iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 26/09/2026

I've always loved familiar stories, I think it started with McCaffrey's fire lizards. Mine are inspired most by recent edition D&D familiars, magical constructs.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 24/09/2026

If you want to hear me go off on ahistorical button representation... well you're probably the kind of person who would enjoy this podcast.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 24/09/2026

Half my feed was Noisy replies, and I was about to make fun of you for shirking your work to scroll bsky... then the hypocrisy hit. I'm a go back to doing my job. 😖

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 17/09/2026

Oh! You splurged and bought the fresh fruit. I saved 10k yesterday by getting my zucchinis from the "festering rot pile" discount bin.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

Disambiguation post: Obtuse: too stupid to understand Abstruse: too smart to understand.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

Slight disagree. The bull may be capricious, but has no malice, greed, or the capacity to choose differently.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

And I think that speaks to the quality of Muir's work. The prose and characters draw you in and keep pulling you forward while drip feeding you lore and bludgeoning you with narrative shifts.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

I'm talking specifically about Gideon, not the series. And yes, it's a mystery, but it doesn't tell you its a mystery. It's breaking so many writing rules, expertly.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

Why does it work? Muir's prose is so lurid and the POV's voice so strong that you don't notice the incongruity behind the shifts. Also, the blood and gore is built into the setting. All the goth necromancer nonsense obscures the transition to horror. I am so annoyed at how good Muir is at this.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

Everything about the first chapters tells us that Gideon is a hero's journey space opera, then a third of the way through that gets entirely derailed into a locked house murder mystery, and then explodes into a last girl slasher. IT SHOULD NOT WORK!?!

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

Look, I know I'm extremely late to the Locked Tomb discourse, but Gideon the Ninth is structurally fascinating and I need to talk about it! Spoilers ahead 🧵

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

The knitting machine sat around unloved for a long time. I'm glad its found some people to play with it. It was so lonely. (Have you been trained on the industrial sewing machine yet. It's a wonderful beast)

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

It really is incredible! I've been with it for fifteen year now and I cannot believe what they have done. There are two looms!?!? Why do we have *two* looms?!

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 16/09/2026

The "wish fulfillment" critique is hilarious, as if romance is somehow uniquely guilty of that. 😂 I bet they're typing that post next to a stack of Jack Reacher books.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 15/09/2026

Having the weirdest brain tick today: the word "soap" looks like it's spelled wrong to me.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 14/09/2026

Author job: write every day, post to socials, engage with your fans. Day job:

A boy being blasted in the face with a firehose with a subtitle "You get to drink from the firehose!"

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 11/09/2026

"Claspers, spines, and knots" or "Attached at the hip"?

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 08/09/2026

Classes start tomorrow; how am I already this exhausted?

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 08/09/2026

A grad student at the table next to me was celebrating a defence and their friends made them this incredible monarch caterpillar cake! It's a work of art. Relevant to the interests of @bug-gwen.bsky.social @soundoftheforest.bsky.social

A cake made in the shape and colouring of a monarch caterpillar.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 07/09/2026

So I didn't go to DragonCon this year on account of my being Canadian the myriad horrors America is enacting on itself and others. This being my morning did help a little with the sense of loss.

A small cabin on a cliff surrounded by greenery overlooking a misty River.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 07/09/2026

Also, you are 1000% correct. Books live and die by word of mouth. Thank you for spreading the word! 🖤🩶

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 07/09/2026

Maybe August 25th is your doing, then? I am utterly baffled by what happened that day.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 02/09/2026

Travel safe! Have a great time! 🐉 (😭😭😭😭)

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 01/09/2026

We sometimes find our callings in the most unexpected places.

Liam Neeson talking on a cell phone saying "I have a very peculiar set of skills"

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 01/09/2026

Fortunately I have the fomo badge to keep me company. Thanks for that!

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 01/09/2026

So very stoked to experience overwhelming FOMO this year as all of you flood my feed with DragonCon pictures and stories? I sadly won't be going this year, on account of my being Canadian and America doing what America is doing. 😭

Ryan console wearing a purple Dagron con shirt and holding up a Dagron con pass as a fomo guest

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 28/08/2026

Is this weird bsky discourse your doing? I log in and my whole feed is people shouting about how they're either actually great in bed or (I presume joking) that it's super gay to like touching women. It appears to track back to you. I bet your notifications are real weird right now.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 28/08/2026

Found a photo. I think I'm 19 in this.

Ryan Consell wearing a green and black rifleman's uniform from Sharpe's Rifles

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Reposted by Ryan Consell

Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 14/08/2026

Stealing from Wizards, the kinder, funnier, queerer, Canadianer magic school series. Read the complete quadrilogy: Pickpocketing Burglary Kidnapping Arson Wizards, thieves, and misfits engaging in high adventure and petty crime. Stealingfromwizards.com #booksky

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 28/08/2026

You know, the oldest piece of clothing I still own is a replica Sharpe uniform jacket my mother made for me when I was 17.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 27/08/2026

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 27/08/2026

Agreed about the Corinthian helmet vibes.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 26/08/2026

More bones, lust and mentions of titty mags in Gideon, and I rather expect it's going to end very differently (don't spoil it for me) but I'm seeing the resonance.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 26/08/2026

Reading Gideon the 9th, and I finally understand a weird fandom overlap. Many fans of SvW also love Locked Tomb, couldn't work out why before, but they're the same damned book: uncultured misfit fish-out-of-water faking it till they make it surrounded by well-bred academic wizards.

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Reposted by Ryan Consell

Stephen Granade @granades.com · 26/08/2026

In honor of Dolly I’m gonna break out the mug that a friend made to commemorate how his young kid sang “9 to 5”.

A mug that reads “MY CUP OF IMBITCHEN”.
Brought to you by your friends at Limitless Horizons Ltd.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

Is that combined, or each? That could seriously impact my investment consideration.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

Is it a chain of bookstores deciding to carry it? A bunch of libraries? A school getting classroom copies? A system error? I have no way of knowing. I bough myself a cookie to celebrate, though.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

Which is to say, who the hell just bought eighty copies of SfW books and why? 🫨 All I can see is that it was one order in the US and expanded distribution.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

A great and terrible thing about being an indie author is that you can get up to the minute reports on sales. It's basically a skinner box for writers and we try to divine meaning from the largely random patterns.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

You have got to be kidding me! That was meant to be absurdist hyperbole. We live in the dumbest timeline. 🫠

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 25/08/2026

Shhh. If he finds out it's called that he'll demand it be renamed "Lake America"

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 24/08/2026

But have you completed the SfW magical familiar quiz? Guaranteed less racist than IQ testing, more scientifically sound than Myers-Briggs, and with 201 more possibilities than zodiac signs.

stealingfromwizards.com

Familiar Quiz | What animal is your Familiar? — Stealing from Wizards

The most robust and scientific magical familiar finding quiz on the internet. (Probably)

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 21/08/2026

Goodhart's Law in action. Constant problem in education when we tie resources to student grades.

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 21/08/2026

But they ARE earth-like. Just like this pile of 💩is pizza-like. They both contain water and carbon, they're both round...

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Ryan Consell @stealingfromwizards.com · 20/08/2026

This is among the many reasons I cringe at shilling my own book. There are so many great writers out there who aren't yet another carbon copy of exactly who I appear to be.

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