 Convention season is upon us, and it's time to kick off the year for me with Evercon 2026 in Wausau, WI! Well Rothschild, really -- but if Syfy can conflate the two, so can I. I mean, it pretty much is in Wausau.
Just, like, next to it.
I'm going to be in the main vendor room at booth six, roughly in the same spot as last year. I'm going to have all of my books, and will also cheerfully talk about No Brand Con if you stop by.
Like most years though, I won't be the only familiar face you'll find at the con. My Peregrine Lake cohort Ethan Flanagan will be sharing a table with Nerd & Tie's Gen Prock in the artist alley. Gen will, of course, be selling her amazing hand made pillows and plush, and Ethan their amazing art.
Importantly Ethan and I will both have copies of the Peregrine Lake print collection, which isn't officially released until May 1st. We're breaking our own street date on this, so if you want to get a copy before it goes on sale to the general public, this is where you can get it.
If you're looking to collect as many Nerd & Tie folks as you can though, we do want to mention that Celeste will also be there, helping work their spouse's table in the artist alley. That's right, you can spend your weekend talking to four different really cool people you might be vaguely aware of on this tiny corner of the internet!
Evercon is one of my favorite conventions to go to, and I'm excited to return. It's a bummer it's up against AMKE this year, but if you want to go to a fun gaming con and meet some neat people... come find us there. It's a good time.
- Traegorn
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 If yoiu don't spend time in the odd corners of bookish and queer social media, it's likely you've never heard of Paul Castle. Hell, even if you are in them, you may have scrolled on by, never to take note. But for those of us who have had him slide across their algorithmically driven feeds, he's become fairly infamous over the last few years. Paul is a blind creator who makes couples content with his husband Matthew, but more importantly for this discussion, he is the writer and illustrator of children's books that he independently publishes.
Now, I've never read his books, so I can't comment on whether they're any good or not. I have seen the illustrations though, and they, honestly, look very nice. His books are queer positive, and his determination to still create this work with his remaining vision is admirable. If that were all there was to talk about, this would be a potentially feel good story, and I probably wouldn't be writing about it in my personal blog.
But, y'know, this isn't the end of the story by far.
You see, if you follow one of Paul's accounts long enough, you'll inevitably end up on a video where he stands in front of the camera, crying about how some obstacle has gotten in the way of his books getting to people. Maybe a bookstore supposedly cancelled an order. Maybe it was something else. Paul will always frame this as his book getting "banned" and that anyone not working with him directly is an act of persecution. This will result in a spike in sales of his books from his TikTok shop. I won't go into too many details, but others have detailed things on multiple occasions if you want to dig into this. I'm not here to argue about the veracity of his statements. I have doubts, of course, and I've definitely been critical of the tactic of "pity marketing." I made a video in June of 2025 where, after he started talking about how he wanted to start publishing other authors, I said that people should avoid it. My reasoning was pretty simple -- the only advantage to working with a "publisher" that small is that they can help you get into bookstores.
And the one thing Paul Castle has proven is that he's bad at getting his books into bookstores.
I made other videos too, but the pity marketing is not the point of this post. My big problem is what happens after Paul Castle makes his videos. That's where the real trouble begin.
You see, inevitably his millions of followers will go after anyone who criticizes him or does some sort of perceived wrong against him. When one of his videos talked about a bookstore owner named Tanya, his followers went and attacked a completely unrelated woman who shared a name. Now this could be chalked up to an overzealous fanbase acting on their own, but it's rather clear that Paul Castle is more than happy to rile people up on purpose too.
Almost a week ago, Castle made a video on his PaulCastleStudio account dragging up a video from three months ago, claiming that someone who criticized his marketing tactics had been ableist. Never mind that the video he points at doesn't make any ableist statements, and just points out how manipulative his marketing techniques are. Paul claimed he didn't want people going after her, but while he censored the person's face, he didn't censor the name on the wall behind her.
The creator has now received a barrage of harassment across multiple platforms, and has made a response to the entire situation that is chilling. I've gotten a handful of harassing comments on a YouTube Short from October, because people found it looking for her. And it's not the first time he's done this. When an Ingram employee was critical of one of his marketing tales, he went after her. When he printed some books through IngramSpark, and she happened to get assigned to his account, he made another video complaining about it. That person also got harassed by his fans.
