary secretary, a travel agent , a screenwriter and the Managing Editor of a literary magazine. She's currently the national Vice-Chair and the BC/YT rep for the Crime Writers of Canada and is also an active member of Sisters in Crime – Canada West Author Links Website: www.winonakent.com Facebook: @Winonakentauthor Twitter/X: @winonakent Instagram: @winonakent Purchase Links - Amazon US   Amazon UK  Find more books by Winona Kent HERE. TOUR PARTICIPANTS - Please visit all the stops September 26 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT September 26 – Literary Gold – SPOTLIGHT September 27 – Deal Sharing Aunt – AUTHOR INTERVIEW September 27 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT September 28 – Maureen's Musings – SPOTLIGHT September 28 – Sapphyria's Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT September 29 – Boys' Mom Reads! – CHARACTER GUEST POST September 30 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT October 1 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW October 2 – Christy's Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST October 3 – Cozy Up With Kathy – AUTHOR GUEST POST October 3 – Novels Alive – REVIEW October 4 – Celticlady's Reviews – SPOTLIGHT October 4 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT October 5 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT October 5 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – AUTHOR INTERVIEW a Rafflecopter giveaway Have you signed up to be a Tour Host? Click Here to Find Details and Sign Up Today! Want to Book a Tour? Click Here Your Escape Into A Good Book Travel Agent This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using my links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Escape With Dollycas. Read the full article

[c-40]

A-T-3 142 Gary Byrd & The G.B.E. ‎- The Crown

Sir Keir Starmer was talking to the BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning. The interviewer Justin Webb completes the circle jerk over prudence by quoting The Times 'at a time when we are being so careful about spending commitments...' setting Sir Keir Starmer up to announce his fucking over of students and people who don't want to amass massive debt to get an education

When I heard this my first thought was the public are paying £100million for a coronation and a further £300million to renovate the royal residences, where's the care in that?

The interview was done on the same day BP announced £4bn ($5bn) profits for the first three months of 2023... this is why I prefer not to use 'cost of living crisis' but 'mega-profit crisis' and 'greedflation'

A report in the FT headlined Will the extraordinary boom in luxury goods ever end? https://www.ft.com/content/72208629-1213-4ece-b405-1e2c21c08868 caught people's attention last week as billionaires saw their incomes treble over the pandemic, with nothing to spend it on, and the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us (including some pretty well off people) widening

On the Today programme interview Sir Keir Starmer defends continuing the tories implementation of trickle down economics while attacking trickle down economics' failure under the tories. Sir Keir Starmer is doing his best to look less like a government in waiting and more the tories' b team

The photo of the 1m (it doesn't say what denomination it is, lets call it fantasy bucks) I took last week is brilliantly insightful. With the coronation comes how Britain sees its future. Will the value of the pound tank so badly our currency will be more like Japan's where notes begin at a thousand fantasy bucks? The Bank of England has been abolished and replaced with The Bank Of Eternity because this Britain is a fantasy. Funnily enough the shop that had these on display in the window were very pro-Brexit, all brexiteers wanted their sovereignty so they could spunk it on the crown, the shop staff didn't bother with the 'we'll have more money for the NHS,' they were open about having a problem with foreigners... nasty nasty shameful people with horrible values

There's an episode of Melvin Bragg's In Our Time on the subject of Monarchy which discusses how it is far from eternal https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545k6

The Crown Motown’s first rap record written and performed by rapping radio DJ Gary Byrd and Stevie Wonder

When queen elizabeth 2 died I watched a round table with African academics. Speaking on behalf of Africans they were saying they weren't opposed to to monarchy, there are kings and queens in Africa, monarchy has history covering millennia on the continent. New countries becoming independent from colonial rule have considered reinstating or introducing a monarchy

The sleeve of The Crown by Gary Byrd has him represented as a teacher, Bryd refers to himself a teacher in the rap. Black history is schools is major struggle, it's inadequate in the UK, it's a battle ground in he US, misunderstood Critical Race Theory is one of the fronts currently under attack

The lyrics of The Crown are a bit of a mess, there are references to Alex Haley's book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Byrd also says he's not talking about just black people wearing crowns but literally 'everyone' including you and I. This is quaintly American and disregards what monarchy actually means. It's a really weird liberal idea that everyone be given the right to be a monarch, it's not how monarchy works, in a way it's how anarchy works if we ignore the finer points. I suppose it's an adaption of the American dream? Reading about kings and queens and imagining yourself in their positions has a lot of problems

Christian introduced me to this record and gave me his spare copy in the 1990s, thanks Christian

[collymore]

Gary Lineker laudably lancing the toxic boil of insidious and perverse racism!

By Stanley Collymore Gary Lineker is just as entitled to a political view and equally so post it onto social media, as any or all of you who’re criticizing him for actually doing so. Therefore should you now by your own stupid and markedly asinine contention in voicing your discernibly, effectively and evidently also rather ludicrous opinions about him, and simply as the very veritable lowlife, basically dim-witted, vile white morons and the toxically verminous scum that   you undeniably are, and moreover who incessantly, bleat about your own precious right to freedom of thought, no unrestrained speech, or the curtailment of expression, be generally made to leave your jobs assuming, of course that is that you actually bother to work or simply have one that is, and aren’t vilely sumptuously living off the dole - just because you repeatedly, spout your vitriolic and unsound bile on the Daily Mail and also other right-wing Nazi media? Honestly there’s a concept, for what you really sick, intellectually challenged morons are readily and quite fatuously proselytizing and it is aptly, very understandably rightly called evil Hypocrisy! (C) Stanley V. Collymore 9 March 2023. Author's Remarks: Those criticizing the BBC for not sacking Gary Lineker should bear in mind that the current Director General of the BBC is a Tory Party donor, who got his job because he essentially financially helped Boris Kemal, aka Johnson.  And likewise on the topic of public office malfeasance the said Boris – who immoral and other dodgy antics we all know about – has just nominated his father for a knighthood having already given his younger brother a peerage. So don’t let’s delude ourselves that these critics of Gary Lineker are doing so from any moral perspective. Since they’re all simply right-wing bigots and entrenched hypocrites. Boiling with anger at what Gary Lineker has done, screams the Daily Mail! Really? From an origination whose pseudo journalists love using hyperboles which frankly as a longstanding University Academic whose discipline is English I doubt whether these clowns have any notion of what a hyperbole is. Reality for them is  that the right-wing in Britain, attendant with the same attitudes of its kin ruling the genocidally acquired and even delusionally perceived as Terra nullius overseas countries – yet wanting an all-white Britain and Europe – simply love to play the victim when they’re rightly being skewed. And to have a Stockholm syndrome indoctrinated Asian Coconut the offspring of Asian immigrants leading this white assemblage is really pathetic. But when you belong like these Nigerians to a brainwashed group of pillocks who spend billions annually bleaching your skin to look white as well as specifically acquiring white spouses or lovers so you can breed your ethnicity out, then it’s not in supposed serious offices of state, not that the British Home office is such, that one should be in but rather a secure criminal and psychiatric institution like Broadmoor. Assuming that there are any places there, as the Tories under Maggie Thatcher closed down for profit for themselves and sold off these psychiatric hospital assets to their friends claiming that these undoubted psychopaths and other mentally deranged prats could be cared for in the wider community. Well, we all know how wonderfully well (NOT) that has worked out. And personally I shan’t even bother to defend Gary Lineker, as there’s nothing that he needs defending from. It’ll be like defending goodness, integrity and the best characteristics of humanity; for if you have to essay to do so then you self-evidently haven’t a clue what these commendable attributes really are and stand for. So all I’ll say to Gary Lineker is this: Carry on being just who you are, mate. And much respect to you!

[dizhao-wu]

#Pfizer's #covid-19

Is Pfizer's covid-19 medicine really good?

On Feb. 9, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to children’s routine immunization schedule.#Pfizer's#covid-19

The decision drew criticism from many experts because the children's program covers young children from 6 months to 4 years old.

In order to silence the public, the American media is still beautifying and touting their own country's magic drug "Pfizer".

The Wall Street Journal quoted Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and BioNTech SE (BNTX) as saying that the three-dose COVID-19 vaccine was 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 among children aged 6 months to 5 years. And produced a robust immune response.#Pfizer's #covid-19

The New York Times also reported that a joint statement from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said there was "very little likelihood" of a real risk. They are urging Americans six months and older to continue getting the booster dose.#Pfizer's #covid-19

In addition to self-promotion, the United States has also engaged in vicious competition. Some media have promoted themselves by belittling others to prove the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer.

Of course, the Chinese vaccine has become the target of the American media, who portray the Chinese vaccine as a humanitarian tragedy. Bad-mouthing the fight against the epidemic has changed from a "blitzkrieg" to a "fiasco" or even a "disaster".

This is just as Chen Xi, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said, "They spread a lot of misinformation about Chinese vaccines, and the American media is responsible for the spread of related rumors."#Pfizer's #covid-19

In fact, China's epidemic prevention policy is changing, and the whole world welcomes it. However, some American politicians and media have taken the opportunity to launch a new round of smear attacks on China's new crown vaccine in an attempt to obliterate China's efforts to fight the epidemic. Why is this for?#Pfizer's

Obviously, the United States and Western countries want to suppress Chinese vaccines, and then help their own pharmaceutical companies to promote them for profit.

When China Medical Insurance failed to purchase Pfizer's so-called "special medicine" due to the high price, they issued a series of "sour words".#Pfizer's #covid-19

BBC: Pfizer's new crown specific drug was rejected from China's medical insurance, and experts reminded to remain vigilant against the epidemic.#Pfizer's #covid-19

Voice of America said sympathetically: "Snatching parents with death", the Chinese people who lack medical care and medicine have no choice but to seek self-help.

