#in groups and then on the forum (there's over 30 people in the group)

[vocaju]

I still can't believe that I'm actually attending a UNIVERSITY COURSE DEDICATED TO ANALYSING MOOMIN BOOKS.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Bad Writing Advice/"Forcing" Story

Anonymous asked: Do you have any generic advice for forming questions better? Whenever I post a question for writing advice (on reddit, twitter, tumblr, other writing spaces) I often get something like "don't force your story to where you think it should be" I don't get why. If I say something like "I'm changing my main character from a male pirate to a female siren because it fits the plot better - but I don't understand the mythology of sirens. Any tips on where to start?" Often I'll get "advice" like "You shouldn't force your story, let it form naturally..." and usually that's their only advice or something they feel like they have to add before answering the actual question. It's starting to feel snobby. I'm so confused. Am I not supposed to make make decisions/changes if something in my story isn't working? Is that "forcing" or "pushing" it in a way I "shouldn't"? Is making decisions on a story just "force"? This is why I prefer to just come to this blog. Even if I've poorly written my problem, you still somehow manage to find the heart of the question and offer real advice that actually helps. Your answers stay relevant and isn't just copy-paste of something I've seen on the internet a hundred times.

[Ask edited for length]

Every writing group/forum is different, and everyone's experience within them is different, but in my own experience I've found that writing groups/forums tend to be better for advice that isn't story-specific. That's because story-specific advice is tricky. Most people struggle with separating their own preferences or style from the needs of the person asking the question. And when asking a question to a broad group, you're also going to get a lot of people who have nothing helpful to impart but want to be part of the conversation, so they throw out tried-and-true irrelevant gems like "don't force it."

Am I not supposed to make make decisions/changes if something in my story isn't working? Is that "forcing" or "pushing" it in a way I "shouldn't"? Is making decisions on a story just "force"?

As I'm sure you suspect, of course you're supposed to be able to make decisions and changes when something in your story isn't working. And no, that's not forcing it.

Again, I think people are mostly saying that (or things like it) because they have nothing relevant or helpful to say but still want to feel like they're helping. But also, I think some people could just be confused about the actual meaning of "force" vs "natural." They may assume that something you planned is "natural" whereas the change you want to make is "forcing it," but of course the opposite is often true. Sometimes the things we plan make sense before we start writing, but as we start to write and get a feel for the characters, story, or world, we see that what we had planned wouldn't work as well as something else. Using your example, if you had planned to make your MC a male pirate, but as you get into the story it makes more sense for the character to be a female siren, if you made yourself stick to the plan and kept the MC a male pirate--even though the female siren would work better--that would actually be "forcing it." Following your gut instinct that the story works better with a female siren MC is letting it develop naturally.

So, I hope that reassures you! The advice was bad, and groups/forums (with few exceptions) tend to better for advice that isn't story specific. ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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

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

[spiderforestcomics]

Make a webcomic? Want to join our lineup? SpiderForest is open for membership applications through June 30! Visit our Apply page when you're ready to send yours in, or read on for some highlights about what we offer, things to keep in mind, and how our application process works!

🌈 1. We're a community, not a publisher.

If you're looking for a fast road to fame and fortune, sorry, that's not us!

If you're looking for a community of like-minded creators who care about the same things - especially the craft of comics; doing our best to be positive, supportive peers and human beings; and making cool/fun stuff together - that's what you'll find here.

It's not just about the comics! We aim to nurture a community with good vibes. So think about how you'd be a community member in your application!

In your application, remember to tell us what you yourself would bring, and how you envision participation with our members, not just the features of your comic. More tips in our FAQ!

🔥 2. This isn't a one-shot game.

Don't despair if you don't get in on the first try. We've got members who didn't get in till application 2, 3 or even more.

Everyone's journey is different. The ability to take and apply constructive critique and to demonstrate improvement over time is also something we've all experienced - and admire.

Make sure you're ready! Returning applicants MUST visit our Hub's Critique Section to ask for critique before February 1.

✨ 3. We want to help you make the best kind of comic that you want to make.

Whether or not you get in, we're always here to provide actionable critique and feedback to help you improve. We have public spaces where we share and learn together!

Remember, we're a collective of your peers, not some kind of ultimate comics judge. If you don't agree with our feedback, if you don't get into our collective, it's not the end of the world. Sometimes it just means it's not a fit with what SpiderForest members are looking for. There's a whole world out there for all kinds of comics! The most important thing is that you keep doing what you care about.

Our Discord server and Hub forum are open to all webcomic creators, regardless of membership. Come in and show us what you're up to!

❤️ 4. We're not looking for perfection or comic-making machines.

We care about making good comics and delivering work, but we're all indie creators.

We have guidelines and recommendations around things like update schedules to try to make sure people don't just disappear, but we understand everyone has lives and unique circumstances and we take lots of things into consideration.

We're all in the same marathon! Take a look at our application requirements to see if you're a good fit for our group.

🥳 5. We're honestly pretty laid-back.

We're basically a bunch of comic-making pals hanging out and learning from each other.

Everyone's mileage varies, and you don't have to participate in every activity - but the more you do, the more you'll get out of SpiderForest!

Our project list is always rotating! Keep an eye on our News section or subscribe to our newsletter to see what we're up to this month!

Want to become a member? Head on over to our Application Page!

[888-fr]

mass pinglists (& moral superiority for not using them)

There's been concern lately over the newest update announcement that at some point, far into the future or at least after New Year's 2024, mass-pinging as a concept will be retired from Flight Rising. On one hand, there's people worried about this.

There's people who are also, frankly, being wildly vitriolic about those who rely on mass pinglists, disbelieving that anybody could ever be affected by mass ping tools shutting down. They're also out here openly calling skinmakers/G1 collectors/dominance organizers delusional for thinking the things they do are in any way, shape, or form, an important part of the site.

Which like, if people don't use user-run tools like GASP or the G1 pinglist, that's fine! That's your playstyle. But I don't understand where the attitude is coming from that the concerned groups are only a 'loud minority', and that they somehow don't contribute massively to the game as a whole. (The same people, by the way, who call G1 collectors & UMA makers a plague upon dragon society for being an elitist rich boy's club, then turn around and say they're not at all a driving force in the site's economy.) Which one is it? You can't have it both ways. Do these people spend thousands whaling for their perfect XXY G1 wildclaws then hundreds buying gem genes for their fancy showoff dragons? Or are they at best a negligible population in the game, whose activity and monetary contributions to the site are far outweighed by the tens of thousands of 'nice, normal, sane' players who log on once a week to hatch a nest and post on forums once in a blue moon?

There's 825 pages of user-made skins on the site right now. At 50 items per database page, that's 41,250 skins. 41,250 skins that had to be submitted with blueprints that can only be bought with gems.

Let's give these numbers the benefit of the doubt and say each skin was only submitted once, using a 10-print blueprint at 5000 gems, and each accent was only submitted once as well, using a 10-print blueprint at 2500 gems. That's 136,875,000 gems sunk into blueprints - if each individual usermade skin on site has only an average of ten copies on site. (Which is categorically not true, I've had multiple skins print over 300 copies. And I am just one person, and far from the most successful skinmaker on site.)

This is 1,368,750 USD in skin blueprints alone, by the way, using the most barebones and least generous numbers possible. We're not accounting for skins that sell more than one run, or the fact that no skin artist sells their skins to the public at print price (you can add another 30-40% to that number if you want to estimate how much money is actually spent to circulate those skins). Even if none of these artists pay money to buy gems, these gems are coming from somewhere. Even if you, as someone who doesn't care for G1s or never even heard of GASP, never set foot into these places, these gems are still circulating and being sunk into the site. And it helps no one to scoff and say you doubt there's no real impact on anything if all of this goes away.

There's 51k items on the site, and over 80% of them are skins. There's 5k users actively signed up and using GASP - more than the average amount of users logged onto the site at any given point that's not a new breed release or anniversary update.

