#publishing thoughts

[inkcurlsandknives]

The next man to derisively refer to Romantasy as "fairy smut" is gonna have me tearing their throat out with my teeth. Just heard a dripping with condescension NPR bit on Romantasy being the most popular fiction genre. NPR is failing me as my calm car listening station 😔

What an exhausting way to live. Just let people like entertainment, be happy people are reading longform media, enjoy the fact that the fantasy target audience is growing and gaining new readers!

Traditional hero's journey fantasy and SFF in general has been a near impossible to break into oversaturated market with an audience that mostly started reading SFF under the age of 15. This has been the case for years, despite the massive popularity of SFF TV shows and movies, it just wasn't translating into people becoming SFF readers if they weren't already. That means by and large authors were not attracting new adult readers only readers who'd already been reading SFF. As literacy and reading rates among kids plummets that's CONCERNING

The move towards romantasy and cozy fantasy in books has opened up the market, and demand for new and diverse stories. We're getting readers who've never touched SFF before! That's excellent news!

[piesafterdark]

I hope riot drops arcane 2, the longer, not cut version of arcane. All deleted scenes, the originals of shortened scenes, extra episodes if need be. It's such an incredible world and it sucks they had to cut things down, especially since this may be the last we ever see of these characters.

[qcomicsy]

I think a thing that people get wrong about Jason's anger is that it's not explosive.

It's cold. Jason isn't the type of person who storms off at every little thing or goes throwing tantrums and setting things on fire blindfully.

He's the type of person who's very practical. He keeps to himself, always. You rarely see issues where Jason's anger is reactive at the moment where the trigger happens to him. If you see his character up close, most of the time when he's triggered his reaction is calm. Even cold.

He gets triggered -> He keeps to himself → He makes a plan → And then he reacts.

Jason's anger being something explosive and out of character and out of place is actually how other people (characters) see it, because they have no idea on how it's playing out on Jason's head.

And that's a thing you can see operating since he was a child.

Where the only exceptions about this effect is either when someone he believes needs his help is involved.

See Nightwing Annual (2021)

But In Batman #411 when Jason learns the fact that Two-Face was responsible for his father's death and Bruce was keeping that from him as a secret his first reaction isn't to blow up on him.

Was to seethe.

Bruce goes up home after dealing with a Two-Face case (in my field we call that poetic irony) and asks Alfred where Jason is, Alfred's answer is that he's been sleeping all day (which is a conclusion that Alfred drew probably after going to check on Jason and seeing him in fact on his bed all day).

But when you see the next panel, even though he is on the bed, He's fully awake and both his expression and his body language shows that he's in fact angry.

This is the first time he appears again in the comics after learning that Two Face killed his dad.

Jason doesn't go towards Bruce immediately to demand an explanation or ask why he did this, or even to throw the truth on his face.

(Which could be debatable that that's something the Dick would usually do, but I'm not that literate on Dick's comics)

His reaction wasn't immediate.

His reaction was to go to his bed and stay quiet. Jason stayed calm and collected the whole trip until meeting Two Face again.

But the moment Jason as Robin has the opportunity to get his hands on Two-Face he does this

From Bruce, and maybe Alfred's perspective it could be interpreted as out of place or him storming off.

But it isn't. Jason was able to keep his cool (even though he shut off), until he was face a face to Two Face.

Does that mean he planned that to happen?

That's debatable, in any moment of this issue it is shown that Jason was actually planning to get to Two Face and do this. I my personal opinion, other and much more plausible explanation is: That he was in fact trying to keep to himself but couldn't hold back the moment that he saw his dad's murder.

You can see the same thing happening as Jason learns that Batman got another Robin in Red Hood: Lost Days.

Talia asks "You all right?" and Jason's first answer is "Sure Why Wouldn't I Be Alright?"

When he's alone he finally has the moment to break down.

(Actually both Red Hood: The lost days and Batman: Under the Red Hood are great case studies on how that usually play out on Jason's head.)

