Writers today: Oh no I can't head hop. That's bad! Hmm is this reference too obscure? Better not make it just in case! Herman Melville: Gonna write 15 pages of random shit that popped into my head, future scholars can research it. And the next chapter? I'm gonna write it in 2nd person, just cuz :)

she's a 10 *and* she's into the Kowloon Walled City

i often think about this review

"light novels"? no thank you, i actually prefer them dark

went to Kraków yesterday and god damn, what it's like to be in a place with proper bookstores

oh hell yeah @megapolisomancy.bsky.social @williamshaw.bsky.social

yes! ha ha ha... yes!

the most weird to ever fiction

lrt: perhaps i should write that wet science fiction manifesto

I have to wonder if contemporary sci-fi is so unpopular because the current mode is a kind of centrist liberalism that hardly anyone (except I guess Chuck Schumer) wants. It is an ideology that has failed to meet the needs of the current moment and most of us are leaving it behind.

i might have a reason to write short fiction soon

The crime of capitalism is not the existence of the Crystal Shrek, but the fact that the Crystal Shrek is not available to all who would benefit from it.

Democratizing the arts looks like universal income, low-barrier grants for both emerging and working artists, well-funded municipal arts & recreation programs, vibrant third spaces, and a well-funded public school system with progressive curriculum. Not a free pass for corporate-owned slop engines.

touching my cat’s stomach gives her a reason to attack. sort of a casus belly

These are also the three dispositions of basically everyone I know, though.

I find the entire genre of "tens of thousands of words minutely refuting every point of an abuse clam" intrinsically unpersuasive. If any of the evidence were actually damning they'd just highlight that instead of doing a tedious Gish Gallop.

1922 Portuguese Minister: So is the poster for the centenary of the relationship between Portugal and Brazil ready. Artist: Yeah some really hot yuri, just like you asked

Talking in a group is hard

i shouldn't get irritated by people just saying shit on the saying shit website

I worry that as we narrow the range of what we can talk about, think about, spend our time on, our ability to make expansive art and language shrinks, too, and so does our ability then to solve big problems and think creatively - all of which is the terrible point of fascism

Today on Eruditorum Press, a massive post in every sense as Last War in Albion reaches From Hell. Make yourself a fresh pot of tea and settle in with it; this one’s a wild ride.

combine the old London Bridge with Neom and you've got a fantastic weird fantasy setting – a city built on a giant bridge hundreds of kilometers long, stretching across the abyss...

Hugo eligibility post! “The Cuddled Little Vice,” my book-length essay on the poison legacy of Sandman, is eligible for Best Related Work.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

sure it's a good fantasy, but is it suffused with the numinous?

deciding on what to work on for next month

It's Ursula Le Guin's day of death. Every year, I have a lot to say and every year I quote her instead. "The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

The crazy thing about including validity in the construction of gender, is how it then orients the entirety of how you define yourself around other people’s approval.

she's a 10/10 but doesn't like Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

Some of the mists in our minds are never going to dissipate. Some bits of us are always going to be stuck in November twilight. We walk and jangle the dozens of bottles of pickled time.

In other words, Martin is stuck partly because he can't escape a model of prose that emulates television or film, written as a series of real-time scenes. Which is a challenging way to write a fantasy epic with a plot stretching over years.

The key bits are about how Martin had the idea of skipping over five years, and why he abandoned the idea. What's interesting is that Martin seems unable to figure out how to summarize, go back and forth in time, or sum up months or years in other than a moment-to-moment way:

Some discussion of the Zeno's-Arrow-like inability of George R. R. Martin's Ice and Fire books to reach their finish line. There's an interview with Martin I've never forgotten because in part it touches on one of my pet peeves: novels paced a certain way, written exclusively in "scenes":

Yesterday's follow up....

you either die a transphobic nazi platform or you live long enough to see yourself become everyone's sideblog

okay why is everyone getting into Tolkien this year, like is it an anniversary or something?

me: i'm so bored of retellings i'm never gonna write a retelling we need to be coming up with something new also me: <realises that the key to this poem set is the lore behind "Little Mermaid">

we all have that one sibling who doesn't finish anything and that's why one of us has a swan's wing for an arm

POV: you are Helen Umstead

it's happening again (i'm attempting to write poetry)

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

reposting

privilege as an analytical category was a mistake

this makes me want to employ the twitter protocol

The best short ghost story ever.

The death cult will lose.

A (slightly belated) happy new year! Allow me to introduce myself to those of you unfamiliar with my work; I’m Lee, I’m a painter from England, I’m a fan of abandoned buildings, moody narratives and quiet, mildly foreboding landscapes.

When I was 23, I saw a bunch of really cute velvet furniture on the side of the road, totally nice. Took it in and a year later a friend’s new gf came to my house and it turns out I’d stolen her entire living room while she was moving.