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Own Hands Story Search Update with Linkspam

This is an

ownhands update, but it has enough cool links I'm crossposting here so more people can see: some great alternative economy, digital commons stuff!

Thanks to PDX Time Bank (see Hourworld.org for more info), I’ve been fortunate to meet two amazing collaborators on the Own Hands Story Search tool: Rob Bednark and Matt McNamara. Rob has jumpstarted serious work on this project, and Matt put together an impressive prototype, integrated with a wealth of information from OpenLibrary, something I would never have thought of.

A quick plug: If you use the research-organization tool, Zotero, you may also be interested in Matt’s Zotero extension for Firefox, Webtero, optimized for web-based research.

Also through the time bank, I’m doing beta reading of Sara Bednark’s (Rob’s wife) novel, Delia, a very well-written tale of isolation and connection in the pandemic. I look forward to seeing this work published and will keep you posted on DW.

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Got Proof Copy of My Novel!

I (finally) received the proof copy of my social sci-fi novel, A Soldier in the Borderlands, lovely cover art by Xavier Aguirre. Here's the blurb:

On a planet racked by drought, fourteen-year-old soldier Tánashen has done terrible things to serve the Citadel. Guilt is a price he’s willing to pay for the Citadel to protect his brother from the raiders who massacred their people. But when the so-called “raiders” capture Tánashen, he must face the fact that the Citadel lied; they are the true oppressor. Now, he’ll risk death to save his brother from the Citadel and liberate his homeland. There's just one complication: most lies contain some truth.

Arwen holding Borderlands

If anyone is interested in reviewing this book, I'm happy to send you a free epub or PDF. Just PM me.

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books

Bibliographies for fiction

A novel I recently finished reading ¹ has a bibliography at the end. It's a couple pages long, divided into sections ~~and the first book on it is Marx's Kapital, lol~~.

¹ "Paresse pour tous" (Laziness for all) by Hadrien Klent

Have you ever read a novel with a bibliography? Do you read the bibliographies in general?

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Response to “Fanfiction Has Destroyed Writing” Video

(Content warning: brief general mentions of sexual violence in fanfic/BL)

For DW folks, a lot of this fannish commentary will be old hat, and I hope you will chime in with your thoughts and experience.

I enjoy Hilary Layne’s YouTube commentary in much the way I enjoy C. S. Lewis. I usually have some philosophical disagreement but also a lot I agree with and definitely respect for her intelligence and rigor.

This video is no exception. In sum, she argues that fan fiction culture (as on Ao3), combined with an educational system that teaches literature badly, has raised a generation of readers and writers whose tastes are “self-indulgent,” prioritizing simplistic self-insertion and personal pleasure over learning and growing through literature. This, in turn, has seeped into much published fiction in a way that makes it read like bad fan fic, full of Mary Sue’s, simplistic storytelling, and a strange combination of sympathy for grotesque behavior (ex. torture) but intolerance of any (nuanced?) depiction of certain negative ideas (ex. racism, sexism).

Watch on YouTube

While I think she misses some of the moral underpinnings of fan fiction, I see truth her narrative. I appreciate her framing the problem as largely having arisen in the past twenty years. Gen Z is two generations younger than me, and her video made me realize I tend to think of fandom in Gen X terms, which is utterly different from what Gen Z has experienced.

The following is some of the reflections, disagreements (or complications), and questions that arose for me watching this video. ( Read more... )