Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

@eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog

215 followers 449 following 1044 posts

Beleaguered PhD student, fledgling author, and submissions editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

Also into history, travel, cooking, film, photography, cats, more.

Recent work & socials: linktr.ee/edderoulet

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Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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It's jarring, yet it intuitively makes sense, that Rome and Pompeii had regular poasters. With brain worms and everything. Possibly real worms.

1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

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dan's avatar dan @danabra.mov
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the weird thing about being on the internet is nobody really notices when you disappear cause thereā€™s always enough stuff to fill the timeline. iā€™m overstating it but itā€™s partially true. thereā€™s nonzero count of people you forgot about because they stopped posting or deactivated

23 replies 44 reposts 352 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Oh, a key exception: One of my writer pals has some writing news.

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Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Just got back from a four-day trip to the Canadian Rockies. I assume I've missed nothing whatsoever during the time.

1 replies 0 reposts 5 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Brendel's avatar Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social
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Stop making jokes and recognize that your account on a microblogging site known by 4% of the American population and whose most famous user is Weird Al Yankovich could single-handedly win or lose this election

33 replies 156 reposts 1130 likes

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Abby's avatar Abby @arobertswrites.com
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ā€œShould I read the Silmarillion?ā€ Idk do you like a) medieval chronicles and b) suffering?

3 replies 4 reposts 35 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Fusion Fragment's avatar Fusion Fragment @fusionfragment.bsky.social
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About that vague announcement: Happy to announce that FF will soon be launching a sister magazine, Saros Speculative Fiction! The goal of Saros will be, of course, to publish more great fiction, but also to give those interested the opportunity to work as an editor for an issue!

6 replies 41 reposts 60 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Now, that sounds like a much saucier, more substantial Civil War alt history.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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*always = certainly not always, but really damn often based on an admittedly fuzzy impression of alternative history writing.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Why do alt history novels always* revisit WWII or the US Civil War but with a worse outcome when there's material like this to work with?

2 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

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PodCastle's avatar PodCastle @podcastle.org
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WE ARE OPEN! SEND US YOUR STORIES!!

0 replies 55 reposts 48 likes

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Lily Baker's avatar Lily Baker @lilybaker.bsky.social
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At no point in this sentence could I predict what the next word was going to be

9 replies 29 reposts 159 likes

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Abby's avatar Abby @arobertswrites.com
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Once again I left lots of problems for future me to solve and now I am future me.

0 replies 2 reposts 14 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Pardon the interruption of this account's usual programming, but:

0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

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Maria Haskins's avatar Maria Haskins @mariahaskins.bsky.social
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āŒGoddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles, son of Peleus, which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs... āœ… Here's the story of of how Achilles got mad and a bunch of people died.

1 replies 2 reposts 6 likes

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Pavel's avatar Pavel @spavel.bsky.social
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Wizards are stereotyped as skinny nerds but actually require physical fitness: -chanting for a long time -waving arms -carrying heavy grimoires -climbing steps of wizard tower -running away from problems you caused Imagine casting while fleeing a macrodemon, without stellar cardiovascular health.

6 replies 4 reposts 46 likes

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Tom Scocca's avatar Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social
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Recap: 1. The Times runs a scandal piece on how Biden administration lobbied not to publish age guidelines for youth trans care, because those guidelines could be politically abused. 2. Pressed by the Times, the administration puts age limits on trans care much more severe than the guidelines.

11 replies 109 reposts 252 likes

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Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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The post-meal tea culture in MENA is nothing to scoff at. In China, meanwhile, their numbers are probably held back by Shanghai (their tea is actually coffee) and ę±åŒ— (their tea is actually ē™½é…’).

0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Undertow Publications's avatar Undertow Publications @undertow.bsky.social
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Monday is Canada Day! Get our Canadian-authored eBooks for just $1 each! Get them all for $7, or grab the ones you don't have cheap. Look at that line-up!