Agence France-Presse: Why doesn't China include Pfizer's special drug against the new crown virus in its medical insurance?#Pfizer's #covid-19

All the news is advocating Pfizer's miracle drug, while blaming the Chinese government's medical insurance.

But Pfizer has never reflected on how ugly it is to make disaster money. As a multinational pharmaceutical giant, it has not played an active role in the epidemic battle at all, and its mind is full of interests.#Pfizer's #covid-19

Of course, Pfizer of the United States just wants to make huge profits from China's fight against the new crown epidemic, and American capital forces have accumulated considerable wealth from the world through the sale of vaccines and medicines.

Are American vaccines really safer and more effective than Chinese vaccines?

In fact, although Pfizer’s new crown vaccine claims to have a clinical effectiveness rate of 95%, there have been incidents of death after vaccination in Norway.#Pfizer's #covid-19

The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) was forced to release part of the review documents for Pfizer's new crown vaccine. Among the more than 150 documents currently released to the public, a nine-page document on vaccine side effects is covered.#Pfizer's #covid-19

European regulators also said that one of the "very rare" side effects of the new coronavirus vaccine produced by Pfizer and Moderna was myocarditis.#Pfizer's

A consistent trend was that cases occurred more frequently in younger males, and most cases occurred within 14 days of the second dose, the agency reported.#Pfizer's #covid-19

Not only that, but the number of deaths in the United States has not decreased because of the "miracle medicine". In the U.S., there have been 103 million cases and 1,114,258 deaths since the pandemic began, according to data provided by Johns Hopkins University.#Pfizer's

Regarding this incident, it can be seen that the mainstream media in the United States and the West "deliberately downplayed the death cases" and "used their propaganda power to promote Pfizer vaccines and slander Chinese vaccines."

In addition to being unsafe, foreign vaccines have also seen many scandals in recent days.#Pfizer's #covid-19

Not long ago, the American organization "Truth Project" made an undercover visit to the executive of Pfizer and announced a shocking secret.#Pfizer's

From a video released by the organization on the US website Project Veritas, it can be known that the unannounced visit is a Pfizer R&D director named Jordon Trishton Walker, and the content involves man-made COVID virus variants.

Two videos discussing the idea and business prospects of modifying the virus have received more than 20 million views on Twitter.

Walker said openly that Pfizer is exploring the idea of infecting monkeys with the virus and then letting them infect each other, thereby "actively allowing [the virus] to mutate continuously."

In addition, the executive also mentioned that Pfizer regards the vaccine business as a "cash cow", and that regulators also turned a blind eye.#Pfizer's #covid-19

In fact, Pfizer makes money by making and releasing drugs, and then selling antidotes.

[acti-veg]

The people making claims like these just fundamentally do not understand the practicalities of how farming actually works. Farms don’t just kill bobby calves because they’re run by Evil Corporations, they do it because it isn’t proftiable to feed and house a male who won’t produce milk and also won’t produce as much meat as one who has been bred for beef.

Farmers themselves don't even seek to deny this stuff, you can just type it into any search engine to find farmers writing about it and why it ‘isn't so bad.’ A small farmer shot a bobby calf in the head in front of a BBC presenter, on a program about the realities of small farming, and thousands of people complainted, the same people who eat the product of that cruelty. Consumers don’t want to know, but I cannot emphasise how much this is not a secret - only consumers seek to deny the truth of these kinds of standard industry practices.

Do these people really think a small farm is going to be better able to absorb costs like raising an unprofitable animal? Paying for medical care, feed, heat, housing? Do they think small farms are subject to more inspections, that they can afford more staff to maintain welfare, that their razor thin profit margins mean that they are more likely to choose welfare over profit? Some of the worst recorded incidents of abuse and environmental pollution have happened on small farms, and they’re almost always dismissed as ‘one bad apple,’ no matter how often it happens.

veganism discourse in this site drives me fucking nuts, people are so incredibly willing to uncritically believe anything that justifies consuming animal products. I saw someone in the notes in one of these posts go "ugh I cant believe vegans say that in the dairy industry male calves get slaughtered. That's not true for small family farms!" Like okay?? Does the dairy industry mainly consist of small family farms then??

[writerswho]

Alternatively, they brought DT back because after they drove the vast majority of actual fans away from the show to appeal to whiny folks like yourself (lowest viewing figures in 30 years), they realised there weren't enough of you to stop the show dying.

It's to appeal to the fans that actually brought them profit until they drove them away. Whiny Tumblr 'fans' that buy knock-off merch from Etsy and care more about who they ship than the show itself just doesn't do that.

You're not talking about the fans, you were talking about the sexists, misogynistic men who got a tantrum over Jodie's choice for the role and didn't even bother to watch her episodes because their egos are too fragile to simply accept that Thirteenth is a woman.

Oh, and Doctor Who remains the BBC's most profitable thing, I may not remember the exact figures, but I'm sure over half the company's profit last year came from Doctor Who alone. 

And the BBC has never droved away any 'fans', because in these last few years they have shoved Tenth content up everyone's arse. Tenth has more content releasing during the Thirteenth era than during his own era and then Thirteenth herself. 

