Sex Lives of Animals

I've been rereading DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE TO ALL CREATION, by evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson. As the title implies, the book is formatted like an advice-to-the-lovelorn column, with each inquiring letter from a perplexed organism used as the springboard for discussion of similar behavior in a wide range of species. The lively explorations of often bizarre sexual customs are supported by twenty-four pages of notes and an extensive bibliography. Not only are the descriptions entertaining in themselves, they delve into the reasons why evolution produced such behaviors and how they promote the survival of the species. The mating habits of "lower" animals could spark fascinatingly strange ideas for alien biology.

Suppose sentient species on other worlds shared some of those bizarre (to us) customs. If the male typically gets eaten during copulation and contentedly accepts this fate in order to nourish his beloved and their children, maybe a network of rituals would grow up around the process of his offering himself to be consumed. Maybe males would compete to become plump and nutritious. Imagine an intelligent species in which the newly hatched infants always eat their mother's body, as with some spiders. Their society would have to include a caste of caretakers and educators to bring up the young. Almost nobody would have a living mother, and the rare female who selfishly refused to let herself be devoured would be ostracized. Maybe a females' rights movement would develop an artificial infant food source to liberate mothers from inevitable death, so they could lead long, productive lives. Hive insects such as bees, of course, are dominated by females with few males, whose function is limited to mating, but among the females only the queen breeds. Terry Pratchett's Nac Mac Feegle, diminutive but bellicose fairy folk, live in a similar colony, except that the queen (or "kelda") is the only female, married to one of the males and sister-in-law or mother to all the rest.

There's a marine worm that can change its sex repeatedly throughout its lifetime. The switch depends on the size and sex of the worm's partner. When a pair stays together long-term, both eventually become hermaphrodites. Ursula Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS features a world where people shift between male and female depending on the random chance of which sex their current mate happens to become that month. The difference from the transsexual marine worm is that Le Guin's aliens revert to neuter for most of each month. She devised this reproductive system as a thought experiment on how a society without sex differences would work. A few Earth creatures start out as females and later transform into males; the Martians in Heinlein's RED PLANET and STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND have this kind of life cycle. One category of organisms, slime molds and green algae among them, may have hundreds of sexes. That doesn't mean five hundred of them need to get together to produce offspring. It means each sex cell is genetically distinct from the other kinds, and there are rules as to which can pair up. The social functions of reproduction and parenting would look very different in a slime mold society from the way they work in ours. In the more conventional male and female pairings we're familiar with, imagine an intelligent species reproductively similar to seahorses, in which the male gestates and gives "birth" to the young. Or suppose we were like certain bats whose males as well as females secrete milk to feed their offspring. Either of those species would probably have a society where females, not being biologically tied down to child care, could enjoy much more independence than in traditional Earth cultures. What about a world of women who reproduce by parthenogenesis, as some animals are capable of doing? All-female societies reproducing parthenogenetically have often appeared in science fiction, such as the world of Whileaway in Joanna Russ's THE FEMALE MAN and the post-apocalyptic setting of Suzy McKee Charnas's MOTHERLINES.

Here's a page that gives an overview of numerous examples of odd animal reproductive behavior, with lots of links:

The Sex Lives of Animals

Nonhuman animals have been found to engage in just about any unusual or "perverted" human sexual practice you can think of, including bestiality (copulating with a member of an unrelated species) and necrophilia. Those two habits, as the article points out, must be simply mistakes in evolutionary terms, since they can't result in reproduction. According to DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE, however, the most deviant sexual custom of all, judging by its rarity is—monogamy.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Part 7 - Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction

Part 7

Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude 

Previous parts in How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series are indexed at the bottom of the index post about Astrology

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The Tarot posts - Tarot Just For Writers - have been polished up and presented as Kindle books. 5 Individual volumes, or one single collected one (the collected is cheaper).

https://amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/

And we have explored Verisimilitude in the various aspects of Worldbuilding, Theme, Plot, and even Marketing.  Seeming "real" at least in some single element, is a novel's most memorable feature.  One "realistic" element can make the imaginary elements vivid, real, fascinating, and memorable.