Easy, direct, and immediate delivery to your inbox, via a download link, as soon as you place the order.

šŸšŸšŸ

undertowpublications.com/ebooks

1 replies 30 reposts 38 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Jared Pechaček's avatar Jared Pechaček @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social
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ā€œare you wearing theā€ ā€œbram stokerā€™s dracula armor? yes, I amā€

2 replies 25 reposts 103 likes

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Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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I'm so sorry! Remy looks like a great companion and a good dog.

1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Premee Mohamed's avatar Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com
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OKAY THERE we got all the books up now for the year SO FAR

Still one more to go! I hope people are excited for my @psychopomp.bsky.social MINI-COLLECTION in the fall! šŸ’€

9 replies 23 reposts 78 likes

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fusipon's avatar fusipon @fusipon.bsky.social
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suffering lifelong madness from seeing something so boring and feeble the human mind cannot withstand it

0 replies 4 reposts 32 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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And the stories! Got one of my favorites in there and plenty else I'm excited to read. @vajra.me has done a great job of curating this collection, unsurprisingly.

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

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Mattie Lewis's avatar Mattie Lewis @devilsdoorbell.bsky.social
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This is popping off by Bluesky standards so Iā€™m gonna do the obligatory plug:

You can find my short fiction online at devilsdoorbell.itch.io

I also have a novelette included in this anthology through Bleeding Edge Books: bit.ly/3xHKRx5

0 replies 1 reposts 8 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Mattie Lewis's avatar Mattie Lewis @devilsdoorbell.bsky.social
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The other major reason being, of course, that money, fame, and accolades are far far far from guaranteed in writing so if you write something and it nets you none of those, at least you wrote something you genuinely liked instead of something you thought would appeal to the masses

2 replies 6 reposts 62 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Mattie Lewis's avatar Mattie Lewis @devilsdoorbell.bsky.social
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One of the reasons I think fiction writers should consider their own tastes first and audiences second is because your own taste is actually a pretty good proxy for audience taste. Maybe not always mass appeal, but none of us are so idiosyncratic that nobody but us will like what we write

8 replies 45 reposts 221 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Gerry Canavan's avatar Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social
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attn scholarly organizations, this is now considered best practice

16 replies 358 reposts 1193 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Yeah, this irony comes through in lots of ways--like when one remembers him as Strider, the decidedly non-chatty tavern patron, during the coronation.

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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I like (and hope) to think the THIS X THAT format is done largely for marketing purposes. I, too, would be worried if that were the entire substance of the book in question. Certainly, it's rookie behavior on the agent's part, as if we didn't need more reasons to be wary of traditional publishing.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

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Faine Greenwood's avatar Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social
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yeah, it is entirely possible to have a Normal Functional Discord!

16 replies 19 reposts 213 likes

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Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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A lukewarm take: Writing is mostly about the execution rather than the ideas, but I'm glad to see this agent fired/ostracized nonetheless.

1 replies 0 reposts 4 likes

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C.B. Blanchard is writing about gay werewolves's avatar C.B. Blanchard is writing about gay werewolves @gaycannibalism.bsky.social
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been thinking a lot about the demand for 'likeability' and 'relatability' in fictional characters, and who it excludes, and who it decides are the default kind of human and how, if the argument is that reading increases empathy, surely we should be prioritising the strange and alien to us?

9 replies 38 reposts 128 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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That's probably better than giving in to the temptation to call it a skill issue or say "guess I'm built different."

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Reposted by Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student

Tim Onion's avatar Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social
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Hereā€™s a miracle solution: stop fuckin doing it

86 replies 1837 reposts 6209 likes

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Pavel's avatar Pavel @spavel.bsky.social
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You can't stop the march of progress (dumplings)

11 replies 39 reposts 119 likes

Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student's avatar Eric de Roulet, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog
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Waiting for someone to publish Mordor's Gilded Age any day now.

0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes