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Blog post...And that's where I've been. The last six months have been hectic because of it. However, you can look forward to an article that mentions my marriage in July's edition of Apex. Keep your eyes peeled!
Although this isn't a wedding blog, and although I try to take a light touch with mentioning personal things, I wanted to take some time to talk about what I'm putting together and how it's happening. Because my wife-to-be is in a sensitive field, I will keep photos of her o -
Blog postSo, you might have noticed a bit of a lack of blog posts over the winter. Well, this time it's not (just) depression eating me alive. I made a thing - two things, actually.
Consider this a soft reboot, and a perfectly good starting point in the series. Book 3, The Meaning Wars, follows two characters: Sarah, the weary Behavioural Criminal arrested for associating with dissidents, and Crystal, a wormhole engineer dissatisfied with her marriage and the safe, boring -
Blog postOkay, so not long ago, I put out a post (written in November, actually...) about the internet getting meaner. Since then, I've been wracking my brain about why it's happening.
Then I developed a theory that made it all snap into place.
Art by Michelle Browne.
What makes someone end up as the main character on Twitter for a particular day? It might be a subculture issue - for example, tabletop roleplay game (TTRPG) Twitter is pretty mad at Cri -
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Blog postI'm going to dispense a bunch of advice that I wish both I had heard when I was younger and on the internet, and that I think younguns on the internet could benefit from hearing.
The way people talk about very minor celebrities and critique their every action would absolutely destroy any normal person. Before you write anything online, consider - has someone else already said? Did they maybe say it better? Are you actually adding to a conversation? Yeah, those are a lot of qu -
Blog postThis article's title comes from the worshippers Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, a secretive Hellenic religious group who formed an understanding of the year's cycle from the actions of the gods. Hades (with Zeus' permission, allegedly) kidnapped Demeter and Zeus' daughter Persephone, brought her to the Underworld, and made her his equally-powerful queen and wife, there to reign over the riches of Earth and the multitudes of the dead. Her mother Demeter was unaware of the plan, and mourned her
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Blog postUsing the right words is not especially easy. I should know; I help people do that for a living. I also try to make words do things to say stuff and express my feelings.
Content warning: I allude to slurs in this piece, citing a couple of them, and also discuss ableism.
Sometimes those feelings are angry, contemptuous, dismissive, or that sort of thing. It's useful to have ways to belittle or express aggression towards people - say, for political reasons, or to expre -
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Blog postI have not been okay lately.
In late March, a dear friend's husband passed away. In April, I almost had the chance to acquire a home - something rare for Millennials and even many Gen Xs - but due to family reasons, it fell through. Then friends' pets kept passing away or getting very ill. As mentioned a few times here, I have thanatophobia, a rather unpleasant phobia of death. In addition to being pretty empathetic and caring about my friends, this was all rather hard. My co-aut -
Blog postSaddle up, kids, because the Magpie is mad about a video on the internet again. Content warnings apply for discussions of sexual assault, consent, queer stuff, and a whole plethora of different types of prejudice and phobias.
As readers of my articles and general members of my social sphere may know already, I'm a big proponent of sex work advocacy. I find the area interesting, it's sometimes ethically fraught and complex, and it's one in which a lot of marginalized oppressions a -
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Blog postI'd been sitting on this concept for a while, and then I found myself relaxing on Youtube one night, watching a film reviewer's analyses - and I was jolted from my comfortable mood and into a flurry of expository frothing.
Possible content warning for talk about cults, general acts of violence, the dark side of humanity, cops, abuse - you get the idea.
Now, I think Ryan Hollinger does a great job of analysing this giving the constraints of his ex -
Blog postIf you've been on the internet for a few minutes, or a few years, it's quite easy to notice that sometimes - or, actually, often - people who purportedly agree with each other can have quite unpleasant dust-ups. Why does that happen so often in political discussions?
Content warning for talk about sexual assault and graphic, frank language in this one.
Source.
I was talking to a few friends about this regarding an article, when - to everyo -
Blog postSo, people who remember the 90s and early 2000s, or even the early 10s, might remember the recurring cultural fixation on being "unlike other girls." A Youtuber I particularly enjoy just put out an excellent video essay on the topic, and it covers a really interesting angle that isn't necessarily being talked about much.
A quick note about gender to preface things - some of the people who look like "other girls" are either transgender or non-gender confo -
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Blog postSo, I mentioned in a previous article that I've been agonizing over leftist infighting issues for - well - a few years now. Despite the sharp tone of my previous posts and some others, it should be noted that I don't hate modern communists - in fact, I generally agree with a lot of their aims (with the exception of the small number of dictator apologists). I am, however, significantly more comfortable around people who talk about democratic socialism and who generally aren't demanding a
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Blog postPeople who've read The Meaning Wars series might recall that in book 2, The Stolen: Two Short Stories, the novella "Wordthieves" depicts a society that has some of the trappings of leftist and liberal groups - meditation, organic food, yoga, vegetarianism, basic housing and healthcare - yet behaves like Christian extremists. To wit, they exert behavioural control over members, demand obedience and a lack of questioning,
Part of my goal with this was to vent frustration at t -
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Blog postI was crawling through my Discord and Facebook threads about politics and chatting with friends when a buddy shared a screenshot of a tweet that made my jaw drop. (Discord is a social chatting platform similar to old IRC chats, but with a nicer interface; if you don't know what Facebook and Twitter are, I would like to know the location of your rock, and exactly how many other blind salamanders live under it, because it should probably be protected by UNESCO.)