That distinctive element, original and imaginary, will "tag" your Series in the reader's mind, and they will remember your byline, maybe buy more books.

So here are some of the Posts mentioning Verisimilitude.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/depiction-part-14-depicting-cultural.html

Here's one about Corporate Greed and the Sex Drive -- involving Pluto transits.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/alien-sexuality-part-3-corporate-greed_25.html

And I did say verisimilitude is essential to Theme:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

The HEA is a hard sell to non-Romance readers, which is most of the science fiction readership, so you have to argue convincingly for the verisimilitude of the Happily Ever After ending.  Here is a discussion of that task for the author of Soul Mate romance.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

And Plot Pacing is paramount.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

In fact "Pacing" as a writing technique can be the most important thing you learn to do. Pacing can be the genre signature -- which scenes or descriptions you spend pages on, and which you cut to less than 1 sentence.

A long time ago, Romance novels were required to omit sex scenes, and still they captured imagination and fueled determination not to settle for less than a Soul Mate.

Romance novels sans sex still presented Characters with potent Charisma.  You could meet a man whose mere glance would sweep you off your feet.

Love at first sight works like that.  After all, it is "first sight" - presumably not after first sex.

Charisma works like that - instant first-sight attention getting, followed by a riveting hint of potential.

Potential for what depends on the problem confronting the person who notices the charismatic figure.

In the era of the "Talkies," film producers were successful if they could recognize a person with Charisma.  People could learn to act, could be promoted widely, could be "made a Star" -- if only they had Charisma.

Today, Hollywood has learned to fake Charisma, but still those with natural Charisma shine above the rest. Football players, even golfers, tennis stars, Olympic figure skaters, some of the better ones never get the round of endorsements and personal appearances because they don't have Charisma.

Today, the politicians that get the most votes do it with Charisma (fake and real), not Policies.

So in real life, it is useful to understand Charisma.

In Fantasy Life, only the writer has to understand Charisma to create such an attractive Character.

However, with the main product Hollywood is selling being Charisma, mature readers have noticed "it's all a sham."  Everyday readers see the gossamer shimmer of beauty ripped away ("Oh, she is so Botoxed!"), and don't want to buy that product anymore.

Yet, we still feel "seeing is believing."  If we see beauty, are attracted by a voice, an idea, a gesture, we respond, and we don't know why.

Likewise, we see ugliness, a disgusting visage, hear an irritating voice, see unacceptable behavior, and we are genuinely repelled.

That repulsion can be created artificially using Hollywood techniques, the same techniques that create Charisma.

That realization is fluttering around the edges of popular consciousness.  Charisma is real, and powerful, but the mature reader of Romance and of Science Fiction is coming to realize how Charisma is being used as a tool to manipulate their opinions and behaviors.  Nobody likes being "manipulated" but Charisma is sneaky - and only becomes apparent after the action (buying a cosmetic product, voting for the wrong person). 

And so Charisma can be the element a writer uses to create verisimilitude connecting the reader to the fantasy world the writer is just imagining.

As noted above, the Happily Ever After ending is a very hard sell.  Real life experience tells us that infatuation passes -- it isn't love at first sight.  Marriage based on infatuation don't last and break up in real agony.

Infatuation happens when a person first encounters a Charismatic Figure who ignites a deeply personal, individualizing vision of the future.  It's usually sugar coated, but reality teaches us the sugar coating hides the bitter truth.

So with age, and experience, we look at Charismatic figures with leery suspicion.

A teen who finds True Love is viewed as Infatuated.

So we have the "second time around" Romance, when a Relationship can proceed to the HEA, while previously it was blocked by the surface illusion of who the other person really is. 

Infatuation is a small scale version of experiencing Charisma.  The person may not be a Soul Mate, but just connecting with a virgin area of Personality.

We need our infatuations to teach us about ourselves.

