A Work of Fiction

Fancy a last-minute audition for a (very small) part in my Law of Names anthology “This Address Does Not Exist” historical fiction episode, “A Function of Power”? Do you know someone else who would?

Read on!

We are seeking an actor of Black heritage who can comfortably perform a West Country British accent for a role where the character uses she/her pronouns. Passion project, so sadly unpaid.

If you're interested (or know someone who would be), the details are here, and the deadline is 4-Apr-26 (yes, this coming Saturday!).

Since Duck Prints Press was founded in January 2021, we have published over 200 stand-alone short stories by dozens of authors, ranging in length from just over 1,000 words up to 9,999 words. Most of these short stories are available for purchase individually from our webstore or are only available to people who back our Patreon… until now! With Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Short Stories and Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories, Duck Prints Press dips into our vault, anthologizing stories we published from 2021 to 2023 into all-new collections!

Whether you’ve looked at our short story offerings and weren’t sure where to start, or you’ve heard about Duck Prints Press and wanted a tasting selection of what we offer, or you’ve wanted all your favorites in one lovely volume, or you had no idea we existed until today and just heard “short stories by queer authors” and said “SIGN ME UP,” Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row have a little something for most everyone, with stories in different genres, with different types of characters, and by many different authors!

Ducks in a Row contains 22 short stories by 22 different authors and is 236 pages long. Duxxx in a Row features 19 short stories by 19 different authors and is 264 pages long. Each is being offered in e-book (ePub and PDF) and trade paperback formats, and we’ve also got some of our signature dux merchandise (including our first-ever dux enamel pin!) and art prints and bookmarks featuring the gorgeous artwork Pallas Perilous did for the book covers!

Visit our Kickstarter to learn more and become a backer today!

Now then.

A key takeaway from the massive amount of almost universally negative feedback to the reblog change should have been: Tumblr users do not, as a rule, care about clout. We do not want quantified "credit" for how good our addition to a post is, and we don't want influencers who are anointed as more important than everyone else because they are popular. That's not what we do here; it's never been what we do here. If we wanted that, we could get it from ANY other social media. The fact that we're here instead makes it pretty clear that clout is not important to us, and in fact is actively repulsive to us. Anointing particular Tumblr users as "top Tumblristas" and putting them on an "advisory board" that gets special access to new features and the opportunity to give feedback on them would constitute the exact type of hierarchy we despise.

Furthermore: When a corporate entity proposes an "advisory board of power users", what they're actually doing is trying to pre-empt wider user pushback against executive decisions, by creating the illusion of user buy-in while using social pressure to enforce decisions that have already been made. The actual reasoning behind selecting "top" users is because they are popular, which suggests they have influence over other users. The idea is, rather than convincing the community as a whole, you convince a smaller subset of influential people, and then they convince everyone else. Again, this depends on a kind of hierarchy and clout-based "influencer" system that we don't have and don't want.

As for the "top users" board themselves: By choosing someone and telling them "you're a Top User and you get to be on the special committee and have special privileges," you are giving them something (supposedly) desirable: social status, (the appearance of) influence and power, etc. And you can take it away. That means now you have power over them. If they don't want to lose their special status, they will avoid displeasing you. Which means they are less likely to give you significant pushback, and they are more willing to pressure others to go along with what you want to do. That makes them incredibly useful to corporate, but completely undermines their supposed role as a voice for the community. We see this already with influencers on every other platform, who become de facto spokespeople for corporations and brands and stop meaningfully criticizing them out of fear of losing the access that is critical to their status.

I'm not saying all this because I think it's news to the CEO of a tech company. I think you know all of that perfectly well already. I'm saying it because I think you assume we don't know it, and because some people might not. But I have played this game before and I know how it goes. It never benefits the community. It is always a way to control the community.

Round 2

'really disturbing how little people seem to be reacting to the human trafficking concentration camps. a congresswoman showed up to try to inspect one of them and ICE attacked her and are trying to put her in prison for 17 years about it. yall are the germans that "didnt know"'

The post they're quoting is by NOW! Democracy @democracynow, featuring an image of Trump wearing a red baseball cap and his standard white shirt, blue suit combo, talking with three other white people indoors somewhere that looks bleak, like a battery farm. One is a slender, femme-presenting person with long, dark hair, a baseball cap, and blue jeans, who has her hands on her hips, facing away from us and towards Trump. None of the three men are wearing ties, with their suit jackets open over white shirts. One man is visible on the left, standing between the group and what looks like dense chicken wire. He stands like someone trying to make himself even broader, arms out a little from his sides and mouth open as though he's about to say something. The other man is barely visible beyond the woman, but gesturing emphatically with both hands, while Trump is clearly in the middle of saying something, pointing towards the chicken wire and ignoring Mr. Emphatic Gesture. Transcription of the quoted Tweet follows:

Sep 23, 2025

The Miami Herald is reporting that about two-thirds of the 1,800 immigrants who were held in the ICE jail in July have gone missing from ICE's online database, with their families unable to locate them. End image description.]

This is an on-camera, streamed game that will later be turned into a podcast. You must be comfortable appearing on camera, and willing to commit to a weekly recording schedule.

I'm looking for anyone with prior entertainment experience. If you've been in APs, stage plays, appeared in a web series or stream already on your own, that means you!