He knows that if he calls someone out that this will happen, and since he keeps doing it -- it's apparent he doesn't care.
And I guess I just wanted to write down how incredibly fucked up that is.
It's also interesting to note that he seems to exclusively target women. My masculine presenting, nonbinary ass has never been singled out. Don Martin, who's been highly critical of him, has never been singled out either. Maybe it's just coincidence. Maybe Martin has a bigger platform as a traditionally published author. Maybe I've been too specific and controlled in my criticism that it doesn't give him enough ammo. Maybe it's just because the demographics of bookish spaces just lean towards women.
But it's odd that a pattern seems to bubble to the surface.
Anyways, this is a weird post to put a promotional tag on, but remember that pre-orders for Welcome to Peregrine Lake: Peregrine Lake Chapter One can now be made through BookShop.org and Amazon! The book is out May 1st.
- Traegorn
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 It's been a long time coming, but I'm super excited to announce the upcoming release of the first Peregrine Lake print collection.
"Welcome to Peregrine Lake" is officially releasing May 1st, and it collects the first chapter of the comic. Additonally, it has the short prequel bonus story "The Move" (which we made only available for a limited time online) which shows how Lynn and Megan moved from Eau De Puanteur to Peregrine after the events of UnCONventional.
You can pre-order the book right now online through either BookShop.org or Amazon, or your favorite retailer with the ISBN 9798348498733.
Ethan and I have been working really hard on this, and I'm excited that you'll be able to take it home in a physical format finally. If you haven't been reading the comic, this is a great place to start of course. From the back of the book: Bev Armstrong is having a hell of a time. She's recently inherited her uncle's house near a small town called Peregrine Lake. After losing her job and getting dumped by her boyfriend, it seemed like the perfect place to start her life over.
It probably isn't.
The Village of Peregrine Lake is nestled in the western part of the Wisconsin Northwoods. Just another small town with small town problems, but in the cold and dark of Wisconsin winter, something may be watching you out there in the woods.
It may not be safe to be there on your own.
...and also, Pappy's Sunset Bay Supper Club out on Highway P has the best french onion soup you'll find for at least a two hour drive. You definitely have to try it.
This is probably the proudest I've ever been of a comic I've put out, and I'm so happy that folks are enjoying it.
- Traegorn
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 This week Discord announced that to continue to have full access to their platform, all users will be required to verify their ages using either a face scan or a photo of their government ID. This massively intrusive policy goes into effect in March, and if you trust Discord with this kind of data... please remember that in October 2025 there was a massive data breach of over 70,000 records from one of their former vendors.
This is bad. Very, very bad.
Over the last decade, Discord has risen to prominence as a place where people can build niche communities. Both companies and individuals have used the service to build their own "servers" for niche discussions and direct interactions. It's effectively been used to emulate the features of old school forums and chat rooms because people have gotten sick of the toxicity of centralized social media.
But for all of its perceived privacy and siloing, Discord is still just another central company controlling the platform. They own every "server," and you're just using their space. So when a policy decision like this happens, it means we're all screwed.
To me this is just another example of how we need to decentralize the web again. Because we used to have siloed, independent online communities where people could talk about their niche thing and connect in private. We called them forums. Someone would just pay for a little webhosting, install PHPBB, and then boom — there you go. You might make it so only logged in users can read them, but anyone can get them off the ground. Now can they handle everything Discord does? No. Sadly with the death of Skype there are very few good, free options for voice chat out there. But that's not what 90% of Discord communities are used for.
I mentioned this almost a year ago (and touched on it again in November), but modern forum software has come a long way since PHPBB2. We run a Flarum install for Nerd&Tie[dot]Social (the official Nerd & Tie forums), and that works amazingly on mobile. There are other options like Discourse and MyBB too. But you just need one person in the community to get some shared hosting, do the install, and then bob's your uncle. Setting up independent forums is the only way to ensure that our communities are no longer at the whims of corporations that fundamentally do not care about us or our online safety. Use fake names. Hide your personal information. Only share what you want to share.