Charisma, as used by the media for fiction and non-fiction (yes, top newscaster's get to be top by having Charisma, not just brains), refers to that same lure that infatuates younger people, but instead of affecting just one person, Charisma affects a broad swath of a target audience.

Learning to develop and aim Charisma, to weaponize Charisma (obsessive love) was the shaper of modern civilization.

Those who are the "target audience" of the weapon-wielders armed with Charisma are beginning to understand it is all a sham.  That's why the broadest audience now considers the HEA all a sham.

The HEA happens when Soul Mates form a Couple.

Soul Mates often seem infatuated and obsessive as they work toward forming that Couple and surmounting the current obstacles.

The Romance writer of science fiction, fantasy, or paranormal genres has a unique opportunity to explain Charisma to a readership uniquely suited to understanding that explanation.

The explanation the writer chooses has to be embedded in the Worldbuilding behind the story -- at an invisible level of the structure.  The explanation has to be woven into the theme, not at the assumption level but at the more blatant symbolic level.

Here is the index to theme-symbolism integration:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

Most writers will have developed several solid explanations for the existence of Charisma, but there are always more to be found.

Here is one way Astrology can explain both the Soul Mate attraction, where each person affects the other charismatically but nobody else sees what she sees in him, and the Public Figure Charisma that moves the body politic.

Infatuation, which has the same effect as being attracted to a Charismatic Figure, is an effect of the planet Neptune and the Sign Pisces which Neptune rules.

Neptune has a blurring or dissolving effect on structure (on reality), but at the same time reveals a "higher truth" or a more real truth that is totally unrealistic but nevertheless true.  The quintessential illustration of the Pisces male is the Engineer.  Think Scotty on ST:Tos.

Obsession is all about Pluto.  Remember Pluto is the "upper octave" of Mars, where Mars creates a bar-brawl scene, Pluto creates World War.  Pluto rules Scorpio, the sign notorious for secret sexual obsessions and even perversions.  It is not the sexuality and love depicted by Venus which is so often paired with Mars. Pluto is the raw staying power of life itself.

Pluto magnifies whatever element it connects to, and so it magnifies Neptune's infatuation effect into full blown Charisma, where life itself depends on cleaving to the glamorous object shrouded in Neptune veils (and thus never what it appears to be.)

The reason understanding of Charisma is so illusive is that Charisma is the product of two difficult to understand forces (symbolized by Astrological planet and sign), Neptune/Pisces and Pluto/Scorpio.

How this works between two individuals, Soul Mates, is how the two Natal Chart positions, aspects, signs, houses, midpoints, of Neptune and Pluto relate to each other, and what transits to the natal charts are in effect during the infatuation.

How it works for whole populations lured into following a Charismatic Figure (sometimes to salvation; sometimes over a cliff) has to do with the Figure's natal chart and transits as they relate to the generational positions of Pluto and Neptune.

The third element that determines how Charisma affects actions (Plot) is the notion of Soul.

Soul is a concept that has to be woven into the worldbuilding. Either souls are real in your fictional world -- or not.  Once you make that choice, you discard one set of themes, and lock into another (maybe a genre, too).  It is a basic choice, and determines which audience (and thus which publisher and which editor) you submit your book to.  For audiences that accept Soul as real in everyday life, you would have to work hard to convince them that Souls are not real in your universe, but Love is real.

So if you opt to build a world where Souls are not real, you eliminate the audience that understands the real world through the concept of Soul.

You would have to convince those readers that a world where humans (or Aliens) have no Soul is better than their world, or can be fixed to be as good as Reality.

That argument generates your Themes.

So Theme and Plot become one via the element of Charisma.

THEME: Souls choose to override the infatuating lure of Charisma and break free of Obsession by using (insert a tool, fictional or not, such as Religion, ESP, Magic Glasses).

THEME: People, humans and Aliens, can not choose to override the infatuating lure of Charisma and so become the hapless victim of Obsession at the behest of their "betters." Kings, Queens, Army Generals, Sorcerers, Moguls, Alien Overlords.

Either theme can be subordinated to the Romance Genre envelope theme of "Love Conquers All."  With or without Soul Mates, Love can muscle through any situation (at least to a HFN ending).

With the Soul Hypothesis, you have an HEA potential, but without Soul, you get a predominance of HFN endings.

Learn what your potential readership knows is real, pick one thing that readership bases their life-decisions on, and incorporate that into your worldbuilding. Be absolutely consistent with that one thing, and let imagination loose for the rest.

In science fiction writing, mix an element your readership knows for a fact is not real with elements they know are real.

Science Fiction is all about "What if ...?"  And basically what goes into the ... of that question is something that is widely known and accepted by all the experts suddenly turning out to be wrong.

Being wrong delights the scientist in the SF reader because finding out what has been wrong brings the "If only ..." of potential happiness into view, and makes the "If this goes on ..." prediction subject to revision for the better.

Being the dynamic force in re-creating your own world is the most fun anyone can have in life.

When the Neptune and Pluto transits bestow life-long, innate Charisma in a person, that Charisma attracts followers simply because the person is having fun living.

Charisma just sits there seething until FUN is added.

Charismatic figures enjoy being the center of attention, which makes them the center of attention.

On the smaller scale, of one-on-one relationships, one person can see an infatuating delight in another and become obsessed by it, joining the Charismatic individual in his obsession.

Being obsessed is actually FUN.  It feels good, which is why people don't struggle to break free until the obsession has almost run its course.

So if Charisma is the topic of your Theme, what it is, where it comes from, why it is good, why it is bad, and whether it is even real or just an insanity of the moment, then you need to introduce your reader to a Character who would enthrall them in real life.

Spock was such a figure for ST:ToS (and still is).  But note how many fans of Star Trek never found Spock interesting -- and instead were obsessed with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, or even Chekov or Sulu.

Each individual fictional character was Charismatic and obsessive to different segments of the audience.

As the characters interacted with each other, the audiences melded together into a social force to be reckoned with by a Hollywood which had, hitherto, looked down on their victims.

Yes, Hollywood thinking disparaged fans (of anything) because those Execs knew the tricks of artificial Charisma that had fooled those fans.

Knowledge is Power.

The fans learned.  Now the fans rule.  Or do they?

Star Trek created an audience (out of pieces that would never have come together into a social force) using Charismatic Characters.

Study the audiences (fanfic reveals all), then study the Characters, and don't forget to study the writers, the producers, and especially those who supply the money (studios - read the Credits).  Study how Charisma has been used, and find a new way to use it to explain the Happily Ever After is real, and not an ending but a beginning.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Force Majeure

Force Majeure is a sexy French name for a powerful excuse for failure to perform.  It is much in the news, and is being invoked by major oil companies and very small publishers to welsh on contractual agreements.

"To welsh" is rather a pejorative term, and might also be politically incorrect, as it implies that residents of Wales are synonymous with financial unreliability. No offense toWales or its people or princes is intended here.

Contract Standards publishes a fair definition of Force Majeure.
https://www.contractstandards.com/public/clauses/force-majeure

The Shearman & Sterling legal blog is highly edifying on the burning question of whether or not Covid-19 is a Force Majeure event. Of especial interest is their three-point test of whether or not the critieria for Force Majeure is satisfied.
https://www.shearman.com/perspectives/2020/03/covid-19--force-majeure-event

Could an author who is locked into an unacceptable contract declare Force Majeure because of Covid-19? This author only reads legal and publishing blogs, but if BP can put off purchasing LNG equipment for an entire year (when the market is bad for oil and gas) on the grounds that the pandemic is beyond its control, the pandemic prevents BP from performing, and BP took all reasonable steps to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic on its operations, maybe authors working from home could claim the same, if they wanted to do so.

It's not easy to write at the same time as unplanned home-schooling, or while having to watch adorable ankle biters every second of the waking day.

The Authors Guild has a guide to help those affected by Covid-19
https://www.authorsguild.org/covid-19-resources-for-authors/

Recently, Michael Seidlinger of Publishers Weekly wrote about 15 books and authors hurt by the coronavirus.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/82703-15-books-and-authors-hurt-by-the-coronavirus.html

Book tours are cancelled, book stores are closed, sales are down, allegedly Amazon is giving preference to promoting third party book sales (for which no royalties are paid to authors, of course), and piracy is soaring. Californian freelance authors have even more about which to worry.

Bryan Cave Leighton & Paisner have a very good set of bullet points about Force Majeure and Covid-19, whether one is on the receiving end of a Force Majeure notice, or considering dishing out one.
https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/thought-leadership/force-majeure-and-covid-19-considerations-for-businesses-in-the-us.html

An author is certainly helpless if under a governor's local executive orders to keep schools closed for the rest of the school year, and to confine everyone to their homes in fortnightly increments.

Foster Swift Collins & Smith PC detail some of the Covid-19 restrictions for those "cabined, cribbed, confined" (Macbeth) in Michigan.
https://www.fosterswift.com/communications-michigan-stay-home-extended-april-30.html

Given the lift to morale that one could get from painting a room --or even an accent wall-- in these S.A.D.times,  it seems particularly cruel that in some places, one may not even buy paint!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Writers and Their Finances

In the April 2020 LOCUS, Kameron Hurley writes about the difficulties of maintaining a reliable income stream as a freelance author:

The Tricky Finances of the Adjunct Writer

Starting with the unusual problem of several thousand dollars popping up in her bank account from an unknown source, she muses on the balancing act a full-time writer who doesn't produce mega-bestsellers must perform to survive from month to month. She mentions such phenomena as different publishers paying at various intervals and on different dates, royalties received months or years after the publication that earned the income, payments that arrive long after the contract promised they would, and the difficulties of enforcing contracts when their terms aren't fulfilled. Not to mention the impact of that "boom-or-bust cycle" on income taxes. "Trying to explain how writers get paid to anyone outside of the business is difficult, because as you’re saying all this out loud, it sounds absolutely unsustainable and bizarre."

The "hustle," she says, "isn’t about balance. For many of us, the hustle is about survival." Hurley has a day job, which, as she emphasizes, most writers need not only for a reliable income stream but most importantly for health coverage. It was a slight shock to me when I read that half of her monthly Patreon support goes to cover her health insurance and mortgage. My reaction was, "Wow, she receives enough from Patreon every month to equal twice her mortgage and health insurance?!" And yet with that income and proceeds from sales and royalties, she's still struggling. Aside from the first full year after the release of my one Harlequin/Silhouette vampire romance, in my best years I generally earned enough from writing to buy a family dinner out once a month. Maybe twice, in good months.

Fortunately, all my adult life I've enjoyed the kind of support Hurley recommends at one point in her article—a well-employed spouse with excellent health-care coverage (from a thirty-year Navy career, followed by a secure retirement). We have never needed my writing income to live on. That's a good thing, because we would probably be sleeping in the car! Still, sales are gratifying even if one doesn't "need" them, because royalties equal readers, and writers create in order to be read.

Mercedes Lackey often points out that fewer than ten percent of writers make a living from their vocation, and most who do have a nonfiction income source (e.g., journalism, writing ad copy, editing, etc.) as a basis for financial security. Holding a day job doesn't constitute an admission of failure. She advises the aspiring novelist to get qualified in a field for which there's steady demand but which doesn't exhaust one's brain, thus supporting oneself while leaving time and energy for writing. Plumbing, for instance. Marion Zimmer Bradley was fond of reminding young writers, "Nobody told you not to be a plumber."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding from Reality Part 13 Making War Alien Style

Worldbuilding from Reality

Part 13

Making War Alien Style 

Previous parts in Worldbuilding From Reality are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

We all know what humans will go to war over.  Don't we?  We are human, after all -- certainly we understand what makes us kill each other?

After all, we've been doing it a good long while.  At least 7300 years, it seems.

https://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/2020/02/10/archaeologists_uncover_a_7300-year-old_neolithic_massacre_in_the_mountains_of_spain.html

Will your readers think they understand human warfare? 

