Every aspect of fantasy worldbuilding can be enriched by learning more about our own world.

But seriously, as many other authors have pointed out before, your ability to design the fantastical is directly proportional to your knowledge of our own world- the more time you spend learning, the better your knowledge lends itself to coming up with some wild shit.

Well, that's a relief for me, I suppose, given that I make more from my indie sales than my publishing contracts. I'd still rather no tech bubble at all, but...

Thank you!

How bad do you think the bubble popping is likely to affect book sales? Only notable recession I've been a full-time author through so far was the pandemic, and that was a bit different. Definitely worrying.

(Already sold off some index funds ahead of the bubble pop to proof myself a bit, but...)

I loved his cat graphic novel, it was adorable- but yeah he drew them kinda terrifying sometimes.

Sounds like a wonderful place, hell yeah!

I've had a couple characters in my books who are good at telling me what to do with them, the rest are lazy bastards who want me to sculpt their life choices like it's my responsibility or something.

Yeah, absolutely! My neck, too. Took a couple weeks to get used to the new posture and stop making a bunch of typos, but I don't ever plan to go back.

Also, I highly highly recommend a vertical mouse, that made a huge difference too.

Haters are always gonna hate. Get your petty revenge by creating anyhow, and enjoy watching them get even madder.

It's no skin off my back if someone just plain doesn't like my writing- no artist who has ever lived creates universal art. Bad reviews and negative quality judgements are an inevitability.

It's when others decide they're the arbiters for what is worthy of exploring in art that I get annoyed.

I can't even count how many negative and one-star reviews I've gotten for having lots of queer characters in my books- but everytime I do, I hit a mental button that reads "make it gayer."

(Are some things harder to create meaningful art about? Sure! And that's without even getting into certain sensitive, difficult topics that make it extremely challenging to avoid minefields. In the end, though, that all still comes down to skill, research, and thoughtfulness.)

Creating art is its own reward, in the end. It can be difficult, frustrating, and exhausting, but there are few more rewarding human activities- especially in this era of encroaching AI bullshit.

Ayuuuuuuuup.

I waffle on whether automatically assuming protagonists are in the right/good guys is a related phenomena, but that's also definitely folks just liking the characters too.