iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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chesca @scribble.quest · 13/01/2026

Lately I’ve been doing some (…only semi-solicited, it’s in a weird space between ‘official’ and ‘fanwork’) visual stuff for my wife’s novel. She’s pitching today as part of bluepit, so please take a look! @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social (Reposting because I think the link was getting this post hidden)

Preliminary designs for Lionheart, a character from By Blood and Salt. He is shown wearing armour, both silver and black, along with a ‘modern’ look and the padded clothing he wears under his armour.

Preliminary designs for Naomi from By Blood and Salt. She is pictured in an orange dress with a purple scarf, a paint-stained oversized t-shirt tucked into denim shorts, a puffy pink sundress and a short jacket and a rainbow mesh top over a cropped pink top with a layered purple skirt.

Scrapped painting of Naomi and Lionheart. Lionheart’s armour is an earlier design, no longer accurate. Lionheart lifts Naomi’s chin to look solemnly into her eyes. Naomi smiles at him knowingly.

Naomi and Lionheart share a pair of earbuds to listen to music together. Lionheart wears a plain black shirt. Naomi wears a blue cardigan embroidered with strawberries over a yellow dress.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

BY BLOOD & SALT magic vanished 700 years ago, democracy, roughly 17. there are no fae, no witches, no miracles. nonetheless, the artist naomi is doing her best to survive... and then she accidentally awakens a statue of a knight-paladin. together, they fight capitalism. #BluePit📖 #A #F #LGBT #WIP

four images of a horned man with claws. in two of them he is wearing armor in silver and armor in black, respectively. in the other two he is wearing old-fashioned clothing and modern streetwear, respectively. the artwork is signed by chescadraws.

four images of a Black woman with pink hair, in various colorful outfits, evincing an eclectic sense of style. the artwork is signed by chescadraws.

a line drawing in red of an anatomical heart, surrounded by the text "we are bound by blood & salt"

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

ur bitch remembered her login credentials again. fuck yeah, just in time for bluepit

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

tfw ur suspicions of ur own revision conclusions that a chapter is strong and doesn’t need much work. anxiety and the protestant work ethic are a toxic combination…

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

we had to come to an agreement about how to refer to him she originally called him “unproblematic griffith from berserk”

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Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Everything is bad and stupid and eye-bleedingly infuriating, so here are some photos I like from when I was in countries other than the US: (all photos by me)

COPENHAGEN: From green and golden treetops, a pillar emerges -- a bronzey brown pillar with deep patina everywhere else, and at its peak is a turquoise-patina angel with wings aloft. From Wikipedia: "The Ivar Huitfeldt Column is a monument at Langelinie in Copenhagen, Denmark, built to commemorate the death of Admiral Ivar Huitfeldt and his men from HDMS Dannebroge, which exploded and sank in the Battle of Køge Bat during the Great Northern War. The monument was constructed in 1886 to a design by Vilhelm Dahlerup. Ferdinand Edvard Ring was responsible for the statue of the Roman goddess of victory, Victoria, and for the reliefs, while Carl Brummer undertook the monument's architectural design." Which admittedly -- sorry, Danes -- contains a lot of words I do not understand because I am a dipshit American. Photo by me, Chuck Wendig

MYRDAL, FLAM, NORWAY: Churning base of a heavily-flowing waterfall. In the foreground are black, almost volcanic rocks. It's the Kjosfossen Waterfall, I think, and the thing that's weird about it is they send out this person -- a woman? -- dressed in all red and she's supposed to be a huldra, a mystical trollish siren spirit, and she goes out there and does this wispy dance before impishly leaping away into some apparent void. It's weird and kind of amazing. Photo by me, Chuck Wendig

FANTOFT, NORWAY. This is the Fantoft stave church (stavkirke?) outside Bergen. It is clearly a DEATH METAL CHURCH which is why it's kind of bizarre that, reportedly, the original was burned down by... a BLACK METAL BAND? Or something? I dunno. Google it. The black and white photo is of the church from below -- it is a church in real life that is largely black and covered in various crosses and dragons and sharp-looking tiles. It's honestly pretty bad-ass. And the sky above is a tortoiseshell of dramatic clouds, only heightening the bad-assery. Photo by me, Chuck Wendig

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN -- HERE IS A PHOTO OF A BIOMECHANICAL CENTIPEDE okay not really it's just a roller coaster, shot from a distance, but also from behind, so you can barely see that there are people in it -- it mostly just looks like pods or pedipalps or something clustered together rushing along a gray metal track as it curves sharply. It's a weird abstract photo and I am pleased by it. Your mileage may vary. The roller coaster is, I believe, MONSTERS, at Grona Lund in Stockholm. Photo by me, Chuck Wendig

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

and now looking forward to a lovely day at the british library!

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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Many of these are debut authors. Please check out their books also.

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Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 26/01/2025

respect truth in advertising

shop window of Sleepy Cat Books, f
with a sleepy cat sitting there front and center

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LorennaCleary.bsky.social @lorennacleary.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Abbot is now threatening to illegally remove the 30 lawmakers, who broke quorum, from office. This is absolute chaos.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Remember that NASA was only able to *start* because the rich were being taxed at 90+% marginal rates. Now, *you* pay a greater percent of your income as taxes than any billionaire. You're just not gonna get NASA back without billionaires paying taxes again.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

note to self: explore more of cristina bacchilega’s work

From trope to socia jusuce: the nappy ending. Not an fally lates en happily: Andersen's mermaid, though on her way to gaining a soul, is in tears. And while we expect fairy tales to end with the protagonist's achievement of love and social elevation, 'they lived happily ever after' is hardly the fairy tale closing. Perrault's morals are tongue-in-cheek; 'happiness and good cheer' are in store for the Grimms' Rapunzel, but only 'for many, many years'; Sicilian tales caution, 'they all remained happy and content, / while we sit here without a cent'; and one closing formula in the living oral tradition of Newfoundland goes, 'They had coffee for tea when I came away / and if they don't live happy, I hope we may!' More than absolute happiness, fairy tales deliver what Tolkien called a 'joyous turn' because their logic is predicated on the favourable outcome of desire.
Whose desire? For what? And who has access to fairy tale happiness? Today's creators-audiences-adapters are particularly keen on asking these questions, with the proliferation of prequels, sequels and remakes signalling both a dissatisfaction with classic fairy tale endings and the lasting appeal of a genre in which abuse and injustice are presented in order to be undone, because in fairy

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Malachite Tigerbunny @malachitetiger.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Protest movements that stop as soon as they start seeing results fail. Protest movements that keep going until your whole squad is across the finish line win.

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🚄Rob✅✅🚆 @robdickinson.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Oh LMAO Brit MPs after voting through identity restrictions on adult sites are using VPNs to avoid it And billing this in expenses.. www.politico.eu/article/brit...

politico.eu

Britain’s MPs charge VPNs to expenses as minister urges caution

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle appeared to suggest that VPN use could put children at risk.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

having a lovely #StationeryStoreDay with my partner at all things analogue in eastbourne!!

a coffee shop tables spread with our purchases from all things analogue: a pen and pencil, a notebook and sticker, and a mystery bag!

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

my reread is going slow but my sense of what i need to fix and how to do it is going fast #amwriting

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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 31/07/2025

lol let me tell you something about the publishing industry: It's very white. Like VEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRY white.

nytimes.com

Opinion | Just How White Is the Book Industry? (Published 2020)

New data shows the extent of the race problem in the publishing world.

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indui @monstermonger.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Precious treasure!

Inside an iridescent oyster, a tiny black dragon is curled around the pearl. It seems to be laughing mischievously and triumphantly.

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The Trandalorian @charliejaneanders.com · 31/07/2025

This isn't a list of jobs that A.I. can easily replace. It's a list of jobs that techno fascists don't think are worthwhile or meaningful and that they want to eliminate. They don't want humans to try to make sense of the world, they want us to believe whatever we're told.

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The Trandalorian @charliejaneanders.com · 31/07/2025

If we really want to settle on other worlds and turn humanity into a spacefaring society, we need to spend at least as much on poets as we do on physicists.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

hello from england!!! christ it’s humid am in this country rn to work out wedding stuff!!

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TBooQ @tbqtalks.com · 16/07/2025

I keep saying it: The push for AI made so much more sense to me once I realized tech bros talked to it like a woman who won't talk back.

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Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 16/07/2025

Look, disappointed as I am to be deprived of a “monster-filled epic”, is no one going to talk about the fact that the guy translating this has the same name as the title character and science tells us this means he’s an immortal who guards the doors between earth and the realm of shadows?