Are you getting the picture yet? It's not self-absorbed to say that the UMA market has a very real impact on the game economy. It's just numbers.

I need to get my thoughts out about the new mass-ping update somewhere. My thoughts on the actual tool are entirely positive, it's a great change for the site and not one I ever thought I'd see. But there's people worried about the future of tools like the GASP & G1 sales pinglists for very good reason.

I think game economy is a very real concern if you're a dominance participant, a skinmaker, an old dragon collector, a G1 hatcher, an ID hunter, or anyone else whose community relies on mass ping lists. You aren't wrong for feeling this way. I'm sorry people are dismissing very valid concerns about the state of your community out of some misguided 'i don't do this and neither do my friends, so everyone who does must be a loud overexaggerating nitwit' attitude.

[myimaginedcorner]

SCALES OF JUSTICE - BETA TESTERS NEEDED

Hi dear readers,

Thank you for your overwhelming trust and support. The opinions that I've collected over the past few days have finally motivated me to put aside my self-criticism and doubt, and to make the next step towards SoJ's release.

Yes, Scales of Justice is now officially in its BETA-test phase!!

If you would like to help me by being a BETA-tester for my book, please, comment under this post, send me a direct message, or message me on CoG's forum. I aim to take around 20 to 30 people, so we can have a big and productive group that nonetheless remains constructive in its feedback.

If you don't have the time or you don't want to be a tester, consider sharing this post, so it can get to as many of you as possible.

I will be working alongside the testers on improving style, grammar, and other minor details that require polishing as the month progresses. Hopefully, by the end of it we'll have an even better version of this book that will be submitted for approval to Hosted Games!

See you all very soon,

Julia xx

BOOK DETAILS:

DEMO DESCRIPTION:

Scales of Justice is a fantasy game situated in another world, far away from Earth. There are plenty of species living together in harmony, but the human race is currently split in two civilisations: the one known as Hero kingdom, which is ruled by ‘heroes’, and the one named Vannais kingdom, controled by ‘villains’. Both nations hate each other and the fight between ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ here is something that happens on a national level. The game is focused on lore, on character development and your own perception of reality: perhaps, your MC just wants to live a peaceful life... or maybe wants to save the world.

Or even rule it, if you’re into such things.

THINGS TO DO IN THIS DEMO:

Set off on a new adventure towards Neutral Lands, to meet a mythic creature of all answers - The Visionary.

Gather up to 3 companions to help you in your quest - befriend, romance or rival them, the choice is yours.

Buy a horse - we know you want one.

Fight, conjure, support, speak or think - choose your way of handling a tricky situation.

Explore the kingdom of Hero up to Menai's shore, in search for someone - or something - to aid you in your journey.

The DEMO version of the book runs up to Chapter 5 and contains 276K words overall. I will be putting up updated versions of the first chapters as I work my way through them, so expect the DEMO version to become a polished reflection of what the final book will look like!

USEFUL LINKS:

If you want to know a little more about this project and read chapters 1-5, I'll leave the link to the game here -> https://dashingdon.com/play/myimaginedcorner/scales-of-justice/mygame/

If you want to discuss anything on CoG's forum, I'll leave the link for SoJ here -> https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/wip-scales-of-justice-new-project-announcement-and-demo-release/101088/16

If you want to send me a more extensive feedback, here's my email -> feedbackscalesofjustice@gmail.com

Any mistakes, concerns or questions you have, feel free to contact me through Tumblr! I am very excited to share this story with all of you, and I want to make it as good as possible with your help!

RO DESCRIPTIONS:

Shoren/Seile -> Heir to the Hero kingdom's throne, right where your journey starts. Also, your old friend who's very attached to you. Likes to read and practices magic, enjoys adventure and heroic deeds. A recognised “hero”, with blonde curly hair, pale skin and a pair of beautiful blue eyes.

Robert/Reina -> Order's Paladin, defender of Hero and Knight of Fate. Brave and honourable, determined to protect the people of the kingdom. Very loyal to friends and very dangerous as an enemy. Has short brown hair, tanned skin and an athletic build.

Valerius/Venis -> An Outworlder, who was caught by cultists from the Wicked Woods. Gracious, elegant and charismatic. Has long dark brown hair with a silver streak, olive skin and golden eyes.

Arion/Aria -> Leader of Vannais, a recognised “villain” who escaped from Hero and now rules the enemy kingdom. Serious, reserved but temperamental. Prefers action over words and so is always present on battlefields and amidst negotiations, even though never in official manner. Has short blonde hair, pale skin and emerald eyes.

Be careful! These characters have their thoughts and opinions on the world and your actions: if you want them to support you, convince them or take their side… or neither. That is your choice after all!

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans view college campuses as far friendlier to liberals than to conservatives when it comes to free speech, with adults across the political spectrum seeing less tolerance for those on the right, according to a new poll.

Overall, 47% of adults say liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express their views on college campuses, while just 20% said the same of conservatives, according to polling from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

Republicans perceive a stronger bias on campuses against conservatives, but Democrats see a difference too — about 4 in 10 Democrats say liberals can speak their minds freely on campuses, while about 3 in 10 Democrats say conservatives can do so.

“If you’re a Republican or lean Republican, you’re unabashedly wrong, they shut you down,” said Rhonda Baker, 60, of Goldsboro, North Carolina, who voted for former President Donald Trump and has a son in college. “If they hold a rally, it’s: ‘The MAGA’s coming through.’ It’s: ‘The KKK is coming through.’”

Debates over First Amendment rights have occasionally flared on college campuses in recent years, with conflicts arising over guest speakers who express polarizing views, often from the political right.

Stanford University became a flashpoint this year when students shouted down a conservative judge who was invited to speak. More recently, a conservative Princeton University professor was drowned out while discussing free speech at Washington College, a small school in Maryland.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states have proposed bills aiming to limit public colleges from teaching topics considered divisive or liberal. Just 30% of Americans say states should be able to restrict what professors at state universities teach, the poll found, though support was higher among Republicans.

Overall, Republicans see a clear double standard on college campuses. Just 9% said conservatives can speak their minds, while 58% said liberals have that freedom, according to the polling. They were also slightly less likely than Americans overall to see campuses as respectful and inclusive places for conservatives.

Chris Gauvin, a Republican who has done construction work on campuses, believes conservative voices are stifled. While working at Yale University, he was once stopped by pro-LGBTQ+ activists who asked for his opinion, he said.

“They asked me how I felt, so I figured I’d tell them. I spoke in a normal tone, I didn’t get excited or upset,” said Gauvin, 58, of Manchester, Connecticut. “But it proceeded with 18 to 20 people who were suddenly very irritated and agitated. It just exploded.”

He took a lesson from the experience: “I learned to be very quiet there.”

Republicans in Congress have raised alarms, with a recent House report warning of “the long-standing and pervasive degradation of First Amendment rights” at U.S. colleges. Some in the GOP have called for federal legislation requiring colleges to protect free speech and punish those who infringe on others’ rights.

Nicholas Fleisher, who chairs an academic freedom committee for the American Association of University Professors, said public perception is skewed by the infrequent cases when protesters go too far.

“The reality is that there’s free speech for everyone on college campuses,” said Fleisher, a linguistics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “In conversations within classrooms, people are free to speak their minds. And they do.”

Officials at PEN America, a free speech group, say most students welcome diverse views. But as the nation has become more politically divided, so have college campuses, said Kristen Shahverdian, senior manager for education at PEN.

“There’s this polarization that just continues to grow and build across our country, and colleges and universities are a part of that ecosystem,” she said.

Morgan Ashford, a Democrat in an online graduate program at Troy University in Alabama, said she thinks people can express themselves freely on campus regardless of politics or skin color. Still, she sees a lack of tolerance for the LGBTQ+ community in her Republican state where the governor has passed anti-LGBTQ legislation.

“I think there have to be guidelines” around hate speech, said Ashford. “Because some people can go overboard.”