The usual excuses are fights over resources (water, hunting, grazing, flint deposits, etc)  And of course, there's Helen of Troy - men go to war over women, or maybe just to get away from the yammering in the house?

Humans get angry, blame their internal discomfort on others, and HIT.

Kindergarten kids learn to hit before they learn to speak coherently.  It's human to HIT that which annoys, discomforts, or obstructs.

Today, the external annoyance, obstruction etc. is coming from people who have banded together under a different political banner.

We are gearing up to fight to the death over IDEAS, and usually over differing ideas of what reality is.

Here is an article on motivated reasoning. 
https://www.inverse.com/science/motivated-reasoning

----quote-------
In theory, resolving factual disputes should be relatively easy: Just present evidence of a strong expert consensus. This approach succeeds most of the time, when the issue is, say, the atomic weight of hydrogen.

But things don’t work that way when the scientific consensus presents a picture that threatens someone’s ideological worldview. In practice, it turns out that one’s political, religious or ethnic identity quite effectively predicts one’s willingness to accept expertise on any given politicized issue.

-----end quote--------

And below that, in the same article:

-------quote------
The same facts will sound different to people depending on what they already believe.

DENIAL DOESN’T STEM FROM IGNORANCE

The interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon has exploded over just the last six or seven years. One thing has become clear: The failure of various groups to acknowledge the truth about, say, climate change, is not explained by a lack of information about the scientific consensus on the subject.

Instead, what strongly predicts denial of expertise on many controversial topics is simply one’s political persuasion.

--------end quote--------

In other words, humans make up their minds, then keep an open mind about facts. 

If you are writing Alien Romance, you can be confident you will portray the human as recognizably human in their thinking processes.  But why would that human fall in love with this particular Alien?

What Alien thinking process is so sexy?

Look at some of the research mentioned as arising over the last six or seven years -- find a single, simple, easily explained and illustrated principle that the Aliens do differently.  Find why that would be so sexy! 

One method of manufacturing Alien species touted by Poul Anderson was simply that all behavior, cultural and philosophical is sexual.

If the reproductive process is different (say egg laying, for example) the Alien cultures would develop from and around the differences caused by that different process.

All human cultures we've ever discovered have that element in common -- so it is very hard to see how reproductive processes generate our cultures and our civilizations.

Warfare, and winner-takes-all-including-the-women, is one thing all our civilizations have in common -- and shrewd analysis can reveal how warfare is essentially sexual.

The whole sex/violence spectrum that is studied so closely by the Romance Genre writers will lead inevitably to the larger type of combat - armies, and massacre. 

We, and all your readers, are descendants of the winners.

Remember that -- winning is all-important to us because of it.  There are no losers left.  So this is now major league, Super Bowl warfare.

This election season is dubbed a war for the soul of America.  It might actually be that, a spiritual war.

Would your Aliens understand that? Would their lack of ability to understand being descendants of winners be their most endearing characteristic?

If your Alien hears an impassioned political speech from this election war, will he understand it?  Will he know why your human female protagonist is willing to give her life, or at least her love-life, to add even her own tiny bit of force to her side's winning?

Could they understand war between winners? 

Or the obverse -- caught up in some Alien, interstellar war for Alien reasons (having to do, unknown to the Aliens, with their Alien sexuality) would your human protagonist have any idea why they were killing each other, blowing up planets, exploding stars - destroying life in the galaxy over their Alien issues?

Viewed from the human's eyes, their facts will sound different than they would to any Alien from any Alien side. 

Incorporate this oddity of human nature which makes our ability to deny not a result of ignorance, but rather of what we already know (and thus can't question) into a novel about human/Alien Romance.  Contrast the human need to make war with the Alien war - can they comprehend the relationship between sexuality and violence? 

Astrology gives you a good clue as you study the 8th House, Scorpio, and its ruler, Pluto.  Scorpio is not sweet-love like Libra.  And Pluto, being the upper octave of Mars is not about fighting and quarreling, but about war and warfare. 

