Hello Thursday!

Another week, another Thursday! One thing that I’ll say about producing this newsletter on-schedule for almost 3 months now: It’s given me a whole new level of respect for Cory Doctorow. He publishes a new issue of Pluralistic practically every day, and meanwhile I’m sitting here “Wednesday already?” and scrambling to get the next Thursday out the door.

Of course, he has had much more practice at this than I have — a straight-up comparison between Thursday and Pluralistic is hardly a fair match, so I don’t even make it. Instead, I bring it up as an example of what my hopes and dreams are for Thursday. Cory Doctorow doesn’t even know I exist — unless he has the sort of eidetic memory that he can remember every single person he ever received and responded to an email from, because he did respond to an email from me once — but still he helps me publish Thursday, by the example he provides through his work.

Whatever sort of creative work you want to do, there’s someone out there who’s doing something that’s similar to what you want to do in some way that you can learn from. It’s just a matter of finding a person whose work speaks to you and then figuring out what is the right lesson to take away from it. Take, for example, George R.R. Martin. The lesson to learn from GRRM is obviously not “Write the first five books of a planned seven book series, then spend at least 15 years on the sixth book, while your fans wait with increasing impatience.” Nor is it to adopt his writing style wholesale, as so many writers seem to have done. Instead, it’s to find the thing (or things) in his books that really speak to you and that you can adopt to make your writing better. 

Anyone who has read any of my fiction would struggle to find any similarity with GRRM’s, but there is a lesson that I took from him. The scene, out of all five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, that influenced my work was from A Game of Thrones, the first volume of the series. That scene? The execution of Ned Stark. Up until the very moment it happened, I was just certain that Ned would get saved at the last minute. When he didn’t, I just sat there, stunned. That one death meant more to me than all the other deaths in the series put together, because it showed me that no one was safe. When I had the first ever “on-screen” death of a major character in one of my stories, I did my damnedest to give it that sort of impact. I wanted the reader to believe it wasn’t going to happen right up until the very moment that it did. Obviously I can’t say whether or not that death hit my readers the same way Ned Stark’s death hit me, but I know I had a chance, because I had a target I was aiming at.

So as you move out into this next week, think about the models you have for any creative work that you do. If you feel like it, leave a comment — I’d eventually like this to be more of a conversation of less of a monologue, but for that to happen, I’m going to have to stand here and talk for a while, until people notice that I’m talking. 

Things to check out online

• Citing Censorship, Artist Emma Shapiro Launches Legal Challenge to Restore Instagram Account — I hope she wins. Instagram is one of the sites that has become more or less indispensable to certain aspects of modern life, especially to modern business life, and the fact that one’s Instagram account can be summarily terminated with practically no recourse should give anyone chills.

• See the Trailer for the New Thomas Crown Affair Movie, Starring Michael B. Jordan as a Notorious Art Thief — This will be Michael B. Jordan’s second time robbing a museum in a movie — the first was as Erik Killmonger in Black Panther (a scene that we watched in one of my museum studies classes). But this one looks even better. I just wish I didn’t have to wait until March 2027 to see it.

• Hide your love away: fan capture and the slow cancellation of creative control — This article from UK music “magazine” (was a magazine, then a website, now a Substack) Loud and Quiet does a great job of looking at the harsh reality of the current parasocial business model that musicians (and other artists) must face if they seek to make a living from their art. The solution, such as it is, seems to be for the artist to find some level of openness that they can live with, and presenting it in such a way that the fans will accept it (all while trying to deal with the fact that the algorithms and platforms aren’t designed to work this way).

• First Look: Lin-Manuel Miranda Explores Incels, Porn Addiction and Cancel Culture in Octet — (article at Vanity Fair, link takes you to archive.ph so you can get around the paywall) Lin-Manuel Miranda has directed another movie. If that’s not enough to get you interested, here’s more: It’s a movie adaptation of an Off-Broadway a cappella musical by Dave Malloy, that Miranda describes as “sort of The Breakfast Club meets A Chorus Line meets The Matrix.” If that doesn’t get you interested, then there’s no help for you. 

• Felicia Chiao’s Domestic Scenes Reflect the Emotional Structures of Daily Life — I learned about Felicia Chiao through Giant Robot, and I just find her work so relatable. I just find something calming in it that I really enjoy.

What I’ve been reading:

Since last week I’ve finished reading

• Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, vol. 20 (Yuto Tsukuda) — One of the things I love about this manga is how it takes the duel/tournament format (familiar from Pokemon, Dragonball, and many other manga before before and since), applies it to culinary school, and somehow makes it make sense! It’s one of those glorious things that shouldn’t work, but it does, and that’s that makes it great.

I’ve continued reading

• ArtForum, November 2025

• Cells at Work: Baby!, vol.2 (Yasuhiro Fukuda)

• Bike Minnesota 2026 (from Minnesota Monthly)

• Minnesota Monthly, July/August 2026

• In the Embrace of Dragons (Lyonne Riley) — Almost a quarter of the way in and we’ve already had two sex scenes, so we’re already on pace for a Lyonne Riley book. I don’t know if all her female main characters are size queens and all her male main characters are sufficiently gifted to satisfy them, but of the books I’ve read of hers, so far we’re 2 for 2, so be aware of that if your tastes don’t run to the anatomically improbable. Then again, if your tastes don’t run to the anatomically improbable, you probably shouldn’t be reading books about humans having sex with dragons (or other monsters) at all, so Lyonne Riley really wouldn’t be your cup of tea.

• Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000 (Barry Walters)

• My Dress-up Darling, vol. 14 (Shin’ichi Fukuda) — I love this manga. Not just this manga in particular but also this category of manga. Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro falls into the same category and I loved that one too. The category? Popular, loud, exuberant girl gradually falls for shy, quiet, geeky boy. I think it’s a popular cliché because so many manga readers are shy, quiet, geeky boys. But it’s also a good story because it sometimes does happen — if you had seen Grace and I in college, you’d have said we very much fit this cliché. SPOILER: Big event happened this volume. If you’re reading or planning to read this manga and don’t want it spoiled, then skip to the next bullet point. In chapter 107, Gojo finally confesses his love to Kitagawa! And the way it happens is just so very them — he thinks he’s telling her in the context of a good-bye because he’s driven her away by feeling jealous of the fans of her cosplay, but then she hears it and is so excited to hear that he loved her enough to get jealous over her. This is followed by their first kiss, which was very well-drawn.

• Blue Rose: The AGE Role-Playing Game of Romantic Fantasy 

• A Red-Rose Chain (Seanan McGuire) — The October Daye series is up for the Best Series Hugo again this year. This book is #9 in the series, and the deciding factor in my decision to buy a supporting membership to LACON and vote in the Hugos this year was to get more books in the series in the voting packet. (Yes, yes, and to exercise my democratic voting rights. But seriously — the new October Daye books by themselves made the whole thing make sense dollarwise.) 

and I’ve started reading

• Flying Witch, vol. 14 (Chihiro Ishizuka)

• The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead — The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter (Robert Hunter) — This novel telling of Hunter’s life in the scene that led to the creation of the Grateful Dead does a great job of evoking the feel of the age. I found this bit extremely relatable:

     It seemed to me that there was something essentially hypocritical about staying inside when balmy weather calls, even though it is more comfortable, and perhaps this was one of the secret keys to the paranoia of our day.
     Merely realizing this fact did not ease my conscience, so I paid for my coffee (I was a penny short, so I left what I had on the counter) and determinedly stalked out to damn well enjoy the sunshine.

  And I also loved this description of the young Jerry Garcia:

     He played the guitar anywhere from twenty-four to thirty-eight hours a day, which would be unnerving even if he were Segovia. However, he was not Segovia; he was Jerry. And the very act of being Jerry was, in his estimation, an excuse for almost anything. He had the easygoing self-assurance of a person who is used to being forgiven for any gaucheness he might choose to perpetrate on his contemporaries, so he committed them with an amazing regularity and a completely innocent conscience. This attitude was made bearable only by virtue of the fact that it worked both ways; he, forgiving easily anything but “grossness” (mental or physical). “Gross” was Jerry’s ultimate condemnation: a sin without possibility of intercession or forgiveness.

  The writing style is sometimes a bit much, but if you just accept that it’s a product of a young writer with literary ambition, writing in that particular place and time, and just take it as it comes, even the “muchness” becomes pleasurable.

• Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, vol. 2 (Shui Usui)

If you missed any past Thursdays, you can access the archives here.

And as always, THIS NEWSLETTER CONTAINS 100% HUMAN-CREATED WORDS.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you next Thursday,

Jason