Use the internet like it's 2006.
I call it being an internet cockroach, some call it the "Indie Web," but either way the only reason that we're at the whims of these companies is because we let ourselves be. There's a simple solution to that problem, and it's just to go do stuff on our own.
Seems like the best option, really.
(Also the old forums for my site still exist. No one's used them in years, but they're technically still up as of 2/2026)
- Traegorn
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 I'm not sure why I have to say this sometimes, but fandom spaces are adult spaces. What we consider organized fandom was built by adults, for adults. But there are people who forget this. Like I've seen people admonish adults for being involved with fandom, saying "adults should be doing adult things" (whatever the hell those "adult things" are), and I've seen kids lament growing up saying they'll have to stop liking anime or comics or whatever property they're passionate about.
And I'm just like... no kid, that's not how it works. That's the opposite of how it works.
Modern organized fandom, as we know it, really starts with Star Trek. There were certainly fans of fantasy and science fiction before that — science fiction conventions have existed since the 1930s —but this was an inflection point where the culture we know today started.
Star Trek fandom galvanized in a way we hadn't seen before. People formed fan clubs, published zines, and organized conventions. And importantly, these were actions done by adults. To be more specific, it was dominated by adult women. Now obviously people of all genders were involved, but its undeniable that they were and remain the dominant group. Those zines were often filled with Spirk fanfic, and it's the origin of fanfic and shipping culture. Elyse Rosenstein, Joyce Yasner, Joan Winston, Linda Deneroff and Devra Langsam organized the first Star Trek convention in 1972, which was arguably the first modern media convention.
All of these things were done by adults, for adults.
And the successors of these fannish actions and organizations (the modern fandom sites like AO3 and the massively scaled fandom convention scene) are still made by adults primarily for other adults. It's not to say that younger people can't be welcome in these spaces, but they importantly are not centered.
Yet some people forget this.
There are a couple of reasons for this. One major one is that a lot of fan activity is online now. In the decades before widespread internet access, a lot of fan activity happened at in person fan club meetings. Adult nerds would meet regularly to socialize with other adult nerds. We saw the faces of our fellow fans, and knew more about their lives. When things moved online though, while we were able to connect farther and wider, these connections became more surface level. People were just avatars on screens, and there's a funny thing that happens when that's our reality.
We start assuming that everyone else is just like us.
We assume that people's backgrounds, opinions, and ages are similar to our own when it's not contradicted with direct informaition. A young person reading fanfic on AO3 starts to assume that the authors are their peers and not, say, a 40 year old office worker writing on their lunch break. The whole fandom world looks like it's also young people because they've never known better.
Secondly, our culture infantalizes anything done by women, and as I said repeatedly in this, women have always dominated organized fandom (regardless of what some CHUDs on social media pretend as they decry the latest comic book movie casting). That means that misogyny makes people think of fandom as childish, whether they realize it consciously or not.
The truth remains though: fandom spaces are adult spaces, and they only survive because they're adult spaces. The world of fandom does not end when you reach adulthood, it opens up.
- Traegorn
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 So one of the most annoying phenomena you'll find on social media is the way that ideas will get passed around like a game of telephone until they're virtually unrecognizable. The "anti-intellectualism in booktok" conversation is probably one of the more frustrating examples.
It all began in earnest, really. Often when someone would critique a book in the romance or romantasy genre, fans of the book would respond with things like "it's not that deep" or "it's just entertainment." But these genres are just as deserving of criticism as any other, and people pointed out that dismissing legitimate media criticism like this was anti-intellectual.
And that's not an incorrect assessment.
But there are a lot of factors that we have to consider with the romance genre, including that it has often been the target of derision for a lot of misogynistic reasons. It's why fans get so defensive when any criticism is lobbed — because most of the time it's not in good faith. I think that anchors a lot of pushback against the legitimate critism too. It gets looked at as a lesser form of literature, but people need to discern the real critique from the bad faith snark if that's every going to change.
At this point, it's not a great situation. It can one hundred percent get worse though.
