Blue Moon Rising, the 2nd book in the Dark Sunshine series.
It's been two years since Bardi survived the dhampir invasion. Two years of being the city's official courier and all the frustration that comes with the job. Not even taking in a wayward fae as a new roommate can quite stave off the aggravation.
But then along comes Marie, the city's new— yet old— leader with an ultimatum. A cross country road trip from hell to deliver a very reluctant groom to his wedding.
Oh Bardi, what have you gotten yourself into this time?
Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GHSZWTQ9
Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.
Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.
This is just going to make people stop using the built in 18+ warnings and make Discord less safe for everyone.
As a reminder - do not cave and give these guys your IDs even if you don't care about them having that kind of data (which you should). They have already had a massive leak of ones collected for UK restrictions. Their support emails still hasn't answered any of my questions about their Data Handling Policy for IDs or other info used to age verification (by which I mean I asked to be signposted to their retention policy and they just kept putting me in an automated loop where they assured me I was an adult account when I asked for their Data Policies, and then told me to just send my ID when I said I was being asked to verify that. So. Great.)
Made a Cara account! Not entirely sure what I'll post yet, I'll probably lurk for a while until I figure out how to promote myself because I'm primarily a writer and the app is very much for artists, but I'm thoroughly enjoying all the beautiful art and the blessed silence that comes with the absence of vertical video.
For context for anyone who's not in the know: Meta/Instagram recently started collecting EVERYONE'S data on EVERYTHING (posts, comments, captions, hashtags, etc. maybe even DMs but idk about that) and scraping it for their AI. In certain parts of the EU you could opt out of this if you could prove that your data has been found in the AI generated images, but if you were a smaller account that couldn't prove this or you lived in the US, Meta said "you have no data privacy rights, sorry not sorry, we'll steal your face, your art, and your identity."
Understandably, a lot of artists replied with "Fuck This, it's been impossible to get visibility here since you introduced Reels and started making the algorithm pay-to-play" and fled in droves to a new app called Cara. It's made by artists for artists, has a strict no-AI policy, and built-in integrations with Glaze, which is a program to protect your work from scrapers. At first sounded too good to be true, but then I reconsidered the sunk-cost-fallacy and decided to give it a shot.
I'm going to document my experience and experimentations and thoughts and hopefully turn this into a coherent blog post for future reference in a couple weeks but here's my initial reactions as someone who is Primarily a Writer and a Self Taught Hobby Artist that dabbles in both traditional and digital medium
oh my god the lack of ai and ads is so nice but the thing that gets me. that really gets me. is that there's NO VERTICAL VIDEO FORMAT. No reels. No stories. Just posts. It's so quiet. I finally have peace. I can think clearly. It's like the fog has lifted.
There's two different layouts for the home page - an algorithm YOU CAN CONTROL which lets you choose percentages of people you follow, posts from the network of mutual's mutuals, and posts selected from the app as a whole. I think it's something like 60/30/10 as the default but you can change those if you want. There's also a toggle to only view people you follow. I love this feature so much. A customizable algorithm is really nice to discover new people when you're brand new to an app and the choice to tune it when you want is so novel and refreshing. (this is something I saw on desktop, so you may have to change it on your computer to see it reflected in the app)
On your page there's also two different view: Portfolio and Timeline. Portfolio is like an Artstation profile of the work that you post, curated to show off your best pieces. Timeline works exactly like a tumblr blog - you can repost (reblog) other people's work, make text posts, share doodles, etc.
Overall the vibe is still very Professional :TM: All the work I'm seeing in my feed is gorgeous, finished/rendered pieces maybe accompanied by progress shots. The big popular names in the Art Industry get all the attention and likes, and everyone else is just kind of... there. I've only had it for a day so I'm still trying to find my mutuals. I'm sure it'll become more casual over time but everyone is still trying to put their best foot first.
