#its a publishing issue by and large

[nicollekidman]

god the thing with books is that there is room for literally everyone in every age group with every taste from every walk of life and every preference!!!!! it's literature!!!! a foundational part of humanity!! but publishing trends are squeezing kids/teens out of genres and markets created specifically for them to chase the childadult contingent, while at the same time, romance/erotica (which is healthy, fun, has always existed) is being marketed aesthetically similarly and to the same audience of what used to be YA. so now there's a very weird collapse that is simultaneously putting adult romance in front of children, squashing teen stories, and sanitizing actual erotica. it is VERY weird but it is not an issue with authors suddenly being bad or women suddenly being stupid perverts, it's a direct result of the publishing industry and how books are being sold/published/marketed

#middle teens being pushed out of YA #YA being marketed to immature adults #and /erotica/ either being completely sanitized or on the other hand ridiculed #for being exactly what it's supposed to be #is all resulting in a very counterproductive mash #my advice to people in my age group is to read some goddamn lit fic once in a while but #its a publishing issue by and large

[oatbugs]

please delete your philosophy gpt-3 post. it's most likely stolen writing.

philosophy?? idk which one you're referring to sorry. also no . if it's the poetry one, see in tags. actually see in tags anyway. actually pls look at my posts on AI too . sorry if it's badly worded i'm very tired :')

#GPT3 is a large language model (LLM) and so is trained on massive amounts of data #so what it produces is always going to be stolen in some way bc...it cant be trained on nothing #it is trained on peoples writing. just like you are trained on peoples writing. #what most ppl are worried about w GPT3 is openAI using common crawl which is a web crawler/open database with a ridiculous amt of data #in it. all these sources will obviously include some published books in which case...the writing isnt stolen. its a book out in the open #meant to be read. it will also include Stolen Writing as in fanfics or private writing etc that someone might not want shared in this way #HOWEVER . please remember GPT3 was trained on around 45TB of data. may not seem like much but its ONLY TEXT DATA. thats billions and #billions of words. im not sure what you mean by stolen writing (the model has to be trained on...something) but any general prompt you give #it will pretty much be a synthesis of billions and billions and billions of words. it wont be derived specifically from one stolen #text unless that's what you ask for. THAT BEING SAID. prompt engineering is a thing. you can feed the model #specific texts and writings and make sure you ask it to use that. which is what i did. i know where the writing is from. #in the one post i made abt gpt3 (this was when it was still in beta and not publicly accessible) the writing is a synthesis of my writing #richard siken's poetry #and 2 of alan turing's papers #im not sure what you mean by stolen writing and web crawling def needs to have more limitations . i have already made several posts about #this . but i promise you no harm was done by me using GPT3 to generate a poem #lol i think this was badly worded i might clarify later but i promise u there are bigger issues w AI and the world than me #feeding my own work and a few poems to a specifically prompt-engineered AI #asks #anon

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2016, Japanese scientists Oda and Hiraga published their discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium capable of breaking down PET plastic into basic nutrients. This finding marked a shift in microbiology's perception, recognizing the potential of microbes to solve pressing environmental issues.

France's Carbios has successfully applied bacterial enzyme technology to recycle PET plastic waste into new plastic products, aligning with the French government's goal of fully recycling plastic packaging by 2025.

2. HIV cases in Amsterdam drop to almost zero after PrEP scheme

According to Dutch AIDS Fund, there were only nine new cases of the virus in Amsterdam in 2022, down from 66 people diagnosed in 2021. The organisation claimed that 128 people were diagnosed with HIV in Amsterdam in 2019, and since 2010, the number of new infections in the Dutch capital has fallen by 95 per cent.

3. Cheap and drinkable water from desalination is finally a reality

In a groundbreaking endeavor, engineers from MIT and China have designed a passive solar desalination system aimed at converting seawater into drinkable water.

The concept, articulated in a study published in the journal Joule, harnesses the dual powers of the sun and the inherent properties of seawater, emulating the ocean’s “thermohaline” circulation on a smaller scale, to evaporate water and leave salt behind.

4. World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.

5. After Decades of Pressure, US Drugmaker J&J Gives Up Patent on Life-Saving TB Drug

In what can be termed a huge development for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients across large parts of the world, bedaquiline maker Johnson and Johnson said on September 30 (Saturday) that it would drop its patent over the drug in 134 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

6. Stranded dolphins rescued from shallow river in Massachusetts

7. ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done but that the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

---

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

#best news of last week #Youtube

[probablyasocialecologist]

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.” While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

[...]

Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians. In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks. The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.

#new york times #israel #palestine #journalism #propaganda

[gothhabiba]

Some hints about evaluating scientific studies

Firstly, understand that something being published in a scientific journal (or an academic journal for the social sciences) does not automatically make it true. Publishers profit from publishing novel, eye-catching, surprising research, which means they are more likely to publish positive results than ones that didn't find a connection between given variables. This means that scientists' careers benefit when they get positive results. Certain institutions also benefit from certain findings above others (a committee for research on "obesity" that is funded by a government organisation tasked with ending it, for example, is likely to try to stretch the evidence to find a link between body weight and poor health outcomes). So how do people evaluate scientific studies, especially without being scientists themselves?

Literature reviews

Literature reviews, which aim to assemble and summarise most of the available or influential papers on a given issue, can be a good place to start when trying to research that issue. Typically, scientific studies shouldn't only be evaluated on a case-by-case basis (since even well-designed studies can be contradicted by other, equally well-designed studies), but a full survey of the different results people have gotten should be taken.

Background information and conflicts of interest

Try to find out who funded a given study. Who published the study? What do these people stand to gain from the results of the study being accepted? (For example: you might pay special attention to the experimental design on a study on whether a certain essential oil helps to reverse hair loss that was carried out by a company that sells that oil.)

In theory, many journals call for study authors to declare any conflicts of interest they may have in a special section of the paper. This section should also list funding sources. You might also look up the authors on linkedin or something to find where they're employed; also look into whether another conglomerate owns that company, &c.

Experimental design

If the study involves a survey, have the authors of the paper provided the questions that people were asked, so that you can evaluate them for potential ambiguity or confusing wording? Not being transparent about the exact wording of questions is a sign that a study isn't trustworthy.

What's the sample size? Is it large enough for the claim the study is making to be reasonable? (More on this in the next section.)

Does the experimental design make sense with what the researchers wanted to study? Are the claims that they make in the conclusion section something that could reasonably be proven or suggested by the experiment that they performed?

Does the experimental design "bake in" an assumption of the truth of its hypothesis? (For example, measuring skeletons to argue that they fall into statistically significant size groupings by sex, using skeletons that you sorted into "male" and "female" groups based on their size, is clearly circular).

How was data collected? People might change their answers to a survey, for example, if they have to speak to a person to give them, rather than writing them down anonymously. Self-reported information (such as a survey aiming to figure out average height or average penis size) is also subject to bias. A good study should be transparent about how the authors collected their data, and be clear about how this could have affected their results.

Also regarding surveys: do the categories that the authors have divided respondents into make sense? Are these categories really mutually exclusive? If respondents were asked to sort themselves into categories (e.g., to select their own race or ethnicity), is there any guarantee that they all interpreted the question / the boundaries of these categories the same way? How would this affect the results?

Interpretation of results

Could anything other than the conclusion that the authors came to explain the results of their experiment? For example, a study finding a correlation between two variables and assuming that this means one variable causes the other ("being in a lot of stress causes short stature" or vise versa) could be missing a secret third thing which is in fact causing both of those things (e.g., poverty). Check to make sure that the authors considered other explanations for their findings and ruled them out (for example, by controlling for other variables such as socioeconomic status).

Are the results of the study generalisable to the population that the authors claim they're generalisable to? For example, the results may not be true for the entire population if only cisgender men between the ages of 30 and 40 were tested. Sampling biases can also affect generalisability—if I surveyed my college to try to find out the percentage of women in the total population, you might ask "but is your college sure to have the same percentage of women as the Earth does?"

Statistics

Are the results statistically significant, or are they within expected margins of error?

Many studies provide a p-value (a number between 0 and 1) for their results. In theory, a p-value represents the chance that the study's results could have been achieved by random chance. If you flip a coin ten times (so, your sample size is 10), it's not very odd to get heads six times and tails four times, and you wouldn't accept that as proof that the coin lands on heads more often than tails. The p-value for that result would be high (that is, there's a high chance that the coin appears unfair only because of random chance). On the other hand, if you flip a coin 100,000 times and it lands on heads 60,000 of those times, that's much better evidence that the coin is not a fair one. The p-value would be much lower. Typically, a p-value lower than 0.05 is considered statistically significant.

In practice, there's more than one way to calculate p-values, and so studies sometimes claim p-values that seem absurdly low. A low p-value is not proof of a claim in and of itself. Check to make sure that the authors of the paper also provide the raw data, and not just the p-values; this indicates a concern with other people being able to independently evaluate their results, rather than just trying to get The Best Numbers.

Citations

If the study cites something that seems foundational to their claims or interpretation, try tracing it back to the paper that was cited. Does the source actually claim what the authors of the first study said it did? Does the source provide proof or support for the claim, or does it seem flimsy, like a "common-sense" assumption?

Replication

Check the studies that cite the one you're currently looking at. Has anyone else tried to replicate the study? What were their results?

What if I really, really don't want to read scientific studies?

That's fine. Not everyone is concerned enough with specific scientific questions for regularly reading scientific papers to be reasonable for them. Just keep in mind that not everything in a scientific journal is necessarily true; that profit motives and personal and institutional bias impact results (e.g. when some studies revealed a lack of poor health outcomes for "obesity," and many scientists responded by calling it a "paradox" that needed to be "solved"); and that pop science and journalistic reporting on science are subject to distortions from the same sources.

Try finding commentators on scientific matters whose output you like, and evaluate their writing the same way you would evaluate any other critical writing.

#feel free to add on! #this doesn’t really incorporate the extent of my cynicism wrt to scientific establishment but. lol #reading comprehension #critical thinking

[mostlysignssomeportents]

2600’s amazing Hackers on Planet Earth con may go down under enshittification

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

It's been 40 years since Emmanuel Goldstein launched the seminal, essential, world-changing 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. 2600 wasn't the first phreak/hacker zine, but it was the most important, spawning a global subculture dedicated to the noble pursuit of technological self-determination:

https://www.2600.com/

2600 has published hundreds of issues in which digital spelunkers report eagerly on the things they've discovered by peering intently at the things no one was supposed to even glance at (I'm proud to be one of those writers!). They've fought legal battles, including one that almost went to the Supreme Court:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

They created a global network of meetups where some of technology's most durable friendships and important collaborations were born. These continue to this day:

https://www.2600.com/meetings

And they've hosted a weekly radio show on NYC's WBAI, Off the Hook:

https://wbai.org/program.php?program=76

When WBAI management lost their minds and locked the station's most beloved hosts out of the studio, Off the Hook (naturally) led the rebellion, taking back the station for its audience, rescuing it from a managerial coup:

https://twitter.com/2600/status/1181423565389942786

But best of all, 2600 gave us HOPE – both in the metaphorical sense of "hope for a better technological tomorrow" and in the literal sense, with its biannual Hackers On Planet Earth con:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_on_Planet_Earth

For decades HOPE had an incredible venue, the Hotel Pennsylvania (memorialized in the phreak anthem "PEnnsylvania 6-5000"), a crumbling pile in midtown Manhattan that was biannually transformed into a rollicking, multi-day festival of forbidden technology, improbable feats, and incredible presentations. I was privileged to keynote HOPE in 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1D7APjmVbk

But after the 2018 HOPE, the Hotel Pennsylvania was demolished to make way for the Penn15 (no, really) skyscraper, a vaporware mega-tower planned as a holding pen for luxury shopping and empty million-dollar condos sold to offshore war-criminals as safe-deposit boxes in the sky. The developer, Vornado (no, really) hasn't actually done all that – after demo'ing the Hotel Pennsylvania, they noped out, leave a large, unusable scar across midtown.