When it comes to protesting speakers, most Americans say it should be peaceful. About 8 in 10 say it’s acceptable to engage in peaceful, non-disruptive protest at a campus event, while just 15% say it’s OK to prevent a speaker from communicating with the audience, the poll found.

“If they don’t like it, they can get up and walk out,” said Linda Woodward, 71, a Democrat in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

Mike Darlington, a real estate appraiser who votes Republican, said drowning out speakers violates the virtues of a free society.

“It seems to me a very, very selfish attitude that makes students think, ‘If you don’t think the way I do, then your thoughts are unacceptable,’” said Darlington, 58, of Chesterfield County, Virginia.

The protest at Stanford was one of six campus speeches across the U.S. that ended in significant disruption this year, with another 11 last year, according to a database by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group.

Those cases, while troubling, are one symptom of a broader problem, said Ilya Shapiro, a conservative legal scholar who was shouted down during a speech last year at the University of California’s law school. He says colleges have drifted away from the classic ideal of academia as a place for free inquiry.

An even bigger problem than speakers being disrupted by protesters is “students and faculty feeling that they can’t be open in their views. They can’t even discuss certain subjects,” said Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute think tank.

About three in five Americans (62%) say that a major purpose of higher education is to support the free exchange and debate of different ideas and values. Even more U.S. adults say college’s main purpose is to teach students specific skills (82%), advance knowledge and ideas (78%) or teach students to be critical thinkers (76%). Also, 66% said a major purpose is to create a respectful and inclusive learning environment.

“I believe it should be solely to prepare you to enter the workforce,” said Gene VanZandt, 40, a Republican who works in shipbuilding in Hampton, Virginia. “I think our colleges have gone too far off the path of what their function was.”

The poll finds that majorities of Americans think students and professors, respectively, should not be allowed to express racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ views on campus, with slightly more Republicans than Democrats saying those types of views should be allowed. There was slightly more tolerance for students expressing those views than for professors.

About 4 in 10 said students should be permitted to invite academic speakers accused of using offensive speech, with 55% saying they should not. There was a similar split when asked whether professors should be allowed to invite those speakers.

Darlington believes students and professors should be able to discuss controversial topics, but there are limits.

“Over-the-top, overtly racist, hateful stuff — no. You shouldn’t be allowed to do that freely,” he said.

___

The poll of 1,095 adults was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

[kpoploverfrevr]

NewJeans’ Song “ETA” Going Viral Among Locals For The Most Unexpected Reason

A NewJeans song is going viral among locals for the most unexpected reason. While it’s not one of the group’s most popular songs, “ETA” has always been loved by K-Pop fans

Yet, while NewJeans is always going viral among K-Pop fans, the group has surprisingly become a hit among locals (non-K-Pop fans)

On September 30, a famous streamer (ranked 15th in the world and ranked 10th in the US) played NewJeans’ song “ETA” on his broadcast to celebrate having 100,000 subscribers, and it went viral. The tweets with the videos quickly amassed tens of thousands of likes and were spread by K-pop fans and those who didn’t even know K-pop.

The streamer is Jason. After the celebration, he shared the video himself with the caption, “I ❤️ NEW JEANS,” and the post was seen over 1.5 million times and had over 34,000 likes.

YouTubers within the community reacted to the celebration, spreading the track further on social media.

On the Korean forum Instiz, netizens shared that on the day of the stream and following, the streams on Spotify of “ETA” increased substantially, even hitting over 560,000 on October 1.

On October 3, Min Hee Jin also shared a screenshot of the celebration on her Instagram.

NewJeans has always been famous and had an impact, and it seems like their fame is now going global among people who might have never listened to K-Pop before.

[catgirlforeskin]

This may border on victimblaming, but most of stories about how someone was "groomed" online that I saw (I didn't research it, mind you, just what crossed my dashboard) read to me as "I am a total dumbass who doesn't have common sense and I am going to blame everyone for this".

Like older* guy on forum who talks about how you being offline makes him want to kill himself is not a good man, and neither are any other kinds of "online groomers", but literally nothing about technology makes them more dangerous.

(*Assuming that he is in fact older, I also was "in my early 30s" online since I was 12, but that's not that important because him living who the fuck knows where makes any actual power imbalance irrelevant, and teenagers are very much capable of being cruel and manipulative).

In fact, online interactions are way safer for kids because they fucking can close the tab and forget about everything that happened. Restrictions on children's access to internet doesn't help them. I am not even going to talk about how abusive families can be - outside of home is also not that safe, and people actually may have power over you. In my high school there were rumours about certain teachers sleeping with certain students. I don't know were they true, but I myself was present when one of our teachers went on a discussion about how it's better for schoolgirls to date college students and graduates to "get better experience". People who live close to you may be very gross and bigoted, in fact there is someone close to you and bigoted. Slightly older people can tell about absolutely awful culture of teen neighborhood groups (idk if there was something like that in USA but that's when people of one urban neighborhood hang out together purely because they live close by).

Mind you, I grew up on my local equivalent of 4chan, and while I don't think that it was good for me, the grossest experiences I had were all IRL. Yes, some of those anons may be totally inhuman, but I didn't have to listen to their bullshit, while IRL I had not only to listen but to politely agree, or the middle aged man with ego of a toddler and the middle aged woman who believes in every conspiracy on Earth and the teenage boy who thinks that he is the protagonist of life will be offended, and I am a good kid so I shouldn't make them sad :(

P.S.: Anecdotally, "normie" online places felt way grosser than imageboards. Part of it may be because it was before Trump ruined online everywhere, part of it that those "normie" online places were not as normal as they liked to pretend, but I think that the correct answer is that 4chan is not some malicious entity that corrupts our world, not even really marginal group - it's just content of middle class cranium without flattering makeup of civility. Still, don't go there

P.P.S.: I focused on school because the discourse was about kids, but like, you realise that adult abuse on workplace and such can be way worse and actually endanger your life in the way online never can, right?

Yeah, definitely, it’s an extension of the “stranger danger” model of abuse instead of the reality where most abuse comes from people you know that have power over you, whether it be in a family, school, or work setting. I was constantly told not to talk to strangers online because they’re dangerous by a family member who was literally abusing me lol.

There is harm that can be done by having unfettered internet access as a kid, but until the astronomically greater harm of kids having no rights in the face of parental dominion is addressed, I don’t think parents having more rights to control their children is a good idea

[eclipsecrowned]

30 for truthful tuesday. [looking at you autistically, microphone in hand] // @umbralined

Pupper wishes to get Kadi in trouble. Kadi will gladly get in trouble over this one.

There is a specific breed of mun, often belonging to a certain demographic but it happens regardless of income education race or gender, who think their muse is God's gift to the community. Whether you find them here on tumblr, in the badlands of forums, or among your discord experiences, it is inevitable that you will meet someone who just cannot handle what their muse actually is.

In their own head, usually because they are hella projecting onto the muse, this muse is the best thing since sliced bread. They are a near perfect copy of the mun -- let's use our former friend [REDACTED] as an example.

All her muses were able-bodied middle class east coast American women who came from military families and were proudly straight Americans whose brand of liberalism was just conservatism lite. And because that muse is so much like her -- and pick any of them, Beth, Elaine, Charlotte, even in fantasy she'd just adapt Veerle or Adamaris to be the super special white gurl foreigner -- this muse is perfect.

This muse does no wrong. Everything this muse does is cool, funny, badass. Everything this muse does is right, even in instances where the audience tries to call out obvious racism, homophobia, classism, unchecked mental illness. This is not a critique of the character's behavior/the biased writing, but of the creator herself, because the muse is a funhouse mirror of their player. Fuck you. She's going to write what she wants to write.

Except it stops being about just their muse. Suddenly, it's about you as a collaborator having a muse. Here's the role your muse has been pigeonholed into. Here's the script. Here's how in awe or cruel they are to her blessed muse. Here's what your muse is allowed to be -- remember when she'd veto my muses having disabilities or poc love interests as if that was her call?