You see, social media is full of people who just echo ideas without really understanding them, and with that lack of understanding just sort of turn a thing on its head. And this is where the "discourse" kicked in, because if social media does anything it's flatten any nuance out of anything. Every discussion gets turned into an "us vs. them," and the worst kind of people jump into the fray. Suddenly, the people who looked down on romance as a genre started to call romance books themselves and anyone who enjoyed them "anti-intellectual" — that somehow any book they thought was "dumb" fell into that category.
That is, of course, not what "anti-intellectual" fucking means.
The entire thing is frustrating. It opens the door to some rando making weird rants about how if romance readers don't read other genres that somehow publishers will stop producing those other books. As if romance buyers haven't been the backbone of the publishing industry for decades. As if romance sales weren't what kept the book stores open. As if romance sales weren't what kept every other genre in print to begin with.
And don't even get me started on the people dismissing romance novels as "porn," as if there's something wrong with adult readers enjoying adult content. The rise of moral puritanism is a wider topic that deserves its own post.
In the end though, we're stuck with what started as a legitimate conversation turning into nonsense, and the people trying to have the original conversation just get buried under all of the flotsam, their points lost.
It just kind of sucks.
- Traegorn
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Right now I'm sitting up in the middle of the night. I should be getting ready for bed, maybe reading a book and trying to clear my head. I definitely shouldn't be still looking at social media on my laptop in my living room with the only sounds the ticking of a clock, the typing of these keys, and the tinnitus in my left ear.
I woke up this morning to yet another person getting executed by federal agents in the twin cities. The fact that the previous sentence included the word "another" is horrifying, and I literally started my day by seeing the video of his execution feed to me involuntarily on TikTok. They pinned him to the ground and shot him.
And folks immediately went to social media to defend the border patrol officers who did this -- arguing that he had a gun. Never mind that the gun was holstered and he had a permit. Never mind that these are literally the same people who talk about the second amendment like it's a holy text. And I don't know if these are real people, or if they're bots or Russian trolls. It just... it's just so frustrating to think that anyone would defend this.
This is tyranny. This is fascism. We can see it with our eyes. We are watching it live.
And the worst part? The worst part is a lot of us saw it coming. There are days where I feel like Cassandra, and I keep wondering when enough will finally be enough. A little over nine years ago I literally ended a friendship because someone told me I was being "cringe" in the kinds of stuff I was worried about happening. It's one of those things where I really fucking wish I'd been wrong.
But also fuck that guy still.
I don't want you to think I'm without hope or without fight. I'm not a doomer and I'll never be one. People who are strong don't do the awful things that are happening right now. If there was no chance of us winning, they wouldn't be doing any of this to begin with. But just because I think that a storm can be weathered, doesn't mean the storm doesn't fucking suck.
Jeffrey Pretti was a 37 year old ICU nurse. He did not threaten federal agents, and they attacked and executed him without cause. The government is lying about the incident, and I know this because I have seen it with my own eyes.
I wish I hadn't.
I wish there'd been nothing to see.
- Traegorn
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 If I told you that a Kevin James/Alan Ritchson buddy comedy ended with our leads purposefully killing dozens of children in a fiery explosion, you'd probably look at me sideways. If I told you they were the heroes, and this was supposed to be a "cool and funny' moment, you'd think I've lost my god damned mind. But the movie Playdate is real, it's been out for two months, and you can watch the scene unfold with your own eyes if you want to.
Not sure why you'd want to, but you're an adult. You can make your own choices.
I'm going to spoil the movie here, so if for some reason you cared about the plot of this thing, you might want to stop reading here. The basic setup of the movie is that Kevin James plays a stepdad whose socially awkward kid befriends the apparent child of Alan Ritchson's character at the park. Ritchson invites James and his son over to their house (which they've recently moved into), and chaos ensues because people are coming to kill Ritchson.
CJ, the character we've been told is Ritchson's son is in fact not his son, but actually a genetically modified clone of Ritchson created to be a super soldier that Ritchson freed from a lab. Occasionally fun (and occasionally dumb) comedic action scenes follow, and, frankly, I found myself mildly enjoying the film. It wasn't deep, and Ritchson is funny (and James manages to not get in his way). I wouldn't describe it as a good movie, but I was enjoying myself.