But HOPE wasn't lost. In 2022, the ever-resilient 2600 crew relocated to Queens, hosted by St John's University – a venue that was less glamorous that the Hotel Pennsylvania, but the event was still fantastic. Attendance fell from 2,000 to 1,000, but that was something they could work with, and reviews from attendees were stellar.

Good thing, too. 2600 is, first and foremost, a magazine publisher, and these have been hard years for magazines. First there was the mass die-off of indie bookstores and newsracks (I used to sell 2600 when I was a bookseller, and in the years after, I always took the presence of 2600 on a store's newsrack as an unimpeachable mark of quality).

Thankfully for 2600, their audience is (unsurprisingly) a tech-savvy one, so they were able to substitute digital subscriptions for physical ones:

https://www.2600.com/Magazine/DigitalEditions

Of course, many of those subscriptions came through Amazon's Kindle, because nerds were early Amazon adopters, and because the Kindle magazine publishing platform offered DRM-free distribution to subscribers along with a fair payout to publishers.

But then Amazon enshittified its magazine system. Having locked publishers to its platform, it rugged them and killed the monthly subscription fees that allowed publishers to plan for a steady output. Publishers were given a choice: leave Amazon (and all the readers locked inside its walled garden) or put your magazine into the Kindle Unlimited system:

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/arp/B0BWPTCP4K?deviceType=A1FG5NAKX0MRJL

Kindle Unlimited is an all-you-can-eat program for Kindle, which pays publishers and writers based on a system that is both opaque and easily gamed, with the lion's share of the money going to "publishers" who focus on figuring out how to cheat the algorithm. Revenues for 2600 – and all the other magazines that Amazon had sucked in and sucked dry – fell off a cliff.

Which brings me to the present moment. After 40 years, 2600 is still at it, having survived the bookstorepocalypse, the lunacy of public radio management, the literal demolition of their physical home by an evil real-estate developer, and Amazon's crooked accounting.

This is 2600, circa 2024, and 2024 a HOPE year:

https://www.hope.net/

Once again, HOPE has been scheduled for its new digs in Queens, July 12-14. Last week, HOPE sent out an email blast to their subscribers telling them the news. They expected to sell 500 tickets in the first 24 hours. They didn't even come close:

https://www.2600.com/content/hope-ticket-sales-update

It turns out that Google and the other major mail providers don't like emails with the word "hacker" in them. The cartel that decides which email gets delivered, and which messages go to spam, or get blocked altogether, mass-blocked the HOPE 2024 announcement. Email may be the last federated, open platform we have, but mass concentration has created a system where it's nearly impossible to get your email delivered unless you're willing to play by Gmail's rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

For Emmanuel Goldstein, founder of 2600 and tireless toiler for this community, the deafening silence following from that initial email volley was terrifying: "like some kind of a "Twilight Zone" episode where everyone has disappeared."

The enshittification that keeps 2600's emails from being delivered to the people who asked to receive them is even worse on social media. Social media companies routinely defraud their users by letting them subscribe to feeds, then turning around to the people and organizations that run those feeds and saying, "You've got x thousand subscribers on this platform, but we won't put your posts in their feeds unless you pay us to 'boost' your content":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

Enshittification has been coming at 2600 for decades. Like other forms of oddball media dedicated to challenging corporate power and government oppression, 2600 has always been a ten-years-ahead preview of the way the noose was gonna tighten on all of us. And now, they're on the ropes. HOPE can't sell tickets unless people know about HOPE, and neither email providers nor social media platforms have any interest in making that happen.

A handful of giant corporations now get to decide what we read, who we hear from, and whether and how we can get together in person to make friends, forge community, rabble-rouse and change the world. The idea that "it's not censorship unless the government does it" has always been wrong (not all censorship violates the First Amendment, and censorship can be real without being unconstitutional):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes-its-censorship/

What can you do about it? Well, for one thing, you can sign up for HOPE. It's gonna be great. They've got sub-$100 hotel rooms! In New York City!

https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-xv

If you can't make it to HOPE, you can sign up for a virtual membership:

https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-xv-virtual-attendee

You can submit a talk to HOPE:

https://www.hope.net/cfp.html

You can subscribe to 2600, in print or electronically (I signed up for the lifetime print subscription and it was a bargain – I devour every issue the day it arrives):

https://store.2600.com/collections/subscriptions-renewals

2600 is living a decade in the future of every other community you care about, weird hobby you enjoy, con you live for, and publication you read from cover to cover. If we can all pull together to save it, it'll be a beacon of hope (and HOPE).

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/19/hope-less/#hack-the-planet

#pluralistic #2600 #hackers #magazines #publishing #kindle unlimited publishing #kindle #enshittification #monopoly #end to end #competition #events #nyc #hope #hackers on planet earth #amazon

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

A NOOSE TO HANG ONTO (III)

NAVIGATION || RAVISHING ALLURE MASTERLIST || NEXT: CHAPTER IV

PAIRING: Nikto x F!Reader (Soulmate AU)

WORDCOUNT: 7.3k

WARNINGS: Angst, mentions of stalking & stalking behavior, talks of death, weapons, violence, suggestive thoughts/comments, toxic modeling standards, food issues, etc. (Series 18+)

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

Sometimes you wonder if meeting your soulmate would even matter—it would never fix the void in your heart, you know. It would be foolish to think that it would. 

But there is such a drug attached to being loved as you are, despite your flaws and failings, destined to be tied in a game of commitment. Yet the simple fact showed that, while soulmates were able to bring you color, that didn’t change people's nature. 

Even among those tied pairs, divorce was rampant; assaults, and murders as well. 

Soulmate Psychosis, it was called. When your mind broke from having it all figured out, or even when you knew it was falling apart. 

It happened to your father and it happened to millions of other spouses too. When your entire life is already decided when you look at someone, it can be…a lot. 

So, part of you was happy that you’d never know who yours was unless they told you themselves—you can hope and pray that they stay their tongue and give you a chance to fall for them naturally. Because it scared you, truly, becoming like all of the rest. A statistic. 

Lord, don’t let yourself become a statistic.

Nikto silently walks at your heels as you push through the front doors of your penthouse, taking off your ball cap and stuffing it into your jacket pocket.

The man at the front desk calls to you, and you raise a hand in greeting, sliding a soft smile his way. 

“Seraph!” Isaak has been working at this building for as long as you can remember—the man with grayish hair and dark eyes. A face that was sharp and a nose crooked; like a chocolate-chip cookie, dark splotches along his face led to the impression of freckles. 

The man was slightly older than you, lanky, and always dressed luxuriously.

“Having a good day, Isaak? Has that girl come back and given you her number yet?” You slow your pace to the elevator, digging into your pocket and peeling out one of the keys from your lanyard for your floor. You nearly drop the thing before you snap and catch onto the metal quickly. Nikto lets off something like an annoyed growl behind you at the interruption from the man across the room. 

He’s impatient, you hum and send him a little glance over your shoulder. Light eyes dig with a warning. You only chuckle and shake your head calmly. One would think that for a PMC he would have all the patience in the world. 

“You know I keep trying to get her to go away,” Isaak smiles at you. “The only woman I’d accept a number from is you, my Little Angel.”

Where the flirtatious comments had gotten you into bed with the man before, now they just didn’t strike you as they had before. Not…anymore. 

You clear your throat and blink away for a moment before you school your expression back to an easy malleability. 

“Good try.” Your focus goes back to the keys, fingers jerkily sifting through them.

Isaak’s brows furrow at your form, perhaps a bit of offense making his face twist—dark eyes slip down your body; pupils dilating. 

A black form steps slightly forward, a large shoulder blocking you from view in one firm movement. Like some wolf with its neck fur standing on end, Nikto’s head is lightly bent down; eyes so intense that they render Isaak frozen in a sense of internal instincts warring with one another.

Nikto doesn’t speak, doesn’t make a sound—only stares and doesn't blink, immobile as a stone.

The soft music of the lobby blurs to the sound of a heart pounding.

You don’t even notice, humming when you find the correctly marked key from its slate mass and moving forward to press the illuminated button of the elevator. 

“Oh!” Your mind pulls itself back to the present and away from letters and fire. “Isaak, this is Nikto—he’ll be…” A pause, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Are you okay?”

The man looks like he’s about to piss himself. 

Without another word, Isaak scurries into the backroom, the door hitting so hard closed behind him that you flinch slightly and blink in shock. Standing for a moment, you tilt your head slowly right before the elevator dings, signaling you can enter. 

Nikto suddenly grabs the meat of your arm and moves you inside.

“Woah!” You call, huffing. “Careful!” 

“Inside,” the PMC grumbles, eyes tight and beady. 

Your feet stumble when he lets you go, having to steady yourself on the back railing so you don’t fall over and hit your face on the floor. A sharp look is leveled at Nikto as he drops his duffel bag to the ground and hooks his arms at the collar of his rig, grunting and shifting his legs to set himself. 

Blinking rapidly, you sigh out a fast breath.

“You know,” you begin, slotting your key into the plaque that says your floor number, twisting, and then taking a step back. Eyes darting to your side, you ease out slyly. “I’m sure people would like you more if you had the ability to articulate what you’re feeling. I’m getting the sense that you carry your emotions around like you’re trying to choke someone out.”

Nikto glares ahead, a brick wall of nothing but a harsh breath. 

You smile softly and chuckle. 

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll get you into shape in no time.” Pale eyes slowly slide to your face and Nikto’s dead gaze stays there—brows in such a straight line it’s like looking at a statue. “I always do.”

While being around your mom led you to a subdued state, you had no trouble easing back into your usual route of subtle flirting; it was natural to you, even after traumatic events. A cushion, if you will. It felt good to still be able to regulate yourself and have some level of control over your life. 

The three bodies and the Stalker, that senseless shadow, still haunt the back of your eyelids but having a distraction in the light was helping. Something new to focus on. 

“We need copy,” Nikto glares at you, ignoring your soft tone.

As the elevator rises incredibly high, you hum in question, smile flicking to a confused frown. He grits his teeth under his mask.

“The key, Whelp, да?” Your eyes spark.

“Oh, sure,” you shrug. “I don’t have one.” 

Nikto’s shoulders move back, blinking at you quickly. “You…” he trails off into a snarl of Russian. A hand comes up from his side to harshly dig into the bridge of his hidden nose.

You have to restrain a wide smile, the muscles in your face twitching. 

When the doors open, you’re led into the sight of your safe place—an entire world away from the one outside the half-closed blinds of an opposite wall of all windows.

“I’ll order you one,” you try to reassure Nikto, sending him a side glance as you let all of the tension leak out of you as you step inside. “No worries.”

The man follows, jaw tense, as he stoops down and swipes up his bag. 

“How is it that you do not have a second key?” Nikto’s eyes dart around the living room, not showing the slight way he’s taken aback by the size of everything and the design choice. 

It was certainly…unique. 

High mass, there were knickknacks on nearly every surface—a far-off ceiling due to the open second level where the rooms must be. There were hanging beads from the stairs, and plants that grew large and verdant; Nitko blinked at paintings on nearly every surface of the visible wall. A hanging chandelier that emits light over the antique-looking furniture of wood and velvet. 

Even a taxidermy deer head, with its antlers holding jewelry that glints rich and luxurious. Books and painted bits of the walls that were near sheer fabric draped as an accessory from the top of bookshelves. 

“Sorry for the mess,” you utter, sincerely, “if I’d been told that you were going to be staying here, I would have gotten the spare room ready.”

The kitchen is simple and mixed in with the living room in the form of a large island piled with magazines and notebooks. 

You sigh and look around, wrapping your arms around your waist as you glance around the space. Not a stranger to the confused looks you’d get from your style.

Aly described it as a fairy tale. A hut in the woods holding secrets and magic. So different than what AMA had you displayed as—a cold angel of white and sharp feathers.

A product of some great lust machine.

“Just wait until he sees the loft,” you murmur, thinking about all of the various fabrics and tailored clothes you’d had in the open space directly when you walk up the stairs. The Dress Form torso mannequins wearing dresses you’d made with pricked fingers and shaky nerves. 

You hoped he hadn’t met his Soulmate, because you’re sure it’s a hideous mess of colors up there. The thought makes you pause, and you realize you haven’t asked that question to yourself yet. 

Did Nikto see color? 

“No need,” Nikto immediately returns to his stoic monotone at your concern over the state of things. “I make do. Step aside.” 

Slipping off your shoes, you place them in the old claw foot parlor table you’d made into your entryway storage, glancing at the void as he walks around your creaky wooden floors with his heavy boots. 

“Shoes,” you remind, voice light. 

The beast halts, his back to you halfway onto your handmade Persian rugs. You watch his fingers twitch around his duffel bag straps, as you go to close your secondary door; hiding the gaping wound in the building as the elevator leaves. A soft click emanates just as the man grunts lowly and lets his bag slam to the floor. 

In one movement, the Russian bends down and unlaces his boots in firm and quick motions, grabbing them and turning like a puppet on a string. He plants them next to yours on the parlor table and sends you a tight look with hard eyes.

Nikto’s accent flares in his quick comment. “You are strange, Girl.”

You hum and shift out of your jacket, folding it and placing it atop the shoes. 

“Oh, so I’m strange because I don’t want you tracking dirt on my clean rugs? The people you live around must be slobs.”

“We do not live around others.” 

You blink, staring into his eyes as your skin pulls lightly. “Then I’m sorry. That must be very lonely.” 

Nikto’s muscles tense under his gear, great thighs hardening. He growls low after a moment of stiffly watching you. “I do not need pity, certainly not from you,” and then stalks off, leaving his bag in the foyer. 

Lips slightly parted, you let him walk away and snoop, taking account of the rooms and the layout for his own needs. Sighing, you rub at the back of your head before letting your hand drop back down, pulling at the fabric of your turtle neck. 

You couldn’t deny that you found Nikto physically attractive—the large stature and built frame made your neurons fire, how he loped along with his bulky gear. Sure, that was natural, and despite the attitude, you did feel secure around him. He had an extensive record for a reason, and your mother would only include the best in her decisions. 

It also attested to the fact that you didn’t find his aggression at all fear-inducing if that made any sense at all. To everyone else, he would be the pinnacle of an axe murderer, but, for some reason, he didn’t feel like that to you. A bit loose, sure, but the knowledge that this man was entirely mission-driven sat well with you. 

It confused you—why did you not entirely mind having him around?

I can live with this, you tell yourself, brushing off your sweatpants and telling yourself not to think of the bakery or about Sergi, Yefim, or Petya; Aleksandr. 

But when all that’s moved away like a curtain in front of the window, the view still remains. 

The Stalker. 

You still couldn’t rationalize it. How could someone do that? Be so bold and brute-like? And it was all over you. 

Never had you been overconfident in yourself—you knew you had the looks and the money, the ability to do what few people could, but that had never gotten into your head. It was common knowledge that every model had a shelf-life and yours would probably end sooner than later if this kept up. 

Any damage to your flesh that left long-term scarring was an instant dismissal. No negative press for AMA, either. 

In all of this, you were walking a very thin path of horror and reality, like a show at a circus. And you of all people know you can’t walk in a straight line.

The overwhelming feeling of being hunted was setting in and you were entirely in the woods with blood poured over your body; weighing down a dress of linen and calling the beasts to feast upon your flesh with a ravaging appetite. 

Swallowing the bile in your throat, you quickly go to find where Nikto had slinked off to, suddenly very cold and not liking the silence. On the way, you flick at your record player, and the old rusty thing spits out Clair De Lune as the glass sun catchers shaped like stars glimmer from the loft’s beams. 

“Nikto?” You call in question, looking around before you murmur to yourself. “Where did you get to?” 

Carefully grabbing the railing to the stairs, you watch your feet as you slowly ascend, piano music in the background; fingers tight and hard as you slide it up one at a time. You only knock your foot once, two steps from the top, but quickly recover with only a huff and a tiny chuckle. 

Nikto walks through the top seating area filled with your materials and fabric, glancing at every book and measuring device that you have; the half-finished pieces. You blink and watch, wondering what he’s thinking as he clicks his tongue before walking to the first door and pushing it open. Your eyes slightly widen at that. 

“Well, you sure do like making yourself at home,” your voice calls to the dark figure, and you shake your head. You begin following as if he is showing you around your place and not the other way around. 

“I am doing my job.” Nikto’s voice spits out from the opening as you shuffle in. He glances around the small guest bedroom quickly. “Your home is cluttered.” The Russian mutters. “Messy.”

“I call it controlled chaos.” You ease, hands slipping into your pockets beside your phone and wallet. “You’ll find I’m fond of shiny things.”

“We can tell.” Head tilting, you restrain yourself from asking why he keeps referring to himself in the first person like that.

“You’re free to take this room if you want.” There are three doors that make up the separate walls—the one you’d both just walked through, one to the adjoining library and joint bathroom, and the other to your master bedroom with a respective master bath. 

All connected to one another like a train car. 

Nikto grunts and slips his eyes to the bits of personalization you’d left, though not as much as the rest of the penthouse. The bed was a Full size, there was a desk with bits of lush greenery coming off from a planter, and storage for clothes in the form of a large wardrobe you’d found in an antique store. 

Classy, you thought, however, your standards for decoration weren’t the pinnacle of design. A set of Russian nesting dolls from your mother was put onto shelves, and in one of the corners, a hanging oil lamp sat above a nightstand. 

Gray plush duvet and a fluffy rug you were told was purple when Alyona stayed over, with large pillows that looked like bear fur.

“Again,” you send a glance to the blank stare that Nikto keeps on you. “I didn’t know you were staying over.”

“It is… sufficient.” Gruff and final, though with an air of annoyed disgust, the Russian goes into the library second to last and then heads into your room with his broad back expanding; leaving a trail of authority in his wake. 

Under your breath, you quietly mock him before rolling your eyes and following. For all this, you ended up being correct. Nikto was a good distraction. 

The first thing that he notices is the stuffed animals.

They take up most of the window nook, some incredibly large and fluffy while others are small and could be crushed in his palm, even sitting atop one another if the space allowed. Nikto blinks at the sight of a very large bear plushie with a small bird on the head—little felt feet sticking out in front of it. 

You clear your throat, the hot embarrassment flooding your face as your smile turns sheepish. 

“Just…uhm…it’s just a little bit of an addiction.” Like the rest of the house, that fairy tale feeling emanates here as well—fancy curtain holders, old tea cups holding palm-sized pewter statues, paintings, and stained-glass lamps from the nineteen hundreds. 

Pale eyes tilt their gaze down to you, silent as always.   

“But at least it’s not drugs!” You push out quickly, awkwardly chuckling and shrugging your shoulders. 

Your feet shift from under you, the large room that you call your own not something you planned on having to describe today. There was something incredibly intimate about letting someone into your house—someone you didn’t know especially. 

Nikto puffs a bit of air in something akin to a scoff, turning his head away from you but not after a slight quirk of his brow. 

“Are you sure you are not on drugs?” You snap up to stare at him, falling silent for a moment as he turns and leaves. 

Gaping, you stutter, slightly amused, “W-was that a joke, Nikto?” He doesn’t answer and a slow smile grows on your lips. “Hey! C’mon did you just make a joke? Awe,” you coo, “I really am good at this!” 

“Stop talking.” Nikto snarls, glaring as he goes down to the ground level. “You are making my ears hurt.” 

You hurry to the stairs, following after with a steady mood, chuckling. 

“If you’re going to be my glorified roommate, I think talking is part of the—” A sharp gasp rips from you as your leg hits on the banister, your foot locked through the metal as you yelp loudly at the sudden pain. In a quick tilt your vision slides, a swift sensation of gravity taking over as your body takes you tumbling backwards. 

You tense mid-air, mind already made up about the incoming pain of your head knocking off the hard material, your skull rattling and splitting open; blood and brain matter spilling out to coat the—

Arms snap around your waist, legs still on the top half of the stairs and back hitting a large chest as you grunt in surprise; eyes blinking wildly. 

Heart hammering, your head quickly looks up only to find the piercing eyes of Nikto burning down into you. Your nose brushes his face mask, the harsh fabric of the lover half pressing into yours. 

You both stay there for a moment, Nikto’s blazing gaze unphased, it seemed, by the close contact. Inside of your gut, your stomach flips, and a tightness flares in your lungs. 

Upon the air, your voice stutters out, tiny, “M-my bad.” You accent it with a helpless chuckle.

Nikto’s breath brushes over your forehead, and with a quick jerk of his arms you’re set back up on top of the stares. Even here, you meet the man’s height perfectly—him a few steps below you yet still a giant. 

“This will be a problem, yes?” Nikto barks out. You steady yourself on the railing and take a deep breath. “You. You are…” His eyes twitch as if trying to find the correct word in English. He grunts to himself, fingers twitching.

You tilt your head, still calming down. Your throat is tight at the heat that still emanates from where Nikto’s hands had wrapped around you.

“...Shaky?”

“Hm,” Nikto doesn’t seem like that word fits best, but he nods once firmly, folding his arms over his chest and never once releasing you from his stare. Studying you as a monster does a maiden. “Да.”

You jerkily shrug, rubbing at your neck with one hand. 

“Well, I guess brain damage will do that to you,” your lips tilt in an amiable smile—trying to play off what you say as you continue. Nikto’s body goes still, yet his attention never leaves. His eyes narrow. “I should have told you when we met, but you were, eh,” you chuckle, looking away for a moment. “Pretty quick with wanting to leave.”

A strained silence falls; an unknown emotion in the air. 