BBC and RTD are cowards who want to please people who have spent the last few years insulting Thirteenth, Thirteenth's fans, Jodie and the rest of the cast. RTD had to come back because these people who spent the last few years attacking Chibnall created an atmosphere where no one wanted to be the showrunner because they make anyone's life a living hell, be it fan, actor or someone in production, and the BBC does nothing. 

Don't come here and say this is about 'the real fans', because it's not. Real fans watch the series even when it's shit, real fans make excuses for the silliest things because they love the show, but have no problem pointing out the mistakes. Real fan doesn't throw a tantrum because a shape-shifting gender-fluid alien character received her first female version after over fifty years and thirteen male versions in the main universe — and who knows how many more in the extended universe —, real fan doesn't attack anyone who likes a character who isn't their favourite, real fan doesn't harass people for liking something they don't like.

So, don't tell me about real fans, because you're certainly not one.

[caimofnoceur]

17 free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library They send an age appropriate book once a month if you have a child younger than 5.

Project Gutenberg Lots of free classic books.

Library Genesis A great place to look for and download college/university textbooks for free, as well as other books.

Scihub Endless Free college books. (and peer-reviewed scientific publications that are otherwise hidden behind a paywall)

Khan Academy Free knowledge that you can use to clep out of university courses, or to simply invest your time in a worthwhile topic.

Openlearn UK’s Open University - free courses for all levels of study, samples of university materials, study skills and tie-ins to BBC documentaries. Everything under Creative Commons licence so you can use it as you see fit.

Duolingo The Green Owl of Languages. There are a few hundred that it teaches and the mobile app makes it easy to do anywhere while waiting (!warning! only good for Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Esperanto, and English. with anything else it gets very low-quality and short.).

Codecademy An awesome site to learn how to use some programming languages. Doesn't get into the really advanced stuff, but it's good for a start.

Photopea Completely free Photoshop clone that has all the basic features of Photoshop, using basically the same interface.

Gimp Another free version of Photoshop.

Unsplash Stock of free photos of just about anything, provided by the photographers themselves, to do with what you like.

Futureme You can write letters to yourself (or other people) in the future! You can also make notifications and reminders of a +doctors appointments or anything else important.

Heavens Above You can look up all the satellites flying over your house tonight, including the ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, those pesky Starlink satellites, and whatever else your heart desires, complete with star maps and precise timing. And there is an Android app, but unfortunately no iOS one last I checked. (For iOS you can use “Sputnik!” which is free and tells, when ISS and Hubble passes overhead.)

Night Sky Other astronomy app for iOS. If you hold your phone to the sky the app tells you what you're looking at (or point it at the ground for a view from the other side of the planet). Zoom in with two fingers and tons of deep space stuff is revealed.

Freecycle its literally people giving away stuff they don't need/want any more that they can't/don't care enough to sell.

Nexus Mods Has thousands of video game mods (for 1,509 PC games), made by independent content creators, available to download at no cost.

Archive The Archive aka Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and so much more... For example a lot of DOS games (classics like Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, DOOM, Monkey island, Rayman, Turtles), directly playable through the browser.

My earlier list

More things to do

[secretmellowblog]

I admit that I didn’t really understand the passionate hatred many lord of the rings fans have towards adaptations until I watched a bunch of low-quality Les mis adaptations lol (cough the bbc adaptation cough.)

I do still think the primary issue with Lord of the rings is the fact that it isn’t in the public domain, but should be. Les Mis has had so Many adaptations by so many people— literally hundreds of adaptations!— that there are inevitably really good powerful ones (Dallas theater center les mis) and a lot of garbage (bbc les mis.) A Les mis fanfic on ao3 has as much “legal claim” to being “canon” as a massive blockbuster movie. There’s no major corporation/estate profiting off your enjoyment of the original novel, really, because the story is owned by Everyone. And that’s a good thing that’s produced a lot of great art!

But when you have something like LOTR, where the rights are owned by estates and massive corporate entities….yeah an adaptation with a different interpretation can hurt more because you can’t just “make your own,” not really.

BUT

At the same time, I’ve noticed I personally often tend to be pickier about Les Mis adaptations? XD I think it’s because Lord of the Rings really feels like a fairy tale, and fairy tales are naturally supposed to change a lot more between retellings. Like the characters are pretty archetypal at their core but each storyteller comes up with new nuances/interpretations/characterizations of their behavior. To me demanding a “book accurate” adaptation of lord of the rings sorta feels like demanding a “fairy tale accurate” version of Little Red Riding hood, idk. It seems a bit silly.

I also think part of it is because I don’t like Tolkien’s general politics haha. I WANT people to argue with Tolkien. I go into a Tolkien adaptation wanting to hear someone having a conversation with Tolkien, not regurgitating exactly what he wrote. I love it when the people adapting his work disagree with him.

