No reason. It never timed out like that in 2024.

Again and again I’ve seen amazingly well done projects fall apart, for no real reason at all. This is why I gave up on Mass Adoption.

I’ve spent my time on sites like this, Lens, t2, and many others, and it does not matter how good the system is, the developers always drop the ball. It’s 100% of the time.

Lens had no reason to fail. But, after moving to its own chain, devs just stopped showing up. They didn’t even try to get a solid ecosystem going. A half dozen working dApps. Another dozens apps promising updates for months and months.

Okay. Let’s look at this big time that went stupid. Zora. Zora was working great as a legitimate NFT marketplace, and browser. Until devs introduced creator tokens, which have been tried everywhere and fail each and every time.

Now, here at Paragraph. 2 years ago. Paragraph.xyz was my absolute favorite way to blog. Mirror.xyz wasn’t my style, but was also going solid work. Then paragraph nuts mirror, and a .com for itself, and follows that up with the app killer: Creator coins. 🥲

There’s no way for independent artists, writers, or people to make money with creator coins. Sure, if you routinely charge $40k for your work, creator coins can be a great way to market your work. But, a single blog post?? Why the fuck would that ever need to be tokens? It wouldn’t. Now Paragraph is as useless as Zora, p00ls, and every other dumbass” buy a piece of it” system.

These systems do one thing. Kill everyone using them that doesn’t have $100k to invest. Drive out the average user. Great work. What happens when 80% of users can’t afford to be users anymore? Market crash. Yup. Can you see it clearly now?

I’ve watched this pattern happen repeatedly since I first got a random XLM airdrop, and started exploring.

That’s all for now. Mainly because I know that nothing I post here will ever be appreciated.

• Peace,

• Jack Lhasa

• @exoteric

• jlhasa.eth

• https://ko-fi.com/jacklhasa

• 
  

  Building Realities with Jack Lhasa | Substack

  Jack, Dave, and a ton of guests giving you the best of modern writing, in new and different ways, every day! Click to read Building Realities with Jack Lhasa, a Substack publication. Launched 6 months ago.

  https://exoteric1.substack.com

  
• 
  

  https://www.worldanvil.com/w/moonshadow-exoteric

The truth? The only person who gets to have a voice is a bitchy old man, who’s closer to a heart attack than a sentence that makes sense. Calling people guilty doesn’t make the guilty. It’s actually the opposite, because now you’re threatening a bystander. Without any reason.

Free speech is always what matters. It is the single most important piece of writing in history. Without it, we all die. And no one can say a word

It became rather long, so I moved it here and put a link in its place.

*****

The timeline of literary devices is absolutely fascinating. Looking at the oldest known examples of concepts that we now take for granted.

Many texts that claim to date back to 500+ BCE (the further back, the more it becomes clear that language developed quite slowly at first, but then, spread quickly) show that the Concept of I wasn't yet understood. We simply could not write something from the 1st person perspective. Why? It's a heavy concept. Narration is what movies all stories. The narrator may write from a large number of viewpoints, the historical gap between the tale and the narrator, the voice, or perspective. The narrative tense develops even closer to modern times, and its focus is on the conjugation of verbs. I’ve known several writers who learned English as a second language, and many of them come to blocks in learning that have to do with the tense , because the narrator’s conjugation is a foreign idea.

To illustrate this a bit, I did a pass for a man in Western Europe(I didn’t ask for further detail) whose English was quite good, when spoken. When editing as I read, I would have to correct the narrative tense every few sentences. In English Composition, it is extra important that the narrative tense of a document remain the same. There are exceptions to this, and there are manuscripts that are divided in such a way, changing focus as a pivot, and a few other examples of when it’s okay to change tense.

The narrator as both the storyteller and protagonist comes along before, as papyrus use spreads and writing therefore, begins to develop and evolve more quickly. The narrator being the speaker, and removing the audience is what we called the first person perspective.

It was handled differently depending on where on the globe we look. One school of thought is that for a long time, anything written was limited to the bare minimum. Etching in stone ain't easy.