And then the last scene happened, and I just went "What the fuck?"
You see, at one point it's revealed that CJ isn't the only clone. There are, in fact, a couple dozen, but Ritchson and James just weren't aware of the rest. Apparently all the clones (including CJ) have had their empathy and emotions removed from them, but the film establishes that CJ genuinely cares for Ritchson.
And then they blow up all the other clones.
In a massive fireball as our heroes walk away.
And I'm like... did no one think about this? The only difference between CJ and the rest of the clones is the short amount of time CJ spent with Ritchson's character. That means every single one of those kids could be easily rehabilitated just by someone giving a shit about them. But, like, why think about that when you can murder them. It's clear that literally no one making this movie thought for more than two seconds about the scene, but what a weird message to end your action buddy comedy on. It's just... it's just weird.
What a weird way to end that fucking movie.
- Traegorn
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So there's a thing that happens when you make stuff and post it to the internet -- people who've never directly interacted with you before feel like they know you. I don't mean like your beloved social media mutual who you've had online conversations with, but instead people who really have never said word one to you to begin with.
I'm far from the first person to point out the existence of this kind of parasociality, but I've had several weird experiences with it this month which has left me either scratching my head or oddly angry. Because I think it's important to remember to the vast majority of people who consume the stuff I make I am stranger. Statistically, if you're reading this, we've never had a conversation, and you're only familiar with the public image I project on social media and the various works of commentary, podcasts, and fiction I produce.
And you know what? I'm glad you're here! I have real world friends I've made who's first exposure to me is something I've made and tossed online. Heck, technically my wife watched one of my YouTube videos long before we met. She'd totally forgotten about it by the time we were actually introduced, but it still counts! I, frankly, want you here. I'm making this stuff so someone will look at it after all.
But, like, again -- I'm a stranger to most of you. And while most of you seem to keep that in mind, sometimes an occasional person will talk to me in a way that is really fuckin' weird.
Like on TikTok a few weeks ago, someone who clearly thought they were teasing me like we were friends made an offhand joke that was, honestly, deeply offensive to me. I'm not going to repeat it, but if you follow me on TikTok, Tumblr, or Bluesky you probably saw my follow up videos about it. The person who posted the comment has apologized, but the important thing is it never clicked in their brain that we did not have the kind of relationship where they could make that kind of joke with me.
Because, again, I'm a stranger.
Now I'm going to mention that this commenter was from Minnesota. This wasn't really important to the original story, but is for what happened next. You see, a random passerby decided that I was a horrible person for my angry response I recorded and posted on January 6th.
Because we all know what happened in Minnesota on January 7th.
This random dude, who had nothing to do with the original conversation, made a video calling me all sorts of names because I was *checks notes* "mean to someone from Minnesota." Now, let's be clear: Fuck ICE and Renee Good was murdered in cold blood by Jonathan Ross. I don't want there to be any confusion. I talk to people in Minneapolis and Saint Paul pretty regularly, and I know how bad things are right now.
But first off, like, I can think that while also having a problem with something someone from Minnesota did that's completely independent of the awfulness that's happening right now. A thing that, again, the person who said it has since apologized for.
And secondly, linear fucking time exists as the entire interaction was done twenty-four hours before the awful, unrelated tragedy. Like I'm struggling to figure out why this lunatic was trying to connect a random person from Minnesota and I having a little bit of an issue with each other and fucking that.
But this weirdo who, to the best of my knowledge, has never interacted with me or my content before, made a whole call out video about it. Dude makes a lot of assumptions about me, and it's insane.
Because I'm a stranger.
And he doesn't know the first thing about me.
Look, I'm just going to be real with you. You should talk to creators on the internet like a stranger you're standing in line behind at the supermarket. Maybe you've overheard them say some stuff. Maybe you've learned a few things about them by seeing what's in their cart. It's not insane to say something to them if it's applicable to the situation you're in, but not everything is appropriate. If it'd creep out, bother, or insult that stranger in line, it's going to creep out, bother, or insult the creator you're saying it to.
I hope that made at least a little bit of sense.
- Traegorn
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