u/jobless_jacob

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I remember reading about MiCA a couple of years ago and thinking it was just another regulation that'll take forever and now platforms either have their licence or they don't.

What's interesting is how much my own priorities have changed like a few years ago I would've compared exchanges based on who listed more coins first and now I'm looking at which ones are actually planning to be around in Europe five or ten years from now

think I'd never say this, but regulation are now one of the reasons I choose where to invest

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close to 100 catholic bishops and church leaders sent a letter to senate majority leader john thune and minority leader chuck schumer opposing the clarity act, arguing that a core provision would weaken federal safeguards against human trafficking and other financial crimes.

this is a religious institution with zero financial stake in crypto’s outcome telling congress that the specific defi exemptions inside the clarity act create a real world avenue for trafficking networks to move money undetected.

the community’s default reflex to any anti crypto criticism is “they don’t understand the technology” or “they’re carrying water for legacy finance.” (Classic crypto community lol) If their specific technical objection that defi protocols are being carved out of aml requirements in a way that creates a usable loophole is actually accurate then thats not fud and a real gap that deserves answer

clarity act has bipartisan momentum and real urgency behind it.

so is this letter wrong about the defi provision or is the crypto industry about to get a regulatory framework that nobody wants to admit has a trafficking sized hole in it?

i've spent the last year looking for a writing community that actually feels like one and mostly coming up empty

the big subs are too big to know anyone the discords i've tried are either dead or full of people who were already friends before i got there so i've stopped waiting to find the perfect room

it's like a writer can't even talk with fellow writers until you're talking about "their" story and the feedback is plain selfish like okay u do me I do you,

Why can't writers connect beyond just feedback

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started with a small thing needed a reason for one character to have a specific moral code so i sketched a religion just enough to ground her

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three months later that religion has a schism, two competing branches, a suppressed older tradition underneath both of them, and it's somehow become one of the main engines of the plot characters are now defined by their relationship to it. half my conflicts trace back to it

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i don't know if this is what's supposed to happen or if i've let one piece of the world eat the whole thing. it doesn't feel out of control exactly. it feels right. but i also can't tell anymore

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i want to talk to other worldbuilders who've had a piece of their world do this to them. did you let it take over? did you rein it in? where are you all? a discord, a group, anything where this kind of conversation is normal.

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ok this is half a joke and half a real question.

i've been writing my MMC for almost two years now and i'm at a point where i think about him the way i used to think about characters in books i loved as a teenager

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i miss him when i haven't written him for a few days. i defend his choices in my head when nobody's even attacking them.

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i think this is actually a good sign for the book. if i'm this invested, readers will be too. but it's also a weird thing to be carrying around alone and i have absolutely no one in my life i can say "i miss my fake boyfriend" to without sounding like i need help

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romantasy writers, please tell me this is normal and please tell me there's a community where this is just casual conversation, because i need that to be a place i can go

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rookie mistake ik.. needed a name fast, grabbed one from someone I went to school with, figured it didn't matter and kept writing

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now I'm 50k words deep and my villain has the face, voice, and mannerisms of a guy I haven't spoken to in fifteen years, purely because of the name. every scene he's in, I see Greg from chemistry lol

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I cannot make the character menacing because my brain keeps overlaying Greg, who once cried during a fire drill

and I can't just find-and-replace the name because the name has become the character somehow, it fits him, a different name feels wrong, but THIS name keeps summoning Greg and Greg is not scary

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is this fixable? has anyone else accidentally cast a real person in their book via a careless name and then couldn't shake it? do I push through and hope Greg fades, or do I do the painful rename and try to rebuild the character's identity around a name that doesn't haunt me? lesson very much learned about pulling names from real life on autopilot

the ancient evil everyone's been fighting turns out to have a point

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the prophecy was propaganda.

the chosen one is on the wrong side and that kind of thing i'm not looking for grimdark-everyone-is-awful ah shi

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I'm looking for genuine moral inversion where the book makes you reconsider who the actual villain was.

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I'm done with skill, not just edgy for its own sakewhat's out there. I know there are a few famous ones but I want the deep cuts too

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typed the last line on a sunday and expected fireworks. felt nothing.

just kind of blinked at the screen, saved the file, years of writing something that didn't actually exist, a fantasy of my own, and went to bed. it was almost disappointing how flat it felt after two years, I've spent a good year building elements and system and ik I can start in it again

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then wednesday, completely out of nowhere, i was washing dishes and it hit me all at once..i finished. i actually finished.

two years, all those early mornings, all those nights i chose the doc over sleep, and it's done. stood at the sink crying into the soap suds like an idiot

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and the worst part is there was nobody to call nobody who'd understand why a finished draft would make me cry into the dishes on a random wednesday. my partner would've hugged me but wouldn't have got it, most wouldn't even get me when I talk about why high elves are different race then forest elves, it's not the same as someone who's been there

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i think the missing piece in my whole writing life is people who'd get it who've had their own version of it.

where do those people gather? genuinely asking. i want to find them completed my book and now I've got nothing that connects me with writing

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also I need advice that should I start another book in ten same universe because I've already build a system, countries, maps, magic and society

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ok this is keeping me up at night,

I'm about two thirds through my draft and I've realized with growing horror that every time my villain is on the page, the book comes alive

he's complicated, he's got real reasons, he's genuinely scary, his scenes write themselves. and every time I cut back to my protagonist I feel my own energy drain because she's just... fine? she's good? she does the right things for the right reasons and she's so much less interesting than the guy trying to stop her

and I don't know what to do cause I can't just make the villain win, that's not the book. but I also can't keep writing a story where readers are secretly rooting for the bad guy because he's the only one with any spark

I think the problem is I gave the villain all the complexity and left the hero as a sort of default good person. he gets contradictions, doubts, a tragic logic. she gets virtue. and virtue is apparently really boring to write and I didn't realize that until it was 70k words too late

do I go back and complicate her? do I give her flaws and doubts and a darker edge? but then is she still the same character? or is the answer that a good hero just needs to be written better, like the problem isn't that she's good it's that I wrote her goodness lazily?

how do you make a genuinely good protagonist as compelling as a great villain. because right now I've accidentally written a book where the antagonist is the main attraction and I'm scared that's unfixable

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hear me out cause this changed everything for me

most writers start with the map a cool coastline, mountain range and big forest there, maybe drop some city dots wherever looks nice, name them, done

and then they wonder why the world feels like a video game level instead of a real place? like bro where is the logic in this?

the truth is..real geography doesn't work like that and cities aren't placed for vibes, they're placed for REASONS. a city exists where it does because of water access, or a natural harbor, or a river confluence, or a mountain pass that forces all the trade through one chokepoint, or fertile floodplains, or a defensible hill

every old city in the real world is sitting on top of a logical reason it's there

so when you place your capital in the middle of a map because it looks central and important, but there's no river or coast and no reason for people to have gathered there, your brain can't articulate why but it FEELS wrong

try it the other way around start with the physical stuff first, rivers and mountais and coastlines and climate, figure out where water flows and where land is fertile and where the natural barriers are. THEN ask where people would actually settle given all that the cities place themselves n the trade routes draw themselves between them. the borders end up along the mountain ranges and rivers like real borders do

rebuilt my whole map this way last month and for the first time it feels like a place that exists instead of a place I drew the difference is that every location now has a reason, and readers feel the reasons even when you never explain them

anyway sorry for the essay I just get really into this part lol