Literary links roundup

[erinptah]

A Pterry note:

There’s a thing I regularly hear people say about Terry Pratchett, even across wildly different contexts…

“Was he always perfectly sensitive about my identity? No. Would he even really understand my life and experiences? Probably not. But if I got to sit down and talk with him, it feels like he would genuinely listen. And take what I said to heart. And support my right to live an authentic and fulfilling way, whether he got it or not.”

Life goals, seriously. I can only hope readers in 50+ years will be saying the same about me.

Kickstarter is crushing it:

November 2020: “Although 2020 isn’t over yet, Kickstarter is reporting the crowdfunded comics on their platform have already amassed $22 million in pledges. That is over 30% up from 2019’s $16.9 million, with two months still to go in 2020.”

July 2021: “…it almost beats Kickstarter comics’ entire 2019 ($16.9m), and is well ahead of its revenue for the first six months of 2020. If this trend continues, it would break the $25.7m record set in 2020 – possibly even getting at or above an even $30m.”

So these are a bummer:

N.K. Jemisen, 2013: “All mythological creatures have a real-world root. Dryads are trees + humans + magic. Mermaids are fish + humans + magic, or maybe porpoises + magic. Unicorns are deer or horses + magic, maybe with a bit of narwhal glued on. Dragons are reptiles + magic, or maybe dinosaur bones + magic – paleontology. So again: what are orcs supposed to be?”

2020: “Before we get into the results of the data analysis, let’s play a game to see how well you recognize gendered descriptions. Here are several character descriptions from actual books. For each one, select whether you think it describes a man or a woman. Don’t think too hard about it—just react!”

2021: “[What happened to Isabel Fall] has been held up as an example of progressives eating their own, of the dangers of online anonymity, of the need for sensitivity readers or content warnings. But what this story really symbolizes is the fact that as we’ve grown more adept at using the internet, we’ve also grown more adept at destroying people’s lives, but from a distance, in an abstracted way. ”

But this is fun:

A Lois McMaster Bujold quote I’m constantly coming back to: “The writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea.”

“Well now, thanks to Nicholas Love’s neat cover generator, you can create both Penguin Classics and Oxford World Classics covers for any book (or movie, or concept) your heart desires, avian gatekeepers be damned!“

Tamsyn Muir is doing a whole extra Locked Tomb novel. We're getting a 4-part trilogy, folks. Can't think of another ongoing series I'd be happier to hear it for.