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

reading an essay by cristina bacchilega got me thinking about my own work’s relationship to fairy tales as an “otherwise tale.” i love it

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michiums @michiums.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

SHOP UPDATED💫 💫3 NEW FOIL PRINTS 💕 UPDATED TRINKET TOTE BAG 💫NEW STICKER SHEET + STICKERS 💜 NEW PENCIL POUCH ➡️ michiums.bigcartel.com #art #pokemon #originalart #stationary #utena #illustration

Pile of new goodies featuring 3 new prints, a tote bag, a new pencil pouch, a new original sticker sheet, and a new glitter sticker design

new animal cavalry sticker sheet featuring animal knights and encouraging words

collage of new items now available: top row from left to right; Utena foil print and pokemon foil print, bottom row from left to right: forest witch original print, glitter brush bug stickers, and wooper pokemon no worries pencil pouches

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Dianna Gunn Does (Fictional) Murders 🇨🇦 @diannalgunn.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

I am once again asking why we're so preoccupied with making robots that will steal all the creative work when we could make robots that do our laundry and wash our dishes (Probably because rich tech bros have maids they already see as subhuman for those menial tasks)

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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Philosophy professor Jonathan A. Caravello of California State University, an observer, was also snatched by ICE in Camarillo, CA yesterday. He hasn't been released.

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apricot @areyoshi.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

PENNSYLVANIA: we are currently experiencing a STATEWIDE 911 OUTAGE. In the event of an emergency, do your best to remain calm & look for social media or websites operated by your county to find a 911 center number. Ideally you'll have received the alternative number via the emergency text system.

A heat map from Down Detector focusing on the United States which shows where user-submitted problem reports are concentrated over the past 24 hours. The entire state of Pennsylvania is glowing.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

i think worldcon stepping in it every year is a bad tradition and we should stop doing it

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

hello #BluePitHype!! i’m jocelyn allen, a writer of fantasies and love stories. i take great inspiration from music and visual art, threaded through a cock-eyed imagination, and i write stories because i don’t know how not to.

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Gamera Spinning (Darren) @gameraspinning.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Tom Gauld www.instagram.com/p/DLz7NCsiVo...

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Trump was golfing, Ted Cruz was partying in Greece, and the Mexican President was sending in help to the Texas flood victims. Put it on every. fucking. billboard.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Yes. Literally every day. My degrees are in interdisciplinary humanities (medieval history and religious studies) and interdisciplinary arts (dance, music, and writing). I cannot go several hours without using the critical and analytical skills the humanities taught me.

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Roland Allen gazes on the space where Chapter XVIII shall be @zibaldoni.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Your reminder that the UK book industry is worth over £7bn, more than four times the steel industry (£1.7bn), and six times the fishing industry (£1.1bn) so maybe English degrees do have a point after all.

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

contemplating making this my wallpaper for this site (a tiny crop from “an ancient mappe of fairyland,” illustration by bernard sleigh, 1917)

a close-cropped image of a gigantic fantastical map, depicting locations such as “elfinmere,” “the sheean gannan house,” “the faerie flocks,” and with helpful annotations like “donkey cabbages grown here.”

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jocelyn allen (revising and editing!) @wordsbyjocelyn.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

friends, romans, countrymen, denizens of booksky 📚💙 what are your favorite book/reading apps that are NOT goodreads or the storygraph? am looking for: the ability to leave little star reviews a progress bar tracker ideally ease of importing previous reads NO AI

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 03/07/2025

The boldness of the hate here is horrifying. An Indianapolis pastor said in a sermon--livestreamed on social media--that LGBTQ+ people should either kill themselves or face the death penalty. And when the media reached out for comment, the church doubled down. www.wishtv.com/news/i-team-...

wishtv.com

Indianapolis church calls for LGBTQ+ community to face death penalty

A pastor at Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Indianapolis preached a sermon titled "Pray the Gay Away" calling for the death or suicide of LGBTQ+ individuals, prompting local faith leaders to condemn...

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Luke Plunkett @lukeplunkett.com · 03/07/2025

jesus christ

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

lol the screenshot is so fucking ridiculous. I'm gonna hold your hand as I say this: Follower Count Don't Mean Shit. Especially not these days. It's a fully false metric of success. Even on Bluesky, where follower count is more meaningful than on other platforms, I see large accounts w/GoFundMes.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 01/07/2025

bsky.app/profile/wolv...

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

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