We're trying to have a civilization here.

Author of Aether Torrent. Buy my book!

[jackscarab]

AETHER TORRENT, my anti-capitalist LGBT-protags YA fantasy adventure novel, is now out in eBook and paperback!

At any moment of your choosing you can buy it from any of several vendors and then read it! Including right now! Exclamation point!

Tori, a disenchanted atheist. Avani, a devoutly religious fugitive. Cirrus, an Air-elemental tiger monster. The three women help each other fight their way out of their bad jobs and into a new goal: reaching Tori's mother in a distant city where, Tori hopes, all of their wishes can come true.

Read the book that Trick Weekes -- Narrative Designer at Bioware, Dragon Age lead writer, and author of Dragon Age: The Masked Empire, Feeder, and the Rogues of the Republic series -- called "cinematic as all get-out," "a ton of fun," and "bursting with life!"

And of course, wherever you get it from -- or anywhere you can, really -- please leave a review! Aether Torrent is self-published and needs all the positive words it can get to draw more readers.

Now I'm going to go enjoy my birthday.

Thanks for reading!

Available now at your favorite digital store!

Aether Torrent by Jack Duffe

[kirbydots]

“Magneto’s backstory should be changed, it’s unrealistic that he’d still be alive after all this time!” Have you forgotten what franchise he’s from?

[kirbydots]

You can suspend your disbelief for the man transformed into sentient rocks by space radiation, the interdimensional bird, and the flaming biker skeletons, but one guy being a little old is where you draw the line?

[magnetothemagnificent]

It's the ~antisemitism~

[magnetothemagnificent]

#its also worth noting that marvel *DID* change magneto's backstory#he was originally presented as someone who had survived the shoah as an adult#and marvel retconned it to him surviving it as a child#iirc his original debut backstory involved him losing a wife and two kids??

Well, no, not really. When Magneto was made to be a Holocaust survivor, he was a survivor from childhood, though by the end of the Holocaust he was in his teens. His daughter Anya was killed by an antisemitic mob after the Holocaust, at some point in the 1950s.

[daughterofstories]

It's also an attempt to pretend that the Shoah is ancient history, when it's really not.

"It's unrealistic for a Holocaust survivor to still be alive."

Assholes, there are Holocaust survivors still alive in the real world.

[prismatic-bell]

They're really telling on themselves because Wolverine is like 170 years old.

[pusheenthenerdcat]

wolverine being a hundred and fucking seventy: normal

magneto being the same age as currently alive holocaust survivors: impossible

[onbearfeet]

While there are definitely living Holocaust survivors today, most of them aren't up to doing half the shit Magneto does, and it seems to be affecting the impact his stories have on audiences. I remember reading Magneto stories as a kid in the 90s, knowing he was a little younger than my grandparents, and getting hit with a truckload of sympathy for the dude. He just wanted to have a normal life like Grandma and Granddad, and then the war happened and oh FUCK. Younger readers now are much less likely to have that personal connection; that's just how human lifespans work. And it's only going to get worse. Magneto does need some future-proofing.

That's not to say I think Magneto's origin should be changed, or that he should be permanently killed off. Far from it. This is comics; all kinds of timeline bullshit happens all the time. As someone pointed out above, Wolverine is most of the way into his second century of life.

What I'd do--and what I'm shocked Marvel writers don't seem to have done yet--is wave the mutant bullshit wand and make Magneto functionally immortal. Secondary mutation, maybe. Something something magnetic fields. The mechanics don't matter any more than "Wolverine is functionally immortal because healing factor" does. What matters is this:

At some point, Magneto will be the last living Holocaust survivor. And he will not let the world forget.

There was a story I read as a kid where Magneto took a handful of soil from the camp where his family died and spread it on the surface of the moon, where he was building a mutant haven of some kind. The image of him on his knees with soil running through his fingers and an agonized look on his face has haunted me ever since. To some part of him, it's always 1945. Never again is quite literally now.

I want to see Magneto as the furious conscience of the Marvel universe. I want him to rip a hole in the UN General Assembly building and stride in with his full regalia on--except for one sleeve, stripped to the forearm to show his tattooed number--and read the UN the riot act in all his nigh-unkillable glory. I want him to storm into summits between warring planets, atomize the ferrous metal in everyone's weapons, and lay down the galactic law that is There Will Be No More Genocides On My Watch, And My Watch Is Eternal. And I want future writers to use his story, and his enduring popularity as a character, to make sure that audiences don't forget either.

