domain:vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2m ago
Why do you worship jackpots?
Build more edge rather than risk more size. Don’t kill yourself chasing the jackpot. Log wealth is what matters. Maximize the 50th percentile outcome. Make your own luck. Avoid drawdowns.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2m ago
She was always consciously feminist (or at least very leftist). I am not aware of her repudiating her earlier work, but I agree that her early stuff was better.
TitaniumButterfly
4m ago
LeGuin started strong but then became consciously feminist and repudiated her earlier work.
I recall her describing how embarrassed she felt in retrospect at making Ged a man, as though a male hero should be the default.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
5m ago
I picked it up from my son, and it really feels like a perfect term to describe the thing in a lot of progression fantasy where the MC does something impressive, and then the focus swaps out to random other characters just to show how jaw-dropped impressed they are at how that was IMPOSSIBLE!
It hits a sweet spot as a specific term for unsightly over-praise.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6m ago
No special tricks, I'm afraid. It just boils down to doing a lot of research and due diligence. Actually read what the agent or contest says about what they are looking for (and what they are not looking for). A huge number of people will just ignore someone who says "I am looking for feminist utopian optimistic SF featuring communities of color" and send them their military space opera. Or worse, send their military space opera to the agent who mostly reps romance authors.
You already know about QueryTracker and similar tools. Make use of them. Sending out 100 queries without a single response is normal.
Look at the books you like (and the books similar to yours) and see if you can find out who that author's agent is. (Often you can find this on their Twitter or their website).
Networking is a thing. Most of the leads I actually got were from other authors who were willing to connect me to their agents.
There are very few publishers who take unsolicited submissions directly. Most of them are small presses. If you are in a very particular niche you might find the right one.
I was very close a few times. But it takes persistence and volume.
Also just so you know, Baen does take submissions but they take literally years to respond. (I think I got my first "you made it out of the slush pile" email two years after I submitted the manuscript, and then it was like two or three more years before my final rejection.)
Your best bet is to go indie. If you absolutely must attempt traditional publishing, skip the agents and try submitting directly to Baen.
Good point, I should be thinking about direct-submission places too... I have a pretty limited view of the publishing industry because frankly I mostly just () books. After a brief look I've already found the litRPG publisher Aetheon, and I think it's pretty interesting that they phrase their inclusion statement as
***Aethon Books is committed to the publication of works by writers of all genders, ethnicities, color, orientation, nationalities, and religious or political beliefs. We are concerned only with the quality and commercial viability of the works submitted to us, and not on the personal backgrounds of the authors.
... which is implicitly meritocratic. Ironically, I bet that their output is far more varied ethnically than the bigger publishers. (Some of those Indians CAN write, haha. And they're doing it on royal road instead of kindle unlimited.)
I'm willing to serially publish in principle, but this book in particular isn't designed for that; it's too short and dense to be serialized, so instead of butchering it I'd rather start from scratch.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
15m ago
Well, see some of my recs. Most of them follow that formula and show character growth in the female protagonist. Whether individually they suit your tastes, I can't say, but a lot of the complaints about Disney and romantasy just aren't that applicable to the entire field of published genre works. (And I do recommend stepping outside of genre to broaden your horizons.)
Jiro
15m ago
Sailor Moon, but there's a reason that people point to anime as being insulated from woke influence.
mildly_obsolete
21m ago
Civ/EU/CK/Total War hybrid
Dreaming up a game like this, I'd put the emphasis on it being a living world rather than a very complex, but largely static boardgame (you do touch on this with the fog of war bit, in a way).
Take playing "tall" in baseline EU4 - it amounts to stacking modifiers and clicking a button when you have the points; if you don't click, nothing happens. Compare to EU4+MEIOU - goods flow and populations rise, development increases along the trade routes, you can at most shape the flows. I love in particular how, with low state capacity and sky-high corruption (includes local, non-state interests), you initially are barely in control, and how you get to take this inefficient, inert society and get to build its momentum, rolling towards modernity.
Gimme a game that does that better, and preserves player agency.
GBRK
22m ago
right-wing Catholic epic fantasy (I know that is not how you described it)
TBF it's not "right-wing", but "catholic epic fantasy" is close enough to the mark. I knew exactly what I was doing with the scene where the main character consumes the blood and body of an undead demigod.
But yeah, I'm aware that "quit my job" money is a long shot. My mindset is that each book is essentially a lottery ticket. The EV is <1, and it's even lower if I go for trad publishing over self publishing. But my utility curve isn't linear with respect to income here: I see the biggest bumps at, "convince a small number of dedicated people to invest a lot of effort into understanding my book" and "make enough money to quit my job." In-between, there's not a whole lot of difference between making 5 or 10 or 20 thousand dollars.
