The Marquis de Leech

The 'canonical' nature of these amendments is really only possible because of the silliness of modern copyright. Were public domain only twenty years after the death of the author, people could do all the amendments or fanfiction they want. It's just none of it would be official, any more than nineteenth century efforts to make Shakespeare family friendly were official.

On the other hand, it's set in the early seventeenth century, and I don't think the characters involved would have considered it rape (an unpleasant deception, yes, but such things tended to be played as a comedy in older stories - the Reeve's Tale, for instance).

The scene in question is the one where he fucks Milady while pretending to be someone else, right?

Small presses tend to use un-agented submissions too, though generally they have a limited submissions window. The problem for writers here is not "they're taking our jobs!", since the quality is simply not comparable to human-written stories (AI can imitate. But it cannot explore theme like a human can). The problem is that the swamping of the magazines will mean longer turn-arounds for rejections, and potentially lower renumeration - magazines must now spend time and effort sorting the AI nonsense from real submissions.

It wasn't Ten Little Negroes, of course. But the difference there is that Christie herself was approving the title change.

I see this as a product of modern corporates' obsession with intellectual properties. And more specifically, milking them for as long as possible. Penguin Random House (owner of Puffin) and Netflix (owner of the Roald Dahl Story Company) are trying to "update" the texts for cash, nothing more. Sincere bowdlerism is about public morality, and this is not about that. Really, if we didn't have such an oligopoly with book publishing, and a copyright system encouraging that oligopoly to hoard and milk the properties of dead creators... we probably wouldn't have this.

The last three weeks have been very productive writing-wise. Four short stories done (totaling over 11,000 words between them).

Finished a re-read of Tolkien's Letters. I'd forgotten how much the guy changed over the course of his life (as the enthusiasm wanes, and the grumpiness takes over).

Given that they remove rubbish, a joke about Lord of the Flies might be more appropriate?

Four weeks of polishing and editing have got Old Phuul down to 98,800 words - I've decided the manuscript is now decent enough for submission.

Media currently cooing about Hipkins' lack of wokeness. As though the only meaningful quality for a PM is Culture War nonsense.

It's Hipkins, of course. *Cue snark about gingers having no soul, especially this one.*

The polls only have National/ACT about five points ahead of Labour/Green. That's not 2008, much less a 1990 apocalypse. Labour are weak right now, but a win in October is not unthinkable. So far as diversity goes... one would hope that policy would actually still matter more than gender or skin colour. The portion of the population who would be excited by such things are already voting Green anyway.

On the leadership, it really hinges on whether Chris Hipkins can get the 2/3 of Labour MPs necessary. I personally do not like Hipkins, who has the persona of a smug bureaucrat, and all of Ardern's reluctance to engage with concrete policy without her fundamental good nature. The Right consider him competent, but he excites exactly no-one. If Hipkins does not get 2/3, it goes to the membership. I think they are more likely to go for Michael Wood, who is more focused on traditional economic Leftism than Ardern's more social liberal stances.

Just finished Lilith, by George MacDonald. Basically, a nineteenth century attempt at a Narnia novel.