What is the "outer-planet" of the Alien's solar system, what does it rule in their character, and how does your individual example of this Alien people manifest that property? 

Build your Aliens from the reproductive level up through sexuality, and on into becoming the dominant species on a planet.

While you are doing that, consider that human dominance on this planet might be coming to an end.  After all, all previous dominant species came to their ends.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Can't Touch This Copyright Law

A videographer spent more than a decade chronicling the discovery and recovery (1996) of Blackbeard's pirate ship the Queen Anne's Revenge. The State of North Carolina infringed his copyrights.

Previously, in 1990 Congress had passed the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, which was intended to remove any State's sovereign immunity from prosecution for copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that Congress acted unconstitutionally in 1990.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf

Individual States have carte blache to infringe copyright. Copyright owners can't touch them.  This permitted piracy is discussed with great wit and clarity by Peter Jaffe and Marissa Yu, blogging for the lawfirm Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer LLP.

Original Link.
https://digital.freshfields.com/post/102g3bc/us-supreme-court-holds-states-immune-from-copyright-suits-or-dumb-pirate-jok

Probably, other enterprises with a net worth and reach comparable to that of a sovereign State are also beyond the reach of copyright law.

Social distancing makes law enforcement, and the operation of the courts increasingly difficult, and while no one is suggesting that courts meet by hologram, as on the Planet Krypton, there is a suggestion that jurors could be sent a locked and specifically loaded iPad.

Contributor Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm writing for Holland and Knight LLP's The Persuasive Litigator blog discusses the possibility of online trials.
https://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2020/03/plan-for-online-jury-trials.html#page=1

It's an interesting idea, but is perhaps incompatible with "net neutrality", although the possibility of a juror suffering from buffering is noted, and Dr. Ken has a suggestion.

Live-streamed church services have suffered in recent weeks, and one wonders whether all traffic is truly treated equally when internet use is up up to 400%, we hear owing to so many folks being ordered to stay at home all day, day after day.

The interesting issues of network congestions are discussed by Julie Bak Larsen for the Bird and Bird legal blog.
https://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2020/global/implementing-traffic-management-measures-to-tackle-network-congestion

And all the while, copyright infringement flourishes, as do internet scams, and sp-called emergency expansions of "fair use" and copyright theft as exposed by thetrichordist.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  

The "Catch" in Author's Monopoly

Cory Doctorow's March LOCUS column asserts, "A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick":

Lever Without a Fulcrum

The "lever" here is copyright law, the "author's monopoly." The article focuses on some ways the common practices of major publishers can use this "lever" as a "stick" to beat creators. According to Doctorow, broad copyright protections designed in theory to safeguard the rights of authors often don't accomplish that goal in practice if publishers' contracts demand control over the exercise of those provisions. Authors, particularly novice writers, usually can't negotiate changes in standard publishing deals; they face "take it or leave it" offers. E-book and audio rights, for example, are seldom left under the creator's control. This situation effectively strips the "author's monopoly" of much of its power. "The fact that the company can’t reproduce your book without your permission doesn’t mean much if the only way to get your book into the public’s hands is through that company, or one of a small handful of companies with identical negotiating positions."

Doctorow analyzes phenomena such as music sampling, record contracts, Audible (the audiobook provider), video streaming, and DRM in relation to the general problem that, "Market concentration at every part of the supply chain is conspiring to make life harder for artists." His proposed solutions involve rights reversion clauses, changes in licensing rules, and unionization, among other possibilities.

I might suggest that authors deal with small presses (both print and e-book) rather than the Big Five. Small publishers can provide a personal touch and, often, more flexible contractual terms. But, of course, the mammoth corporations offer bookstore exposure and high-volume sales; the latter are almost impossible to achieve online without strong marketing skills. Also, an author who feels she lacks the expertise, resources, or time to exploit subsidiary rights effectively might prefer to leave those outlets in the hands of a publisher with the connections and experience to do so for her. It's a puzzlement.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt