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've been trying to put my feelings into words about the events of the last week. In theory, I'm a writer. That's a thing I should be able to do easily. I've sat here with a blank document for the last hour though, and mostly just given up on trying to be remotely eloquent or thoughtful at all.
I'm just mostly angry and sad.
It's not the first time something like this has happened in the last twelve months, just the first time it happened on camera from multiple angles. It's been shoved on to every social media platform I'm on, and I've seen it far more than I wanted to. The adminstration has predictably toted out the a flat denial line, and the the comment sections of the internet are filled with real cultists and fake bots who will ignore the reality in front of their eyes for the narrative provided by their dear leader.
But we stand, and we fight. I don't know what the way forward is. I know there is one though, and I'm confident we'll find it.
I don't really have anything else deep to say. Like I said, the words are escaping me right now. The Joe Hill quote "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!" comes to my mind again. I know I posted that a lot in November of 2024, but it still applies. They want us scared, they want us cowed, and they want us beaten. We won't give them that though.
It's been a while since I put out a series-wide book trailer for my contemporary/urban fantasy series the Mia Graves Saga, so it seemed about time I do an updated one.
As you may have noticed, I say book 5, The Perfect Host, should be out later this year. I'm deep into writing it, and I am determined to have this finished, edited, and ready this year. After book five, I'm probably going to take a break from the series to write some other stuff. It's going to mark kind of a good breaking point -- a satisfying place for the series to end, but I do have ideas for more books in the series if I want to pick the ball back up again.
And anyone who knows me knows I'm not going to leave characters I like this much alone for long.
Honestly, I genuinely love writing these books. I know it took me longer than normal to get Buried Memories out the door, but overall it's fun getting into the heads of these characters. I don't know how many I'll write in the end, but as long as there are more stories to tell in Parrish Mills, I'm going to keep doing them.
So I don't make a lot of code nerd posts on this blog, but it's mostly because I am, frankly, not that great a programmer. I like to describe myself as "experienced enough to only break things in weird ways no one expected." But a lot of my website is run on stupid code that's just me mucking about until I stumble on a solution, and sometimes I'm looking for a resource online which doesn't seem to exist.
One of the random scripts I still use is called zFeeder 1.6. It's an RSS reader, and it's how I include the most recent Peregrine Lake comic on the front page of TraeDorn.com/TRHOnline.com and a few other things. Now, it's not a perfect script since it was literally abandoned by its creator like 20 years ago (and there's an exploit in the admin page -- where my solution was to just delete the admin scripts and manage the thing through direct backend file modifications). Importantly though, as written, it doesn't run on anything more recent than PHP5. And in 2026, you shouldn't still be running PHP5.
So I needed to fix it.
And let me be clear: I'm not writing this because I think you should use zFeeder. It's old as hell, and there are modern solutions to building a script that reads RSS feeds. I'm writing this because someone might already be using it, and might want to keep using it.
And fixing the script so it runs on PHP8 is so fucking easy it would be insane not to document it. There are literally only two code changes you need to make to get the script to run. Just two.
First off, open "zfeeder.php" and just delete this line:
set_magic_quotes_runtime(0);
Magic quotes hasn't been really a needed thing since PHP4, and starting with PHP7 it's been removed entirely -- so it will literally break any script.
Next, open "includes/zfuncs.php" and find the following function:
function url2file($url)
{
return(ereg_replace("[^[:alnum:]]", "_", $url) . '.xml');
}
In newer versions of PHP, ereg has been replaced with preg, and you just need to replace the function with this:
function url2file($url)
{
return(preg_replace("/[^[:alnum:]]/", "_", $url) . '.xml');
}
That's it. That's literally the whole thing. With those two modifications, zFeeder 1.6 should run fine on PHP7 and PHP8.
And also, remove your admin scripts if you haven't already, okay?
- Traegorn
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As the year comes to an end yet again, I've ended up reflecting a lot not just on the last twelve months, but my past in general. Who I am, where I've been, and who I've brought with me.