Magneto being a Holocaust survivor is only a flaw in the storytelling if you're a goddamn coward.

[kiragecko]

Canon has already done both - deaged him AND said his magnetism somehow makes him age slower.

What they were struggling with when I mostly stopped reading (over a decade ago) was navigating how to keep the emotional resonance as raw as he transitions to a historical figure.

Marvel has a lot of immortal/long-lived/time-traveling characters. It delights in giving them really intense backstories, and using the cushion of "this was long ago" to keep that intensity from being overwhelming. Sure, this guy murdered an entire city during the Crusades, but the Crusades are so long ago that they're basically a fairy tale, so that can just be used as an exciting visual!

Now a days, when they want a character's tragedy to be raw and real, they usually try to keep the ties to specific events ambiguous, so that writers can loosely shift the link as time goes on - Vietnam becomes Iraq, which becomes Afghanistan, which will eventually become somewhere else. Because we connect more deeply to things that we, personally, still remember.

You can't switch the war that Magneto survived. Him being Jewish, and the fact that it was the Holocaust, specifically, have become too important to the character. (Even though he was a survivor of Romani WWII internment at one point, and wasn't even in WWII during his early days.)

So his formative tragedy was 80 years ago. But he's NOT like Wolverine, whose history is an exaggerated thriller/horror movie. He's not like Apocalypse, or Sinister, or Exodus, whose histories are bloody fairy tales that carry no weight. He's not even like Captain America, whose history is a funhouse mirror reflection of the present - a constant conversation about the "good old days" and what makes America what it is. But those are the people he's starting to be compared to, because those are the types of stories immortal characters get.

How does the death stay meaningful as he comes back from the dead for the 5th time, and we're told his blood is being constantly rejuvenated through magnetism? How does his pain stay real when he's been reverted to an amnesiac toddler and then given doctored memories after being reaged?

The challenge of Magneto isn't figuring out why he's still alive and fighting. The challenge is figuring out how to keep the emotional resonance of his story as you add in more and more fiction.

[specialagentartemis]

Intelligent alien species based on bugs but specifically those moths that don’t have mouths and only live for a week after they pupate. This species’ whole conscious life is actually in the larval phase; larvae are the ones considered people, larvae are the ones with conscious and complex brains who build society, and each instar of the larva is treated as a different phase of life. Larvae become emotionally and socially and cognitively mature without ever becoming sexually mature. When they pupate, they metamorphose into something different and strange and close to mindless, with no mouth and no digestive system, whose only instincts are to mate and then quickly die. Metamorphosis is treated, functionally, like a person’s death, and the imago phase is a kind of proto-afterlife of majestic flight and the continuation of the species. Birth and death inextricably intertwined. Sex is not something people do during their lives, it’s a thing that is done as an imago after you’ve passed on from your life but before you return to the soil in death. Resultant eggs are collected by family members to raise. I think this would be fun.

[mulchmouth]

Im going to hold your hand when I say this. It is not realistic to expect yourself or your family to be able to survive solely off of food you have foraged or grown in a garden. People with more knowledge and experience have tried and failed. What do you think happened to all of those communes in the 60s? Most of them failed. Famine and malnutrition have been constant companions to humanity until industrialized farming and food supply lines came along.

It feels like a uniquely American capitalist take to assume these traditions will make you completely self sufficient. You need a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of knowledge across a lot of subjects, and a lot of luck to provide for everyone's nutritional needs.

So should you even bother trying to be more self sufficient with your food? I argue yes. Foraging and gardening are fun and will teach you so much about many things. They are deeply rewarding activities that can supplement your diet. There are herbs I haven't bought in years because I grow my own. There are dishes I can only make with foraged ingredients because I can't get them in stores.

You may not have the power to do everything, but that doesn't mean your efforts are wasted. Getting 5% of your nutritional needs from food you have grown or foraged, even for a season, is a massive accomplishment.

[hmskms]

I think (for Americans, at least) this idea can be traced back to the pioneer/westward expansion around the 1800s, and the propaganda that was based on that in the 1950s-60s.

It's all very "rugged individualist" in a way that's both dangerous and unrealistic. For example, the propaganda is that homesteaders did it all themselves, built cities from nothing, etc. etc. Reality is that they had significant support from the federal government. That's before getting into the racism/genocide of it.

Anyway, I love gardening as a hobby. Great way to get outside, be active, etc. It'll help you learn more about food production and your local environment, and plenty of places will also have gardening groups where you can meet friends.

If someone wants to garden to save money, I generally recommend a few herbs in pots, followed by tomatoes and leafy greens. Why? They're the more expensive items from a grocery store and they're pretty easy to grow.

[plantnerderyallday]

In addition to the above, people will have a vague idea that the peoples who are native to America were able to "do it", so they should be able to figure it out, too. But the thing is, the way the native peoples approach foraging involved a lot of care taking of the land over multiple generations to create and maintain and improve their food sources. At least in the region I'm in, these food growing areas are dispersed to where the plants grew best, instead of trying to grow all of the food species in one location. Once you start learning about it, the hunting and gathering looks less like mainstream American ideas about hunting and foraging and more like a really awesome agricultural system. (Incredible variety over the continent cannot be summarized in one post so I'm not gonna try)

In addition to this, they also had massive trade networks. So not only was it a community level undertaking versus a single individual or family, it was an undertaking between communities.

No one has ever done it alone. We do it with community and community networks. Do learn about gardening and foraging and all the other food production skills, and pair that with learning how to build and be in community. We need each other.

[headspace-hotel]

no one anywhere ever has been "self sufficient"

[escuerzoresucitado]

[nerdicornthetrekkie]

[gamechangershow]

Sorry but it's not complete without...

[mapsontheweb]

How people in NYC identify their ancestry or family origin

Interactive map:

An American Mosaic

This map shows how people in the United States identify their ancestry or family origin. Explore the many ways we describe our heritage and

[mapsontheweb]

Countries eligible to host the 2038 FIFA World Cup

(by u/-yolewpaniaq)

[mischiefmaker615]

[oneheadtoanother]

[valtsv]

"here's my original character, Man Who Sucks But Loves His Daughter Very Much" and it's a guy who worships at the altar of patriarchal violence and the woman he uses as an excuse and an effigy to absolve him

[valtsv]

well i think his daughter should tell him to kill himself

[filmnoirsbian]

I love getting unaccompanied minors (kids flying alone) who so clearly just. Don't want to be here lol. Sometimes I get to know a little of their story, like their parents are divorced, or a family member died and they're heading to the funeral, but usually they just don't want to talk about it and that's fine. But I always treat the flight like it's a challenge to make them smile. I offer them snacks and soda but that's never enough, that's whatever, they could get those from an airport vending machine. Chump change. So then I tell the worst jokes. Just the most embarrassing, kindergarten teacher, annoying dad jokes you can think of. And those always get a groan, or a "Seriously??" And that's my in! Now I can say "Why, what's your idea of a good joke? No, come on hotshot, make your best joke, let's see it." And they hem and they haw but of course they eventually tell me their very best joke because kids are little competitive comedy goldmines. And it's always super funny, so I laugh, and that's where they slip up. Because you know what you almost always do when your joke successfully makes someone laugh? You smile. And I'm like. Gotcha. Rookie move. Now you're going to end up having a good time in spite of yourself. I win.

[filmnoirsbian]

Did this with an 11yo u.m. today and he said "What did the ghost say to the other ghost?" And I said "What?" "Nothing. Ghosts aren't real."

[filmnoirsbian]

I'm literally a flight attendant, offering snacks and drinks is my job

[this-is-a-name-dont-worry]

gshsjb

[liaraswife-deactivated20210629]

SHIT

[valtsv]

me: BRING OUT THE DEATH RAY!!!

*my henchmen wheel a large glass tank containing a tiny stingray into the room*

[valtsv]

captive hero: aww!

me: QUIET! this is the deadliest ray known to man. one milli milli milligram of poison from its sting is enough to stop a grown man's heart in under a minute! and he answers only to me! behold your DOOM!

stingray: *nudges my hand*

me, getting down on my knees in front of the tank so i can look him in the eyes: Mortimer, please. i'm trying to be intimidating here.

[valtsv]

you will

[80slesbiab]

Kate McKinnon getting her hair pulled by THE pornstar Nina Hartley

[rose-chateau]

[bitterkarella]

the flat hand thing works, she’s correct

[lyrifemme]

The flat hand thing is so correct, and I’ve thought about this clip like four times a week since i saw it like ten years ago. That is NOT a noise she intended to make

[normal-horoscopes]

I think I've found my favorite [citation needed] on Wikipedia.

[ambatya]