Anyway, there -
Blog postOh, how the turn tables.
With Trump impeached for the second time in one term - a historic first for the US - I wanted to take a moment to really just savour the backlash against him and the fascist movement threatening him.
Despite what a small number of people on the left and liberals are saying - you know, that we ought to be kind to these discontented "patriots" trying to do their best, etcetera - the reprecussions have been severe. Delayed, grant -
Blog postI was listening to my Play Later queue on my favourite podcast app - like my Youtube Watch Later playlist, it's rather unwieldy and extensive - and as usual, I ended up adding a recent episode that caught my fancy.
This one happened to be about what might be the most notorious Canlit book, or even the most notorious Canadian book, of all time - Bear.
Yes, I'm talking about the book where a woman falls in love with and has sex with a bear. That book. -
Blog postSo, I've had a thing for distressed sweaters and knitwear since childhood - between The Matrix (1999) and my love of Dickens and his orphans, I've always had an appreciation and fascination for things falling apart. Growing up in an upper-middle-class household with parents from lower working-class backgrounds (a farming family and a military family respectively), having to really wear things out before I got a new one wasn't much of a problem. (Yes, I realise how frustratingly privileg
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Blog postWell, the good news is that I'm not dead, as you can tell from this post existing. The other good news is that I've been writing a lot. Book 3 of the Meaning Wars is done, Book 4 is also now done and out to beta readers (but if you're interested, I can always use more!), and book 5 is 2/3rds done. In addition to that, I also am 60K of 100K into a coauthored book with a friend of mine, Anna Lewis, set in her series about a nigh-immortal pirate who's about to get his first taste of therap
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Blog postSo, astute readers will have noticed that I've been completely silent since February. Where'd I go for three months? This is going to be rambling and less focused than my usual posts, but perhaps my readers will forgive it.
Content warning: pet death, current events
Well...frankly, I haven't been able to figure out how to write about what's been going on. Despite years of editing and writing science fiction, including stories about or related to pandemics, actually endu -
Blog postA belated happy new year, my dear followers!
So, I have a neat idea for a new series coming up. But after the holidays (which were pleasantly busy) and some interpersonal scuffling in January (which was not nearly as lovely, but came to an all-right enough resolution), my idea bank was absolutely flat broke.
A nice chat with friends has filled the bowl up, but while I work on those posts, here is something I stashed off to the side after a Facebook conversation last yea -
Blog postI've been super busy with work this month, neglecting my blog as a consequence, but I had so much to say about this that I couldn't help but pull up my chair and get writing about the book Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes.
You can also find it on non-Amazon links via Goodreads, here.
Having just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, another work of speculative fiction focusing on bigotry, rights issues, and ultimately, redemption and overcoming, I was thirsty for more. I want -
Blog postIt's no secret that I'm a feminist, but I also grew up reading and adoring the words of Dead White Men, as they're often referred to now. Today, however, I want to focus my gaze on two peculiar bedfellows: Hemingway and H.P. Lovecraft.
When I first read Hemingway - for school, surprisingly enough; most other authors of "Great Literature," I sought out on my own - I was struck by the female protagonist's ferocious personality. In Matilda, Roald Dahl's main character comment -
Blog postMillennials - and now, Gen Z - have some weird coping mechanisms.
On a late-night browse through Twitter - which, honestly, tends to stir many ideas - I was reading one-liners and social justice observations while Bad Romance, a podcast about ill-conceived romantic comedies, played in the background. As one of the posts, Jourdain, plaintively asked her boyfriend, "why are you like this," I laughed. It's a favorite memetic joke of mine, and a standard in our household, oft -
Blog postWell, The Joker just hit theatres, and honestly, I'm not sure whether I'm going to see it.
Art by Michelle Browne.
Quite a few cultural critics I admire and respect have panned it, still others have said it was boring and unambitious - and frankly, it's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of comics, for a variety of reasons. I'm curious, sure, but based on what I've heard from various podcasts and Youtube shows, as well as friends' chatter and Twitter, it's basically a dumbed-down -
Blog postArt by Michelle Browne
Today, I saw a video that sparkled across my neurons and absolutely demanded I share some weird facts with the world, so here ya go.
MLM huns: "let's take this failed attempted remedy for the Black Plague and use it as a disinfectant! That'll work" *Plague Doctor intensifies*
Now, you may or may not know what Multi-Level Marketing is, but if you don't, let me throw some names at you: Doterra. Amway. It Works. Mary Kay. Silpada. LuLa
Titles By Michelle Browne
