• It’s been a year since this groundbreaking interactive web comic ended. Let Gita Jackson tell you about Homestuck. For me, Homestuck led to my first big reporting win—my first time appearing in CNN, one of my best-known Daily Dot articles, and the first time I was listed as a source on a Wikipedia article.
• This weekend is the Small Press Expo, one of DC’s smaller, weirder comic cons. I go to find indie work I’ve never heard of before. I wrote about it once for Forbes (back when I had a lot less editorial control over what my articles were titled).
• I don’t run into people using the word “trap” maliciously (because I don’t associate with people like that). Instead, I see this word used all the time by people who have no idea that it’s a slur. Here’s why we should all quit using this word.
• I recently had one of the most difficult interviews of my career with Kore Yamazaki, author of The Ancient Magus Bride. Like many creators who have dealt with criticism, Yamazaki speaks in a careful, practiced neutrality. But Tony gleaned something from this interview that I didn’t see, when Yamazaki spoke about meeting her fans.
• Speaking of criticism, the irony of sending death threats to the Death Note director is not lost on me, but it’s an absolutely awful way to spend your time. At least it helped me set up a Boku no Pico joke.
• I love the Book Smugglers, two bookworms turned short fiction publishers, and they’re working on their first Kickstarter. They just published a post about lessons learned and the unexpected perks about turning a love of books into a company.
• I’m listening to 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back, a podcast by famed film critics Conor Lastowka and Michael J. Nelson, and it’s a hilarious skewering of Ready Player One.

Art by Gina Chacon (Tumblr, Twitter)