“I—” Your voice is cut off by your phone vibrating from inside of your pocket, and with your hand snapping to that general area, you blink in surprise. “Oh.” 

Fishing it out with awkward fingers, you find the illuminated screen and a text from Alyona calling up to you.

‘Video call w AMA & managers. 5 min. Be ready!’ 

“Shit,” you mutter, immediately going into your professional headspace. 

But before you can rush off to grab your computer and slap makeup on your face, Nikto’s hand yanks your phone from your grasp. Blinking at your empty palm, your face darts up with a swift offense growing. 

“Nikto!”

“Quiet.” The man taps into your contacts and you watch helplessly as he begins slashing in his own number with his digits firmly pressing in hard intervals to the keypad. 

Huffing, you shake your head and leave him there to do what he needs to do, not overprotective of a device and more concerned with the time constraint that was leveled like a noose around your neck. 

You had to look somewhat good for the call, after all, they could be waiting to tell you you’re fired. 

They wouldn’t do that with Alyona there, you reason as you narrowly dodge running onto a side table before you enter your room again, though this time from the main door. Not the managers either. 

Your lips pull straight. 

But if the CEO was on call, then you’d have to worry. He had no problem being ruthless about policy and public image, always so pretentious with his power over all of the men and women employed at Allurement. 

But then again, he had always seemed to take an interest in you, anyway. 

You slip out of your turtleneck and pull on a silk top that seems either white or a very very pale color—either way, they always put you in something near to white, so it didn’t matter. Since it was a video call, there was no need to show your bottom half; the sweatpants stayed. 

Makeup was the hard part. 

With your nerve spasms always showing up at inopportune times, it took a long time if someone else wasn’t doing it for you. You had ways to combat it, sure, but none you could get ready in five minutes. 

Three, you tell yourself. 

An idea hits your head like a rock.

“Nikto!” You call, rushing to your vanity and pushing aside a plush raccoon to snag your mascara. There wasn’t time for anything else. “I have a favor!”

“No,” the man materializes in the opening of your door, the backdrop of your fabric mess in the loft behind him; the clashing of shades momentarily confuses you, blinking quickly, but you recover with a huff and a plea.

“I need you to put my mascara on—my hands are too unpredictable right now.” He’s growling in the way you’re already accustomed to. This must be one hell of a day for him. “Your job is to protect me right? I need you to protect me from public humiliation.”

“Then humiliate yourself.” Nikto’s narrowed eyes lower even farther, face turned sharply to you as you walk over and hold out the stick. “This is not my job.”

You dig hard into his eyes, serious if not a bit willing. “I’d owe you.” Your tone is hard but true. 

The Russian bear’s shoulders roll slightly, getting higher and more irritated. He grunts at you. After a long and heartstopping moment, he grabs onto your pocket and slips your phone back inside, jostling your body into his as you make a noise in surprise. 

In that same movement, the mascara stick is yanked from your hand and fingers grapple onto your chin. 

Your eyes go wide; body instantaneously tensing, as the unyielding grip moves your chin to the side and one hand unscrews the mascara with a slight pop of the seal. 

“You are dependent,” Nikto’s digits are tight, but you don’t blink or pull away as the stick spreads pigment. “I do not like it, Girl. Like child running with a knife.” 

“Aren’t you such a ray of sunshine?” You grumble but stay deathly still. Nikto’s body is tight against yours, leaning over you. 

The guy certainly didn’t mind getting handsy if he needed to. Thinking like that makes your feet shuffle tinily under you, a heat emanating from your cheeks and your thighs momentarily becoming stiff. 

His body warmth bleeds through his bulk; the grating press of his chest plate to your upper body.

“Stop breathing,” Nikto hisses and your cheek is moved to the side, knee knocking into his leg. 

You feel and see the stick descend and move your lashes delicately, quite adverse to the attitude you’re getting. The Russian is attentive and set on getting his task done, even if he despises it.

“What kind of a request is that?!” 

“Hush!” He barks and you both try to glare at each other as the last of the mascara is bushed on. “Get out.”

You pull back and frown up at him.

“I’m sorry you think that your attitude is appropriate, Nikto.” With your nose in the air, your hands grapple for your laptop on the way out of your room and sit at the desk out in your loft. Tossing a stack of fabric to the floor and brushing down the surface. 

Behind you, there’s a plain-colored sheet hung to the wall for conferences—and you make sure it’s in place as you plop down to your seat. 

Nikto’s angry eyes bore into you from the doorway, which he slowly leans against and crosses his arms heavily. 

He mutters under his breath in fast Russian, shaking his head as you unlock your laptop and log in, easily clicking where you need to go and pulling up your video call with twenty seconds to spare. 

Alyona’s face appears first, looking to the side, and you send a soft smile before you unmute yourself. 

“Feeling better?” The woman perks up, eyes coming to you. She beams.

“Солнышко!” You laugh, tilting your head. “No, no, forget about me, how are you?” Aly gives you her full attention. “I need to come over and visit, yes? We should have a girl’s night again. Just us.” 

“I’m…alright,” you simply say, fast to reassure her of her worries. There was no need to burden the model with your fears. Not when she’s still living with her own. “And that might be a bit difficult on the ‘just us’ part, unfortunately.”

She sighs but is serious in her concern.

“New bodyguard, Seraph?” Nikto listens to everything from across the loft, and you glance up at him before you open your mouth to speak in the affirmative.

“Live-in.” Alyona thins her lips, but, surprisingly, doesn’t seem off-put. 

“Perhaps that is good, hm? If it’s to keep you safe, I would be willing to deal with it.” Before you can admit that it’s not the worst idea in the world, though draining, three others pop into the call.

Yours and Alyona’s managers, and, of course, the CEO of AMA. 

You have to hide your curse before it sneaks out of your mouth. Everyone greets one another, and you send polite smiles and hellos in return. Corporate professionalism a virus that sweeps your features into a mask of compliance and brain-dead agreements. 

Kliment Fedorov, CEO of Allurement Modeling Agency, shows his large and round face in the very center of the screen; with tiny eyes like a fly and a bald head. He’s in his office.

The man calls your name and smiles wide, pure white teeth leaning more towards fake looking than just the results of frequent brushing. 

“It is good to see both of my best girls getting along. No lasting marks, I hope?” You and Aly dart look. 

“None, Sir.” You both answer, still smiling and falling in line. They only speak in English for your comfort—in your manager’s box, you see his translator lean into his ear and relay the words being let out.

“Good, good! This is great news. Seraph,” you perk up, Nikto from the back shuffling while looking around his surroundings. He picks at a piece of reflective fabric on a side table with his brutish fingers, twisting it before huffing and tossing it away. He snoops as if put off by the high-mass areas, used to order and cleanliness. 

Not that it wasn’t clean, but outwardly it gave off a certain impression of clutter.

“How soon can you be back? We have had even more propositions offered because of this event.” Your lungs stutter. “Mrs. Solovyova and yourself are very profitable for the company at the current time; this only made your popularity better!” 

Your manager, Kostya, spits off into his native tongue with its harsh edges. Nikto’s head shifts back your way but says nothing. 

Profitable? Wanted? You can’t say you’re overly thrilled at the comments. Just like you can’t say you want to get back to work when the Stalker knows exactly where you’ll be. 

Who could say when he would strike again? A day? A week? Going back to AMA would make the target on your back as large as a damn elephant.

Kliment waves a hand and your manager falls silent at the sheen of anger in his fly-eyes. He continues.

“Of course, AMA had to take precautions, Ladies.” Alyona shifts in her box on the screen, glancing to the side. “We were very close to having to terminate your deal with us. Such events are…ah, dangerous for our image.”

It’s like a punch to the gut you knew was coming. The only reason you were still employed was because of companies trying to profit off of the girls who beat the odds and survived a direct attack on one of their own. 

You could already see the headlines—had seen the headlines. 

Aly and you know the response you need to give.

“Thank you, Sir.” Smiles are stiff, but a sheet of pleasure washes Kliment’s face.

“Well, of course, my girls! I would never get rid of such beauties, no, no. This agency is your home—I love my women like my own.” His eyes stay on you, and your body shivers even miles away. “But lovely Seraph, again, when can we have you back? Everyone has been asking, yes? Photographers lining up! But of course, you’ll keep your assigned one.” 

Everyone? You swallow down saliva thinking about crowds and the peering eyes. 

“Uhm,” Nikto openly stares, and you glance up at him. He offers no help above a tilt of his head; arms over his chest. “W-when would you need me back, Sir. My calendar is always free for you.”

“Good! Tomorrow, then. Mrs. Solovyova?” 

“...That works for me, Sir.” 

“Perfect!” You sigh and close your eyes for a moment before the CEO jumps into business—your managers taking notes in preparation for scheduling and locations. “I will send the details over to your departments and good wishes to the companies, I’ll expect to hear of you both being in tomorrow.” 

He leaves the call, but not without a smirk forming on his face. 

The managers talk for a few moments, getting almost everything in order before they too leave. 

Aly and you release a deep breath, both sagging. The other woman is first to speak.

“Bastard.” Nikto scoffs from across the room. You peek before you rub your head and nod in turn. 

“A creep, one hundred percent.” Alyona sighs, and her palm acts as a headrest as she lays her chin on it. She licks her lips, face going hard.

“You don’t think that he…” Your brows tilt in confusion before you catch what she’s trying to say. 

“No, Aly, it can’t be him.” She frowns. “T-that would be,” you force a laugh, hands beginning to spasm. Swiftly you move them under the desk. “That would be insane.”

Nikto takes his phone out of his pocket and taps something into the screen, feet spacing themselves in a display of a perfect soldier. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, Солнышко.” You turn away for a moment. “Anyone could be at this point.” 

“My mother said there was a break-in at the bakery before the explosion. Someone planted that bomb because they guessed on an off chance that we would go out.” You breathe sharply. “Do you know how insane that is? Anyone could have,” swiftly stopping your sentence, you shake your head to clear it. “It’s…the person who’s doing this can’t blend into normal life. It has to be obvious, and everyone’s missing it.”

“Easy, Little Seraph,” Alyona eases, showing you a hand to get you to come back to her. “We will figure this out, yes?” 

A hand rubs along your face and you whisper out, “Okay.” 

“I’ll see you and the new man tomorrow—you know you can call me with anything. Nikifor and I worry about you. Yekaterinburg is a dangerous place, regardless.” You have to smile at that, lightly chuckling. Aly tilts her head as her hair brushes her shoulders after a moment of quiet thinking. A lighter air spreads out like her voice from the speakers. “...Who did your makeup in so little time?” 

“See you tomorrow!” You grab the end of the laptop and slam it closed as the woman yells out to you.

“Don’t fuck him on the first day!” Wanting to shrivel up and die, you avoid Nikto’s suddenly brutal gaze and quickly push a smile to your lips.

“S…she’s joking.” His pale eyes aren’t amused. 

Nighttime is a strange affair between the two of you.

You jump at every strange noise—like Nikto rearranging his room better to his standards—as you think of dinner for two. Laying on the couch, back in your turtle neck, it’s hard to focus above the scrape of hardwood and the low grunts from above; the distant rhythmic stomp of feet.

You rub your eyes and groan low. This was going to be a task, even for your usually placid attitude. 