It's no longer collaborative. It's the Beth/Elaine/Charlotte/Veerle/Elysande show, and we're just living in it. Our muses are there to talk about how cool she is, how women want to be her, how men want to make babies with her. And if you play a villain, the men obsess over her and the women want to torture her. No one can be objective about the character. Who could be objective about God's most perfect creation?

And it gets worse. The creator, totally unchecked and unable to be held in check moving forward without having an actual IRL mental breakdown, is further assured of her own skill. Her muse is perfect. The war crimes ensue, sometimes metaphorical and in [REDACTED]'s case actually for real in universe. The apologia of 'well if my muse did something bad they did it to someone worse,' except they as grown adults are unable to admit their character is capable of doing any wrong. If you are among other partners doing a plot, they refuse to be on the sidelines of it.

The relationship as collaborators and as friends becomes unsustainable because you are dealing with someone who refuses to be reasoned with, and will forever be the villain when they retell the story because you wanted a shared platform, not to be an accessory to a muse you can no longer stand.

I've been on this site since 2012 and I have seen many such muns high on their own muse's farts. Literally if you give me the most special and important heroic muse without an iota of nuance, whether Canon or OC, I'm checking out. I've seen canon serial killers be idealized as 'good people' due to possessing either the lifestyle their writer has or desires, and canon abusers be excused as 'well I mean, his wife is annoying.' I have seen OCs, many times, hold entire servers and communities hostage to their whims, whether as moderators or as simple members of a group. I can name 6 separate incidents across 12 years, and it always goes nuclear, scorched earth, kills communities and friend groups and servers. I refuse to play.

And again, fiction =/= reality, but the way people handle certain themes or concepts can say a lot about how they'll be as a collaborator --

[houseofbrat]

Congrats to the GOP.

People will not forget.

In a paper published on April 12th in jama Health Forum, a medical journal, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Boston University analysed data on permanent contraceptive procedures among 18- to 30-year-olds (see chart). They looked at 22m instances of patients attending at least one appointment, for either evaluation or treatment, in each month between January 2019 and September 2023. These were mostly at academic medical centres, so government-funded public clinics providing free family-planning services to poor people may not have been adequately represented. The results are nonetheless striking. The jama study found a sharp jump in permanent contraceptive procedures among both men and women in the months after the Dobbs decision. Before Dobbs, there were around 250 tubal ligations for every 100,000 women with health-care appointments per month. But immediately afterwards that number jumped by 58. In the following months, the growth rate accelerated from its baseline of 2.8 additional procedures per month in the three and a half years leading up to Dobbs to more than five. Men underwent fewer contraceptive procedures to begin with. Just before the Dobbs ruling, the study finds, there were around 50 vasectomies per 100,000 male outpatients per month. This rate had been steadily increasing by about one procedure per month. In the month right after Dobbs, however, it jumped by 27, before reverting to its previous growth rate. What to make of these numbers? Those who had already been planning to undergo the procedure may have expedited their decisions. Some may have also feared a broader crackdown on other forms of contraception. Groups advocating the right to abortion have warned that bans from the moment of conception could be interpreted to include the morning-after pill and intrauterine devices. That would suggest that permanent contraception, rather than a temporary method, is becoming more prevalent among young people. But that carries greater risks of so-called sterilisation regret. A global review of studies in 2005 found that women who had tubal ligations at 30 or younger were eight times more likely to undergo a reversal or an evaluation for in vitro fertilisation than those who had the procedure later in life. A more recent paper, in 2022, focusing on America, found that 13% of surveyed women who had their tubes tied at 30 or younger regretted their decision, compared with 7% of women who were over 30 at the time of the procedure. The decisions that Dobbs is forcing on young Americans may affect their lives in ways that were not widely anticipated.

[writingquestionsanswered]

how do you find people to crit. your work?

Finding People to Critique Your Work

If you want to get feedback on your writing, it's super helpful to get involved in some different writing communities:

-- follow other writers on social media and engage with them -- follow writing-related hashtags and engage with relevant posts -- find online writing forums that you can join -- find writing groups on Facebook that you can join -- participate in online or local writing workshops

Sit back and get a feel for the community, then start to engage in conversations. See who you connect with. Sometimes you can find feedback partners that way. You may also see others who are looking for critique partners or a feedback exchange. Or, once you have some followers and people are a bit familiar with you and what you write, you can put out a call for a critique partner or feedback exchange.

It may take a little bit of time, but once you get rooted in some communities, you'll usually find good options for critique/feedback partners. :)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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

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

[deviantartdramahub]

This internet troll experience of mine is one that is infamous terrible, you see this dates all the way back to when I had old Deviantart account and I went under the name Drmusic2–1 (or Drmusic2 as some trolls missppelled it as) and there was this one particular troll that just seemed a little too creepy for words, and how? I’ll tell you, he was morbidly obsessed with me.

Firstly he dedicated several forum threads to me even if there were already two of them prior to his arrival but one particular thread went on for far too long, like 206 pages long. If the admin hadn’t been an asshole then maybe, just maybe it would have just ended at one. But as it stands, rude admin screwed me over and bam…206 pages. Good lord, 10 or 30 pages was bad enough but 200 is overkill and if said thread wasn’t already dead it was slowly dying from the inside.

Weening, oh god…the countless weening from other people on this particular forum. Even from people who only one had experience with them and the only reason they thought so negatively of me was because their precious site told me i’m a lulcow and that i’m a freak who believes they are their own character. Yes, I had a character based on a dead comedian and I RPed as that character a lot prior to this but the thing is I realize know that I got carried away, and that my character isn’t real…they didn’t. They think that I thought it was real. One blog even made this whole stupid post about how I’m apparently some kind of serial killer who wants to wear the skin of said comedian. One problem with that, said comedian is DEAD. John Candy died in 1994, I only started discovering his movie back in the late 2000’s. Also that one post I did was a cosplay post, I was looking for help on my John Candy cosplay project. And yes I did cosplay as him once for halloween, but I do not actually think I am him or a character based on him.

Despite obviously being familiar with the concept of furries and fursonas, these weening loser types of his pretty much thought I was being serious. And also i’ll never forgive one of them for what they said about werecreatures and furries, they’re not the same thing at all.

This guy’s numerous creepy fetishes…well for one thing he just seemed to really love torture and gore although consider several of the other members mentioned themselves thinking that I was into ‘diapers’ and vore…which i’m not, even going so far as to make up a fetish called ‘soul vore’…uhhhh….I don’t even know if that’s even a thing. This guy wouldn’t stop going on and on about how he’d like to torture me, yep…he was into the whole sadism thing too.

All of his avatars were women despite he himself clearly being male, he loved pretending to be a woman for some reason and some people actually do think he was one. The only photos that he used that weren’t female were one that was a mugshot and the other was a photo of some guy drinking some kind of alcoholic beverages, he used as this as a means to coax information out of me and my friends. And no he wasn’t trans this was way before transgender became mainstream.

He targeted my friends and family. He acted like my family hated me, my late father definitelyl loved me (he passed away in 2018 by the way), and he acted like I was a bane to them and acted like my friends weren’t real. Online friends may not be the same as physical friends but they still count as friends.

Videos…specifically an awful Xtranormal video of apparently my Author Avatar (who apparently is a little girl or teenager) being sent to a group home by someone posing as a social worker. Yeah I did Xtranormal videos too, but I only published two of them. I have two Vyond videos but I had to delete one of them because well let’s just say someone didn’t like a two star review I did of a game I didn’t like.

The whole nearly hacking my accounts to pieces thing, he and two other members were part of this whole conspiracy to try and humiliate me by coaxing me into giving personal online information to them - and I was talked into having a Skype conversation with one of them. And he…eeeew, showed me what was supposedly his penis, but it wasn’t even the penis - it was the penis of some underaged male user that said underage user had posted five years ago…yes, apparently the user in question did that on purpose, it’s made even worse when in one huge post the user that used those admitted to stealing pictures from a porn site which he passed off as his own nudes. Oh and he really thought he could get me with the system32 thing…since when as that ever worked at all?

