the Crown's favorite hobby : bullying the nobles

Replaying A Tale of Crowns and I completely forgot how hot and cold A is at the beginning. Complete whiplash!

But when you go to R's room to talk about the flower and masks, and he says "I won't let anyone hurt you" and my ovaries explode? Glorious???? Love this if???????

Vetted fundraiser masterpost-masterpost.

This is a collection of links to various posts concerning fundraisers I've vetted and instructions on how to submit fundraisers to me. These are primarily ones for Ghazzan families although some fundraisers for Sudanese families are also listed (I'm more familiar with my own country's politics and dialect and am more capable of vetting fundraisers for Palestinians as a result). Each post will have a time stamp indicating the latest date of update. And fundraisers will have colour-coded disclaimers according to the particularities of their case.

I know that people do not like clicking on links or navigating between posts, but please actually look through these posts and choose a fundraiser to donate to. Please.

List of fundraisers for direct contacts from Ghazzah & Sudan. - PRIORITY.

Vetted family evacuation fundraisers list 1. - Particularities Listed.

Vetted family evacuation fundraisers list 2. - Particularities Listed.

Unvetted but highly likely legitimate fundraisers.

Additional fundraisers for various purposes.

Holiday Drop: Patreon Bonus Stories II

Hey everyone!!

I know I haven't been as active with updates and posting on the blog in general over the past few months. Progress on CH12 has been painfully slow going, though I'm still working on it, and hope the new year will kick my ass into gear 🙏🏼

In any case, I've decided to make it up to you by releasing extra Patreon snippets.

A whole bunch of them, actually. If you'll recall, back in October I released 1 snippet for each LI, this time I'm releasing 4 snippets for each LI showing scenes from the game told through their point of view, with a combined wordcount of 9052 words.

The snippets included in this file are:

I've also included snippets showing how the Crown's parents met each other, how X met Tûjo and Heval, and how Perjin met R told from Perjin's perspective.

You can download the file from this link. It's a zip file, so you'll have to unzip it ("extract all" option after right-clicking it), then open up the index.html file in any browser of your choice. Just make sure not to move any of the files outside of its folder, or you'll break the images/fonts!

If you enjoy these snippets, consider pledging to my Patreon! You can view the total list of available snippets for each tier in this Google doc, it'll be updated as I add more stories each month.

Thanks so much for all your support over these years, hope you enjoy these bonus snippets.

Happy holidays!! 💖

btw! I was made aware that many people don't know that we're boycotting Eurovision this year, so.

we are boycotting Eurovision, as per BDS guidelines.

don't watch the stream, don't engage with the videos, don't post it about it on social media using hashtags that are going to trend. whatever you're getting from the show isn't worth it

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

I've been mulling this post over since I reblogged it this morning, and if Malcolm doesn't mind, I'm going to clarify for a few people who might be wondering: If these people aren't playing the same game as us other indie authors, what game are they playing?

The answer is that they're playing the algorithm.

It'd be so easy to drop this at Amazon's door, but quite frankly, all book retailers reward this behavior. If you are pumping out work regularly, the sales algorithm will reward you because it keeps you relevant. I'm not talking about authors who produce one book a year or even two or the few people who are genuinely that prolific.

I'm talking about the above people, who, let's face it, treat indie publishing as a form of content farming.

I have zero issues with authors who use ghostwriters, especially when they're honest about it. (James Patterson is a notable example.)

But the people who hide it or attribute it to their "hustle game" while claiming we're all in competition with each other are not competing with writers; they're competing with other Algorithm Gamers because they've realized that no matter the quality of their work, as long as they have something in the New Release category, they're making money.

They're competing to stay relevant in terms of quantity, not quality because they don't actually have anything to say.

It's all just clicks to them -- and I'm willing to bet they make more money from getting people to click their (usually undisclosed) affiliate links than they do their actual books.

So take heart, dear writer. You are not competing with these people.

The vast majority of us don't view the rest of our community as competition. We're just trying to get our own work out the door while also supporting our friends as best we can.

Work at your own pace. Make the art you want. Support other writers. It'll be worth it. I promise.

Matching nail polishes :3

I love them lmao (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