When we were down in Milwaukee for Christmas, Crysta and I got dinner with Chris and his partner Sarah. I haven't seen Chris in years, and it was the first time meeting someone that important in his life. It was nice -- and frankly it's been too long since we got together. Chris is arguably my oldest friend, he was the best man at my wedding, and even though it had been ages since we got together, talking to him always feels like no time has passed. We're both awful at keeping in touch, so it's nice to be reminded that the connection we have is still there and easily rekindled.
And we're both going to try to be better about, like, actually talking to each other.
Coincidentally, I separately ended up in a conversation with another good friend about a person we used to both be close to the other night. I could have sworn that I wrote a blog post about this at some point, but for the life of me I can't find it. Maybe it was on a social media platform, but it doesn't matter really. The friend I was talking to the other day was talking about how she wanted to reconnect with this person who is now far removed from both of our lives.
She in part removed him by choice, but me not so much.
This person had been a close creative collaborator with me, and how he chose to make his exit from my life has always been something of a sore spot. My friend wanted to reconnect with him because she missed him though, but apparently he doesn't want to talk to her.
For like the dumbest, most childish fucking reason I've ever heard.
So finally, after learning some more details about what happened between those two, with over fifteen years in the rear view, I'm finally at peace with what happened. Frankly I think I might significantly better off to not have had this person in my life, and maybe I should count my blessings that things ended when they did. Who knows what passive aggressive landmines I narrowly avoided.
There's also a lesson here I think. If someone is important to you, and they reach out, you'll answer. Distance and time don't matter when people decide they want to reconnect, and when both people value a relationship it's as easy as sitting down together again and sharing a meal.
We have limited time on this planet. My grandmother died earlier this year, and my cousin just a few weeks ago. There is a finite amount of moments we'll spend with the people we care about, and we should value each one we get to share. If someone doesn't value making a connection with you, then maybe they weren't worthy of your time to begin with. I don't know. It made sense to me at the time.
Just a little announcement today regarding Peregrine Lake and the update schedule for the next two weeks. Last year, we did a flashback story called The Move where we saw a brief little tale of how Lynn and Megan moved from Eau De Puanteur, WI to Peregrine Lake, WI drawn by me instead of Ethan. It was just a fun little bridging tale between the new comic and UnCONventional. The idea was that The Move was a bonus story for the forthcoming print collection (which will be out early 2026), and it was quietly removed from the website in November.
Well, we decided to do that again this year.
For the next two weeks, Peregrine Lake will update on Tuesday and Thursday with a little story called The Interview. This time we're seeing how Megan got hired at the diner. Like The Move this will be ephemeral -- staying on the website through November 2026. This one will be destined for the second print collection eventually.
So enjoy the tale! Put up with my art! And the comic will resume as normal on January 6th.
- Traegorn
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Fifteen years ago today I wrote a blog post title "We're Living in a Cyberpunk Novel," and it was when I had the dawning realization that so much of our world felt like it was ripped straight out of a William Gibson novel. At the time I was looking at the current headlines and the state of technology, and it was really clear the way the world was going.
Well, uh, it got worse?
Like as we bring 2025 to a close, we see less corporate regulation, the attempted dismantlement of our democracy in favor of oligarchy, the weird, broken state of social networking, and the complete digital chaos of the future of the free and open web. Like elections are affected by social manipulation through digital platforms, and billionaires harvest our data through the control of online spaces. Massive amounts of money are being spent on data centers that poison the environment so you can do "research" (and sext) with a supposed "AI" that makes shit up constantly.
And we all use Amazon Prime.
It's not great. And while when I wrote that original post fifteen years ago these observations felt novel, today they seem obvious and mundane. Like as we are fully immersed in late stage capitalism, it's hard not to notice how bad things have gotten. And to be fair, since speculative fiction is far more often an observation of the present than a prediction of the future, it's pretty obvious we didn't have to go that far to get here. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
Now obviously we need to fix the structural issues in our society and fight back against the pending environmental apocalypse, but, like, you probably already knew that if you're reading this. The problem I'm having right now is that we're stuck in a cyberpunk dystopia and some of y'all are still wearing khakis.