At roughly this same time time, Hammurabi is credited for the first codified system of law. Most scribes were priests, the two endeavors dovetail nicely. The religious viewed written language as a direct gift from the gods. In such a deeply literal setting, they could only imagine a story from a rather Top-Down style.

There’s some inclination to the idea that the first to put forth a manuscript in the first person were possibly treated as heretics by the most widespread beliefs of the time. It is good to note, however, the idea of heresy was a much later development.

Hersey is a very nuanced action, with numerous different definitions depending upon the writer and the reader. This would come much closer to present.

Over the last millennia is when in Western culture, the most interesting bits all come into play, either rather quickly in succession, or at basically the same time.

These concepts involve Omniscient narrators, multiple narrators, close or limited third-person, story structure, protagonists and antagonists, setting, past tense, present tense,future tense, stream of thought, or flow state writing, and, Hero’s Journey, archetypes, voice overs, pacing, unreliable narrators.(not all encompassing)

Indigenous communities that we can still witness, as well as other animistic societies of the past often shared their oral tradition through a multi-layered narrative, with planned, but often changing narrators. These occasions were special in the they involved members whose community roles were different, and in the way that the stories survived and changed down the line, as they changed each time told.

The past tense is the most common, present tense, and then future. Past tense is used to convey things currently taking place. The present tense is almost exclusively used when the narrator recalls a past event, memory, or dream. The future tense is rare to encounter. It takes place in a future which occurs after the narrator’s present tense. The tone of future tense is that which can give the work an unspoken eerie feeling. Its inclusion at all implies the narrator may be capable of foresight, or is privy to particular information of a future time. Prophetic works play with the future tense, but it’s a balancing act.

The most easily found examples of the advanced concepts mentioned here originate in Greek or Roman, Sanskrit, and later in Latin, and the Romance languages.

Tip If You Enjoyed This

The Information in this article draws from my own personal knowledge and perspective. Some of these concepts are still widely debated. This does not include cultures outside of what is commonly referred to as Western. I am aware of the many cultures that are without mention. This is not a personal choice based on merit or comparison. It is simply the knowledge I possess, in the straightest of possible lines. If readers would like to share stories of relevance regarding storytelling or literature not told here, they are welcome to comment and share with us all.

• Jack Lhasa
  

MY OPINION

Personally, I've never seen anthologies as good moves for marketing. Even 30 years ago in print. Anthologies took me much longer to read than any other book if the same size. I'd read one story, turn to the next page, and stop to think if I had time to finish it. It just lead to a slower process overall. Each new story had a new pace and rhythm, another hiccup, and the best authors rarely contribute to anthologies.

In the used book store, anthologies were priced for nickels and dimes. If they were more expensive they'd just pile up.

I've published either 2 short stories min. To 1 novel length piece a year since 2007. From 1996-2006, I published a lot more often, much of it poetry, some teasers(often I was the ghost), or a short story to novella length from 2000-2006. (Grad HS 01. MA 07).

I never even considered submitting to an anthology, aside from a couple of poetry anthologies edited by associates. The short stories I sold were entirely to the magazine market.

The horrible, viscous, bloody, and sloooow death of the magazine has changed publishing more than digital media, I think. Personally.

Print magazines barely exist. Digital magazines price themselves too highly. And it shows. Websites, blogs, and sites like this tried to fill the role magazines one did, but progress was awkward, unreliable, and often impossible to read past ads.

Substack is different. As long as releases maintain the quality:content ratio and balance cost & bulk, substack works. However, it only seems to do this for individuals publishing themselves, or very small teams, if they maintain more than one newsletter.

This was in response to a publishing company analyzing the current market before releasing a single publication.

This link is to the original post.

https://substack.com/@exoteric1/note/c-135031396?r=4y4usq&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

• Jack Lhasa

Rin is my favorite character to redraw with tiny variations and palette swaps!

1credit. (About $0.10 USD). 100 available!

https://popset.xyz/post/8238

• Jack Lhasa

• Building Realities Images

I’ve recently started using Substack again. Now you can find my newsletter and posts there! Check it out here!

