literature.cafe

Hi. Im a trans writer doing my lore for writing dark phantasy. I am inspired by many dark phantasy like Berserk and A Song of Ice and Fire, but mostly from real world history and in many parts of the world is very horrible to live as a women. How ever SA is part of some characters background but I I dont feel good actually writing it. Can I just skip it and be vague about it or there are workarounds? I dont wanna trigger survivors or make people drop it because if it.

Is not like im mentioning it all the time, my work is more like a collection of stories in the same universe that take place in different time periods and some dont have it at all, but it will be important in some.

Thank you in advance.

I understand that the newer version has a different ending and some new characters and scenes that weren't in the original. But the original is what got all the accolades and was considered his best book.

Which way should I go?

From the breakout SFF superstar author of Murderbot comes a remarkable story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.

"I didn't know you were a... demon."

"You idiot. I'm the demon."

Kai's having a long day in Martha Wells' WITCH KING....

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

WITCH KING is Martha Wells’s first new fantasy in over a decade, drawing together her signature ability to create characters we adore and identify with, alongside breathtaking action and adventure, and the wit and charm we’ve come to expect from one of the leading writers of her generation.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Amazon
• Kobo
• B&N

A cyberpunk story originally published in 1987! Kind of interesting to see that era's depictions of cybersecurity and AI.

Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BmQ629

Ursula K. Le Guin is a fantastic writer of speculative fiction and the author of the earthsea fantasy series.

1913 - library established in Houston by a black community. Years later, the city disbanded the all 8 black board members and shut the library down

1939 - 5 black people thrown out of a Virginia library for “disturbing the peace” (they were quietly reading).

1961 - Geraldine Edwards Hollis and eight other students from historically-black Tougaloo College — a group known as the Tougaloo Nine — held a sit-in at a “whites-only” public library in Jackson, Mississippi, as an act of civil disobedience.

1970 - the first meeting of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association formed to address the fact that the ALA wasn’t meeting the needs of Black library professionals.

The late 1990s started to become the sweet spot for library inclusion and governance. Everyone was welcome to access books and media without restriction.

In the 2000s, technology emerged in public libraries in a quite inclusive way. There some libraries had PCs and some had ethernet and/or Wi-Fi (free of captive portals). Anyone could use any of those technologies.

2024:

• Ethernet becomes nearly non-existent, thus excluding:

  • people running FOSS systems (which often lack FOSS Wi-Fi firmware)
  • people with old hardware
  • people who oppose the energy waste of Wi-Fi
  • people who do not accept the security compromise of Wi-Fi (AP spoofing/mitm, traffic evesdropping, arbitrary tracking by all iOS and Android devices in range)

• Wi-Fi service itself has become more exclusive at public libraries:

  • captive portals -- not all devices can even handle a captive portal, full stop. Some captive portals are already imposing TLS 1.3 so people with slightly older hardware cannot even reach the ToS page. Some devices cannot handle a captive portal due to DNS resolution being dysfunctional before the captive portal is passed and the captive portal itself is designed to need DNS resolution.
  • GSM requirement -- some public library captive portals now require patrons to complete an SMS verification. This of course excludes these demographics of people:
    • People who do not own a mobile phone
    • People who do not carry a mobile phone around with them
    • People who do not subscribe to mobile phone service (due to poverty, or for countless privacy reasons)
    • People who object to disclosing their mobile phone number and who intend to exercise their right to data minimisation (under the GDPR or their country’s version thereof)

• Web access restrictions intensified:

  • e-books outsourced to Cloudflared services, thus excluding all demographics of people who Cloudflare excludes.
  • Invidious blocked. This means people who do not have internet at home have lost the ability to download videos to watch in their home.
  • Egress Tor connections recently blocked by some libraries, which effectively excludes people whose systems are designed to use Tor to function. So if someone’s email account is on an onion service, those people are excluded from email.

There’s a bit of irony in recent developments that exclude privacy seekers who, for example, deliberately choose not to have a GSM phone out of protest against compulsory GSM registration with national IDs, because the library traditionally respects people’s privacy. Now they’re evolving to actually deny service to people for exercising their privacy rights.

There needs to be pushback to get public libraries back on track to becoming as inclusive as they were in the 1990s. A big part of the problem is outsourcing. The libraries are no longer administrating technology themselves. They have started outsourcing to tech giants like Oracle who have a commercial motivation to save money, which means marginalising demographics of people who don’t fit in their simplified canned workflow. When a patron gets excluded by arbitrary tech restrictions, the library is unable to remedy the problem. Librarians have lost control as a consequence of outsourcing.

One factor has improved: some libraries are starting to nix their annual membership fee. It tends to be quite small anyway (e.g. $/€ 5/year), so doesn’t even begin to offset those excluded by technology.

I've never use a book reading tracker before. But I made a few weeks ago a BookWyrme account.
BookWyrme is the fediverse book reading tracker and I'm marking books I've read when I remember them. Often, I need to add them to my instance as I've mainly read in French and many books needs to be manually added or imported before completing missing information.

This made made think about my journey as a reader. I've read lot older books in english or at least old enough to have more than one french translation. Would I love them with another translator or another translation? Would I enjoy reading them in english now? Would the langage difference be too much? Have a change too much as person?

I've read comics in paper format, volume by volume but I read them now online, chapter by chapter. How should I should I add them? Should I add both forms?

Which field are missing in BookWyrme to add information that are pertinent to me? What are its limitation? What are the workaround these limitations?

I looking for people to discuss these subjects.
Are you interested?

I don't want to write such big post again and make giant conversations but to publish smaller post on semi-regular basis and hear a bit of feedback.

Is this the right place? Do you know a more fitting community?

Have started this. It's started really well.

Ray Bradbury is bloody brilliant (writrer of Fahrenheit 451)

Hey! We're still here. Just been busy, still checking and resolving reports though. The image server was fixed but unfortunately we are now experiencing email delivery issues, so be aware of that. We will likely need to switch to an SMTP service soon.

Hope everyone is doing well :)

At the time, everyone thought that Sirius betrayed James, and murdered Pettigrew and several muggles. Lupin would have believed that he alone knew that Sirius was an animagus.

What reasons might he have had for withholding this information from the Ministry or Dumbledore? Lingering doubts/loyalty? Fear of persecution by association?

New chapters take a while with this one, but it's enjoyable for the most part.