iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

you might be interested in this review one of my Goodreads mutuals wrote: www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

goodreads.com

See what your friends are reading

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I wrote about Warrior's Woman (1990), romantasy, and the culture war theloosecravat.substack.com/p/warriors-w...

theloosecravat.substack.com

Warrior’s Woman

Romantasy and the culture war

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

np, it's super interesting! (albeit hard to read!) also not meant as a rebuttal at all! Seems like Kinsale is generally more popular than Ivory and Gaffney nowadays so I imagine the grouping happens less.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ivory/Kinsale/Gaffney used to get grouped together all the time ~back in the day~, All About Romance even asked Ivory about it: allaboutromance.com/author-inter... I am at the center of that Venn Diagram tho. These ladies are my faves.

allaboutromance.com

Interview with Judith Ivory

Judith Ivory: Intelligence that Shines Through (March 22, 1999) “The great thing about books is they requires two imaginations, the reader’s and the writer’s.” “I think it is the artist’s job to thr...

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

when avon asked judy cuevas to take on a pen name midway through her career do you think they knew they'd be forever condemning her to be known as "Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas)"

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"even if you aren't that into Fabio" couldn't be me

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

this was very interesting, btw! Even if you aren't that into Fabio, Michael has some really interesting insight into how PEOPLE has changed since the 80s/90s. They used to have art coverage! Literature coverage! Now it's all celebrity

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

my first paid subscriber piece: a refutation on heteropessimist takes on romantasy theloosecravat.substack.com/p/mars-needs...

theloosecravat.substack.com

Mars Needs Women!

What does alien romance say about the modern heterosexual?

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

this is so funny because I think my answer would be Barbie

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

late to this, but this house was on an ep of livestyles of the rich and famous that I am DESPERATE to see

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

i honestly think we should all be very aware of this and not like, help them out by engaging with their complaints in good faith. "there are too many sex scenes / not enough plot!" read something else then, loser

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

annnnyway lots of conservatives getting very heated about romantasy lately, trying to frame it as a concern for women's rights (clock the word "degeneracy" in the title. A dog whistle!!!)

a youtube screenshot from The Second Story. She is talking about the book Fourth Wing. the title of her video is "the absolute degeneracy of modern writing"

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

or maybe yr enemy? I do not want to ~ presume~

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Thank you! And that's such an interesting correlation. I've seen people review Tom Huff's work saying it's so obvious he's a man because he writes like x,y,z when his work is very much in the style of Rosemary Rogers, etc.

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Casey S. Pumpkins 🎃 @caseyexplosion.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

No, what happened was the religious right in the US, after losing on Obergefell v. Hodges, immediately changed tactics. They held huge conferences outlining their plans to roll back LGBT rights as whole by targeting trans people. They didn't skip a beat. We aren't to blame for our own oppression.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

you haven’t lived until you’ve been mentioned by name in a one star Yelp review

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Lucynka @lucynka.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

A long, but really good, read, (particularly in the wake of the death of the Harlequin Historical line?—AKA one that allowed for unusual settings/characters/stories). I always enjoy Chels' essays. ❤️ #romance #romancelandia

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Els🖤🤍💜🩶 @elsjones.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

A freaking excellent piece of writing

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

(I am American, I live in Glasgow)

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

i wrote about Americans writing Scotland (specifically in historical romance) theloosecravat.substack.com/p/sir-walter...

theloosecravat.substack.com

Sir Walter Disease

Americans writing Scotland

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Sean T. Collins @seantcollins.com · 13/12/2025

At the risk of sounding stupid this kind of thing is why I post about writing porn when I write porn. When they slam the Internet shut on porn it's sex and sexuality they're trying to stifle; they're foreclosing on the possibility of adults being free people, and it behooves antifascists to say so.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

i love it when tiktokers/youtubers pretend they're doing a public service by reading a controversial popular book so they can make content about it. "i wasted my life reading 1,000 pages of alchemised!" yeah buddy that was your fault. not gonna waste any of mine with your video

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Gretchen Felker-Martin PRE ORDER CHIMERA 2.16.27 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

PORN IS ART, PORN IS GOOD, PEOPLE MAKING PORN IS A SIGN OF A HEALTHY SOCIETY

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

being an Oscar Van Rhijn fan is so logical to me. He schemes! He slouches! He has quiet zingers!

Oscar Van Rhijn from the TV show The Gilded Age. He is wearing a hat and fancy sunglasses, a very stylish man in the late 19th century.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

go through some newspaper archives, they said. it'll be FUN, they said

Screenshot of newspaper clipping that says "Move over, Fabio. Book publishing's new cover boy is Newt Gingrich."