I AM interested in your experience shopping your books around. Are there any (politics-independent) tricks you picked up querying or submitting to contests?
Skulldrinker
23m ago
I'm asking for stories that are identifiably girl stories but also follow basic storytelling rules rather than expressing the basest cringe urges of women (and then the vampire bad boy and the werewolf bad boy fight over me while I sit there and wait to be taken by the winner, and the vampire wins, but the werewolf is okay because he finds someone else, then the vampire marries me) or being girl-power pandering. I'm talking "man goes up tree, people throw rocks at him, man comes down from the tree, Changed" level rules.
I know they exist, writers who can write them exist, and yet Disney can't find them. Instead it's "girl goes up tree, is stunning and brave, rocks bounce off of her, men are such trash amirite, the end."
HereAndGone
24m ago
What I've heard of the last Indiana Jones movie is depressing. They could have handled "guy gets older, his adventuring days are naturally now behind him, he can retire to that long-delayed happy domestic life and honored retirement with the respect of his colleagues and students after one last hurrah handing over the reins to the new hero/ine" but no, they had to ruin Indy for the cheap jokes.
odd_primes
24m ago
Apparently they had a deal with Hasbro for a minimum of $225 million in royalty fees for the three new movies. Lucasfilm would get 20% of the wholesale price in royalties, which would kick in once the minimum threshold was crossed. For comparison their deal with Hasbro for the prequels had a minimum royalty fee of over $500 million, which seems to indicate that they expected lower merch sales.
https://www.jeditemplearchives.com/2018-09-16-the-cost-of-hasbros-star-wars-license/
throwaway-7742
26m ago
Also a boy's hero journey might be more interesting to a girl than vice versa because women have higher levels of cognitive empathy or perhaps it resonates with women in an evolutionary "selecting a winner" kind of way.
HereAndGone
26m ago
I mean, I'm a girl (at least a good while ago) and I like SF and I thought they ruined "John Carter" because they didn't know what to do with it or how to market it - dropping "of Mars" from the title was the first signal they hadn't a clue.
There will always be more boys than girls who like certain properties, and even for the girls who like the SF properties, the way they handled things was terrible. Who on earth liked the Force witches or whatever the hell these things are supposed to be? (Just a hint here, if you're doing a sacred mystic ritual, try not to have it look like an am-dram society pretending to have epileptic seizures).
"The Mandalorian" worked because the female appeal was Pedro Pascal plus baby Yoda (and I understand the female lead was not actively terrible in a Girlboss mode, so of course Disney bounced her for badthink) while having enough of the SW lore to appeal to the guys. The later SW movies with Rey could have worked if they'd concentrated more on the ensemble of Ray and Poe and Finn (and had managed to retain a coherent plot arc, instead of every new director deciding to drag the plot in a different direction). Also don't fuck up Luke's character, but they couldn't resist doing that.
But as it is, the properties they get their sticky fingers on are then revamped to lose the core audience (coughRingsofPowercough) and introduce the Girlboss who has to be so much better than the icky Patriarchy. Girls who aren't interested in SF won't watch this stuff, girls who are and like the original IP will be turned off, boys won't watch it either, and so the expensive new series that is going to be the star show of the streaming service falls flat on its face.
And then they do it all over again with a new one.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
26m ago
It's used widely elsewhere in modern zoomer-ish parlance from what I can tell.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
27m ago
A quick search indicates that this forum saw its first use of "glaze" in this sense 11 months ago.
Jiro
31m ago
Let's say "pandering to the stated desires of progressive women". Whether their actual and stated desires are different, or whether girls and adult female progessives want different things anyway, isn't going to matter.
TitaniumButterfly
33m ago
Defer to people in positions of authority
Well, women in positions of authority, anyway.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
34m ago
Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?
It's relatively new, but I've seen it around more than one week. What you observe happens with all buzzwords, including "psyop".
TitaniumButterfly
35m ago
I hate everything, but I like Bluey.
TitaniumButterfly
38m ago
glazing
Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?
I don't think we had a lexical gap here. I don't think a new word is called for, and if it were, I definitely don't think it should be that one. Nothing about this feels organic or warranted.
Played Slay the Princess recently (still exploring the remaining threads). So well written, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to pretty much anyone.
I enjoyed Cataclismo, a sort of a survival city builder with block-by-block fortification placement and a proper campaign to play through. Spanish studio, competent attempt at unique aesthetics and worldbuilding (at best distinguished and fablelike, at worst a little sterile), ok-ish campaign narrative. Fortification building satisfying, but gets tedious if you overbuild at every opportunity - difficulty is bit low and spiky, I'd suggest you build more than one layer of walls rather than elaborate, optimal walls & towers.
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