(no subject)

Whenever I write an unreliable narrator, I always find myself wondering if I should warn the readers in the headers that the narrator is unreliable. Especially when it's a subtle sort of unreliability.

In related news, Rin is going to disown me for this fic.

The Internets are Cool

Cool things I am into: Kickstarter and Kiva.

Kickstarter is a funding project/platform for creative types. Basically, you put up a project with a tangible goal and a specific bottom-line (opening a butcher's shop, issuing a print run of a short story contest winners collection, doing a documentary, whatever). You provide various gifts to backers who provide x amounts of money (such and such at $5, such and such at $25, such and such at $500, whatever intervals you like), then you advertise and try to get people to pledge to support your project. You've got anywhere between 1-90 days, depending on what you pick, to make the goal. If you do, you get the money and it's your job to complete the project and get the backers their promised gifts. If you don't, well, no money and the backers' credit cards don't get billed. Pretty cool.

I'm backing about two or three different things right now, but two of them are pretty far out on their deadlines. However, this one is only ten days away and only 50% funded. It's a project to fund another five months of weekly issues for an indie-scene New Orleans, LA 'zine. That being my hometown, I definitely want to support it.

Kiva is a charity micro-lending site. It connects donors with various entrepreneurs around the world. You lend a minimum of $25 to a particular person/project. If it gets fully funded, they will slowly pay you back while they use your money to improve their lives. If it's not fully funded, you get the money back. In both cases, it comes back as Kiva Credit rather than cash, which you can use to donate to someone else. Very cool.

I've got about $75 in the system right now, and I've been a member for about a year now. I tend to focus on female entrepreneurs for various personal reasons, with a lot of my loans going into Africa and South America.