Surprise! Run Aground Early Access be upon ye.

It appears our hosting site doesn't support pre-orders in the way we thought it did! Since this early access publish was already on the books specifically because we're eager to give our readers the option to dig in early, we've elected to go ahead and pull the trigger a little earlier!

Serial publishing of the webnovel is still scheduled to continue in early January, with the beginning of Act 2! And the final, polished version of the ebook will come out November of 2026 with illustrations and bonus content included.

Edit to note: this is three acts and around 400K total words, and therefore priced at 19.99$! It will be considered a separate purchase from the eventual final edition next year; if monetary concerns might limit our readership to one purchase out of the two, we recommend the future final edition!

Run Aground is the seventh book (and second full-length novel) in the Michigan Fleet series! Every other chapter is illustrated by the talented cowriter-artists Ray and Splickedy. The book should stand alone fine if you haven't read the series, although it will be a richer experience if you've read After the Storm and Taste of New York (and maybe Cross My Heart).

After years trapped in a wealthy monster’s harem, actor Rafael Caro is a ghost of his former self. When he meets Rich Merrill, the newest captive, unexpected kindness brings him back to life and headlong into love. Rich, Rafael and their friends in the harem try to keep each other sane and safe in this cruel place—but no one escapes without help from outside...

Note: The series so far has been reasonably delicate with the subject of sexual coercion, but this story has a lot to do with captivity, exploitation, and depersonalization. We take those subjects seriously, and though we try to keep the hurt balanced with comfort, the dark topics are still prominent parts of the narrative. If you have triggers around sexual coercion and abuse, be cautious about this story. If you're into this shit: hell yeah welcome aboard!!!

Content warnings: dubcon, noncon, sexual slavery, violence, alcohol use, noncon drug and alcohol use, murder, attempted suicide.

the Hive,

who’s been well-established to, once the use of existing loved ones is no longer a viable option, use sexual attraction to ease the immune into accepting them,

has sent Manousos men of a particular age group and body type a total of, hmm let’s see now *counts on my fingers*, 4 out of 4 times

which could mean nothing

as someone who remembers the patriot act and all the conversation surrounding it, it's a bit... of an experience being able to remember how many people pointed out that Terrorist was a politically convenient term which could be used to dehumanise and legally strip the rights from someone and that eventually all this would be used internally. and the response was 'nuh uh only browns with funny headgear are terrorists'. and then two decades of 'fighting age males' being blown to pieces at weddings because they might have, maybe, looked at a terrorist once. A week ago a head of state is black bagged in the middle of the night by the US for being a 'narcoterrorist'. And now an unarmed, random woman - white, citizen - is gunned down by jackboot thugs and before her body is cold she is, of course, a domestic terrorist.

If you are reading this, you need to know that the moment the US state needs to kidnap you, the moment a drone pilot decides you're in the wrong place, the moment you are bleeding to death on the sidewalk, you will be a Terrorist. Because anything can be done to a Terrorist.

Ncuti Gatwa & Hugh Skinner - The Importance of Being Earnest (National Theatre London)

hard to believe there are actually people out there who think that big noses are ugly and unattractive … like what the fuck is wrong with you ?

I need you specifically to kill yourself. choose a slow and painful method also

BIG NOSE WOMEN SUPREMACY 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

literally how can anyone not find these women the hottest people ALIVE

so like is anyone else seeing what's happening on the dilbert website right now

I bring sort of a 'peasants of the past were not as debased,uneducated and dirty as a lot of pesudo-medieval fiction makes them out to be but this new wave of attempting to sweep the very real indentured servitude, corporal ownership, poverty and lack of basic human rights under the rug isn't achieving what you think it's achieving' vibe to the party that people don't really like

The key to understanding history and geopolitics is to remember: just because one side is bad, doesn't mean the other side is good

Just because an official narrative is suspect doesn’t mean the most popular counter narrative is automatically true

I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.

@transparent-plastic-robotgirl check it out

omg that's cool as heck!!! 🌸

— Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (via jillymomcraftypants)

What a legacy. We’re so lucky to have had her.

The Wageworker, Lincoln, Nebraska, May 31, 1907

just got a call from the american psychiatric association. you old dogs, i said, picking up on the first ring. how many times i gotta tell you to lose this number. i don’t want you coming around here anymore. “listen, toots, we’ve been doing some thinking,” they says, and i says, guess there’s a first time for everything. “you’re a real funny dame, sugardoll. reviewing criticism, we’ve determined that the biggest issue with our previous diagnostic and statistic manuals of mental disorders is the anonymity of it all. we’ve been circling around a vague figure of the mentally well without defining the traits of a mentally well person. there’s no personality. what we need is a cute broad with a couple opinions to model the psychological norm.” so i’m saying back up and give it to me straight: i’m the new standard of sanity? can i get that in writing? and they say, “as the american psychiatric association we hereby state that you are the baseline and any deviations from your personality are deviations from the very concept of sanity, at least in the united states psychiatric system.” they’re making it public tomorrow. it’s a nice gig, if you really want to know. never thought they’d let a woman do it.

One day later:

hey did you know that uhh

oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao

these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!

that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)

To this day I still don't believe that anyone actually thought you could generate infinite chocolate via an optical illusion. That's a thing people tell themselves to feel superior

The defining feature of tumblr is not "the website where people actually think infinite chocolate is possible", it is defined by a group of people refusing to break kayfabe, another group being genuinely confused by an optical illusion (NOT the same thing as thinking infinite chocolate is possible) and a third group who is certain they are a lot smarter than the other two.

Vulcan Hands

Which horny Vulcan flagged my hands post!!!!

Absolutely losing it over this, genuinely the only way it would ever make sense is if it was, in fact, flagged by a Vulcan

You have the right to be bad in bed.

When sex is consensual, we all have the right to be our own idea or someone else's idea of who or what is "bad" in bed. Sometimes; anytime. That's because we're human. While we can give consent -- or ask for it -- for a given kind of sex, and put a lot of specifics on that, what we can't ask anyone for, nor can anyone insist on with us, is that there is consent ONLY if sex is totally awesome. No one can ever promise that or be expected to deliver that. We also have the right to suck at sex in someone's estimation because anyone else involved always has the right not to have sex with us or, if they already have, to opt out of sex with us at any time, or to choose not to have sex with us again. Someone we have any kind of sex with gets to be what we consider a lousy lover because we have the right not to have sex with them, to opt out of sex with them at any time, or to choose not to have sex with them again.

I keep noticing lately that there's a lot of media and cultural messaging out there, that continues to be out there, that would easily have us believe that life doesn't go on when crummy or substandard sex happens or we're any part of sex being crummy or unsatisfying for someone else. That it's really not okay, or as simple to accept or address as I just did with it up there. That a "bad" lover by anyone's always-arbitrary standards is a broken person who needs fixing at some kind of sexual fix'em-up shop, rather than someone who had the unmitigated gall of simply being a human being in one of the most human things we can do. I also keep noticing an escalating fear of "doing it wrong" in bed, like just being a human being learning one's own body, someone else's body, exploring their sexuality and those of others -- and slipping in the mud, or choosing a route that turns out to be less-than-stellar, as we'll all do at least one time or another when exploring anything from sexuality to a new hiking trail -- is the equivalent of stepping on a land mine.

Your Right to Be Lousy in Bed (After All, No One Has to Have Sex with You)