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I've Joined The Creator Accountability Network

I've joined the Creator Accountability Network (CAN) as a provisionally credentialed creator! The provisional period is three months long, and at the end of that time I'll be fully credentialed if nothing disqualifying comes to light.  I'll be excerpting details from their website as the best way to explain what this is and what it means for me as a content creator and for you as readers and audience members. The short version is that I've undergone ethics training as part of the credentialing process, and that if you feel my actions have harmed you (now or in the future), you can report harassment, abuse, or other harm to CAN. Quotes in the rest of this post are from CAN's website as of August 16th, 2025. Here's the long version: From CAN's mission and purpose statements:  "The Creator Accountability Network empowers Community Members to build trust with Content Creators through ethical training and credentialing, victim-centered reporting of unethical...

Salamandastron by Brian Jacques (Redwall, #5)

Salamandastron by Brian Jacques is a story of parents and children, legacy, siege, battle, epidemic, and feasting. It’s about passing the torch. A good introduction to Redwall (almost any book will work) but can also stand solo if you just want a good story.

Reading Salamandastron, I love the Redwall books, but now I know a little about the historical and current discrimination against Scots as a language and against the Scottish in the UK, passages with comments of not understanding “Northern” speech of the falcons and eagles are concerning. It’s not subtle, it happens several times that MacPhearsome or Rocangus or Laird Mactalon say something that seems to me (as an American) understandable but very Scottish and then someone declares they didn’t understand the bird at all, but everybeast understands the moles with no trouble. I love the work that went into conveying all the dialects onto the page, it just reads strangely now to have someone keep commenting one how hard it is to understand this particular accent, especially when in the real world it isn’t just an accent, it’s a separate language that has shared roots with English. If we’re lucky enough to have Scottish listeners I’d love some feedback about this issue if you’ve read Brian Jacques’s work.

I like the contrasts between different parent/child pairs in this book. We have Urthstripe and Mara, Ferhago and Klitch, Log-a-log and Nordo, Laird Mactalon and Rocangus, and Loambudd and Urthwyte. All their relationship dynamics are unique and shown pretty well, and it feels like a thematic decision in this particular book.

CW for murder, massacre, plague, death.

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