Orion (he/him)

Writer of SFF. Currently working on a novel about magic teenage assassins in space. Shopping a novella about a drunken mess of a witch in Ancient Greece who's cursed to fight monsters to the death. You're welcome.

This is my fiction writing account. If you want to follow my general interest account, find me in mas.to.

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mas.to account: Orion Ussner kidder (npub17k7…sf48)

Public Key

npub1gtn6hez728gns8luv3wl9zerglhepekwx62ehd4ksfwenm6vghqqm47nks

NIP-05 Address

orionkidder_at_writing.exchange@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsy9eatu309r5fcrl7xgh0j3v350musum8rd9vmk6mgyhveaaxytsqfpuzta

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npub1gtn6hez728gns8luv3wl9zerglhepekwx62ehd4ksfwenm6vghqqm47nks

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Published at

2024-08-28T18:01:10Z

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Last Notes

2024-08-31 18:22:12

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 30: Would you consider using AI for a book cover design or an audiobook?
I just saw someone on here describe that as cutting off the branch you're sitting on. AI is *designed* to devalue creative work. Let's not participate in that, eh?
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2024-08-29 21:08:31

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 29: What is your favourite story structure? Three-act, four-act, eight-sequence, or what?
Write what feels correct, then massage it into place afterwards. I don't have a set structure. I know myself very well, and I would end up feeling obligated to *obey* a structure. I don't want that. That's not fun. I write for fun.
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2024-08-28 17:55:27

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I would *love* to write something entirely in email or social media posts or something like that. The epistolary novel is a great form now that we're in a culture where we constantly communicate in writing.
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2024-08-28 17:55:09

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 28: Do you incorporate poems, songs, or letters in your work? How do you format them?
A couple of times, yes. Once, I had a poet in a scene reciting a (total bullshit) story of my protagonist. He was there, so I quoted him, but I broke up his quotes with my protagonist's bitter commentary on his lies. Once, I quoted from social media and put it in italics for lack of a better option, and I once put a small note in italics for the same reason.

2024-08-27 15:52:36

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 27 To what extent does technology impact your story?
Most of the tech could be written out; eg, instead of going to a space station around Jupiter, they go to remote island. But the nature of the city they live in, how it's majority arcologies and basically anarcho-syndicalist, that impacts what kind of people my lead characters are, so that's significant.
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2024-08-26 20:02:18

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 26 Where do you think the line exists between plagiarism and homage?
There's no line. There's specific cases, and there's context. Taking actual words or ideas and presenting them as if they're your own is plagiarism, but those are obvious cases, mostly. The problems are the edge cases, and they require a lot of analysis to really understand.
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2024-08-25 16:20:43

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#WritersCoffeeClub 25 August: Do you format all your writing similarly or use special formatting for specific sections?
I have never experimented with format as a way to alter my writing experience, but the idea is intriguing. Maybe I should switch to a pointier font for fight scenes, and swoopy rounded ones for emotional ones.
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2024-08-24 15:26:05

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#WritersCoffeeClub August 24: In your writing, what's the worst thing you've done (or might do) to a reader's state of mind?
Upset their faith in authority structures.
No wait. That's the best thing...
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2024-08-23 15:13:30

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 23: Would you ever collaborate on a book or other literary work? How do you feel about sharing the limelight?
Oh hell yes. I would love to have a dedicated writing partner or work with an artist. Let's jam.
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2024-08-22 16:11:19

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 22: Hollywood wants to turn one of your stories into an animation/anime. How do you feel about this?
Fuckin' eh. Give me a big fat cheque and creative control.
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2024-08-21 15:24:16

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 21. To what extent does politics play a role in your work?
When most people use that word, they mean government work, and there's only hints of that. It is a deeply political book, though. It's about how the police an absolutely disastrous substitute for mental health services.
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2024-08-20 15:18:14

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 20: How would you react if a fan had a tattoo of one of your characters?
Confusion. Mild horror. I mean, also flattered, but... yeah. Now, if someone *cosplayed* as one of my characters, I could die happy.
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2024-08-19 19:35:01

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 19. What are the top five things you've learned on your writing journey?
1. have a plan even if it’s very loose and you don’t follow it
2. listen to a think what reviewers say but don’t treat it like marching orders
3. get a writing group if you can; don’t rely on friends/family (there’s too much at stake, emotionally)
4. read a lot, both in your chosen genre and outside of it
5. write a lot (sadly, social media mostly doesn’t count)
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2024-08-18 19:45:41

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 18: Coolness, humour, strict necessity. How do you balance them in your work?
I take issue with the question. Coolness and humour are necessary. They make the story fun to read. They draw in the audience I want. They communicate tone and character. I will say this: if a joke or something cool doesn't actually fit the narrative, I will remove it (eventually), but again, that's not "necessity." That narrative consistency.
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2024-08-17 18:54:31

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I do this exactly. I think a lot of us do.

