listen if you all aren’t following the legal proceedings in the genre romance book community rn re: some asshat trademarking the word “cocky” and suing other authors over describing their male characters as such in their cover copy, you are MISSING OUT ON SOME MSSCRIBE LEVEL SHIT
bc i kid you not, the us patent and trademark office is now fielding a lawsuit petition that involves the phrase “’A Cocky Werewolf: A Gay M/M Mpreg Werewolf Shifter Romance’ by Wolfgang Glasscock”
and honestly i could not have asked for more out of 2018
and it is also an important fair-use legal case that affects all writers, so. that, too. but also, “my house servant is cocky and naughty with secrets” is a phrase that lawyers are arguing about.
(I know some people hate Zak S, but the dude has a fine arts degree and knows his shit on this topic.)
Yes! This thread made me think of this essay when I first read it, but I couldn’t think of any identifiers from it to google so I didn’t bother running it down to include. Thanks to the-real-seebs for unknowingly providing a link to an essay I had lost track of, but was secretly thinking about for the last week :p
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but – it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration – why do assholes always come out on top? – and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
just moving along like everyone else 