Right now you can sign up for free! It’s called “Building Realities with Jack Lhasa” and it’s once a week, so your inbox won’t get all clogged up. The focus is on worldbuilding. I’ll be sharing my techniques, talking about people who built amazing worlds, and soon, readers will be getting the first look at my enormous collaborative world.

Currently there is a news letter, a chat room, plus Notes, and the first piece sad of my experience. Only 2 newsletters so far, but after a month, they move to the archive, where you’ll need a paid subscription. Also, the newsletter will occasionally have optional writing exercises, which you can share with the chat if you life. Feedback upon request.

So far, it’s almost entirely my content, however, my friends Dave and Luke deserve some credit. Both will be more involved as we move forward, and I hope that some of you will want to use my setting for your own stories. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, contact me!

The world in Moonshadow(name not final) is actually a moon about half the size of Earth. It is full of all kinds of life, and it orbits an ice giant. It has never had contact with humans, and it never will.

So, you should go to Substack, and sign up for the newsletter! There’s also live chat and a running feed to discuss this project, worldbuilding, or writing in general.

thanks!

Jack Lhasa

I leave only a link, if I think for much longer, I won’t be able to stand up again.

https://apple.news/APOl1f1VVTViaMGvOzElbyA

https://apple.news/APOl1f1VVTViaMGvOzElbyA

I just can’t. Not anymore.

FUCK YOU TRUMP SLUTS. YOU’VE GIVEN UP EVERYTHING THAT YOU WERE TAUGHT TO BE SO A PISSY, VENGEFUL OLD MAN GOT TO LAUGH AT COLLEGE STUDENTS AND OTHER PEACEFUL AMERICANS WERE TREATED AS CRIMINALS.

It didn’t have to come to this. If you never spoke up in the previous decade, then you let this happen. If you voted for this to happen, you never had the guts to be American anyway.

• jl

probably a very long vacay for me….

I know a lot of you out there have been waiting for me to finish a full-scale project(of like, any kind) for a long time.

The original Exoteric project didn’t get much past concept and was about super advanced Virtual Reality.

I ditched it for a game world that marinated in it. “Only Shadow” was born. Now, Only Shadow had a fair share of readers and NFT collectors. I’ve been hoping to throw all the material from Only Shadow into an ebook, and offer it by NFT, but also in one or more ebook store formats. I am still planning to do this, but as most of you know, my health has been a real issue for almost a year now.

My health slows me down to a crawl. I rarely have the energy to keep up with social media, let alone create new material of the caliber I’m aiming for.

In December 2024, I announced the end of ‘Only Shadow,’ and my intention to do something that could be truly unique. Moonshadow was the code name I put on this new material. It’s still the name I use, but it’s become very large scale, and will be even more so before launch.

Until this project is completed, I’m offering art for the creation process(but not anything that’d be accurate in the full release) in the form of NFTs on a number of platforms. Links will be posted here when they happen.

I began working on this in December 2024, and I’ve done some of my best work here. I think the full scale setting is going to be unlike anything else out there. It is certainly unlike anything I’ve ever attempted. I cut out anything that feels like it’s derivative of stereotypical as soon as I see it.

Moonshadow is a world of fantasy, with SciFi elements. I’ve spent hours and hours checking my descriptions with realistically plausible scientific elements. The world has a place in its solar system that’s not like any we’ve had a good look at here. So, I’ve developed the look and feel of the setting to include pure science, with far less speculation. However, the further we get from earth, the more speculative everything gets.

This project is going to be something that people are drawn to. It is on the level of something that calls to readers. In designing this setting, I’ve left a large area of openness, which will allow others to write within this setting, create art from it, any kind of media, really.

So, for now, just keep an eye on my words, and I’ll continue releasing material, airdropping free material to people who’ve joined the whitelist, and more.

• Jack Lhasa

• exoteric

This is a simple story about a simple transaction.

I was at the gas station, ready to buy a drink, when they told me their card machine was down and they could only take cash. I started to put my stuff back, when the person behind me offered to pay for my drink.

I thanked him, and on the way out he said, “One love, man. Pay it forward.”

A genuinely decent person in a world that has only been getting darker recently. An inspiration where there is usually none.

• Jack Lhasa

• jlhasa.eth