2024-08-17 18:17:03

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 17: What was your motivation for choosing past or present tense?
Past tense is the historical default, so it doesn't call attention to itself. Also, I use present tense for dreams to make them both more visceral (bc they're little horror scenes) and to signal to readers that I'm shifting to a different reality.
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2024-08-16 21:56:06

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 16: In a maximum of 500 characters, can you write us a short story, poem, or words of wisdom?
“Every first draft is perfect because every first draft is finished.” – Marc Bernardin
“You can’t edit a blank page.” – Mary Chan
“You don’t have to sell your art to be an artist.” – Orion Ussner Kidder
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2024-08-15 15:39:42

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FWIW, the courts may find that scraping text is within acceptable fair use, and that's not even my primarily objection.
LLM's rely on massive amounts of labour exploration in Africa and South Asia.
They waste shocking amounts of electricity.
They produce garbage text (and images) and make obvious mistakes.
They are a cudgel to pay creative workers less money for more labour.
Their primary use is cheating, scamming, & disinformation.
They cost ten times what they make even just in dollars.

2024-08-15 15:21:42

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug15:Have you used any form of AI to help create your work?
I tried once to create a book cover and couldn't it get it to work. This was before I knew more about "AI." Now, I don't touch them. They're not inherently evil, but bc their creators need them to make gobs of money, the way they're used and what they're used for *is* highly destructive.
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2024-08-14 17:20:41

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 14 Have you helped other writers on their journey, or is it everyone for themselves?
I have a writing group with a core group of members as well as some who've come in and out. It is source of joy and, frankly, stress relief. I also have a friend or two who's also a writer, mostly for fun (And one pro who does not need my help! She's been at it for 25 years!). And there's there's this place. We help each other.
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2024-08-13 16:43:32

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 13: Would you ever serialize your work? Have you done it?
I would love that. My novella is five distinct chapters. They’re more like issues of a comic book than anything else because that’s a rhythm I know really well. (It would also make an excellent comic book.)
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2024-08-12 21:43:05

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His red-haired girlfriend with the sexy Irish accent comments that the whiskey is good. No more is said of it. The book presents it as a clever thing he did that was a perfectly fine idea.

2024-08-12 21:26:43

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I think it would be fair and just for them to break into his distillery and take the damn whiskey. I think the collective of people would be within their rights to take possession of the whole thing. If they like the whiskey, he can keep making it as his contribution to the collective project of, like, not dying. But charging money!? Do they even have money!? They're escaping an Earth destroyed by nuclear Armageddon! What the actual hell are you talking about with opening a business?!?!

2024-08-12 21:23:50

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In the bobiverse books, "free market" capitalism actually works to do something other than enrich the already wealthy. Eg, on a brand new colony on a hostile plant full of plants and animals trying to kill them, someone opens a whiskey distillery and starts *selling* booze.
As a reader, I'm like: are you already drunk? You have extremely limited resources, and you're functioning like a social unit just to survive, but this asshole wants to make money off the situation!? Fuck that guy!

2024-08-12 21:19:44

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Patriarchy and white supremacy and classism all *use* economics to marginalize people. Take away capitalism, and it'll be a less oppressive world. Not bc people are "better"--people are still just people--but bc bigots will have a harder time of bigoting.

2024-08-12 21:18:36

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Not directly. I'm not writing back at those books. But the way I've thought through the worlds in my stories is via materialism.
For example, in my sci-fi book, I've posited that capitalism has been tamed-to-killed bc that's how we survive the climate crisis. Also, it takes a huge weapon away from bigotry.

2024-08-12 19:48:28

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Someone who sees the world the way I do--in terms of materialist explanations of power imbalances--will "buy" that logic if I've done it well. If they don't, well then I'm not writing for them.

2024-08-12 19:47:12

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For a reader who's like me. I still need to relate the story to someone who isn't me, but someone who shares my sense of what's fun to read about, but also the "logic" of my narrative worlds. Ex, the "bobiverse" books are written on the assumption that something like libertarian capitalism actually works. I don't buy the parts of those books that rely on that logic. My work is based on a materialist, class-based understanding of the world. The background logic is essentially Marxist.

2024-08-12 15:52:03

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 12: Someone asks permission to use AI to write a book in your style outside your usual genre. Do you allow it?
No. I mean first off, my voice has no "market value" at this point, but even then, I don't think it would be an interesting experiment. It would spit out some stuff that sounds superficially similar, maybe uses some of the same words I lean on, but it would be without subtext, without depth. Yawn.
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2024-08-12 15:49:49

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 11. Do you consider any of your work to be unfilmable?
Oh damn. That's such a great question. I have this back-and-forth in my head where I both want to create effects that can't exist outside of text—stuff like making telepathy highly impressionistic rather than hearing thoughts like words—but then I immediately think, "How would this look in a movie or a comic book...?" So no, not "unfilmable," but definitely pushing the filmmakers, if there were ever to be any.

2024-08-12 15:46:21

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 10. What's your favourite summer read for a getaway/holiday/vacation?
A fun space opera adventure with a brain, like Anne Leckie's first Imperial Radch was great.
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2024-08-09 16:21:49

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(The reason she’s Québécois is because I wanted to undermine the “ancient Asian kung-fu mentor” trope, and a late-middle-aged white woman with a French accent seemed very distant from that.)

2024-08-09 16:20:34

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 9: In your work, do you include short sections in languages other than the primary language?
Not whole sections, no, but I have a sci-fi gag where a character can use minor telepathy to understand any language she speaks a little of, so I’ve peppered her dialogue with her antagonist/mentor with French because said antagonist/mentor is Québécois.
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2024-08-07 18:05:37

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 7: What is the best thing you've done or might do to a reader's state of mind?
Make them empathize with the mentally ill. That's the point of my current project. They (we) are not to be feared. They/we need help. They/we can be extremely vulnerable, especially if it intersects with other vulnerable states: gender, race, disability, homelessness, youth, etc.
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2024-08-06 17:23:15

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 6: In your writing, what location has inspired you the most?
High school. In all its institutional repressive glory.
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2024-08-05 18:17:55

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 5: If an AI created a genuinely good story, would you read it?
Sure? I mean, the question is making a hell of an assumption, but yes, out of curiosity, I would. I don't expect that'll happen, myself.
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2024-08-04 15:08:57

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 4: What else competes for your time & what strategies do you use to secure time for writing?
Work and family, and the fact is, they're both ultimately higher priorities, so writing gets in where it can. The problem is not time lately. It's getting my butt in the chair and *doing* it.
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2024-08-03 18:46:49

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 3: Do you agree with George Orwell, who said you should never use foreign, scientific or jargon words and phrases?
That is NOT what he said. That's a misquote of Politics and the English language. He doesn't say "never." He says they *can* be characteristic of certain *kinds* of bad *political* writing: ie, vague for the purposes of pushing violent rhetoric. He also expressly says his advice doesn't apply to fiction.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
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2024-08-02 17:25:07

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#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 2: Is there a person in your life who encouraged you to write?
I am very lucky to have a partner who's encouraging, in a hands-off kind of way—she can tell how happy it makes me—and a writing group that's *very* encouraging. I'm gooooood.
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2024-08-01 23:26:00

#WritersCoffeeClub Aug 1: Can you foresee any circumstance where you might use AI to compose part of a story?
Only if I'm trying to demonstrate how shit they are at creating stories!
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2024-07-08 16:09:31

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That's it exactly. Nobody is inherently good or bad based on their like demographic.
Proximity to systemic power, however, has a strong tendency to make people *terrible*.

2024-07-08 13:36:07

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I've known more than a few old white men who are also excited nerds, and I've known a couple of white women in academia who were awful. I'm just saying.
Edit: I should have phrased that much more carefully! Let me say: you are not wrong, as a generalization, but there are significant exceptions.

2024-07-07 20:14:07

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India, too. There's a swell of resistance to the worst of it, but it's partial or it's limited by the options available. I'll take it, but we have to keep pushing.

2024-07-07 16:30:21

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I already posted this elsewhere, but we love when people ask us about our research. We got into academia to spread knowledge, and we fucking adore explaining things at length. The thought that someone cares about what we have to say is intoxicating.

2024-07-07 14:36:53

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I didn't claim there was something misleading about the post. I said that *in a time of disinformation* it's important to provide links*. This is not controversial.

2024-07-07 02:41:55

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Common courtesy is to post a link. That's been internet etiquette since the 90s.

2024-07-07 00:46:54

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It's common courtesy to provide a link so that we can all look at the same text, and given how much misinformation and disinformation is floating around, it's *good* to have confirmation before believing stories like this. Left-appealing disinfo exists, too.

2024-07-05 02:02:28

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This was always about smashing Palestine, taking the land, and scattering Palestinians to the wind. I don't think it was a false flag, but I do think Netanyahu et al seized on it as a marvellous excuse to colonize harder, and that they barely care, if at all, about the innocent Israelis killed or kidnapped. And they *delight* in killing Palestinians, all Palestinians. It's a horrific thing to witness.

2024-06-29 20:27:11

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(Who are we talking about? I'm confused.)

2024-06-27 16:41:03

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I think it's a disputed term, so I don't know how accurate those online summations will be. I can tell you how I've heard it used, but that's so anecdotal. YMMV.

2024-06-27 14:14:45

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I don't follow. It's not really a racialized term as far as I can tell, but POC might have a deeper insight on that.

2024-06-27 05:48:40

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This is the def I'm familiar with, largely used to say, "That person is stupid bc they believe communism as practised by the USSR and/or PRC will save us all." Like, MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE could be called a tankie novel because communist China is the ultimately saviour of the world from environmental disaster at the end of the book. To be fair, I've mostly heard anarchists say it that way, and anarchist and Marxists have deeply held distain for each other.