Like if I'm going to be stuck living in a pulp story, we should at least get the cool ass aesthetics to go with it. Like I know I've clearly embraced this world in my workspace, but we should be going for it in our homes, our fashion, just everything. Like everyone should be going full weirdo, regardless of what age you are. If we're all carrying devices that let corporations track our location and listen in on our conversations everywhere, we should at the very least be dressing like it.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I wanted a space opera future, not a cyberpunk one, but this is the one we're living in.
So the day is finally here -- Buried Memories, the fourth book in the Mia Graves Saga, is now officially out!
I posted the official blurb on pre-order announcement a few months ago, but the book's premise is basically "what if you were in a small town where people kept disappearing, but you were the only one who noticed." This time around, we're following Sarah instead of Mia, and she is not having a good time.
It's a fun book, trust me.
Anyways, you can pick the book up a few different ways. It's available as an eBook via Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and DRM free in my Patreon Shop. If you want it in paperback, you can get it through Amazon, Bookshop.org, Direct Orders, or whatever bookstore you want with the ISBN 9798349560958. I'm really excited for you guys to get your hands on this one, and if you read it and like it please consider rating it and writing a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or Storygraph. It really helps me out if you do.
So I already made a post about this on TikTok/Bluesky/Tumblr/YouTube (because I am, if anything, distributed these days), but I wanted to talk about it here -- as it feels more permanent. This last weekend I was at a convention, and like most cons where I table a few people came by to pitch me their own creative projects. Now let me be clear: I genuinely like that people do this. It's fun to hear people tell me about their passion project. I just really only have one ask if you're going to do this though.
Talk to me first.
Now, that may seem obvious to most of you, but it apparently isn't for everyone. And most people, in fact, do this. Like at said con, a guy came up to my table, saw that my banner said I was a podcaster, and talked to me about the fiction podcast he was working on. It was a great conversation, and while I haven't checked out his show yet, I fully intend to give it a listen some time this week. He started out that interaction gauging my interest though, and letting me know who he was as a person. It was fun, it was nice, and he left me his card. All in all, a positive interaction.
But that's not what all of these instances are like.
A while later, a different guy comes up to my table. I greet him, but am effectively ignored. Now, that happens, and while it's a bit rude not to respond at all, nerds can be awkward so I'm used to it. After a few moments of looking at my stuff, he starts picking up my cards and putting them back down one by one. I have several different business cards (one for each comic, one for Nerd & Tie, and one that's a general "me" card), so I'm not sure why he's doing this. When he gets to a Peregrine Lake card though, he turns it over and says his first words to me in the two minutes or so he's been at my table: he asks for a pen.
I hand it over, assuming he wants to note something about my stuff on a card, which has happened before. I mean, the card he's picked is one for a website where there isn't anything for sale on the table right now, so I just assumed it was the one thing up his alley. I'm under the impression that he's going to jot something down and walk away with the card.
That is, in fact, not what happened.
Instead he writes out quite a bit more than I'm expecting him to, and Crysta and I are just sitting there in silence. Then, when he's done, he hands me my own card. What he's written down is a URL and some social media accounts, and he tells me he's starting a creator collective of independent writers. He mentions having talked to some of the other authors at the con (there were a couple). I politely took the information, and told him I would check it out, and he walked away.
But here's the thing, if he'd bothered to speak a word to me when he arrived, he might have asked me what my thoughts on a creator collective are. That's when he'd learn I'm already a part of one. Like one of the cards he picked up and ignored was literally for it.
And we could talk about how he should probably have brought some sort of card or flier if his goal was to network, or how it's difficult to convince me that you'd be a good advocate for my work when our interaction is this awkward, but that's not the point. If he had started with a conversation, he would have learned my background in that space. And while I have no interest in changing affiliations, we could have talked about working together or I could have given advice on how to grow and promote.
It just would have required a god damn conversation.
I just want to feel like you see me as a human being, really. Take some time to find out my interest, figure out my vibe, and importantly let me figure out yours. It will be a better experience for both of us, trust me.
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As the year comes to an end yet again, I've ended up reflecting a lot not just on the last twelve months, but my past in general. Who I am, where I've been, and who I've brought with me.
Fifteen years ago today I wrote a blog post title "
