A Big Nerd Who Makes Poor Decisions

Because of the midterms

"Covid was years ago I don't understand why theyre rehashing it!"

The midterms are happening in a few months

"How can they hold him in contempt? He didn't say anything!"

They're performing political theater to remind people of how upset they were during the pandemic about the decisions being made because the midterms are happening in November and the Covid backlash is how they won 2024.

visited the Denver art museum and there was a beautiful display of afro picks from various regions in Africa (which I didn't get any pictures of unfortunately, kicking myself!!). I did get a photo of this wonderful quote next to the display though!

Any given fanfic writer is walking into a fully-stocked kitchen. The characters exist; their milieu exists; their backstories and traumas and interactions exist. We come in and start cooking, adjusting recipes to our own tastes–and most of the time we do that while sharing the kitchen with hundreds of others so we can see what they’re doing, adjust our recipes and techniques based on what we like or don’t like of what they’re doing–and whoever eats that food is probably eating it after eating dozens or hundreds of other dishes from the same kitchen, which inevitably color their opinion of the dish in front of them.

Original writers are working alone. In a void. They don’t just have to buy or grow the ingredients; they have to build the kitchen.

Not to be too blunt. But, I think fan-fiction readers who try to get into published original fiction have built up an expectation that published works are already ‘curated’ per se and already culled of all but the Good Stuff—which is not the case. Some (many) books just Aren’t Good.

A lot of genre fiction does rely on rather flat stock characters that can be plugged into similar plots over and over, and YA fiction is definitely going this direction where the Girl Protagonist Heir to Magicqueenkingdom and Mysterious Brooding Hot Boy are largely interchangeable for all the examples of the same thing in any given book.

But a lot of books spend a LOT of time intricately developing their characters, and do it quite well.

Like worstie, I can barely promote my own published book without wanting to curl up and die.

They’re just not disclosing it as ads, which they are supposed to do, and instead it's marketed in a very Tumblr-esque way which can be summed up as “omg guys look how CUTE this is” followed by a different account underneath going “omg found it!!” and it links to a drop ship site with the item(s).

And the link usually has an affiliate tracker in it, which you may or may not be able to spot unless you’re familiar with them, which is also something you are legally supposed to disclose.

I used to get a lot of offers from around 2016-2020 to sell “moon lamps” on here, y’know those orb lights that look like a moon? Yeah. I was offered a higher kickback to make it look like I wasnt posting an add because these sellers know Tumblrites don’t like ads.

They wanted it to look as organic and hyped up as possible and then I’d just so happen to be like “omg you guys it's on sale” and post a link. Which is skeevy as shit and also illegal af in the US.

It’s like the insta/tiktok girlies saying “link in bio” to get around saying “here’s a product I make money on if you buy it” because they want to sound like your friend because people are more likely to impulse buy stuff if a “friend” is recommending something.

They’re also trusting that everyone knows “link in bio” means “affiliate link” which is technically not enough of a disclosure but whatever.

This is why I tag all my own book promos with “affiliate links” because depending on which storefront you buy Hunger Pangs from, I may get a kickback from the vender which I do to help mediate the fees I lose from distribution. It’s not much—literal pennies in some cases—but I’m still legally required to state it.

It’s also why when I do post products I use or like, I make a point of letting people know I’m not an affiliate and not sponsored because despite the legal ramifications these people are flirting with by not disclosing their affiliate status, I want to be fully transparent with my followers when it comes to me trying to sell them things.

Y’all keep my lights on by reading my work and through my ko-fi and patreon. I am not about to risk that trust for the sake of some shitty vibrator sales from a sketch-ass drop shipper who wants me to pretend I’m not selling you things.

So, yeah. People do successfully sell stuff on here. A lot of us small indie creators sell our own work all the time.

"Okay, but Meat Boy" the creator of Meat Boy has explicitly cited Jumper as one of its core inspirations, and included the protagonist of Jumper as a playable guest character in its 2010 commercial redux.

❌ “historians will call them friends” devalues historians and forces complex relationships into modern simplicities, also devalues friendship/platonic forms of love