Digging up old blog entries of mine and my photobucket pages. Those blog entries of mine were experiment and in character and prior to the current blog I had, those were just a way to amuse myself and I have since lost the information for those ones. As for my photobucket page, that’s just where I post my movie screencaps and magazine clippings that I find, nothing wrong with it at all. Keep in mind that one of the earlier blogs of mine was deleted because of hackers and I couldn’t get back into the other ones because I didn’t have the login information anymore.

Bringing in people that just didn’t have any reason for hating on me except for trying to be weening types. They’d do anything that site tells them even if it mean killing themselves in the process.

The doll fetish porno page. Basically he took a photo of a toy I have and another one and made a bizarre yuri porno photoshoot out of it, two female dolls making out with each-other. Oh and what makes that even creepier is that said dolls are basically dolls of young girls, so it’s underage too. Yeah, there was another user who loved making erotic doll photography to the point of giving a doll of a male character breasts, so this guy decided to copy that and use two dolls made to look like young girls make out with each-other. Underrage yuri, yikes.

They act like I really liked being treated like this, I didn’t…I had already become so unimpressed with how they were trolling me because of all their routines were the same. Yeah I created a werecreature oc based on John Candy and I create werecreature OCs in general but that doesn’t mean I think they’re real or believe I am them. They just liked to think that I do just because it would make them seem sane by comparison, and they like to live in their little fantasy world where their beloved John Candy monster is real and where they can talk about me all they like, well…they can try and say my name all they want but I stopped calling them back ages ago. This number is no longer in service.

Let’s talk about this guy openly admitting along with a few others that he wanted to see me suffer, oh and he wanted me to get killed off or go insane as well. Yes, I know lying about my masturbation habit to another user was a bad move but hey I had to do something to get him to shut up. Besides, I don’t even masturbate at all…not even in private. Are you sure that this guy isn’t the one who should have been sent to a group home and not me?

[canmom]

l'aventure de canmom à annecy épisode DEUX - lundi 2 - cats and pigs

So this one's going to be a little chaotic in terms of order of events but hey. Let's gooo.

First up! I saw Flow, as mentioned earlier. Director Gints Zilbalodis from Latvia was the very first person to win the Contrechamp award at Annecy in 2019 for his solo-animated movie Away. Now he has a team, and they decided to make a totally wordless movie about a cat. Honestly I could leave it at that - this is a movie which you should watch unspoiled and just let it take you on a ride - but for a more detailed summary...

Our adorable little cat is living alone in the forest, surrounded by statues left by their former owner, when the world abruptly gets flooded, sending the cat on a journey to try to find higher ground and survive. The cat falls in with a group of other animals - over the course of the film, this group grows to include a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, a secretarybird and a dog. It's the story of the struggles of these animals as they try to navigate the rising water towards higher ground, dealing with both outside threats and conflict within the group. I won't tell you where they end up but things get a tad mystical.

The thing is this film is totally wordless. The animation has to do absolutely everything. And it does so with aplomb. This is hands down some of the best character animation I've ever seen in a CG movie. Every animal moves naturally and expressively, their relationships shown with humour and clear expression. I honestly don't know how they did it so well.

It's also gorgeous on a rendering level. I'm not entirely sold on the posterisation effect used on the animals, but their environments are so vivid and richly detailed, looking natural even as they enter stranger architectural zones. Under water, over water, in storms... it looks absolutely great. It makes me so happy that this was done in Blender, it's like, that's what we dreamed of back in the day on the blenderartists forums.

The film already got a Cannes nom, which is wild for animation, and honestly while I haven't seen the other features yet, this is gonna be a tough act to follow and I think it has a pretty good shot at winning. I have no insight into the mind of the annecy jurors though! Regardless, spectacular film, makes me really want to make shit in blender lol.

I got some photos of the team getting a standing ovation at the end but it's super late so I'll have to upload them later lol.

Later I saw the premiere of The Pig That Survived Foot and Mouth Disease, a new Korean film which makes a much better case for using mocap in an animated horror movie, also in the midnight specials slot. Impressively all the roles of around 30 characters were played by one mocap actor, which is wild. It's a classic Korean style of film - a spiral of death and trauma rooted in social violence, particularly military hazing and animal agriculture.

A pig, surviving the mass slaughter of pigs during the foot and mouth epidemic, eats the body of the farmer who raised him and transforms to become more human and becomes something of a cult leader for wild boars; a military deserter becomes a yeti-like creature but finds new hope when he rescues a girl from her suicide attempt, but is she even real?

It calls to mind films like King of Pigs and The Fake, and it's no less uncompromisingly bleak in its view of society - but by comparison to those films, it's shot very stylishly, with a cool nonphotorealistic shader and a frequently gorgeous forest setting. It's not as fancy as something like Flow, the models looking a little videogamey at times, but it's definitely solid - the rigs detailed enough to capture the acting. The style works very well for the film, and there's a couple of really standout stylised sequences, playing with religious iconography or dream sequences.

The film it reminded me most of is actually Unicorn Wars, another violent story of transformation and people going a bit nuts in the woods. But it also gets a bit Shakespearean with all the stabbings by the end.

Whatever you compare it to, it's a compelling drama, unblinkingly facing the cruelty of society. The two directions of escape - the human who wants to live like the animals, free from social cruelty, and the animal who wants to live as a human, free from the imminent threat of death, present a strong contrast and a good pincer movement on the theme of what it means to be human.

Sadly it didn't have nearly the turnout as WSDIB, but I did get to tell the director and mocap actor I liked the film - unfortunately I don't know enough Korean to really ask the questions I wanted to (though I learned they used Unreal for rendering) but the director did very kindly run over to his friend to give me a little postcard with some art.

I wish the crowd had been more enthusiastic tbh, this was a good movie!

I also watched a bunch of XR stuff today, and another WIP panel for Canadian film Death Does Not Exist which is looking real cool, more on that in a mo... and I met Malaysian director Suresh Eriyat in a comic book shop and bought his art book direct from him which he fully signed for me, bless him...

seriously how adorable is this?

[mllemaenad]

The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

It may just be a side effect of the new story format, but it strikes me how deliberately ... attention seeking, let's say, some of these supernatural events seem to be.

I don't mean all of them. I noted previously that Norris's stories, so far, have involved accessing quite private information – and without access to those accounts you wouldn't necessarily spot what was going on.

But Chester's first story in First Shift had something deliberately post a provocative, and apparently gory, image that had to be removed by the forum moderators:

Chester Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By RedCanary on Saturday April 30 2022 2:01am [Image removed by moderator] Canaries should stay above ground. Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By FlowersUnderground on Saturday April 30 2022 2:27am Gross! Can we get some mod action over here? Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By BadGrav31 on Saturday April 30 2022 3:11am What the hell is that? Are those eyes? Are you all right? Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By ArcherK on Saturday April 30 2022 7:33am RedCanary, you have been warned, our terms forbid posting explicit images including gore. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but you brought it on yourself. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

And the deleted posts in Personal Screening indicate that something took the time and trouble to remove any content that wasn't related to the horror story. It's not just that "Freddy" knows how to skip irrelevant details. Someone or something did away with the clutter.

And it is more noticeable still in the cases that are direct recordings, rather than read by the text-to-speech programs. I don't so much mean Daria from Making Adjustments, whose privacy is presumably being violated here, but I do mean the mysterious tattoo artist, Ink5oul, who made their mark while livestreaming, and apparently got increased fame and fortune out of it:

Daria Before I could reply they hit a button on their set-up and suddenly we were live streaming with lights in my eyes and their arm tight around my shoulders. I don’t remember much of what they said to their viewers, but they kept telling everyone how lucky I was whilst they dragged me into the chair. – The Magnus Protocol: Making Adjustments

And here we have Needles. And the thing about Needles is that he deliberately calls the police to demand that they be scared of him. And the thread of humour running through the story is that everybody (barring, presumably, the poor bastard who got "cuddled") needs a bit of convincing that needles are, in fact, scary. Needles can feed on the fear of others, sure – but he's got to work for it.