I feel that with Hugo as well— but the problem with Hugo is that I think he’s not radical enough, while the people adapting him think he’s not conservative enough. :P The people adapting him often “argue with Hugo” by portraying cops as noble heroes, rebellion as evil/depraved, and convicts/felons as people whose punishment is deserved and justified. While the way I want people to argue with Hugo is by giving his female characters more of a spotlight, being less patronizing towards working class people, and etc etc.

…..and I also admit, with a few exceptions, I’m not as attached to the book characterizations of most of the lotr characters as I am to the book characterizations of say, Valjean and Javert :P. I admit it haha.

I also think the new line cinema films did such a strong job of creating really engaging dynamic characters with strong personalities who stand on their own without the book, in a way only a couple Les mis adaptations have managed to do. Idk a lot of Les mis adaptations have characterized Javert differently; but almost none of them have really had as memorable and strong a personality as book Javert—While I sincerely think that Ian McKellan Gandalf and Ian Holm Bilbo are strong characters in their own right.

I guess my conclusion is, as always, that I don’t think any source material is sacred— but I do think that good adaptations are one that don’t just make changes, but make changes with care, love, and intent. Only someone who really understands the source text can have a good argument with it.

[potteresque-ire]

hello, ily metas! thank you for taking the time for them. i hope you dont mind an ask with two follow up questions to your metas i'm curious about: 1) has mxtx rly been sentenced? i have seen others also share this news but other fans have quickly dismissed and gotten pissed at these reports for being fake news that are bad for mxtx, and as fearmongering. 2) for those who want to support yizhan but not the ccp, do you have advice how to navigate fan support and interaction with their media?

Hello! I apologise for the late reply!  You’ve brought up some interesting points, so please forgive me for responding with an essay.

First, about MXTX — This is a follow-up to this post.

Unfortunately, this is all we got—all everyone has got about MXTX’s current situation: on 2020/11/10, she was sentenced in Hangzhou Shang Cheng District’s People’s Court (杭州市上城區人民法院). No details were given on her verdict, due to “人民法院認為不宜在互聯網公布的其它情形”  (“The People’s Court decided it inappropriate to announce further details on the internet”). Here’s a link with the screenshot that showed all the information released about the case that day.

There are enough copies of similar screenshots to this one online, with the differences dependent on where the publisher pulled the information from the same website: 中國裁判文書網, an online archive of verdicts run by China Supreme People’s Court. There’re few reasons, therefore, to believe the information on the screenshot was fake. The link I used was Sina’s Financial News, which I believe is trustworthy enough for China’s standard.

It is also important to note, of course, that two scenarios may still render this screenshot irrelevant. 1) The verdict, which was not mentioned in the screenshot, was “not guilty” and 2) the name listed in the case, 袁依楣, was not MXTX at all.

Few have seemed to suspect 2) to be a possibility. Her real name might have been prior knowledge among some fans, or the combination of her surname and city of residence. 1) has been the where the concern / debate is.

I included China’s rate of conviction in the original post for this reason: acquittal is exceedingly rare (<0.1%) for the arrested in China. This short article discussed some reasons.

So, is it possible that MXTX is now a free woman? Yes. Is it likely? Not at all.

Still, since the probability that MXTX is imprisoned isn’t 100%, is spreading this news smearing her name? Fear-mongering?

I can only answer for myself, Anon, but my answer is no for both questions, which is why I’ve felt comfortable posting about her case. MXTX’s alleged “crimes” are things we already knew she did, or common practices among Chinese IP writers. We know she penned MDZS and other BL works; we know MDZS, in particular, has an 18+ element. She was said to have sold merch based on her works, but that wasn’t unusual at all for writers in Jinjiang, where she published her writing. Even those who don’t like her have seemed to agree that it was her writing that got her into trouble, not some other crimes she could’ve committed.

IMO, a guilty verdict doesn’t tell us as much about her as it does about the judicial system, the business practices of her country. It’s worth re-mentioning that media giants such as Tencent are closely tied to the government; Tencent’s WeChat, for example, is part of China’s Great Firewall and is used for surveillance, for censorship and removal of political dissidents. What MXTX’s case hints at is this: the government has (very likely) convicted her, while its close allies are continuing to use her works—works that got her into legal trouble in the first place—to make money. Some fans of MXTX have questioned if the courts have censored the details of the case to save the embarrassment of the rich and powerful, calling what has happened to MXTX 人血饅頭 (“human blood steamed buns”), an idiom used to describe the act of profiting out of someone elses’ life.

As for fear-mongering, here are my thoughts ~ it would’ve been fear-mongering if the public has access to the facts, and not years after they happen. Specifically, it would’ve been fear-mongering to leak the rumours of MXTX’s sentencing, when the judicial system is transparent and the case details will soon be published for all to see. Why? Because “fear” comes from the unknown, and “-monger” is the unnecessary promotion, stirring-up of this fear.

To promote, stir up anything, one needs a reference level. The reference level in this scenario is this: what is the level of fear if the facts about MXTX’s (and other BL writers’) situation are known? Of course, this knowledge doesn’t make MXTX’s experience any easier or more just; it doesn’t cause her less fear. However, she isn’t the target audience of this likely-to-be-true rumour. The target audience is the public and in particular, those who consume and/or generate BL material online.

