Lilith Nightray

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

The glorious seventh Symbol, Septem.

1. Do not do age verification.

and he paused for a second and then said, “when you’ve been taught from a young age that crying is weak and you should train yourself never to cry for any reason, you assume that everyone else has trained themselves too, so anyone who cries has to be doing it on purpose. it took me a long time to realize that wasn’t true.”

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your view cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

Most of this is very true. Lab equipment for lefties might exist, but no lab is going to invest in something with their very little money for that. It took one retail job that was very considerate of the issue (after I kept cutting my arm open) months to get my even a left-handed box cutter from corporate.

But! I do actually have a fancy ergonomic left-handed mouse. It was a gift from my parents some years ago (which was for Christmas, but frankly I deserve it after having an exclusively right-handed mouse growing up on the family computer instead of even a neutral one).

I don't know where they got it, or how much it cost. I wouldn't be surprised if it had to be ordered online for lack of presence in brick-and-mortar

And that's the most frustrating part: even when the stuff exists, it has to be special-ordered so, so, so much of the time. It is almost never available in brick-and-mortar unless it's a brick-and-mortar especially designed for that as a novelty--and even those are vanishingly rare.

But the mice exist!

I really like how the scientology speedrunning trend is developing, in this clip we see that the participants are

Not deterred by the closed door

Working as a group

Protecting their identities

Inflicting material costs to the institution via property destruction

Getting away at the end

But there are various trends I’ve seen in the way people relate to characters and works that have fascinated me, because I feel like I’m getting a perspective on a fundamental shift in how people interact with fiction.

I’ve been in fandom spaces since the ‘90s, and maybe it was the spaces I was in at the time, but I tended to see people utilizing fiction to interact with new perspectives/worlds/etc. Fiction was a lens to step outside yourself and see larger pictures and new ways of being.

But modern fiction trends seem to be focused much more inward. Fiction is now increasingly seen as an exploration of the self, rather than the other, and that’s led to new trends in how to create and interact with fiction. ‘Relatability’ of characters seems to be a huge one. A reader or viewer must be able to see themselves in the character, fitting that character into their own perspective, outlook, and issues in life. If a character is not relatable in that way, they aren’t considered a good character. A morally complex or even reprehensible character? That’s not a mirror people want held up to themselves, and so morally questionable characters are ‘problematic’.

I think it also reflects in the way that it seems increasingly like there is a prevailing belief that all fiction must teach moral lessons. If a story does not explicitly tell you who is good and who is bad, and show the bad being punished and the good being uplifted, the morality of the writer is questioned. Because again, fiction is no longer an exercise in exploring new perspectives, but is solely a mirror of the self.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but it’s been on my mind as I’ve been looking at younger perspectives on fiction and seeing how the way one interacts with characters has shifted. While I certainly don’t think that exploring the self through fictional perspectives is bad, I do wonder about the flattening effect of wanting everything to be ‘relatable’ and to show people the morally right way to live.

大家好！这是由我的朋友绘制的 Septem。我觉得它简直太棒了，所以想在这里与你们分享。希望你们会喜欢我朋友的作品！

my brother and his friends in this field trip group were truly great kids. but they were not above run of the mill teenage boy shenanigans. it’s the end of senior year, you and all your buddies are at the amusement park, you’re naturally going to want to act like a complete moron

there was one kid in the group who was especially prone to goofing around. committed to the bit, some may say. my mom knew that if nonsense was going to break out, he’d likely be at the center of it

so she goes up to this kid at the very start of the trip and says “hey, i’m kinda worried about this chaperoning thing. this might be a lot to ask, but can you help me keep an eye on everyone? you wouldn’t have to do anything big, just be an extra set of eyes for me.”

friends, this kid proceeded to run their field trip group like the fucking us marines. everyone is at the meet up spots at the designated time. everyone waits in line for the rides like a bunch of boy scouts. the second the horseplay gets too out of hand, this kid is getting it back under control

it’s incredible how differently people act based on the expectations you set. instead of going to this kid and saying “hey, i know you’re trouble, so i’ve got my eye on you,” my mom went “hey, i know you have influence in your peer group, so i think you can help me.”