Jason is way more in control of his emotions than people ever give him credit for. The thing is that Jason holds it back until he either blows off or is capable to throw it back in someone's face.

[beccawise7]

The aftermath of craving & desire is almost always the most beautiful moment.

Your body spent. Your mind empty of worries, only focused on her breath against your skin.

Still connected as you relax into her arms. Her fingers soothing you after you completely owned every part of her.

Beautiful. Intimate. Priceless.

~beccawise7💜🖤

[frm9pm]

They’re aurors but every month(or week?) they have to submit a list of possible new spells/hexes to the ministry. This is meant to keep aurors sharp and adaptable with as many tools in their arsenal. And if you ask why there’s not a dedicated department for spell discovery, it’s because someone said that only an auror on the field would know what’s needed on the job.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Oh hey, I can just make my own post:

There is such a disconnect between the humanities being perceived as women's subjects (ones girls get into way more than boys) by the general public and the experience of academia as a woman where male scholars are still given a lot of credence and occupy quite a few prestigious positions.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[that-butch-archivist]

source: That's Ms. Bulldyke to You, Charlie! by Jane Caminos

[love-in-my-twenties]

Habits that changed my life for the better

I stopped joking about myself. It was mostly about suicide jokes (it was a decision that I made after the worst moment of my journey with depression, if I can call it that), but, really, it's about all self-deprecating stuff. It may be just jokes, but it stays in your brain.

Positive attitude. It's similar to manifestation, in a way, but in a... down to earth way, I guess. Thinking positively about stuff changes everything for me. Almost everything is simpler.

I deleted Twitter. It may be a different social media for everyone, of course - now probably TikTok for most - but, well, Twitter was where I spent long hours everyday. I started taking breaks from it about a year and a half ago and deleted it in August. It was hard - I loved the community there and I miss the daily updates from my fav fandoms, but it's for the best. I still can't explain how Twitter affected me but I do feel better since I stopped spending so much time there.

Taking vitamins. I didn't think it would really make a difference but it definitely did. The biggest surprise for me was vitamin C - my immune system has improved super quickly when I started supplementing it. I didn't even realise how bad it was before. Other than that, I take B complex, A+E (hair, skin), and iron (i tend to have a deficiency of it). (& D when it's winter).

Having a consistent skin care routine. It's calming and both doing the routine and seeing the effects make me feel better. (I do realise that many people have more demanding skin than me and searching for the right products can be frustrating and expensive. I'm just talking about my experience).

Other things that I think are worth mentioning:

Therapy - just a short explanation that I've been on therapy (with breaks) for about 6 years now. I've had social anxiety for most of my life, now still struggle with depression (and amnesia, actually) a bit, but what I wanted to mention here is that I learned a lot from it. It's obvious, but I just think it's important to pinpoint that I did not just learn how to think more positively and love myself by myself.

Exercising! - I still struggle to make it a habit, but when I actually do exercise regularly (I do pilates), I really feel better. It's worth it.

Hydration - same with drinking water. I really don't think I have to explain it in any way lol.

[fluentisonus]

wait can I just complain for a second bc this is kind of pissing me off a little but the only available editions you can find online of jj grandville's les metamorphoses du jour (1829) are 1850s and 1860s editions, which afaict are Not the original lithographs but rather engraving reproductions of them (which is touched on briefly here). which I had assumed just meant it would be a slightly different quality or have other slight differences, which would only be mildly frustrating to me except for the fact that I've been comparing the versions in this 1854 edition of the book on gallica with what (as far as I know) are original lithograph prints here in the british museum collections because some of the ones in the gallica edition were striking me as like Noticably not 1820s-30s in vibe and. they seem to have been straight up 'modernizing' the clothing in these 1850s reproductions??

(first version (1829) vs later version (1854))

hi hello what happened to the entire shape of her dress & sleeves??? and to his fall front & trouser straps??

(first version / later version)

this is literally a different dress?

