DK Latta

I was about to post something, relating to a larger, sweeping point I had. I googled to check that I was right. Was all set to smugly post. Then...I decided to dig a little deeper and discovered *gasp* I was wrong!
The lesson, kids? Double-check facts...esp when the 1st ones align with your bias

All of this. I am the first of my target audience.

Part of this is, if you aren't creating for someone, it's like creating for everyone, which is creating for no one.

And as a writer, that someone should be me since I HAVE to reread my work over and over and over 🫠 that's publishing, bay-bee

👇 I've said this before about AI writing: it's a producer-driven grift (techies, bosses, pseudo-writers) but there's no actual audience for it. Even AI "writers" have no interest in reading other's AI "written" stories, and have to *trick* readers into buying theirs
That's not a sustainable model

Random thought du jour:
Maybe it's just 'cause of a vague facial similarity to Winston Rekert but if anyone was thinking of doing an "Adderly" re-boot, Tim Rozon should probably be in consideration

And here's a secret of the past decade: a lot of the crucial organizing/resistance work is done by women who look like nice mom-type ladies, often suburban variety, sometimes through nice organizations like churches. Sorry if anyone needs it to look like Che Guevara.

..fallacies I could drive a truck through! (Ok, I'll admit bias: I still smart from an essay where one ed said I should read "more" about a topic I've literally spent my life reading about; another said I should read essays by ___ when I had....but felt they wrote banal, unchallenging essays! 3/3

..still with a lot of misconceptions & shallow grasp of ideas. And it's kind of depressing because I'd love to do more of that, but I often lack a certain confidence (do I know enough about the topic? what if I misconstrued something?) while others rake in millions (well, thousands) posting...2/

In this internet world there's plenty of self-created pop-culture pundits (other topics, too, but I'm focusing on pop);
Some release brilliant, insightful vids. Some release terrible, shallow (oft ideologically RW driven) vids.
Then there's the middle, people who make OK, not bad vids, but...1/2

I guess it's my age but it's weird seeing popculture analysis vids on Youtube and 80% of the commentator's reference points are Manga & Anime! As guy who grew up reading comics, I'm not gonna diss that (lol) but you should probably try to shuffle in film & book refs, too

Quite a thread. What you wonder about with guys like this publisher is it really mendacious business practices, or just ego: he'd rather denigrate everyone around him than admit that, maybe, someone else is right and he wrong? :(

Extremely concur with this. Have also said for a long time that Trump would be, Trump IS, nothing if House and Senate were functioning sanely and with integrity.

All these men driving women out of their fields with giggly idiot grabassery and then bloviating to the public about how the lack of women is proof of male intellectual superiority... I hate them all. I hate them so much.

one of my strongest beliefs is that we're in our situation right now bc some of the most prominent talking heads (e.g. joe rogan, andrew schulz) are learning about politics in their 40s and 50s, instead of their teens and early 20s, and we have to go along for the ride as they learn basic things

..better (Holmes was a rip-off of Poe's C. Auguste Dupine, but Doyle still did it better). Anyway, just thinking how/why some genres/sub-genres seem heavily populated & others sparsely so. Lack of creative interest? Lack of an audience? Are some styles, tropes harder to evoke than others? 10/xx

to such a discussion. Where you can find examples of a sub-genre to scratch a yearning, even as many are pale echoes. An example is how Sherlock Holmes inspired a slew of Victorian-era eccentric, egocentric detectives, some quite successful in their own right. But Doyle arguably just did it...9/x

Barbarians & Broadswords Barbarians & Broadswords eBook : Latta, D.K.: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

..especially to people with little interest/respect for their genres? (At this point I'll indulge in a plug for my book, Barbarians & Broadswords, which featured stories deliberately meant to evoke diff styles incldng Howard & Moorcock ~ end plug)
There are nuances
8/x

www.amazon.ca/Barbarians-B...

..and tho there were writers who were compared to him, few (in my mind) were genuine peers, capturing his style, pacing, etc (tho, funnily, Howard's Almuric did!) And this is funny because ERB and Howard are often seen as clichéd hacks within overworked genres. But do they just seem that way...7/x

..I've read anyone working in a Moorcockian style of S&S, and even Howard-esque seems rare (Jakes' Brak the Barbarian being an obvious attempt); indeed, even Conan pastiches often seem to fail to capture Howard's je ne sais pas! Another example was ERB. I grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs 6/x

Yet it was obligatory to see rec lists saying: "If you like Howard & Moorcock, you'll LOVE Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser!" And tho I liked Howard & Moorcock, and they wrote in a similar "genre," I'd argue they were stylistically and thematically quite different. Indeed, to this day I'm not sure...5/x

..in the work. F'rinstance, when I was young, three of the pillars of S&S were Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, and Fritz Weaver - specifically Weaver's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser); yet it seemed to me they were very different, stylistically. Indeed, I've yet to read a F&TGM story I liked much. 4/x

..a fan the book shelves are full of writers writing on similar themes with similar styles (even if he might be subtly "better" than many, the throne to which others aspire). But then other genres seem harder to emulate. Or (here's where perspective comes in) maybe fans see different things...3/x

Merely tropes, themes, clichés are easily recreated. Or if you like Tolkien there're scores of plucky bands on quests to thwart great evil. That doesn't mean there aren't "better" writers, but if you like one author you can prob find others you'll enjoy. Likewise, say, Stephen King. If you're...2/x

Just randomly thinking how in storytelling some genres/sub-genres and "voices" are common...and some weirdly rare. Or is that an individual's perspective?
To whit: if you like, say, mysteries, there are hundreds of writers who write almost interchangeably. That isn't a diss, per se. 1/x

You wonder how much clauses like this are a reflection of the Arts (and so much else) being bought up by hedge fund managers. People uninterested in art-for-art's-sake but convinced the mother lode is in TMing potential IPs - the next Bond, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.

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Two weeks left and the next stretch goals to unlock are including more digital art and a one-page themed RPG!

Likewise, people get snippy at people who point out issues in the Artist's old work, as if that, too, is crass and stupid. But, um, is it? If someone was held up as an Artistic luminary that all the smart people appreciated, yet there are some obvious red flags, isn't that worth grappling with?
3/3

Maybe they *did* never like the Artist's work, yet the Artist was on such a pedestal detractors were treated as ignoramuses who couldn't recognize true genius. And now that the Artist has fallen from grace...they *still* aren't allowed to criticize him by the same folk who always praised him.
2/3

Whenever an Artist is outted as "problematic" (I guess Gaiman is in the news again) I see people n pundits rolling their eyes at folks who say "Well, I never liked..." as if those folks are crass, bandwagon-jumpers or...or..."Virtue Signalers". Gasp! And it always seems to ignore the obvious:
1/3