Because it seems like a place for professionals to connect - I think there is a place for Writers on this platform. Even if you aren't an artist yourself, I still think it's valuable to have an account just to lurk, collect inspiration and art styles from artists you like, and find people to commission for book covers, illustrations, character art, and more. If you post little doodles of your OCs, that could be fun. I just don't think it's the right place to market your book.
The platform blew up from 40K users to 650K users and the poor dev team is struggling under the workload and financial burden of running the site. They're going to have to monetize it at some point, and with that comes enshittification so I'm not holding my breath it'll stay untainted forever, but I'm hoping that when they do monetize it, it'll be through a subscription-based platform or getting large corporate sponsors to become like a LinkedIn for Artists
So far I have one post up, which is the full cover art for "First Flight of Spring" (one of my Ko-Fi stories). It's the first place that hasn't compressed this monster file which is super nice, so if you want to check that out, I guess you can follow me. And if you're on Cara, drop your information in the comments! I'd love to find other users!
🖋️ Fantasy Writer
🎨 Hoarder of Many Hobbies
🌱 Plant Lady
Check linktree for my blog, mailing list, kofi, and socials
I guess with all the media companies forcing me to unsub and stop watching because *checks notes* they're giving in to facism... I'll be reading a lot more books!
What's a girl gotta do to be left alone?
Nobody avoids the vampiric world more strenuously than Bardi St. Claire. With the help of an exiled werewolf, she prefers to operate her own towing business on the outskirts of the city. Safe and tucked away from the vicious politicking and flamboyant lifestyles of her fellow bloodsuckers.
But when she stumbles across a dying courier while responding to a disabled vehicle call, she ends up being forced to take over the less than stellar position. Now she's the courier, the one responsible for transporting everything from cryptic documents to ancient artifacts, the secret and sordid heart of their shadowy underworld.
Suddenly there's no escape from the city drama, where twin brothers vie for control, both political and romantic and the zombie-like dhampir are growing emboldened enough to gather in numbers previously unheard of. Enough to threaten the status quo and endanger Bardi and those she holds dear.
With the help of her friends and contacts in the occult underworld, will Bardi survive this job? Or will she end up ground up and spit out like so many before her?
I know, I know, we shouldn't be celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. I gasped in horror when I stumbled across the actual close up shooting footage. (I don't recommend looking for it, it's pretty awful.)
I don't want violence. I want Americans to care more about children, and the lives of people they don't know than they do this bizarre obsession with owning firearms. I want gun violence to end.
But, Charlie Kirk's platform was a world where everyone has easy access to guns. Where gun deaths were acceptable to guard this "god given right" he believed in.
It should not come as surprise to him, his followers, or anyone, the world he desired also put him at risk of becoming a gun violence statistic.
He is the victim of his own rhetoric. His bed was made, and now he is lying in it.
someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue
I love you Pacific Rim, I love you Ramin Djawadi's soundtrack, I love you Mako Mori, I love you found footage prologue, I love you entire concept of Drift compatibility, I love you only actual golden retriever man Raleigh Becket, I love you Kwoon scene, I love you "it's not obedience. it's respect," I love you Mana Ashida's powerhouse performance, I love you Stacker Pentecost's sun motif, I love you Chuck's jacket, I love you hallway fistfight, I love you Crimson Typhoon, I love you Otachi, I love you del Toro's "guy in a suit" approach to creature design, I love you Hansens with flare guns, I love you "for my family," I love you numerous artful nods to Jurassic Park, I love you "we can clear a path. for the lady," I love you forehead touch, I lo
Love love love characters that present themselves as emotionally open social butterflies but the more you see of them the more obvious it is that they’re the most closed off fuckers in the story. Sure, they want to help you with your personal problems and messy emotions, but if you turn that shit back on them, they’ll shut down or deflect every time. Why are you sticking your nose in their business anyway? It’s not like it matters. They’re not a person, they’re just a role being played. They’re the guy who fixes things and saves people. Please ignore the man behind the mask, he’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Foreshadowing @eorzean-capitalist - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