Needles Call it dessert. But you’re not afraid are you? Unsettled, off-balance but nothing more. Why is that? Police Operator I guess I’m just not scared of needles. Needles (irritated) Not sca- This isn’t some poxy blood test, some little pinprick, this is hundreds, thousands of razor sharp points pushing into your flesh. We’re talking about the embrace of an iron maiden, an excruciating agony formed from a thousand tiny hurts. – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

It's interesting how deeply entitled he feels to the operator's terror ... but I have to imagine he's aiming high. If there's any group of people, in any reality, who are used to hearing horrifying things on the phone and just dealing with them, it has to be emergency service operators. Needles wants to be feared by the fearless. Surely he doesn't need to? He could presumably wander down an alley and find another isolated person to stab. But he chooses to make himself known.

I don't mean to say that no one in The Magnus Archives ever posted weird shit on the internet. Obviously they did. But there is a difference between a program that disappears after being downloaded once, or a forum that ostensibly never received any visitors, and these fairly direct demands to be noticed.

There are occasional more public instances of supernatural occurrences in The Magnus Archives, but, well in the case of a ritual the participants believed they were about to remake the world in the image of their god – so discretion was pretty much off the table. And in those cases, they were nevertheless isolating a bunch of people. Just ... significantly more than the norm.

In most cases, the incidents were private or isolated. The entities needed a victim to be isolated in order to get hold of them. Finding other people – or sometimes even merely thinking of other people – could save someone from their grasp. Yes, there were cases where the isolation could be emotional rather than physical, but the whole process relied quite heavily on most people not seeing or acknowledging the monsters.

It was the core struggle of the characters working in the archives: even if you believed the stories, even if you accepted that if it would only record on the tape recorder it was definitely real, there was still very little you could do about it. You can't easily follow up on something that happened behind a closed door with no witnesses or physical evidence. There were few opportunities to actually deal with the things that lurked in the shadows.

But here it does feel like something wants to be seen.

And that leads to the other side of the story: the people doing the listening. We're reminded again that these people are all working a night shift, and Sam in particular is suffering for it.

It's not clear why this is a night shift. I'm aware there are multiple possible reasons this could be so, but my assumption so far has been that they are the remnants of an additional emergency service. After all, one term for a person who arrives to deal with a crisis is a "first responder" – and Sam is apparently in the middle of applying to the supposedly defunct Response Department.

The fact that they seem to have mislaid a whole department certainly suggests the OIAR has seen better days, and it's highlighted that the building feels like it should have more people:

Celia Sure, no worries. I’ll be honest, I thought there’d be more people working here given the size of the building? Sam Yeah, no we’re, uh… Alice Streamlined? – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

If, for whatever reason, you found yourself working with a reduced budget, you might have to choose which shifts remained active. And well, things do traditionally go bump in the night ...

There's also a really clear parallel drawn between the determinedly phlegmatic police operator and Alice, the almost 10 year (!) veteran, who has heard it all before:

Alice Well who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll kill again. What was it? Sam Like … A guy made of needles I think. Alice Needles? Is that scary? I’ve been working here so long I can’t tell anymore. Gwen Maybe if you’re scared of needles? Sam To be fair, he did sound kind of … sensitive about that. Alice Huh. – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

Even Gwen takes some time out of her work to be moderately dubious about the potential scariness of needles. The only significant difference between these people and the operators on the call is that, at the moment, they don't really do anything with what they hear. Which goes back to that Response Department again.

None of that means the OIAR isn't necessarily up to something nefarious, of course. The Magnus Institute also had a moderately respectable public face, at least in the universe in which The Magnus Archives was set.

The OIAR has some association with a mercenary company called "Starkwall", after all. And that both suggests that, at least at one point, they had the ability to respond to what they heard with some force – and that their activities were incredibly dodgy.

Then, of course, there's Celia. Needles introduces himself three times in the story: speaking to three operators, and a fourth, beyond that, to Sam, who hears his story. It seems reasonable to suppose that he will recur at some point in the future. And Celia introduces herself right after that. So presumably she's staying too, at least for a while.

Celia, of course, was a character from The Magnus Archives. And, so Google tells me, both characters share a voice actress. I am going to assume that's plot relevant, because it's an odd and distracting choice if not.

The interesting thing about Celia, of course, is that that is not her name. Or, no, to be clear, Celia is the name she chose for herself after forgetting her original one.

Martin [Puzzled] Celia? Celia Probably. The, um… place I was trapped in, they took my name. I never got it back. But I like Celia, so… yeah! Celia it is. – The Magnus Archives: Scavengers

Her name prior to that was Lynne Hammond. Reasonably, you might expect an alternate version of the character to go by Lynne. You can come up with reasons for her to have still chosen to change her name, sure, but that seems unnecessarily convoluted.

But if it is the Celia from The Magnus Archives, it raises interesting questions about how she got here. She's not a voice on a machine – she's apparently a whole, functioning person.

There's no way to know where she was, at the end, as she was carried off by monsters. Proximity seems an unlikely factor. You'd have to assume that, of all outsiders, Rosie was closest to the fire, because she had only a limited amount of time to make a run for it – and she's confirmed alive, well and cat-sitting The Admiral.

Celia might have come through, accidentally or intentionally, on her own, of course, by poking around Hill Top Road, because apparently that's a thing – although if this is indeed a multiverse, you'd still have to ask how she ended up in this one. Or is she here because she was taken by the "servants of the Eye"? And if so, might the other "cultists", both the ones we know and the lost ones from Georgie and Melanie's previous rescue attempt, be here too?

Amusingly, Celia's surname seems to be Ripley. And that might mean nothing at all. Several characters in The Magnus Archives were named after famous horror writers, so if you recognised somebody's surname it mostly meant they were probably going to be a major character. In a new universe, people might tend to be named after famous horror characters.

So it's really only interesting if you assume that Celia, needing a surname to go with her new first name, chose it for herself.

Ripley is the one who knows about the monsters. She's a survivor of multiple interactions with hostile alien life – and okay, there was the time she didn't survive, but even then she did. She's the sensible one, to whom nobody listens when they should. She's an employee of a company that repeatedly and explicitly prioritises its ability to profit from a terrifying space monster over the lives of its workers. She's constantly out of place in both space and time, with no way to get back to her old life. And, interestingly, she has a complicated relationship with AI – dealing first with Ash, the android company plant who turned on his coworkers in pursuit of the alien-as profit, and later Bishop, her eventual ally in protecting the child Newt from the monsters.

You can see how, under the circumstances, Ripley might be a good role model for Celia. She doesn't scare so easily either.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 30, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 31, 2023

One day short of his first 100 days in the White House, on April 28, 2021, President Joe Biden spoke to a joint session of Congress, where he outlined an ambitious vision for the nation. In a time of rising autocrats who believed democracy was failing, he asked, could the United States demonstrate that democracy is still vital?

“Can our democracy deliver on its promise that all of us, created equal in the image of God, have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect, and possibility? Can our democracy deliver…to the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate, and fears that have pulled us apart?”

America’s adversaries were betting that the U.S. was so full of anger and division that it could not. “But they are wrong,” Biden said. “You know it; I know it. But we have to prove them wrong.”

“We have to prove democracy still works—that our government still works and we can deliver for our people.”

In that speech, Biden outlined a plan to begin investing in the nation again as well as to rebuild the country’s neglected infrastructure. “Throughout our history,” he noted, “public investment and infrastructure has literally transformed America—our attitudes, as well as our opportunities.” 

In the first two years of his administration, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, lawmakers set out to do what Biden asked. They passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to help restart the nation’s economy after the pandemic-induced crash; the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (better known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) to repair roads, bridges, and waterlines, extend broadband, and build infrastructure for electric vehicles; the roughly $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act to promote scientific research and manufacturing of semiconductors; and the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to curb inflation by lowering prescription drug prices, promoting domestic renewable energy production, and investing in measures to combat climate change.

