I mean to be fair it’s not JUST this article. I first started seeing people (INCLUDING BESTSELLING AUTHORS) talking about this on Twitter yesterday as though it were the craziest thing they had ever heard. I went ahead and looked at a thread one had linked which basically described this practice I had heard of and…

I dunno, I mean I read the same article you did and there’s no mention of the fact that this is an extremely common practice for well-funded publishers.

Loads of publishers do it. I mean, I think it’s more common for non-fiction than fiction, especially YA which can sell like gangbusters with good cover art. But it fuckin happens and we all know it. I just thought more people knew about this is all.

I just have to ask: are people actually surprised that this happened? I’m a librarian so I’ve got some idea of the cycle of publishing, purchasing, best seller lists, and I feel like I’ve known forever that you could game lists like these. Was this not common knowledge?

Exactly. It all turned out fine, thanks for asking. I have a little soreness yet and tend to limp a bit when I wake up in the morning but I’ve got no complaints.

This is pretty much the case with any torn ligament. Did it in my foot a while back and could still pretty much function because it was a complete tear

My grandmother slipped on ice and landed hard a week before my mom was born so I seriously doubt a few punches is going to do much damage at 3 months.

I always thought it fell off the rails a little bit toward the end, and I mean the very end i.e. the final boss who comes completely out of nowhere, but then practically every FF game does that some way or another. It did not limit my enjoyment of the game by any means.

That fucking episode got Let’s Hear it for the Boy stuck in my head for a solid 72 hours.

I have a soft spot for all of them, but I especially love IX. I know its story is a little weak compared to the others but I had just never seen anything like that visually (VII was my first final fantasy) at the time and I thought it was astonishing.

I never liked it as much as IX or VII. Seemed to me that Squall was trying to hard to be Cloud, but without the later character development and personal revelations that turned Cloud away from being a surly bitch.

Maybe its because she didn’t really pull it off?

Fair enough, but I’ll believe it when I see it. For now, all I know is that in all the accounts I’ve read of the rise of facist governments, the one thing that never seems to stop them is principled attempts to ignore them. I hope that day comes where we can stop them in their tracks that way, but it’s not here yet.

Okay, I mean this is fine, but it doesn’t really address the issue I brought up. The SPLC could say this til their blue in the face and again, THEYRE PROBABLY RIGHT, but we’ll never know for sure because there will never be anything like this that doesn’t draw a response. This isn’t a new phenomenon. There’s more…

How so? Like I said, I think its fine and probably would work if it ever happened, which it won’t. It’s just impossible. But I’d be interested to see anything they might have on that.

That’s not a bad way of looking at it. I’m not sure it was the best choice for this moment, if it was a choice, but it probably reflects reality at some level.

Well, I mean, I would’ve been doing that too if I was just sitting next to it, so I didn’t want to read too much into that.

Sure, it could work in theory, but they will literally never be in a vacuum. Everything they do is designed to provoke, and SOMEONE will always bite, probably a lot of someones. And that’s to say nothing of the media, who often outnumber both protestors and counter protestors when they show up. So while it could work,…

Gotta do something. I live in the Midwest and have a wife and kid so I can’t be out there on the lines with a bat.

True enough, which is why I also donated money for hospital bills of people hurt in Charlottesville. I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m just asking a question here. I can wonder about this AND do more meaningful work.