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mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

hi! 😃 i couldn't help but notice that scrolling is sapping your will to live! may i offer u a video essay in these trying times? youtu.be/Bdj14_jdumI

youtu.be

be your own algorithm

YouTube video by pagemelt

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Me, a person who has publicly called Thomas Cromwell "babygirl": Ali Hazelwood is in trouble for WHAT

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Sanj also wrote about this baskinsuns.substack.com/p/sex-romanc...

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this disconnected from bookish community because of some strangely regressive views on sex and sexuality. Last year, after St. Martin’s Press sent out PR boxes containing vibrators and lube to influencers, some of whom were not aware they were on PR lists for the publisher and hadn’t agreed to receive PR, there was a flurry of discussion around the implications of foisting sex toys onto non-consenting adults. The book being promoted was a queer adult romance novel by the very popular queer adult romance novelist Casey McQuiston, and all influencers involved were adults (as far as I know), but social media was still speckled with concern to the effect of: “What if I opened this PR box in front of a child! That’s so inappropriate!”

Far be it from me to defend a publisher from criticism. SMP merits much critique (see the footnotes), and it is absolutely annoying or frustrating to receive mail you haven’t agreed to receive. It isn’t my ministry to tell people not to be angry about something. I do, however, find it hard to lend credence to the idea that the existence of this PR box constitutes material harm, and think that it behooves us not to construct hypothetical harm to defend our beliefs. When people started inventing scenarios of influencers opening PR packages in front of abusive intimate partners and being harmed, then attributing the fault of that imaginary, nonspecific harm to a marketing professional and not, say, the intimate partner, all I could think was that somewhere, we’d lost the plot badly. Also, the tenuous or wholly invented linkage of queer adult sex and sexuality (fictional or real) to harm against children is a tale as old as homophobia itself, and one that I watched supposed “allies” skate right past in their crusade.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

I did feel actively insane last year watching a lot of book creators say that a queer author is a sex pest over a PR box, so this breakdown of the situation... very cathartic to me www.tiktok.com/@_happy_dagg...

tiktok.com

Quick, someone start a fight in the comments! #booktok #books #bookrecommendations #kindleunlimited #spicybooks

TikTok video by Jet

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Ruth Scurr: "Robespierre looked like a cat" Me: oh damn. that's true

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

obviously don't use gen AI, especially for something this stupid. but also speaking for myself part of the appeal of the Jacobin club is that all of the prominent members had Faces of Weird Proportion

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

looking up something on the french revolution which is how i found out some history blog used AI to yasssify Desmoulins

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

i watched no less than THREE fake trailers for Pillion before realizing that there is not actually a real trailer for Pillion yet.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Worst case scenario if you leave it alone: someone gets away with grifting as a not super profitable identity Worst case scenario if you don't: hostile environment for closeted trans people

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

i saw residual discourse about an author who is a man "pretending" to be a lesbian and man, y'all need to leave it alone. Gender and sexuality are fluid, if someone is posting that identity chances are they're interested in exploring. Not your job to be a cop about it

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

yes obviously you are allowed to critique popular books and social media creators but using"booktok girlies" as a pejorative is something you should rethink imoooooo

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

it's not REALLY a big deal but i get sad when i see reviewers say things like, "here are the best books I read in Q1" please exorcise corporate jargon from your hobbies! free yourself!!!

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Reformed Rakes @reformedrakes.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

New episode! The Phoenix Bride is an achingly romantic book set in London, 1666 and unlike anything we've ever read. Siegel managed to make an under explored setting feel very lived and pulls off the kind of happily-ever-after we wish we saw more of in the genre.

Cover of The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel superimposed on a painting of the Great Fire of London. Text reads Reformed Rakes Presents:

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X-Ray Eyes @xrayeyes.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

MAKE GOOD MOVIES OR DIE! Cecil B. Demented, John Waters (2000)

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Sanjana recently shared this old piece in her latest (excellent!) Substack and I'm excited folks are discovering it. It's about Christine Monson's infamous book STORMFIRE, a bodice ripper that a lot of people view as a gratuitous, immoral work theloosecravat.substack.com/p/a-history-...

theloosecravat.substack.com

A History of Violence

Stormfire, the scorpion, and the frog

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Reformed Rakes @reformedrakes.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

new episode! this week we’re talking about sex work, mistresses, theater, jewelry, estates and more with @scarr.bsky.social! His Lordship’s Mistress is a charming Signet Regency that explores many topics that newer readers might assume a stuffy Regency would shy a way from.

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Sawyer @potboilersawyer.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

like if you HAD to award him that year he was also nominated for Glengarry Glen Ross??? I may never sleep again

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