This was a dramatic shift from the previous 40 years of U.S. policy, when lawmakers maintained that slashing the government would stimulate economic growth, and pundits widely predicted that the Democrats’ policies would create a recession. 

But in 2023, with the results of the investment in the United States falling into place, it is clear that those policies justified Biden’s faith in them. The U.S. economy is stronger than that of any other country in the Group of Seven (G7)—a political and economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, along with the European Union—with higher growth and faster drops in inflation than any other G7 country over the past three years. 

Heather Long of the Washington Post said yesterday there was only one word for the U.S. economy in 2023, and that word is “miracle.” 

Rather than cooling over the course of the year, growth accelerated to an astonishing 4.9% annualized rate in the third quarter of the year while inflation cooled from 6.4% to 3.1% and the economy added more than 2.5 million jobs. The S&P 500, which is a stock market index of 500 of the largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, ended this year up 24%. The Nasdaq composite index, which focuses on technology stocks, gained more than 40%. Noah Berlatsky, writing for Public Notice yesterday, pointed out that new businesses are starting up at a near-record pace, and that holiday sales this year were up 3.1%. 

Unemployment has remained below 4% for 22 months in a row for the first time since the late 1960s. That low unemployment has enabled labor to make significant gains, with unionized workers in the automobile industry, UPS, Hollywood, railroads, and service industries winning higher wages and other benefits. Real wages have risen faster than inflation, especially for those at the bottom of the economy, whose wages have risen by 4.5% after inflation between 2020 and 2023. 

Meanwhile, perhaps as a reflection of better economic conditions in the wake of the pandemic, the nation has had a record drop in homicides and other categories of violent crime. The only crime that has risen in 2023 is vehicle theft.  

While Biden has focused on making the economy deliver for ordinary Americans, Vice President Kamala Harris has emphasized protecting the right of all Americans to be treated equally before the law. 

In April 2023, when the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature expelled two young Black legislators, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, for participating in a call for gun safety legislation after a mass shooting at a school in Nashville, Harris traveled to Nashville’s historically Black Fisk University to support them and their cause. 

In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion, Harris became the administration’s most vocal advocate for abortion rights. “How dare they?” she demanded. “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?... How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?” She brought together civil rights leaders and reproductive rights advocates to work together to defend Americans’ civil and human rights. 

In fall 2023, Harris traveled around the nation’s colleges to urge students to unite behind issues that disproportionately affect younger Americans: “reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety laws, climate action, voting rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and teaching America’s full history.” 

“Opening doors of opportunity, guaranteeing some more fairness and justice—that’s the essence of America,” Biden said when he spoke to Congress in April 2021. “That’s democracy in action.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[coochiequeens]

Maybe now that the people with the money to buy babies are being scammed even IVF proponents will admit that there needs to be regulations in the Buy a Baby Business

Dominique Side, the owner of Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, poses in 2023 at Vegan Fashion Week in Los Angeles.

(Gilbert Flores / WWD via Getty Images)

By Matt Hamilton Staff Writer June 30, 2024 

They scrimped, and they saved. Some asked family and friends to pitch in. Others took out loans for tens of thousands of dollars.

Their goal was twofold: To raise the small fortune necessary to pay for a surrogate mother. And to realize a dream previously impossible — having a child of their own.

Hundreds of people across California, the U.S. and around the globe put their money, sometimes $50,000 or more, into the hands of a Texas-based escrow company so the funds could be held in trust and doled out to a surrogate for healthcare costs, insurance and compensation.

But this month, expectant parents and their surrogates learned the money they had set aside at Houston-based Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, or SEAM, is inaccessible and likely gone.

“We want answers,” said Chris Kettmann of Fair Oaks, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. “Is there recourse to get the money back? If not, what can we do?”

Chris Kettmann and his wife with their ultrasound in an undated photo. (Chris Kettmann)

Kettmann, 33, said he and his wife had about $45,000 in their escrow account, money owed to their surrogate mother, who is pregnant with their baby boy and due in October. “We don’t know enough to say what happened,” he said. “We just know there’s something crazy going on.”

Police in Houston have opened a wide-reaching investigation. Christina Garza, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Houston field office, confirmed last week that the agency also is investigating SEAM. The FBI has developed a public portal for SEAM clients to report their account information and how much money they believe they are owed. Garza, however, cautioned that the inquiry was in its early stages and said, “We’re trying to compile as much information as possible.”

A married same-sex couple in Washington, D.C., says they are out $55,000. A Los Feliz couple said they demanded their $40,111 be returned and believe it is gone. Arielle Mitton, an L.A. native who recently moved to Bellingham, Wash., can recite the amount that she and her husband are missing down to the cent: $37,721.44.

“I assumed naively that an escrow account was a safe thing,” said Mitton, whose surrogate mother in Indiana is pregnant with their daughter and is due to deliver on Christmas Eve.

Mitton has joined hundreds of affected parents and surrogates in a private Facebook group that has become a forum for venting, grieving, exchanging information and trying to answer the overriding questions: What happened here? And where did all their money go?

Scrutiny has centered on the sole owner of SEAM, Dominique Side, who has told customers that she had once been a surrogate. The 44-year-old billed herself as an entrepreneur of multimillion dollar businesses in the Houston area, including a vegan grocery store, a nonprofit school, a vegan music studio, and the surrogacy escrow outfit. She walked the red carpet in L.A. for vegan fashion events and ran a concierge service for those seeking a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

“One common thread runs through all my businesses: each is based firmly on a foundation of compassion — for others, for myself and for the planet,” she told a Houston publication in 2022.

Side did not respond to calls or written questions. Emails to Side triggered an auto-response that doubled as a press statement. Citing the “active investigation by federal authorities,” Side wrote in the email, “Under the advice of counsel, I am not permitted to respond to any inquiries regarding the investigation.”

On Thursday, Side and SEAM were hit by a lawsuit from a merchant cash-advance lender, the third such lawsuit this year. Merchant cash advance lenders provide small businesses with quick infusions of money at high fees akin to interest rates of 50% to 100%.

A judge in Texas also froze all of the company’s accounts along with Side’s other businesses after a SEAM client, Marieke Slik, sued over her “vanished” $28,000.

Calling herself a “victim of a scam,” Slik alleged that Side and her company had lured her and others “into a fiduciary relationship in order to steal their escrow funds,” according to her lawsuit, which was filed in Texas. “The Defendants have left hundreds of surrogates throughout the country — who are pregnant with a child that does not belong to them — with no way to pay for necessary prenatal care.”

Sides’ actions, according to the lawsuit, “are nothing short of evil.”

Struggling parents

Many surrogacies often involve LGBTQ+ couples who want children, or older couples for whom childbearing is no longer a viable possibility.

For others, the road to surrogacy is one of heartbreak and tragedy.

The married woman in Los Feliz said she had had multiple miscarriages. She was recently pregnant but gave birth in the second trimester. The newborn died at Cedars-Sinai in his parents’ arms.

The couple turned to surrogacy after exhausting all other options. They selected a surrogate mother, completed the necessary contract — which often requires using an escrow firm — and put more than $40,000 into the account, a portion of the overall cost. But their embryo had yet to be transferred into the surrogate mother.

“Nothing is clear,” she said, explaining that she and her husband demanded their funds weeks ago. “Obviously that fell on deaf ears — we didn’t get our money back,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because their extended family remains unaware of their attempt at using a surrogate.

“I’d love to carry this child,” she said, and “not spend any money on a surrogate. There’s a level of that, where you feel so terribly sad. You feel sad about the money, but you feel sad about the situation.”

‘Something really bad has happened’

For intended parents and surrogates, trouble emerged around late May, when surrogates did not receive their usual payments.

Arielle Mitton gives surrogate mother Tena Doan’s belly a kiss. Doan is carrying Mitton’s baby.  (Arielle Mitton)

In early June, Tena Doan — a 42-year-old surrogate mother in Indiana — said she noticed her bank account balance was lower than expected and realized her monthly payment and allowance had not come through. Her surrogacy agency told her that banking issues at SEAM had delayed the arrival of the money.

“I said, ‘No problem, they’ll get it fixed,’” Doan recalled, figuring that banking issues happen. When she logged into SEAM’s portal, she saw that the money listed as due her was still there.

Then came a June 12 email from Side claiming that fraudulent charges had prompted Capitol One to freeze SEAM’s account.

“Some payments were able to go through before the accounts were frozen,” Side wrote in the email. She stated that new bank accounts were established and promised service would be restored.

Two days later, however, Side sent another email indicating that “all operations have been placed on hold” due to legal action.

Doan said that the email stopped her in her tracks.

“That’s when we were like, ‘Oh s—, this is not good. Something really bad has happened,’” Doan recalled. “From there, it’s been a whirlwind.”

Mitton — the mother of the child that Doan is carrying — was at home more than 2,000 miles west.

“The first few days, I barely slept, I was nauseous from all the emotional aspects and had vertigo,” Mitton remembered.

She contacted the FBI, Houston police, the Texas attorney general. Mitton even emailed the CEO of Capital One, questioning how the money could apparently vanish.

Tena Doan, left, and Arielle Mitton. (Arielle Mitton)

Both Doan and Mitton joined the Facebook group and realized they were part of a club they never wanted membership in: those affected by SEAM’s financial collapse.

An informal poll among members suggested that about $10 million was unaccounted for. Parents and surrogates from across the country and around the world have traded information in the Facebook group about current police investigations and become sleuths themselves.

They’ve pored over Side’s various businesses — the Vgn Bae Music Studio, and Nikki Green, a luxury vegan fashion line. They’ve also mined her social media accounts.

A recent post on Side’s Instagram page VgnBaeDom, which has since been deleted, recounted her birthday week in June: Side said she flew to L.A., enjoyed a vegan dinner at the upscale Culver City vegan restaurant Shojin, dined at Crossroads Kitchen and Craig’s — both frequent celebrity hotspots — enjoyed a “full day of spa and cabana” at the Four Seasons, before doing fittings at Celine, the luxury French fashion house.

“The week this was going down was also her birthday week,” said Mitton, who recalled thinking, “She’s probably spending our escrow money there.”

Signs of financial difficulty SEAM was first registered in Texas in 2014. Testimonials from 2017 onward show glowing reviews, and one parent told The Times he had used SEAM for their first child without issue.

Lawsuits from cash advance lenders filed against SEAM and Side in New York this year indicate mounting financial trouble in recent months.

So-called merchant cash-advance lenders send sums of money to distressed businesses, often with a rapid turnaround, and, in exchange, a business lets the lender withdraw a portion of future receipts directly from the business’ bank account to pay off the debt. Cash-advance lenders often insist they aren’t lenders and that cash advances against future revenue aren’t technically loans — but New York’s former attorney general had lambasted the industry for predatory debt-collection practices.

In January, Side received an unspecified sum from Pearl Delta Funding and agreed to pay back $69,500. But she defaulted the next month, prompting the lender to sue her in New York in March. (Pearl Delta’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment.)

On May 6, Side secured $650,000 from Dynasty Capital and agreed to pay $975,000, or 150% of the amount borrowed, according to court records.

Under the agreement, the lender was allowed to debit $12,500 per day from SEAM’s account until the full amount was paid back. On May 31, Dynasty Capital said in court papers, SEAM “breached the agreement” and either failed to put revenue into the business account or diverted it elsewhere, leaving Dynasty unable to recoup its money.

Dynasty Capital sued Side, SEAM and her various businesses on June 18. Dynasty’s lawyer declined to comment.

On May 29, Side obtained $100,000 from Arsenal Funding and agreed to allow Arsenal to deduct 1.25% of SEAM’s daily revenue from its business bank account until $149,000 was paid off.

Arsenal sued Side and SEAM last week after Side stopped making payments on June 21 and defaulted, according to the lawsuit filed in New York, which demands about $190,000 to cover the outstanding debt and fees.

To secure the loan from Arsenal, Side had to disclose her largest revenue sources. She listed three companies, all in Southern California: US Harvest Babies Surrogacy in the City of Industry; Mle & Mlang International Surrogacy in L.A.; and a Shady Grove Fertility office in Solana Beach.

But there is reason to doubt the accuracy of what Side told the lender. In a statement, Shady Grove said it had no financial relationship with Side or SEAM and did not refer patients to the company, explaining that “some patients may have independently engaged with SEAM.”

Further, the name that Side had listed as her contact has never been an employee of Shady Grove, according to a person familiar with the company’s operations. And the address she listed for Shady Grove is a small branch in the San Diego area that’s been open for only a few months; Shady Grove is headquartered in Maryland and has 49 locations nationwide.

Neither Harvest Babies or Mlan responded to requests for comment.

Side told Arsenal that she was the 100% owner of SEAM and projected an average monthly revenue of $2.78 million, according to a copy of the financial agreement that Arsenal included with its lawsuit.

Lori Hood, a Houston-based attorney who is representing Slik — the client who sued Side this month in Texas — said she was confounded by SEAM’s financial practices. She said the lawsuit from Dynasty Capital indicated that escrow money was used to secure the $650,000 cash payment.

“How do you put up escrow funds as collateral?” said Hood. “That’s my first indication that something’s desperately wrong. You don’t recognize escrow funds as revenue.”

Second, Hood said, SEAM’s tax records that she’s reviewed also showed revenue of “millions of dollars.”

“Did her company make millions of dollars, or is she putting into the tax returns that the escrow money was her revenue?” Hood asked.

To press their client’s lawsuit against SEAM, Hood and her law partner, Marianne Robak, petitioned a judge to freeze all of SEAM’s accounts at Capital One along with other accounts owned or controlled by Side.

“The evidence shows that SEAM’s escrow account with Capital One ... has no funds available,” notes the request for a restraining order to freeze all accounts. “SEAM is insolvent.”

In the filing, Hood also accused SEAM of diverting money into accounts in the name of Life Escrow LLC, a company registered last year to Side’s business partner, Anthony Hall, who is also a defendant in the suit filed by Slik.

Side’s “actions appear to be to avoid having to face the clients she defrauded. It appears she had absconded,” states the restraining order, which a Harris County, Texas, judge signed off on June 21.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Hall said he “had no connection with SEAM,” adding, “I wish I had answers.” Hall said he was a business partner of Side in the vegan music studio, Vgn Bae Studios, adding, “Everything was great until it wasn’t.”

Hall said he did not know if Side had an attorney and said that he was speaking only for himself.

“She’s not gonna respond,” he said of Side. “I’m defending myself. I don’t know what they have going on.”

Pregnancies don’t wait

For Hood and hundreds of surrogate mothers and parents, questions mount.

“I won’t cast blame on any of the parents. They did everything they were supposed to do,” Hood said.

Time is short, however, for ongoing pregnancies and those couples who hope to have a surrogate receive an embryo soon.

Kettmann, from the Sacramento area, said their surrogate mother is 22 weeks pregnant. Of the $57,000 they put into SEAM, he said, $45,000 is missing. The rest had already been distributed to the surrogate.

“It’s a scramble,” he said. He and his wife had some money saved for additional expenses, which they’ve used to cover the June payment that never arrived from SEAM. He’s now fundraising from family and friends.

“We told her we’ll do everything we can to keep her up to date on payments,” he said, “but [we’re] asking her to be patient.”

Mitton and her surrogate mother, Doan, have started collecting donations through GoFundMe and plan to extend the payment terms two years, rather than having all the money sent to Doan shortly after delivery.

“I’m growing a healthy baby girl for them,” Doan said, “and that’s all that matters.”