😐.

this wouldn't annoy me so much (and in fact I would actually enjoy comparing & find it really interesting) except for the fact that as far as I've been able to tell there's no place (online at least) where you can see all of the original illustrations -- the british museum only has a few, & same with other places -- so some/most of these images seem to only exist (digitally I mean) in their 'updated' 1850s versions. and in fact some sites list the later version as being the the 1829 versions! I just want to see 1829 clothing is that too much to ask

[beccawise7]

A woman who feels safe & secure in your physical, mental, spiritual & emotional presence will open herself fully to you.

Her mind, body & soul... Yearning to be explored in ways she's craved, yet never known.

Your touch & confidence in leading her.

Your Hands against her skin. Firm but gentle.

Your eyes admiring her beauty. The way your voice leads & encourages her as she comes undone for you.

Perfection.

Rare but exquisite when witnessed.

~beccawise7💜🖤

[haggishlyhagging]

Sexual Politics is out of print. The Dialectic of Sex is out of print. What women have to do is come to terms with the fact that we live in a society that simply censors better than state censorship. People have got to come to terms with the power of the publishing industry and the media in controlling thought and expression. They have to understand that it is an issue of power and money and people have to be less passive in relation to books. People have to take their money which they don't have much of and they have to buy books by feminist writers. They have to develop a much more sophisticated understanding of how the book industry works. A hard-cover book like Letters from a War Zone was virtually published dead. If it's still in bookstores in two months it will be a miracle. They have to understand that everything that they hear all the time about how everything can be published in this country is a lie and that part of the social function of the publishing industry is to buy up the rights to and then obliterate certain books so that nobody can get them. They have to stop thinking that they live in the liberal dreamworld of equality where fairness has already been achieved. It hasn't been achieved. You can be equal in your heart but it doesn't make you equal in the world. I think that the refusal to understand what happens to books by women goes along with this liberal refusal to acknowledge that power is a reality and we're not the ones who have it. What I'm saying is that women have got to start facing reality. You cannot build any kind of movement for change on wishful thinking. The wishful thinking is that we already have what it is we want and what it is we need. We don't have it. Women who want to write and communicate, which in a big country is hard to do—it's getting harder for them, not easier. There isn't more access, there is less access. People have got to take the economics of the publishing industry seriously and understand that very few writers will survive who do not write according to the demands of the marketplace, by which I mean essentially the demands of turning out books that you can consume as passively as a television show. That's sort of the standard.

-Andrea Dworkin, “Dworkin on Dworkin” in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe Jane Austen's real genius was that, unlike other authors at the time, she didn't have long sections where characters share their backstory. Or rather, when she did it, she set it up like a mystery so we'd want to know the backstory.

Instead of having a character be like, "Here's three chapters about my life," soon after showing up in the novel, she'd sprinkle little clues through the story that make us wonder, "What's Colonel Brandon's deal?" and then closer to the end of the story, Colonel Brandon would tell us what his deal was. We'd wonder "Why does Mr. Darcy do all those horrible things?" and then he'd give an explanation that includes a lot of backstory.

And these infodumps always come in response to significant moments of the story. She'd engage our minds and our emotions and then give us the infodump at a point when we care about the information it contains. Compared to some other authors (even some that came long after) it seems like a significant innovation.

[notbecauseofvictories]

it takes years for terry pratchett's books to get consistently good. I would argue that the series doesn't really hit its stride until Feet of Clay, which means that pratchett was writing and being published for 12 years before he found his groove.

and I genuinely can't imagine that. in part because I do think that pratchett's publication calendar looks different than what's expected of writers today---he had about 2 books published per year for his entire career. he must have been writing furiously, and the publisher must have relatively quickly gotten these to press.

but also....I just can't imagine any modern-day publisher keeping an author on their list for twelve years, unless that author is a prestige get or a constant presence on the bestseller list. And what does it say about the state of publishing that you can't go on publishing someone's good-but-not-revelatory books until they figure out what story they're trying to tell?

[betterthanbatman1]

What if I’m crying in the club what then?

[a-stars-art-blog]

Finished the wips from yesterday