“What the hell does a monster eat?” The comment is directed at the taxidermy deer on your wall as you move to stand. “Liver? The souls of my enemies?” You blink, pausing before you mumble. “Maybe that’s not so bad, now that I think about it.” 

Your pantry was already sparse at best. 

Tapping the cupboard, you settle on something that Alyona had taught you to make with her mother. Cabbage Soup—Schi or щи—low overall in calories but still filling when you know your limits; healthy as well as hardy. You mess with the bag of potatoes and peel out a few, turning and setting them down on the island. 

With the dark night soon setting in, you push the automatic button on your wall and watch the curtains close the rest of the way with a soft buzzing sound. Sighing, you flick on the lights and get to work as the gray blobs of potatoes fall apart under your knife, set to the side. 

Cooking, while you still had a complicated relationship with food, did truly make you calm down. The tremors eased up, your feet stopped moving so much—you even felt yourself getting hungry as the ingredients were roughly chopped and dropped into a pot to boil. 

If you allowed yourself it, you wouldn’t have minded growing up to be a cook instead of some form of greed and envy. But the thought of that now made you lose your appetite entirely.

When you’re half done with your tiny bowl, water on the side with nothing else, Nikto stalks down the stairs. 

He takes one look at your bowl and speaks lowly. 

“Щи.” You hum, recognizing the word that Aly’s mother had said. He grunts, chest jerking as he comes around the island to the boiling pot; his back now to you. “You will starve with that small of a portion, Whelp.” 

Blinking, you sip down some of the broth from your spoon and furrow your brow. That nickname still makes your eyelids narrow in slight disapproval, but you let it go.

“I don’t think so, Nikto. It’s the last bit of calories I need for the day.” Pale eyes watch over his shoulder, pulling smaller.

“I find that insulting.” His hand grabs the ladle, bringing it up to stare. The Russian’s shoulder blades pull out at the motion, the line of his spine most likely showing through his skin under all that gear. You should tell him it’s okay to take it off, but you highly doubt he ever does outside of sleep. “Pointless.”

“You try being a model,” you remark. “You’ve got the body for it, at least. I know a few people that would swoon over the height alone.” 

Nikto’s visible skin pulls, biceps tense. “Swoon, Girl?” The accent makes it sound like a bark from a dog. 

You take your last spoonful, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. 

“Like,” pausing, you swallow, “actually I don’t know what that means. Become emotionally affected, I guess?”

“I do not care if people become ‘emotionally affected’ by my height.” Nikto pulls a bowl from the cupboard—a large one. “Such things are below me. All that matters is the mission.”

“Sounds boring,” you huff. “Sour cream is in the fridge.” 

The light from the machine greets you as the condiment is taken out and emptied into a nearly overflowing bowl of cabbage soup. Blinking at the amount of food that would burst your stomach if you ate it, you shrug and clean out the last of the broth by bringing the lip of the bowl to your mouth. 

Nikto huffs, looking down at the soup. He pauses.

“Where is баранины?” Your confusion must be plainly stated on your face because he seems to clench his jaw and say through his teeth. “Lamb.”

“Alyona never made it with meat,” you answer, hopping off your stool and moving to put your dirty dishes in the sink. “But I’ve heard everyone makes it differently depending on where you grew up. Was that how your parents made it?” 

When you turn back around he’s already walking away from you. Watching, wide-eyed at how silently he cleared the room, you make a small sound in the back of your throat as he disappears upstairs.

The silence wafts back in, only the small noise from the record player dancing in your ears. 

You lick your lips for the remaining taste of food and clean up with a still-growling stomach, shaking your head at the strange character living with you. Hoping this doesn’t drag out any longer than it has to and you’re able to find the stalker soon, you hear your phone go off on the counter as you mull over your predicament. 

After you put the last of the leftovers away, you pat your hands on your pants and reach for your device, flipping over the screen and reading what will probably be a text from Aly for tomorrow. 

You pause. 

UNKNOWN NUMBER:

‘Why won’t you let me love you?’ 

Staring, whatever sense of normalcy you had from cooking was snatched away. The blood in your veins halts with a blockage of iron and fear. Instantaneously, adrenaline spikes, making your pupils go small and your jaw clench. 

Hands shake. You almost drop your phone. 

With a quick punch of your fingers, you delete the text and block the number—tossing your device back to the counter and moving away from it until your back hits the cupboards. 

Spasming palms slap to the stone countertop, grip tight. 

You stare at the phone for a very long time, hearing nothing but the dull drone of the piano, the sounds of the city outside, and the pulse of your veins. Static was in your ears. 

Gasping for a sudden deep breath, you clear your throat and turn away to finish cleaning, your body unable to stay still.

That night, like the ones previous, you find trouble sleeping. 

The room was only illuminated by the fairy lights you’d strung from the ceiling, a soft fade and reentry like twinkling stars hanging in a black sky. You stare at them with open eyes, laying on your back surrounded by a multitude of quilts and blankets—pillows that crowd with doughy insides. 

Nikto was turning in his bed, and the movement was setting you on edge. 

The PMC had ordered you to keep the door between your rooms open at night, in case something was happening he would hear you better. You held your tongue on the fact that if this creep managed to get into your penthouse then it was already over for you. Regardless, now you could hear every shift and grunt—every huff of annoyed air. 

No doubt the Full bed in the spare room was too tiny for him, nothing compared to your King. 

Sighing and covering your eyes with your forearm, you call out sleepily. 

“Are you sleeping alright?” The shifting stops. You wait for a response but get none. “Nikto?” Nothing. 

Sitting up, your large silk pajamas hang off one shoulder as you yawn; covering your mouth you stand and steady yourself on the oak bed frame. Standing so you can get your bearings, you decide to do what you normally do when you can’t sleep. 

Grabbing your phone’s flashlight, you flick it on and head to the kitchen—being extra careful and taking the stairs at half the speed you normally would. In the kitchen you grab at the stacked teacups and pick one with flowers on the sides; giggling to yourself at the thought.

Magnolia Tea. 

Its smell burns into your nostrils as you prepare it in near-darkness, like a beacon of light the liquid shimmers. You remember your mother making it for you after the accident—helping you to sleep and stave off the nightmares; the insomnia. 

You finish your cup in the kitchen but bring the second back up with you. Spilling only a little onto the tea plate, you go through the main door to your room and then turn to the blackened opening of Nitko’s doorway. 

“I made tea,” your voice echoes. But no sound. 

Maybe he was already asleep now. 

“No need to drink it, but it helps me when I can’t sleep. Magnolia, if you’re curious.” You chuckle, fairy lights illuminating your face. “Sorry, I’m keeping you up. I’ll leave it in the doorway, okay?”

Silence, but perhaps a tiny huff from inside the lion's den. Good or bad, you have no clue. Slipping back into bed, you try not to think about what you’re sleeping above—the letters from the Stalker’s gifts. 

You’d never opened them, and you never would. Inside that lockbox is where they would stay.

Your phone vibrates on your nightstand, and even with the tea in your stomach, it is a long, long, time before your eyes flutter closed. 

Yefim’s body dances like a puppet on a string, a shadowy figure pulling the cords and letting his decimated corpse sway; jewelry stapled into his burnt neck like a collar. A noose that your desperate fingers try to hang onto.

How long could you keep this game up?

TAGS:

@anna-banana27, @random-thot-generator, @midwesternwitchery, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @halfmoth-halfman, @alpineswinter, @blingblong55, @cryingnotcrying, @lxne20, @not-eclipse, @theecoffeebean, @phoenixhalliwell, @h3ll-guttz, @tiinkerbell, @genjilvr, @azush4rp, @escapefromrealitysm, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @finnigansxz, @cowboybaby2, @delaynew, @doggydale, @zapphir, @littlemisstrouble, @xxtmoe, @grizzersmamma, @andreas-river, @blogdddxx, @jade-jax, @emthegrace, @lovebugmsyd, @makariaspresence, @noisyprofessorhoundsalad-blog, @scythebot, @blueoorchid, @kra-rino4ka, @caramlizedtomatos, @strawberymilk,@frazie99, @homicidal-slvt, @develised, @crispyhusband, @cathnoneofyourbusiness, @ghostslittlegf, @generalcloudtraveler, @azsteris, @rvjaa, @creminemisinthehizzyforshizzboy, @comsyki

#ravishing allure #cod #cod x reader #cod x you #call of duty #x female reader #call of duty x you #mwii nikto #nikto x reader #cod nikto #nikto #cod modern warfare #call of duty mw2 #cod mw22 #mw2 2022 #mw2 #call of duty x reader #cod mw2 #call of duty modern warfare #modern warfare 2 #call of duty mwii #cod x female reader #x fem!reader

[coochiequeens]

Because large-scale organising is “almost impossible” in China, women are turning to “all kinds of alternative ways to maintain feminism in their daily lives and even develop and transfer feminism to others,” she says. These may take the form of book clubs or exercise meet-ups. Some of her friends in China organise hikes. “They say that we are feminists, we are hiking together, so when we are hiking we talk about feminism.“ - Lü Pin

To find evidence that China’s feminist movement is gaining momentum – despite strict government censorship and repression – check bookshelves, nightstands and digital libraries. There, you might find a copy of one of Chizuko Ueno’s books. The 74-year-old Japanese feminist and author of Feminism from Scratch and Patriarchy and Capitalism has sold more than a million books in China, according to Beijing Open Book, which tracks sales. Of these, 200,000 were sold in January and February alone.

Ueno, a professor of sociology at the University of Tokyo, was little known outside in China outside academia until she delivered a 2019 matriculation speech at the university in which she railed against its sexist admissions policies, sexual “abuse” by male students against their female peers, and the pressure women felt to downplay their academic achievements.

The speech went viral in Japan, then China.

“Feminist thought does not insist that women should behave like men or the weak should become the powerful,” she said. “Rather, feminism asks that the weak be treated with dignity as they are.”

In the past two years, 11 of her books have been translated into simplified Chinese and four more will be published this year. In December, two of her books were among the top 20 foreign nonfiction bestsellers in China. While activism and protests have been stifled by the government, the rapid rise in Ueno’s popularity shows that women are still looking for ways to learn more about feminist thought, albeit at a private, individual level.

Talk to young Chinese academics, writers and podcasters about what women are reading and Ueno’s name often comes up. “We like-like her,” says Shiye Fu, the host of popular feminist podcast Stochastic Volatility.

“In China we need some sort of feminist role model to lead us and enable us to see how far women can go,” she says. “She taught us that as a woman, you have to fight every day, and to fight is to survive.”

When asked by the Guardian about her popularity in China, Ueno says her message resonates with this generation of Chinese women because, while they have grown up with adequate resources and been taught to believe they will have more opportunities, “patriarchy and sexism put the burden to be feminine on them as a wife and mother”.

Ueno, who found her voice during the student power movements of the 1960s, has long argued that marriage restricts women’s autonomy, something she learned watching her own parents. She described her father as “a complete sexist”. It’s stance that resonates with women in China, who are rebelling against the expectation that they take a husband.

Ueno’s most popular book, with 65,000 reviews on Douban, is simply titled Misogyny. One review reads: “It still takes a little courage to type this. I have always been shy about discussing gender issues in a Chinese environment, because if I am not careful, I will easily attract the label of … ‘feminist cancer’.”

“Now it’s a hard time,” says Lü Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist who now lives in the US. In 2015 she happened to be in New York when Chinese authorities arrested five of her peers – who were detained for 37 days and became known as the “Feminist Five” – and came to Lü’s apartment in Beijing. She narrowly avoided arrest. “Our movement is increasingly being regarded as illegal, even criminal, in China.”

China’s feminist movement has grown enormously in the past few years, especially among young women online, says Lü, where it was stoked by the #MeToo movements around the world and given oxygen on social media. “But that’s just part of the story,” she says. Feminism is also facing much stricter censorship – the word “feminism” is among those censored online, as is China’s #MeToo hashtag, #WoYeShi.

“When we already have so many people joining our community, the government regards that as a threat to its rule,” Lü says. “So the question is: what is the future of the movement?”

Because large-scale organising is “almost impossible” in China, women are turning to “all kinds of alternative ways to maintain feminism in their daily lives and even develop and transfer feminism to others,” she says. These may take the form of book clubs or exercise meet-ups. Some of her friends in China organise hikes. “They say that we are feminists, we are hiking together, so when we are hiking we talk about feminism.

“Nobody can change the micro level.”

‘The first step’

In 2001, when Lü was a journalist starting out on her journey into feminism, she founded a book club with a group of friends. She was struggling to find books on the subject, so she and her friends pooled their resources. “We were feminists, journalists, scholars, so we decided let’s organise a group and read, talk, discuss monthly,” she says. They met in people’s homes, or the park, or their offices. It lasted eight years and the members are still among her best friends.

Before the book club, “I felt lonely when I was pursuing feminism. So I need friends, I need a community. And that was the first community I had.” “I got friendship, I deepened my understanding of feminism,” Lü says. “It’s interesting, perhaps the first step of feminist movements is always literature in many countries, especially in China.”

Lü first read Ueno’s academic work as a young scholar, when few people in China knew her name. Ueno’s books are for people who are starting out on their pursuit of feminism, Lü says, and the author is good at explaining feminist issues in ways that are easy to understand.

Like many Ting Guo discovered Ueno after the Tokyo University speech. Guo, an assistant professor in the department of cultural and religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, still uses it in lectures.

Ueno’s popularity is part of a larger phenomenon, Guo says. “We cannot really directly describe what we want to say, using the word that we want to use, because of the censorship, because of the larger atmosphere. So people need to try to borrow words, mirror that experience in other social situations, in other political situations, in other contexts, in order to precisely describe their own experience, their own feelings and their own thoughts.”

There are so many people who are new to the feminist movement, says Lü, “and they are all looking for resources, but due to censorship, it’s so hard for Chinese scholars, for Chinese feminists, to publish their work.”

Ueno “is a foreigner, that is one of her advantages, and she also comes from [an] east Asian context”, which means that the patriarchal system she describes is similar to China’s. Lü says the reason books by Chinese feminists aren’t on bestseller lists is because of censorship.

Na Zhong, a novelist who translated Sally Rooney’s novels into simplified Chinese, feels that Chinese feminism is, at least when it comes to literature, gaining momentum. The biggest sign of this, both despite and because of censorship, is “the sheer number of women writers that are being translated into Chinese” – among whom Ueno is the “biggest star”.

“Young women are discovering their voices, and I’m really happy for my generation,” she says. “We’re just getting started.”

By Helen R Sullivan

This is the third story in a three-part series on feminism and literature in China.

#China #Japan #Chizuko Ueno #Books for women #Feminism from Scratch #Patriarchy and Capitalism #Misogyny #Feminist Five #Lü Pin #WoYeShi

[dduane]

BTW… re: Smut

... off my comment to this post the other day...

I'm an entertainer. Writing's a form of entertainment. (And not just for the readership: for me, too.) To be aroused by art one's experienced is (almost by definition) to be entertained, I'd say. If someone's jerking off to my erotica, then all I can do is lean back in the typing chair, smile a bit, and think, Good! I got the job done. :)

(...with the tags: #and no I'm not going to let on where the smut is#why would i deny anyone the delights of the search#and of being repeatedly mistaken#while possibly finding smut writers who're better at it than i am#:) ...)

...and then noting (with affectionate amusement) some responses:

Well, troops, better get busy filling in that bingo box. 😄

Also: I have to say (while stressing that I absolutely appreciate the humor behind "shocked, shocked, scandalized...") that the dissonance is, temporally speaking, a bit ill-founded. Because while I may be best known for the Young Wizards works these days... by no means did they come first. This did.

A soft chuckle in the darkness. “Lorn, remember that first time we shared at your place?” “That was a long time ago.” “It seems that way.” “—and my father yelled up the stairs, ‘What are you dooooooooing?’ “—and you yelled back, ‘We’re fuckinnnnnnnnnnng!’” “—and it was quiet for so long—” “—and then he started laughing—” “Yeah.”

Granted, from the here-and-now POV of readers with access to the hot-'n'-spicy shipfic or PWP on AO3, this sort of thing (and the numerous other lights-often-off or dialogue-only sexytiems passages in the traditionally published Middle Kingdoms works) would be seen as pretty small beer: soft, non-edgy stuff. Yet in 1979 apparently there were those who found the sex and sexualities on display in The Door Into Fire arresting enough that the book got me nominated for the Astounding Award (for best new author in the field) two years in a row.

There's no question that the broadly inclusive tone set by the Middle Kingdoms books went on to affect and underlie the YW universe in very basic ways. (There've been some scholarly works written by academics who've picked up on this, so [much to my relief] this perception hasn't been just me imagining it.) But I'll grant you that those who don't know the MK novels wouldn't be in a position to make the connection. (shrug) This is just one of those things that comes of having a lot of fragmented readerships who don't know about each other... a side effect of having done a lot of different things during a career. I can also understand how not knowing about the MK works could leave people who know me only, or primarily, as someone writing for a younger readership, a little bit disoriented (or maybe concerned) when the issue of me writing openly sexual material rears its head. But that wouldn’t be a change of direction. It’d be, to some extent, more a return to form.

Anyway: I consider erotica—and its more casually-dressed (or undressed...) cousin, smut—to be perfectly legit forms of literary expression; ones that can soar to unexpected heights if you're willing to put in the work. The sexy-stuff-writing muscle requires periodic exercise if it's to remain viable and/or useful. So I exercise it. And being a 70-year-old person who sometimes creaks audibly when she walks has done absolutely nothing to decrease my interest in the subject—the brain being, after all, the biggest sex organ, and the one least vulnerable to the depredations of time. If anything, nearly fifty years of experience (and three and a half decades of marriage to @petermorwood) have added... let's just say nuance. 😏

Now this whole concept will doubtless horrify some of the "Eww, You're Too Old To Be Writing This Kind Of Thing, Go Get A (Home) Life" types. To which all I can say is, "...Well, good!" By and large, such folks are not my readers anyway. And as for any of them who are, and can't deal…? They need to understand that (pointing off to one side) those people over there—the various kinda-straight and pansexual and bisexual humans, and the gender-fluid fire elemental, and the otherly-gendered Dragon, and the mostly-gay ones enthusiastically shouting "We're fuckinnnng!" down the stairs—are Nita's and Kit's godparents. Without the members of that extremely mixed marriage and their increasingly extended family, there might be no Young Wizards series... not least because it was the splash made by the first of the Middle Kingdoms books that got the Errantryverse crowd in through a major publisher's door. And the series’s continued (modest but still noticeable) success through the second and third volumes kept the writing of new YW books going for a good long while.

...So. For those who may have had questions: HTH. 😀

(And now back to the unending search for a more graceful synonym for “testicles”.)

#Young Wizards #Middle Kingdoms #writing young adult fiction #writing adult fiction #writing adults-ONLY fiction #all sisters under the skin

[beguines]

would you be able to recommend any books/resources that provide a good intro to anti-psychiatry? rlly fascinated by this subject

to be clear, i wouldn't describe myself as explicitly anti-psychiatry. people very close to me rely on psychiatric medication in order to relieve symptoms that aren't just disruptive to their role in capitalist society but cause them immense suffering in general. while i have had particularly negative experiences with psychiatric medication, i have also seen it save people's lives and pull them out of acute crisis. i've been seeing a therapist for four years who has had a very positive effect on my life and has always been respectful of my refusal to take psychiatric medication.

i also think it is necessary to acknowledge that while psychiatry and psychology are disciplines that enforce capitalist hegemony, the alternative to being capable of functioning within capitalist society isn't much of an alternative at all when capitalism's inescapability is part of its very nature. that being said, i think it's extremely important for anyone living with mental illness, being treated for it, or supporting someone who is to be aware of:

the insufficiency of the biomedical/disease model and the very slow speed at which the field is moving away from it

the inability of medical professionals to identify the etiology of any mental illness

the immense risk associated with virtually all psychiatric medications (particularly antipsychotics and mood stabilizers)

the very profitable marriage between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry

the influence of western (and particularly american) hegemony over how we treat what we call mental illness

the prevalence of coercive/forced treatment

i also think it's extremely important within that context to do your own research and ensure that you're engaging with material from a variety of different sources, maintaining an awareness of any biases they may have and how those affect their research and conclusions, whether they skew towards anti-psychiatry or not. the most important thing to do if you or your loved one has any kind of illness is to be well-informed and capable of advocacy, which is largely why i've been doing a bit of a deep dive on the subject lately.

what i'm reading now:

desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness by andrew scull

psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness by bruce m.z. cohen

psychiatry in crisis: at the crossroads of social sciences, the humanities, and neuroscience by vincenzo di nicola and drozdstoj stoyanov

other recommendations:

i think your best bet for more introductory material would be robert whitaker's work, including anatomy of an epidemic: magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in america and mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. he started an organization called mad in america which has a lot of resources and information, including a podcast of the same name. there's also a network of associated groups that are based in different areas of the world if you're interested in non-american perspectives.

the medicalization of society: on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders by peter conrad

on the heels of ignorance: psychiatry and the politics of not knowing by owen whooley

here is a link to some of the old icarus project zines and pamphlets. i was briefly involved with a small icarus group when i was younger and there were some serious issues with the (dis)organization and some of the principles upon which the local groups operated. i'm sure these still have some useful and/or interesting information, and if nothing else they're interesting relics from the anti-psychiatry movement in the early 2000s. i'm less familiar with some of the newer work they put out before their dissolution in 2020. here is an article on the history of icarus from one of the co-founders, published in 2014.

i would recommend looking into bioethics and biopolitics in general, particularly focault. if you want to get into any of the seminal figures in anti-psychiatry (laing, szasz, etc), i would personally advise a very critical reading of their work. as always, this is not an explicit endorsement of any of these works, authors, or their respective viewpoints.

#ask #psychiatry

[olderthannetfic]

I'm a wattpad user solely because I write original stories and I was always too nervous to post on the ao3 site since I know it's more fanfic based. With the news of the whole wattpad purge I do not want to touch the app anymore and I've been slowly abandoning the place anyways so I was curious if ao3 even is an option for me to post my stories on the site or any other options?

I know there's an original work tag on ao3 but it just feels very daunting and almost 'wrong' since its fandom oriented

--

AO3 includes original work so it can host fandom-adjacent stuff. If you think your work counts, that's good enough.

So, for example, if it uses fanficcy tropes, it's intended for the same audience, it's not intended to be monetized, etc. People often use AO3 for weird porn that would get deleted elsewhere, original BL type content, original works that were part of a fandom gift exchange or zine or old archive, and that kind of thing.

In the past, queer stuff that wasn't specifically in a fandom was particularly likely to share hosting with fandom stuff just because it was hard to find places to host that kind of thing. And the audience for queer fanfic and queer original art had heavy overlap. But lots of kinds of content are on AO3 today.

AO3 isn't going to delete your work for not being fandomy enough if you claim it is. It's just a question of whether you think it belongs there.

--

If you'd prefer to keep the option to monetize open, the next question would be what kind of work you write. Different content does better different places. It's totally possible to just self publish on Amazon. There are many webnovel sites (though I hear most suck for authors).

If you write stereotypical Wattpad stuff that reads like standard het romance with a YA flair, that may be less popular on AO3 than some places. On the other hand, if you run afoul of any of Wattpad's content guidelines, that may be an issue on many sites, and AO3 may be just right.

I'd say, generally, if you want to sell your art for money, if you're good at beating the Wattpad algorithm and like the big audience that garners, or if your audience has limited overlap with fanfic types, I'd seek non-AO3 hosting.

If you want to quietly post not-for-profit art that might get read by people who also like fanfic, AO3 is probably the best option.

--

I mean, would you like to just use AO3? No one's going to stop you. If it's just diffidence that's the problem, you might as well do it.

A number of years ago, people had stronger feelings about allowing original work on AO3 because they were afraid it would swamp the archive. But by now, the site is so heavily used and big that this just doesn't seem like a serious concern. Original Work is one of the larger individual "fandom" tags, but it is dwarfed by the archive at large.

[mysticstronomy]

WHY IS PLUTO NOT A PLANET ANYMORE??

Blog#399

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Textbooks had to be rewritten. Members of the public were outraged. Our understanding of the solar system itself was forever changed on Aug. 24, 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to reclassify Pluto, changing its status from a planet to a dwarf planet — a relegation that was largely seen as a demotion and which continues to have reverberations to this day.

Today, the debate about Pluto exposes difficulties in the definition of "planet." The IAU defines a planet as a celestial body orbiting the sun, with a nearly spherical appearance, and that has (for the most part) cleared debris from its orbital neighborhood. But even this set of metrics is not universally agreed upon.

Earth, and even Jupiter, have not cleared many asteroids from their orbital regions despite their large size. Moreover, there are small worlds that are circular and that orbit the sun and yet are not considered planets, such as Ceres.

Pluto's so-called demotion from planetary status raises larger issues about how to define any object in the solar system, or even in space more generally. It shows that science cannot, sometimes, slot objects into easy categories. Because if the definition of a planet once again widens, it is unclear how to assess the numerous non-circular objects that circle our sun. This may even put the asteroid belt into question, referring to the huge band of small objects between Mars and Jupiter. Or what happens if a planet is somehow broken up into pieces?

All the same, as the Pluto debate took place almost 20 years ago, many still don't quite understand all the fuss, nor why Pluto was knocked from its planetary position. But the solar system's transformation from nine planets to eight (at least by the standard IAU definition) was a long time in the making and helps encapsulate one of the greatest strengths of science — the ability to alter seemingly steadfast definitions in light of new evidence.

The word planet (in English) stretches back to antiquity, deriving from the Greek word "planetes," which means "wandering star."

The five classical planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — are visible to the naked eye and can be seen shifting in strange pathways across the sky compared with the more distant background stars.

After the advent of telescopes, astronomers discovered two new planets, Uranus and Neptune, which are too faint to spot with the naked eye

(Note that this definition of "planet" is following the Greco-Roman tradition on which the International Astronomical Union or IAU's community definitions are based. The names of planets vary by culture and the naked-eye planets were observed around the world during antiquity.)

When astronomers discovered Ceres (today considered a dwarf planet), they initially categorized it as a "planet" among scientific communities of the day. But that began to change as further measurements showed it was smaller than other planets ever seen at the time. Eventually, Ceres was lumped into a group of rocky bodies, called "asteroids", of which we now know of hundreds of thousands of these in the asteroid belt alone.

Pluto was found and classified as a planet in 1930 (note the IAU was formed in 1919) when astronomer Clyde Tombaugh of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona compared photographic plates of the sky on separate nights and noticed a tiny dot that drifted back and forth against the backdrop of stars. Right away, the solar system's newest candidate was considered an oddball, however. Its orbit is so eccentric, or far from circular, that it actually gets closer to the sun than Neptune for 20 of its 248-years-long trip. It also is tilted to the ecliptic, which is the plane upon which the other solar system planets orbit.

Originally published on www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, May 11th, 2024)

"THE UNIVERSE COULD BE FILLED WITH ULTRALIGHT BLACK HOLES THAT CAN'T DIE??"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography

[onlycosmere]

REGARDING AUDIBLE

Brandon Sanderson: Hey, all. Brandon here, with what I consider to be some pretty exciting news. Many of you may remember when I wrote last year about my worries regarding audiobook royalties (particularly for independent authors). You can read it HERE, but some of the main bullet points are as follows:

I seriously worried about the opacity of reporting to authors about audio sales. We didn’t know what a sale meant, how much of an Audible credit was given to authors when a book sold via one, and how royalties were being accounted.

I felt that the industry was taking advantage of authors because of their lack of powerful corporate interests to advocate for them. While video game creators and musicians get 70–80% (88%, in fact, on two major platforms) of a sale of their products in a digital platform, Audible was paying as low as 25%–with the high end being instead 40%.

I felt I could have gotten a better deal for myself, but the entire state of this industry was seriously concerning to me. So, I made the difficult decision NOT to release the four Secret Projects on Audible, costing me a large number of sales, to instead try to bolster healthy competition in the space, highlighting some of the smaller Audible competitors.

I hoped this wake-up call would prompt change. I didn’t refuse to put my books on Audible out of retribution or to declare war; I did it because I wanted to shine as powerful a light as I knew how on a system that highly favored the audio distributors over the authors. I was convinced that the people at Audible really did love books and writers, and that with the right stand taken, I could encourage them toward positive change.

I’m happy to say that this stand has borne some fruit. I’ve spent this last year in contact with Audible and other audio distributors, and have pushed carefully–but forcefully–for them to step up. A few weeks ago, three key officers high in Audible’s structure flew to Dragonsteel offices and presented for us a new royalty structure they intend to offer to independent writers and smaller publishers.

This new structure doesn’t give everything I’ve wanted, and there is still work to do, but it is encouraging. They showed me new minimum royalty rates for authors–and they are, as per my suggestions, improved over the previous ones. Moreover, this structure will move to a system like I have requested: a system that pays more predictably on each credit spent, and that is more transparent for authors. Audible will be paying royalties monthly, instead of quarterly, and will provide a spreadsheet that better shows how they split up the money received with their authors.

This part looked really good to me, as I understand their decisions. I tried poking holes in the system, looking for ways it could be exploited, and found each issue I raised had already been considered. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect, and people smarter than me might still find problems that I didn’t. However, I think everyone is going to agree the new system IS better. We will better be able to track, for example, how Audible is dividing money between books purchased with a credit and books listened to as part of their Audible Plus program.

It’s all very technical, but I have to say I’m impressed with the effort they have made. The people there listened to my complaints, and have tried to improve. I’m not at liberty to explain in its entirety their new structure right now, as they’re still tweaking it, but they did say I could announce its existence–and that I could promise new, improved royalties are on the horizon.

Now, before we go too far, I do anticipate a few continuing issues with the final product. I want to manage expectations by talking about those below.

What I’ve seen doesn’t yet bring us to the 70% royalty I think is fair, and which other, similar industries get.

Audible continues to reserve the best royalties for those authors who are exclusive to their platform, which I consider bad for consumers, as it stifles competition. In the new structure, both exclusive and non-exclusive authors will see an increase, but the gap is staying about the same.

Authors continue to have very little (basically no) control over pricing. Whatever the “cover price” of books is largely doesn’t matter–books actually sell for the price of a credit in an Audible subscription. Authors can never raise prices alongside inflation. An Audible credit costs the same as it did almost two decades ago–with no incentive for Audible to raise it, lest it lose customers to other services willing to loss-lead to draw customers over.

These are things I’d love to see change. However, this deal IS a step forward, and IS an attempt to meet me partway. Indeed, even incremental changes can mean a lot. When I was new in this business, my agent spent months arguing for a two-percent change in one of my print royalties–because every little bit helps. These improvements are going to be larger than two-percent increases.

Because of this, I will be bringing the Secret Projects to Audible very soon. I consider Audible to again be a positive force for the industry, and I have decided to shake hands with them. Audible has promised to release their new royalty system for all authors sometime in 2024, though I should be testing it in the next month or so.

And…if you’ll allow me a moment, I’d like to say that this feels good. It isn’t what I wanted, but I’d begun to think that nothing would ever change–that even my voice, loud though it can be, wouldn’t be enough. Yet change IS possible.

I know that there are plenty of people out there who are tired of hearing about me and my works (I’m sorry–I do have quite the group of evangelists, and we can be an enthusiastic lot). However, for better or for worse, I am one of the bestselling authors in the world. Historically, one of the best ways to change things in my industry is for authors like myself to force it to happen.

Feeling this responsibility, when I was first talking to Audible about these issues in 2022, I made it very clear that I wasn’t just seeking some quiet deal that gave me an individual advantage. I wanted to see positive change for all authors. And while I don’t think I can take sole credit, I do feel like my efforts this year have had a significantly positive effect. Soon every independent author who publishes on Audible (and maybe, eventually, traditionally published authors with the huge publishers–depending on what New York decides) will be getting a larger cut of the profit, with more transparency about how that cut is allocated.

So, for those who have been waiting until Audible had the Secret Projects, you’ll get your chance soon. I hope you’ll support them, and support Audible for their decisions. And thank you to all of you who shared the news about my problems with the audio industry last year; I believe that pressure really did help. This is a victory for all of us, because happier authors able to make a better living (particularly those authors who are struggling in the midlist trenches) make for a more vibrant world for everyone.

#Brandon Sanderson #cfsbf #audible #branderson #root #wob #kind of #long post

[gotouhitori]

Okay, so. I'm in Love with the Villainess. Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou. WataOshi. Whichever title you want to refer to it by.

Before reading or watching it, I wondered why the hell people were holding up this random villainess isekai light novel with an over-the-top masochist main character as a landmark yuri title. Okay sure I don't doubt there's yuri going on, but how can it be so special?

Then I watched the anime. "Huh. The series and its main character are clearly and unambiguously lesbian in a way that so many other series can't bring themselves to be. And it has the most frank discussion of queer issues I think I've ever seen in anime or related media. Yeah, I think I see now, it is a cut above." And both because I've heard the novels get into a few things a little more and because the series now has its hooks in me enough for me to want to read the novels anyway, I read the first novel. And yeah, that does add a bit.

And then I read the second novel. The latter bit of the anime does cover the first bit of the second novel, but it's mostly new territory for an anime-only or anime-first such as myself. And holy fucking shit. Spoilers under the cut.

For one thing, the anime/first novel dropped some trans hints about Yu, and that turns out to be a whole transfem allegory - which isn't unheard of by any means, but it's not especially common in a work where that isn't the main focus. And not only that, but there's an actually explicitly textual transmasc in Rae's past life, who forms part of Rae's motivation to make considerable effort and take considerable risk (up to and including treason) to make sure Yu can live as a girl - once Yu states that is what she wants, it is important to note. Random yuri villainess isekai light novel says trans rights, and will absolutely stand by it.

And then all of the stuff about class and inequality comes to a head, and remember how the game that Rae's in the world of is titled "Revolution"? Yeah. One of those happens. Various hints have been dropped about what happens, largely centred on Rae making efforts to save Claire's neck in the most literal way possible when things really go down. But holy shit does that turn out to be more effort and a much more complex endeavour than it appears at first... or for most of the time while it's going on, for that matter. Ultimately she arranges things so that while the revolution still happens (it is basically inevitable), overall loss of life and suffering is minimised, and the general situation is as good as it possibly could be. By the time the proverbial smoke clears, Rae and Claire are openly living as a couple, which is a lot more than you usually see - one of the things Rae comments on is how in per previous life, too much of the yuri she read ended with at least one of the girls either dead or winding up with a man, which annoyed her enough to write fanfic based on series she likes with unsatisfying endings to fix that. And though the game did have a yuri spinoff, the original - the events of which she was living through and manipulating - was het. The character she winds up with was never supposed to be a romanceable character to begin with.

And that's just the first two of the five novels. Living through and changing the course of an actual revolution and settling down with her partner is just 40% of the whole story. (And less if more novels get published.) I've just started the third novel, and it's certainly looking like the rest is going to be at least as much of a ride as the first two were.

This really is an outstanding series. It's Dungeon Meshi levels of "I cannot stop thinking about it" to me, which if you've seen how much I post about that, says a lot. And I haven't read even half of it yet.

#i'm in love with the villainess #watashi no oshi wa akuyaku reijou #wataoshi #yuri #trans rights #lesbianism #lgbtqia

[rosietrace]

This is a personal rant about my thoughts on Greek mythology retellings, and just the way Fantasy books and the publishing industry is at this point 🧍‍♀️

I have nothing against Greek mythology retellings, or just anything Greek mythology related in fantasy in general!

However, I have certain gripes about the way Greek mythology is portrayed in media, specifically in the way its interpreted in Fantasy.

[ More under the cut! ]

I love Percy Jackson, and I think that Uncle Rick did a wonderful job at expanding the world and making Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythology entertaining and easily digestible for young audiences. Genuinely, he does a better job at writing children's books than R*wling could ever be capable of.

However, as much as I can love PJO as much as I do, I still find certain bits of the world building and character writing as... Very hit and miss.

To start, I don't like the way Ares was written in the series. I can understand that it would make sense for his personality to be that way, because he's the God of War and it helps with Clarisse's character development; but I find fault in it because Ares in the myths is nothing like PJO Ares. (He literally killed one of Poseidon's sons because he raped his daughter, Alcippe, and he's one of the only gods who doesn't hump anything that can breathe in air. At least Ares has the courtesy of asking for consent 💀)

The Gods being the reason behind WWII and Hitler being a child of Hades. All I must say.

The portrayal of the Aphrodite cabin

The fact that Athena can have children. Annabeth, pjo fandom at large, I love you are, but you gotta admit it must've felt weird when you first read the books and you find out Athena — the maiden Goddess of Wisdom — can have offspring. Regardless of the reasoning, I still find it weird 😭 (EDIT: I've now just remembered that it was a reference to how Athena herself was created 🤡 I'm a clown)

I get that the Hermes cabin is also the cabin for the unclaimed, but couldn't have Hestia's cabin worked too? She doesn't have offspring, sure, but it probably would've made more sense for the unclaimed to go to Hestia's cabin so that the Hermes cabin wouldn't be so crowded

This isn't really a world building issue, but I think I should bring it up: I'm not saying this against the Kane Chronicles fandom, but... Sadie and Anubis. Why. Like you can't convince me that no one WASN'T weirded out by that.

Less of a complaint and more of a question because I can't remember if the question was answered in HoO or not, but when Percy told the Gods to start claiming their unclaimed children and be more decent parents (as he should, go off king), did that request apply to the Romans at Camp Jupiter too? Because that's gotta have been confusing when the unclaimed kids at CP suddenly started getting claimed 😭😭

I could go on a whole ass tangent about PJO, but that would make this post longer than it needs to be 😭😭 and any of the points might not make much sense, since I haven't read the books in a LONG time

Off to the YA Fantasy segment... Hoo boy.

The oversaturation of Hades/Persephone retellings makes me SEETHE. Why is it always Hades and Persephone why can't it be something else 😭

I just don't like the “modern feminist” retellings of Greek myths in the YA Fantasy genre, in general. They tend to completely miss the point of the original myth, and it's the case with a lot of Hades and Persephone retellings where they try to paint Hades as the good guy taking Persephone away from her control freak mother, Demeter.

Because that wasn't what the myth was about. The myth isn't a love story, at least, not a romantic one. It was about Demeter's love for Persephone and how much she wanted her daughter back after Hades stole her away. Keep in mind, in the historical context of the myth, the daughters of women in ancient Greece never really get to see their mothers after their engagements are solidified.

If they wanted to make a “feminist” retelling of the myth, they'd have it centered around the love Demeter had for Persephone to almost doom the mortal realm to an eternal winter to get her back.

I love the myth of Hades and Persephone, truly, I do. I understand the appeal it has on people, the appeal it has one me. I can see why people adore the myth in the way they do because Hades is one of the better husbands in Greek mythology (a low bar, but my point still stands).

Personally, I blame Lore Olympus and especially the video of the myth by Overly Sarcastic Productions for the way the myth is portrayed in mass media. And I say this as a former LO fan and a fan of Overly Sarcastic Productions 😭

I'd also want to go into my many, MANY gripes about “Crown of Starlight” by Cait Corrain, but in all honesty? I don't think I can properly convey how much I DESPISE Cait and their book. So I'd highly recommend y'all to check out the videos about Cait Corrain by Reads With Rachel, WithCindy, and Xiran Jay Zhao on YouTube if you're interested in going into more detail about the controversies, especially for those who weren't made aware of it.

I feel like the publishing industry just... Isn't good anymore, after Booktok went viral. Reading has been “hot girlified”, and all Booktok seems to ask when they get recommended a book is: “Is it spicy??”

Reading is like fast fashion, now. It's all based around certain popular tropes that that's how books are promoted now. Not for the plot — or sometimes lack thereof — but for the tropes the book has.

The only thing I can thank Booktok for is that they helped me discover The Cruel Prince. And even then, it's marketed as romance on there, when it's a political fantasy with a romance subplot.

‼️ Woah! A secret bonus section! ‼️

I, personally, don't read — nor do I like — Sarah J Maas. (Especially considering the problematic aspects of her storytelling, character portrayals, and is (apparently, correct me if I'm wrong) a Zionist)

However, that isn't to say that I don't like some of the characters she makes. A lot of them have potential, actually! From what I've seen, I think Nesta, Gwyn, Azriel, Eris, Tamlin and Lucien from ACOTAR are the only characters I actually like, based on what I've heard — and seen — on anything in the SJM critical tag on this hellsite.

And while we're at it, let's discuss the elephant in the room with ACOTAR, right? Rhysand.

By all that is good and holy, I hate Rhysand so much and I think I'd hate him even more if I actually READ the books. I don't get why Booktok is so invested in him when Maas retconned Tamlin's character to make him look better as Feyre's love interest.

Also, from what I recall, didn't Rhysand sexually assault Feyre? And he didn't bother to apologize for it, and justified it with his sad tragic backstory??

I can't with y'all, istg 😭 the fact that “Feysand” is apparently a Hades and Persephone retelling too makes me even more mad about it because it isn't even a GOOD retelling. It just takes away what ACOTAR originally was— a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with Feyre and Tamlin as the leads.

Didn't Maas dedicate ACOTAR to her husband because “He would go under the mountain” for her??? BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY WASN'T RHYSAND WHO SAVED FEYRE FROM UTM, I'LL TELL YOU THAT

I think, out of all the series Maas has made thus far, Throne of Glass is the only one I ACTUALLY kind of like, based on what I've heard. Crescent City seems to be too complicated to understand, and even though I've never read it myself, I miss what ACOTAR could've been. (My hope lies with Nesta, Elucien and Gwynriel, at this point)

#rosie is rambling 💀 #rosie rambles #booktok #anti booktok #anti sjm #pjo #rick riordan #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #tog #throne of glass #acotar #acotar critical #pro nesta #pro gwynriel #anti lore olympus #lore olympus #anti rhysand #anti feysand #pro feylin #the hot girlification of reading #crown of starlight #sjm critical #book rant #its ranting time

[gatheringbones]

["There's a growing body of published work, including both personal accounts and scholarly research, on how the suppression of non-normative embodiments for the sake of compliance with standards of neuronormative performance (a compliance toward which the neurodivergent are relentlessly pursued throughout their lives) does profound psychological harm to neurodivergent people and is strongly correlated with depression and suicidality. The dominant culture, in other words, pushes neurodivergent people to prioritize passing for "normal" at the expense of their own well-being, mirroring the way that queer people have traditionally been pressured to stay closeted. In the emerging discourse on this issue, the suppression of non-neuronormative embodiments is commonly referred to as masking, and the reclaiming of those embodiments is referred to as unmasking. So it would be entirely accurate to say that neurodivergent unmasking is a form of neuroqueering (one of the most vital forms, I'd argue).

The sort of bodily unmasking I'm talking about here, the reclaiming of previously suppressed ways of moving, can be intense and profoundly transformative. When the suppression has become ingrained unconscious habit (as happens especially when suppression begins in childhood), it's maintained in large part by the layers of deep, chronic unconscious muscular tension which Wilhelm Reich referred to as character armor. Character armor is the bodily component of repression: it serves not only to block the spontaneous performance of various bodily movements and self-expressions, but also to block access to the feelings, yearnings, organismic impulses, and psychological capacities associated with those movements and self-expressions. The process of recovering one's capacity for spontaneous neuroqueer movement is thus deeply and inseparably entwined with both the process of liberating oneself from the chronic tensions of character armor, and the process of recovering and cultivating modes of self-attunement and embodied expression from which one had previously been cut off by those tensions.

The neuroqueer project of reclaiming specific hand movements and stims that one was forced to suppress in childhood is a doorway to broader vistas of neuroqueer practice: in working to reconnect with those movements, one is also reconnecting with and cultivating one's attunements to the inner stirrings, inclinations, and impulses from which such movements emerge. The cultivation of this attunement can develop over time into a vastly expanded repertoire of spontaneous self-expression and a greater capacity to creatively reshape ourselves. Neuroqueering at its best is not only a creative defiance and subversion of both neuronormativity and heteronormativity, but also simultaneously a path toward living more authentically and creatively than the strictures of normative performance would allow."]

nick walker, from neuroqueer heresies: notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities, 2021

#nick walker #trans literature #brainspace #cw suicide