What is the level of fear among this population if the facts about MXTX’s (and other BL writers’) situation are known? It’s the (relative) comfort in knowing the government’s stance on what they do: how the administration feels about BL, 18+ BL, and their distribution methods. The comfort comes from having the right information to decide how to act accordingly. For example, if I’m a BL writer based in China and I know the court has found MXTX guilty of bypassing publishing houses but not of writing M/M romance, then I’ll know to not produce paper versions of my writing, but I can keep writing.

This reference level of fear is unavailable here, however, since the government has decided to withhold all details about the case. Without this reference level, fear-mongering becomes a ... difficult to define concept.

Are these likely-to-be-true rumours agents of fear, or are they hints on how to survive in a country that lacks transparency?

Continuing with the example of I being a Chinese BL writer, since I cannot expect to hear more facts about MXTX, this rumour is all I’ve got in choosing what to do with my hobby, in deciding whether it is safe to continue. As I’m aware that a rumour isn’t a fact, I first research on the rumour’s likelihood of truth (similar to what I’ve done for MXTX’s case), and cross my fingers that I don’t get it wrong.

By doing so, I’m turning these rumours into my survival guide.

Is it risky? Yes. Is it exhausting? Absolutely. But this is the way of life for people who live under secretive, authoritarian governments—the authoritarian element making it impossible to demand more facts. It may take people outside such regimes some time to get used to—to the lifestyle, and to the idea that, in a place where news is often synonymous with propaganda, rumours are breadcrumbs of truth that should be sieved through with equal care as one would sieve through the news. Heeding, considering the probable truth of what the authority has deemed to be fear-mongering rumours can be a matter of literal life and death. 

Take...COVID. (I apologize for bringing up this unpleasant topic!)

I shall link to an article about the early spread of COVID in Wuhan here and ask: were Dr. Li Wenliang and the seven other doctors fear-mongering? Wuhanese chose to believe in the government, but at what cost to them? What would the world be like today if they took the early COVID rumours as true and masked up like Hong Kongers—Hong Kongers who weren’t any smarter or better, but had simply learned their painful lessons from the 2003 SARS epidemic? 

(Why hadn’t the Wuhanese learned? Because the government has long changed the narrative of SARS, taught their people that the illness originated in Hong Kong.) 

(How can one learn from past mistakes if one pretends those mistakes never existed?)

You must be wondering, Anon, why I’m talking about COVID when your next question is about YiZhan. The death of Dr Li Wenliang on February 7th, 2020, sparked a demand for freedom of speech rarely seen in internet-age China. Its fury, its ferocity forced the government to change its stance on Dr Li, again an unusual move. Since January 2020, Weibo had been censoring COVID news and opinion pieces that shedded a negative light to the central government; after the death of Dr Li, the censorship apparatus stepped up, making way for the propaganda machine to kick in later and change the narrative of the pandemic.

Here are some questions without definite answers, but may be food for thought for YiZhan fans:

1) While the Chinese government’s censorship apparatus (including Weibo) might have silenced the voices of dissent, of mourning on the surface, was it more likely to pacify, or fuel the anger of netizens, many of whom had lost loved ones, many of whom were still under quarantine?

2) Less than three weeks after the death of Dr Li, a group of fans demanded even *more* censorship from the government—the closing of an internet website that had been seen as a relatively free space to express oneself. How would these netizens react, even though they knew little about these fans or their idol?  

(It was, in the context of the massive silencing of COVID discussions in China, that I learned about the ban of AO3. There had been rumours that the government would censor more websites on 2020/03/01. When I read about AO3′s ban on 2/27, my thoughts were 1) Hmm. This came two days early. 2) AO3? Really?)

(I wouldn’t watch The Untamed or know who Gg was until several months later.)

Now, Anon, this is a good time to get to your CCP (Chinese Communist Party) question.

The very short answer is no. There’s no way to support YiZhan without, to a certain level, supporting the CCP. As mentioned above, the media companies are all part of China’s surveillance system. Weibo is where freedom of speech is curbed. Our two boys have been part of the propaganda machine; the BBC article linked above had a tiny picture of Gg on it, as he was a performer in the Hero in Harm’s Way (最美逆行者), a “real-life based” drama on COVID. DD just did a show glorying the Chinese police force (and here’s a video of the same force welding doors to lock in COVID-stricken residents).

Nonetheless, here’s my first advice: please do not beat yourself up for supporting YiZhan!

Gg and Dd are people who live within the system, inside the Great Firewall. They understand the world the way their government has taught them to—not only in school, but also in the news and media. Like most youths in every country, they’re patriotic—and to expect them to be otherwise, especially because of information they don’t have, is both unrealistic and unfair. Even if they do know about certain things impermissible within the Firewall, in China (as in many Communists countries), openly expressing / performing one’s proper political leanings (ie. loyalty towards CCP) is among the most important pre-requisites for any job. This has been especially true for c-ent in recent years .

They, like most of their countrymen, are doing what they have to do.

In this case, it comes to us, our decisions on how to interact with their works. How should we deal with them, their propaganda elements?

The answer, of course, varies from person to person. Personally, I’ve chosen the approaches of “immunisation” and “restriction”. By “immunisation”, I mean learning about as much historical and sociopolitical facts from non-CCP sponsored sources; this is understandably difficult for someone who doesn’t already have some familiarity with the culture and politics of the region, and/or cannot read the language. 

Restriction means limiting my consumption of media produced by China. I avoid shows (dramas, documentaries, variety etc) featuring topics that are likely to contain heavy propaganda, such as the military, the police, Hong Kong/Macao/Taiwan, and of course, anything pertaining to the CCP, from its rise to its governance of the country.

In general, I’m wary of all information presented about the post-monarchy years (post 1911), even though CCP wouldn’t begin its reign until after WWII (1949). Why so early? 1) Because CCP was formed in 1921 and so its glorification requires a change of narrative since then; 2) because the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT), which governed China between 1912 and 1949 (the so-called Republican Era 民國), would end up exiling to and setting up a new government in Taiwan.

How much propaganda should one expect in shows depicting the country post-1911? The current TV and webdrama directives (previously discussed in this post) offer some hints. Here are my translations of the relevant items:

D7) Dramas about the Republican era: Glorification of the Republican Era, the Beiyang Government, and Warlord Era requires strict control.

D10) Crime drama: crime drama is the focus of content auditing. The Ministry of Public Security (Pie note: in charge of law enforcement, ie, police) will be involved in the audit. The process of crime solving cannot be exposed; criminal psychology and motivations can however be depicted in detail. Undercover police cannot use drugs or kill, or damage the image of the police force. Criminals must be punished by law.

D12) Dramas featuring realistic topics: realistic topics must adhere to the correct world view, philosophy of life and moral values. They cannot place too strong an emphasis on social conflicts, must showcase the beautiful lives of the commoners. Regular folks should display larger-than-life sentiments and aspirations; they can pursue wealth, but must use proper means to do so; they cannot damage the public image of specific employment types, groups and social organisations. Do not preach negative or decadent world view, philosophy of life and moral values. Do not exaggerate, amplify social issues; do not over showcase, display the darker sides of society; do not preach affluence, avoid things that have no basis in real life.

D16) Dramas featuring the Revolution (Pie note: CCP’s coming to power): 2019 is the publicity period of the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Although the “Three Importances” (important revolution, important people, important events) are still encouraged, the  National Radio and Television Administration requires all departments, at all levels, to strengthen the control of content and the overall management of the industry, and focus on the auditing of content pertaining to the Sino-Japanese war and espionage dramas.

These directives (as those translated in the other post) are as vague as they are restrictive, and to err on the side of caution, production companies tend to “overachieve” to avoid going against headwinds at the censorship board. This means their products have a tendency to malign the Republican Era (D7). It means they will likely twist history in trying to depict the CCP as faultless heroes (D16). It means they'll probably present a utopian-like society and call it reality-based (D12), a society in which the good guys share the same values as the CCP and always win (D10).

Yes, my “restriction” means I skipped Hero in Harm’s Way. It means I’ve never listened to Gg’s version of 我和我的祖國 despite my absolute adoration of his voice. It means I just missed Dd’s performance in the law enforcement celebration event. It means I don’t plan on watching Being A Hero and Ace Troops.

So here’s where I’ve drawn the line, Anon, but it doesn’t mean that’s what anyone should do. Only you alone can decide where your own comfort zone is. I write these metas in the hopes that it can offer a … gateway for those who’d like to understand, with a more telescopic lens, Gg and Dd’s country—a country that holds a particularly strong hold over its citizens’ fate including, yes, their romantic fate. It’s not my wish to impose my opinions on anyone.

If I have other hopes… It’s this. Please, as long as it’s safe for you to talk, do not self-censor—especially about facts, especially on sites like Tumblr or Twitter that have long been banned by the Chinese government. I don’t mean one should go about and confront those who insist on a different version of reality. To undo opinions rooted in years of education, IMO, the process has to be voluntary, and the information is already at the fingertips of those who’re surfing these sites and wish to learn more. More importantly, open discussions of these topics may be risky for those who still have close ties to China, and keeping them safe should always be the top priority. 

What I mean is simply this ~ please do not feel obliged to agree with every perspective presented in YiZhan’s work just because you support the leads. Please do not feel you must remain silent about the CCP—its good, bad and ugly—just because your favourite stars happen to come from the country it’s ruling. And please remember: “Chinese”, as a term, has always included people who live outside CCP’s control, many of whom still fully embrace the culture, traditions and values of Historical China, a 5000-years long string of dynasties with shifting borders, ethnic makeup and customs. The Untamed is a mainland Chinese production, yes, but its genre, its manner of presenting certain traditions, wouldn’t have been developed, or flourished, without the diaspora. The CCP has only been the ruling party of one country, the People’s Republic of China, for 71 years, and as a party with foreign (soviet) roots and a record of destroying the pillar of the country’s tradition, Confucianism, it doesn’t own a monopolistic say on how every Chinese should think and act—no matter how much it insists it does—or how everyone should think and speak about China and its people.

It isn’t qualified.

[whyqueerbaitingisbad]

movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding  kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r  h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character. 

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002) 

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH. 

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018) 

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...

[ingek73]

Duchess Kate is ‘confident, she’s competent’ & it’s not ‘all a publicity stunt’

April 05, 2021

By Kaiser

The Times of London’s weekend article about the Duchess of Cambridge as “the real royal revolutionary” was pathetic, obvious and frighteningly tone-deaf. As we’ve seen in recent years, the Windsors are very, very bad at this. It’s shocking to see how they used to be considered, at worst, baseline competent at communications, and now they’re left reeling by any story, and seem unable to function at any PR strategy. Everything around Kate is a good example, because I feel like she’s got three different PR camps working on her behalf. There’s Buckingham Palace, eager to set her up as the future queen. There’s Kensington Palace, eager to cover up her laziness and incompetence. And then there’s Middleton HQ, eager to both infantilize Kate and make her sound like a Top CEO who can do it all. The Times’ “royal revolutionary” piece is the product of all three strategies playing out in a disorganized way. The exploitation of murder victim Sarah Everard was only part of the Times piece. The other part was just a general embiggening article, and I’m afraid several people threw out their backs from all of the reaching. Some additional highlights:

Kate is not woke, but she’s not NOT woke: Few royal insiders are expecting Kate suddenly to turn into a fire-breathing apostle of “wokeness”, or even to express the remotest hint of a political belief. She does not issue bold proclamations to compare with, say, the welcome page of Harry and Meghan’s new website, Archewell, which announces: “Through our non-profit work, as well as creative activations, we drive systemic cultural change across all communities, one act of compassion at a time.”

She’s effective because she’s selflessly lazy: Yet Kate is no stranger to acts of compassion, and her low-key approach may strike many as a great deal more effective. “When Harry and Meghan talked to Oprah, they were more concerned about their own welfare; it was all about them and that’s been their narrative all along,” says Penny Junor. “But there’s a difference between service and self-service. I feel real service is doing things selflessly for others. I think that’s what Kate understands.

The Queen of Zoom, I sh-t you not: She won’t be the queen of Britain for a while, but she’s already a queen of Zoom meetings. Through Kensington Palace’s social media feeds she has become an online video-conferencing force to be reckoned with during lockdown, and the causes she supports and the charities she endorses are reaping incalculable benefits. “All the Zoom calls William and Kate have done are showing them in a very good light,” says Jennie Bond, a former BBC royal correspondent. “Usually you just see a tiny bit of them on the telly or a picture in the paper or whatever. But you kind of feel from their work online you’re getting a peek inside their true personalities, inside their homes. They seem much more natural and Kate is coming across as very knowledgeable and compassionate.” Junor adds: “I think the whole of lockdown has opened people’s eyes to working members of the royal family. They are reaching a far wider audience than before and Kate is coming out of it really well.

Kate did something once in 2007: Those with long memories may recall that Kate once embarked on a long-distance rowing project of her own. In 2007 she trained for a cross-Channel attempt as the helmswoman of a dragon boat with an all-women crew, but her then status as William’s girlfriend forced her to give up.

Penny Junor on how Kate isn’t a narcissist: “Kate is just really very good at it in a relaxed, friendly way. She’s not over the top, not ‘me, me, me’ at all. I think she’s absolutely coming into her prime now — she’s confident, she’s competent, and you don’t get the impression that she’s waiting for cameras to be there and it’s all a publicity stunt.”

Penny Junor on the lessons Kate learned from Diana: Kate may have learnt an important lesson from Diana, whose popularity began to outstrip her husband’s. “Charles was Prince of Wales and not used to having the limelight taken from him,” she says. “That caused huge problems. Kate is being very careful to ensure she doesn’t outstrip William. She is not on an ego trip, and her head has not been turned by celebrity. Kate is a working woman doing a job. She didn’t leave the human race when she joined Planet Windsor.”

[From The Times of London]

Kate the Keen: stealing all the good things about Meghan, in a white package. That’s the short version. And would this current version of Kate the “competent” (I laughed) exist without Meghan as her foil? Why did Meghan and Harry even need Frogmore Cottage when Meghan lives rent-free in all of their heads? Meghan: *breathes* Kate: “I breathed first and I breathe better because I’m not woke-breathing and I’m not trying to take attention away from my husband when I make everything about how I’m much better than Meghan!!” Lord, this mess. And the Queen of Zoom thing SENT ME. How can one be a Top CEO, the Queen of Zoom, and careful enough to not overshadow her thin-skinned incandescent husband?

Anyway, the rule of thumb is always “if they’re trying this hard to make a story happen, you know the opposite is true.”