iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anyway, I’ll stop vagueposting after one last thought: Sometimes craft books ARE really helpful - just in the exact opposite way the author meant them to be.

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Part of why I write stories is to present my own artistic values. To illustrate what I think writing is and is for. Part of why I write is to explore what writing can be. And it can be so much more than this book claimed.

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I decided to be charitable and just keep working through the book. But all my excitement about my idea was vanishing. I was developing a solid, probably sellable book that I could t stand the idea of writing. Then it hit me

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This book was very insistent on the completeness and accuracy it it’s view of what fiction is - what storytelling is. Part of this insistence involved dismissing certain common aspects of fiction as being illusions. (There’s never really more than one Main Character, e.g.)

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I’ve been reading and working through a popular book on the craft of fiction (not going to name names). I just kept getting angrier and angrier as I followed along, admittedly building a good launchpad for a novel. 1/?

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Getting my MFA is in the top three best decisions in my life. The only thing stopping me from doing it a second time with another concentration is the fact that I don’t think they’ll let me. Hottest MFA forever! (That’s the UCR Palm Desert low-residency MFA for anyone who’s curious.)

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Nobody writes neurotic sadbois and wailing seductresses like Iris Murdoch.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

So help me, I’m trying

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Things I researched today for my screenplay: Leeches Leech-borne illnesses Pulmonary edema Styles of house foundations Mesmerism Cold reading Gum disease It’s gonna be an absolute banger.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Can confirm. I love all my writer friends, mentors, and everyone I’ve ever read and enjoyed.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Finally, the science to back up what I’ve always been saying

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(Not saying that i’m just like him, obviously, and not saying that it would be good. Just saying I got smacked in the face with an influence/ role model I had no idea I even had. And that it sure is nice when an old bit of TV still ‘holds up’.)

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And then we see Mulder’s apartment: gorgeous old wood trim, huge windows, but tiny and full of interesting mess. The kind of places I’m constantly drawn to. And that seals it: I realize I have been trying to become Fox Mulder since I was something like 11 years old.

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Let me state here that I couldn’t remember any dialogue from the episode anymore. Hadn’t for years. I would’ve bet the episode ended at the haunted house. But when Mulder got READ by the one ghost I heard myself described with hair-raising accuracy.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

What a ride! Some of the visuals were immediately familiar. It was warmer-lit than I’d have guessed, but honestly that was the only thing off. And it was FUN. And it has whiffs of pathos. I loved it! But reader, it held a mirror up to me and made me confront myself in a completely unexpected way

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For a second I was delighted, but then I slammed my laptop shut. What if it was BAD?! What if past me was revealed to have been a completely tasteless, ignorant serf? I thought about it today though, and I just got done watching it.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

so that I wouldn’t get caught. It was a Christmas episode, from season 6: some ghosts trick Mulder and Scully into thinking they shot each other. Something about it just HELD me. I have no idea how many times I watched that episode. Then last night, I arrived at it in my series watchthrough

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Story time: So I started watching The X Files, which was on when I was in middle school and very much the kind of thing I was NOT allowed to watch. Obviously I had a friend record an episode and let me borrow the tape. One episode, that I watched over and over at 5 in the morning—

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Lionel Messi what the actual fuck 😳🤯

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Reposted by Toby

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Apparently, journals, universities and publishers cannot do it but the Oscars can

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Name your too 15 tv shows, gut instincts only: Sesame Street Wishbone Ghostwriter Star Trek Voyager Gilmore Girls Poirot Bob’s Burgers The Good Place Endeavor The Crown Slow Horses Interview with the Vampire The Great British Bake Off Hannibal Psych

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Reposted by Toby

Kelseypaintz @kelseypaintz.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

I did 2 more 20-minute expressionist gouache studies of muppets to feel better again.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

There’s something unnervingly profound about this.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I didn’t get sent to the counselor but the book about aliens and Area 51 that I checked out a bunch of times from my school library did disappear. They let me keep checking out the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe though.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

The Onion is one of the top things - maybe the top thing - that sometimes make me proud to be from Wisconsin.

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Toby @queerhobbit.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I grabbed The House of Skin by Karina Lickorish Quinn! Super excited to read it!

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Our vulnerability to A I doesn’t come out of nowhere. Not saying there’s a broad evil conspiracy, but the right conditions were great for A I to be broadly embraced. We aren’t going to be able to plan further responses to it without understanding where the initial responses are, in part, coming from

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It becomes shameful to ask questions. So yeah, people are going to ask a bot that can’t or won’t judge them for asking rather than risk the shame of asking another human.

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When you’re constantly taking tests in school and the people in power (adults) reward high-scorers over kids who really are curious but haven’t memorized enough, you learn to keep your confusion to yourself.

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