babe, it's Thursday but otherwise 👍

Every writer who generates a slop image for their work is a class traitor.

"I can't afford a visual artist"

So your solution is stabbing artists in the back? Stealing from them?

Furthermore, slop-generated imagery suggests slop-generated writing. That's how you're presenting yourself.

I wonder why this was done. There must be some advantage to it, and I'm curious. Piracy or bot scanning protection, I wonder?

I don't know whether my ereader could handle that, but my phone can. I probably wouldn't take that tactic for that reason. Interesting, though.

Not complaining, just fascinated by shifts in self-pub: I bought a book direct from the author this morning, and although being labeled as an "epub," it was instead a zip file containing a pile of graphics and XML documents.

It's like we've decided "a cake" can also be a bowl of flour and sugar. 🤔

April Aliens & More Sale Welcome to my second themed sale, Aliens & More. Each of these books has a character who isn’t human: robots, aliens, shifters, elves, vampires, even sentient objects.

💙📚🪐📚🌈 Sheila Jenne's April Aliens and More sale is on for a week! Check out some bargain books: sheilajenne.com/april-aliens...

It's WILD, yeah. 😂

holy shit! I'm not the only one anymore! 🎉

Haven't read it yet. Definitely will. Hey, even if it takes a very different approach, and it looks like it does, that's still interesting.

novelfire.net/book/how-to-...

Except that one dungeon where I kept hammering the weaknesses, and the characters just kept saying "Whaaaa, that was supposed to work!" 😑 Yeah about that.

Anyway, good times

25 hours.

Bat Guy is even more my favorite. It's going to take a lot to dislodge him.

I have figured out (I think) that this game is not about leveling; it's about loadout. Each dungeon/boss has a combo of weaknesses, and the key is to set up your character classes to exploit them.

It will be a massive PITA in some areas - our street grid is non-Euclidean and our public transit mostly gave up - but I suspect the utter apocalyptic panic is unnecessary. It's bringing out suburbanites' terror of The Big (lol) City, is all.

I could be wrong! But I hope it will be mostly fine.

elmo says welcome to chaos in front of a background of fire Alt: Flaming Elmo meme with the tagline "Welcome to chaos"

Trafficpocalypse day 1! I got in 10 minutes earlier than usual

* I work ~5 neighborhoods away from the festivities, but the vibe for the last month has been "RUN HIDE AAAHHHH"

* My city is hosting a sports event that some estimates claim will double the # of people in the city 🫠

Phoeo of a cute cat behind a super market toy set looking at the camera, with the silly caption of "Khajiit has wares if you have coin" which is a known The Elder Scrolls line.

Khajiit has wares if you have coin

Comic: Types of Board Game. [Each panel has a person, a person with a ponytail, a person with shoulder-length hair, and a person with a white hat seated around a table with different board game and pieces on top. (1) Boring: PERSON 3: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we all get tired and go home. (2) Abstract: PERSON 1: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a... (3) Hyperspecific Theme: PERSON 2: It’s October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations... (4) Overcomplicated: PERSON 4: It’s a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshhire*, but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and... (5) Cooperative: PERSON 3: We’re working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we’ll silently organize my junk drawer. (6) Branded: PERSON 1: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku. (7) Party: PERSON 2: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the... (8) Social Deduction: PERSON 3: Remember, per our *find the secret murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player has committed a real-life murder does *not* count.

Types of Board Game

xkcd.com/3235/

The Year Without Sunshine - Uncanny Magazine During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civi...

This is why @naomikritzer.bsky.social's The Year Without Sunshine is one of my favorite disaster stories: www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-...

Final edits are happening now! 😱 (Just waiting on some more notes! eek!)

Coming soon in paperback and ebook to as many places as I can reach. I've had a great time with these; hope you enjoy them.

Art credit: ahemhem.carrd.co Sketch of two men walking. On the left is Clive, a human, wearing a cloak with the hood up and eating a croissant. On the right is Aspen, an elf with a side-flop hairstyle, wearing a winter coat and a turtleneck sweater. He is talking and holding a cheese pastry.

For the first time, I said, “My best friend left for the College just before I joined the Dread Army. He wanted to become a telekinetic mage.” “Is that so!” If Felix heard the weight behind the technically correct but insufficient term /best friend/, his affable tone did not suggest it. “Telekinetic magic is in high demand. How is he faring?” My cheeks heated in the cold air. “I don’t know.” “Ah.” Now he seemed to grasp the full scope of the situation. “Starting on a new chapter of your life, it can be too easy to get swept up and forget to stay in touch with the folks back home.” I hunched into my collar. It would be easy to agree, to shift the blame to Tristan. “I’m guilty of that too, I think.” “Well. That’s easily fixed, isn’t it. The ravens take messages at all hours.”

Last excerpt:

Book 10: On the Care and Feeding of an Evil Army

In which two prickly introverts Hedgehog’s Dilemma their way through designing a new mess hall for the Dread Army. Includes pastries and knitting, but also sad backstory.

🎨 ahemhem.carrd.co

You and I Are Polar Opposites is an easy second, but I have to pick Journal with Witch. I mean, obviously.

I admit, I was wondering whether it might be a case of unintended consequences or a double cross or something. 😅

Bus typo: Help us score the gift of life, DONATE BLOOB

BLOOB FOR THE BLOOB GOD!

Already reposted one great suggestion, but also, for me this feeling was tied to being a former Gifted Kid™, and it helped a lot to let go of the idea that I wasn't allowed to suck at things. In other words, getting over myself.

write something terrible, is my advice. like genuinely, just write something god awful. commit to it. you can then spend time making the terrible thing better having already done the hard part of actually writing anything at all.

a cartoon character with a sword and a chinese symbol on his shirt Alt: A white bat creature with a katana points dramatically at the camera (name redacted due to spoilers)

- Oh good, I can fast travel. Still, somehow, I do not have time to do anything. But it seems like an improvement

- Still perpetually underleveled and struggling; maybe I just suck at this game lol

- New favorite NPC, at least for the next 90 minutes until we meet the next one after that

Already did it; commissioned art for the stories that didn't have covers of their own. 0% necessary, would be financially reckless if I actually depended on this for my livelihood, A+ would do again

A lily of the valley growing out of mulch

It's spring, our island has a 5-star rating, or both

- Feeling underleveled and like I skipped a lot in the first city, but the game is so on rails that there's nothing I can do about it. 🫣

10 hours in. Having fun.

- Playing the dub, and no one can stop me. Love it so far.

- When the prince wakes up he can be the prince consort I GUESS? Have we already kinda lost our original motive here, who cares, DEMOCRACY

- Each one of Louis's underlings is unhinged in their own way, that's some fun villainry

Counterpoint: I use em dashes with abandon and will not let "AI" steal them from me. I was overusing them first and will continue to do so long after "AI" is a crater in our financial system, or our merciless overlords, or both

That makes sense. I don't feel great about "pay to prove you're human" solutions, but that would work.

Screenshot of Bluesky with an error message, "Not Enough Resources"

Same, but also, what?

I can still make my own decisions and speak for myself. Those decisions are going to vary for each person based on their situation and personal ethics.

Those are mine. So we'll see.