I say this as someone who enjoys reading and writing sex scenes: too many authors treat them as an obligation to meet reader expectations rather than an opportunity to deepen characterization and romantic conflict. When a sex scene is doing its job, you should learn something about these people.

ICYMI, I wrote a little thing about how the crafting of sex scenes in genre romance has taken a major hit in recent years. #romancelandia romancing-the-stoned.beehiiv.com/p/no-f-ck-is...

lmao

I read this decision start to finish and I can't decide which was my favourite part: "you can't copyright hot boys", or "YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT THE STATE OF ALASKA."

The opening paragraph of this article is INCREDIBLE.

I think you can get decent reactionary art. The problem is that these people are such catastrophically embarrassing losers that they've spent the last decade having public meltdowns over gas stoves, the Cracker Barrel logo, & whether the green M&M used to be fuckable. They're joyless hall monitors.

OG Twitter people remember when this guy was so liked that if you posted even the mildest criticism about him, you were flooded with days of harrassment, and now look at this whiny little piss baby.

And what gets me is that these same journalists still write like we should give any of their opinions deference at all. "Sure, I was wrong for TEN YEARS, but democrats should..." man, fuck you.

"Damn, maybe we should be soft on the people who have lived in this delusion for TEN YEARS and are just discovering Trump is a fascist" If other people want to have grace, go with my blessing, but I especially will not forgive or forget the journalists who smugly told people we were fear-mongering.

I have vivid memories of 2015 and people telling me "trump can't win" and then when he won, telling me, "The supreme court is fine" and then telling me "roe v wade" is fine, and framing people like me as hysterical, so these people can actually eat shit and put in the work if they're sorry.

It's deeply, deeply fucked up to see a Dem leader so ineffective and disconnected from reality that people have to stand in the cold, begging him to convince his own party to stop bankrolling masked nazis murdering civilians in broad daylight.

When It Happens, the most insufferable people alive are going to tell us all what terrible people we are for celebrating, so I want us all to practice the various ways we will tell them, from the bottom of our hearts, to eat shit.

God, we're going to have to endure this peace prize shit every year, aren't we

I would N E V E R (!!) encourage you to spread the link: icelist.is which has been curated by state. I am simply leaving it here for you all. For Research purposes.

There are some days I wake up and see shit like this and feel deeply, deeply resentful of all the people who are responsible for putting this nonsense in front of my eyeballs daily. We are not even a year into this presidency, and it feels like I've aged a decade.

I'm interested to know how many Gen-Xers joined ICE once they got rid of the upper age limit. Because I'll bet it's a decent number.

THE MIRRORING IN HEATED RIVALRY, PEOPLE edit by: __coldties on X

The reactions to the ending of Heated Rivalry is why capital-R Romance people will fight and die on the hill of the Happily Ever After/Happily For Now ending. That ending is load-bearing. It's earned. It's the soothing hug after the story took a bat to your emotions.

So I am going to say something about romance as a genre. A lot of people think that romance is ignorable because <insert thing they think about romance> and romance authors don't count because <insert thing they think about romance>. This thread is not about whether you have to like romance.

The thing about Bari Weiss is that she has the unshakeable confidence of someone who has never once been the smartest person in any room she's entered, but has also never noticed.

I am going to watch this freaking show just to write a think piece countering stuff like the original post. The NHL as a league is a bigot's wet dream. They banned players from using pride tape. They have no out players. The fan base and players are overwhelmingly white, straight, cis. +

The culture in Heated Rivalry is not about the culture *at large*. It's the homophobic culture of hockey, specifically. The NHL is STILL the only major men’s league with no out gay players. Brock McGillis, who came out after retirement, has said this show was too real for him.

good morning, I have noticed that some of the critical responses to the Crave show Heated Rivalry have been, let's say, incomplete sex scenes are craft! goddammit!

I can only come to one conclusion: a very horny romance show that is not actually about hockey broke a lot of critics' brains.

I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.

Love when people write a whole philosophical treatise that boils down to "give me your work for free or you're basically a cop"

I haven't shared book news here for a minute, so I would like you all to know that Publishers Weekly declared this book has "over-the-top kinky sex"

I read that Substack article and what a terrible day to be literate

Me, waking up: I'll just have a quick scroll through Bluesky--OH DEAR GOD

GodDAMN that is brutal.

I KNOW they aren't this fucking dumb, so the fact that they think their voters are fucking dumb enough to believe this is insulting.

I don't know how many Senators up for reelection in 2026 actually argued in favor privately and then stepped back to let someone else fall on the sword, but I would bet CASHHHH Chris Coons was one of them.

The coordinated nature of this—none are facing voters in 2026—means that either Schumer approved it or failed in his job as Senate Majority Leader to stop it. Dems voting "no" get zero credit until they demand a change in leadership. Schumer out as Leader, Durbin out as Whip.

Someone needs to do a post-mortem of that election because it was an absolutely unhinged cocktail of racism, xenophobia, billionaires with too much time on their hands, a political party working to kneecap its OWN CANDIDATE, all served with a side of legacy media losing its collective fucking mind.

Zohran was polling at six percent in January. Nothing is impossible

Inject it right into my veinsss

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This election was worth it just to watch Cuomo lose twice lmaooooo what a loser

I don't know what will happen in NYC tonight, but I do know that regardless of outcome, any number of public figures, celebrities, politicians and institutions that oppose Mamdani have done so with a level of rhetorical ugliness, racism, and dishonesty that should neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

This entire thread had me DYING. I can't stop laughing

sometimes i remember the time Dick Cheney shot a guy on a hunting trip and the guy who got shot was the one who apologized anyway have a good day everyone, go NYC!

Mother of god, this is brutal

support whomever you’d like, but what is frustratingly dishonest about this take is that actual issue — the thing critics have identified as the problem — isn’t the decision of the 21-year old to get the tattoo, but of the judgment of the 40-year old who still has it.

The only reason they're going after ILR right now is because there was an uptick of COVID migrants who came in on relaxed rules to fill occupation shortages and will soon qualify to stay permanently. This is just pointless fucking cruelty for no reason.

You don't demolish a portion of the White House and build a $250 million dollar ballroom unless you intend to squat in there long enough to use it.

My husband (not American) was asking me, "Shouldn't the protests be more serious than costumes?" and I explained to him that in a time of video manipulation and misinformation, it's very hard to make protests look threatening when people are wearing things like giant inflatable dick costumes.

I know decorum in politics was always performative nonsense, but I am legitimately exhausted by politics via shitposts. In this case, literally. Social media literally fried these people's fucking brains and now it's everyone's problem.

Just randomly remembered the time my cat (IQ: single potato chip) ate one of those giant house spiders and then vomited up a pile of eight fully intact spider legs. JUST the legs. Long, spindly spider legs in a sad little pile on my carpet at 3am. You're welcome for that visual.

I don't know how to explain or word this right now, but I feel like he wants to go to war because he thinks it's masculine. It's purely for the aesthetic, the image. It has no basis in reality. He's treating real life like Call of Duty.