aelstra

🇵🇸 i will always stand with human rights // tired writer & full time student // this is mainly a blog about writing // i talk about books on @out-of-the-forest-i-come // she/her // aelstra on ao3

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

#know your fandom history

[writer-woes-and-woahs]

For characters with a strong emotional bond: What could make them hate each other? What could make either of them go against their ideals just to hurt the other?

For characters who would like nothing more than to kill each other: What could make them work together? What could make either of them sacrifice themselves and everything they were fighting for to save the other?

[zedd-undead]

Whumper and Whumpee who are on the same team. Whumper will provoke whumpee until they snap and then go cry to the rest of the team so that Whumpee develops a reputation for having a temper and being emotionally volatile. Now everytime they express something they’re dismissed.

So when Whumper starts causing real damage; starts crossing lines and escalating past verbal altercations, starts showing up at Whumpees house after fights so they can ‘finish things properly’. Until they start threatening Whumpees position on the team, saying that if they tell anyone about the little predicament Whumpee is in, they’ll tell everyone that Whumpee is the one threatening Whumper.

What’s worse? They recorded a video of Whumpee snapping after a particularly bad fight, snowing Whumpee cursing, threatening, and snapping at Whumper. Of course, the earlier footage, of Whumper beating the daylights out of Whumpee is all conveniently edited out.

[elierlick]

Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.

[lucieslucidity]

post so nice had to reblog it twice and force it down everyone's throats

[fleshengine]

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

We gotta fix that.

[hagiomoto]

Yeah, it’s incredibly annoying that the average American only seems to care about ICE now that it’s finally affecting white Americans. But we, non-Americans still have to pay attention, because the reality is that governments around the world are rolling out harsh, more reactionary policies against immigrants and refugees. They're watching this, taking notes and placing orders (with Israeli-linked firms) too. It is happening right now.

How your countries treat refugees? Did you know? You should know.

[queenfreakhudsonwilliams]

i keep seeing canadians say shit like "the only ice my government supports is hockey" not true! there are five ICE headquarters in canada. we are bringing in harsher anti trans and immigration laws. edmonton police killed someone this month. Starlight tours are still happening. 50% of kids in foster care are Indigenous. and im not even going to touch Danielle Smith and Doug Ford. we are on the same path, we just do it quieter. call your MP and tell them to stop bill c-15, divest from guardaworld and hootsuite, and fund aish and healthcare!

[queeranarchism]

Europe has been deliberately drowning refugees and 'pushing them back' to regimes paid to imprison refugees so they don't reach the EU for DECADES now and it's only getting worse. Our cops murder and face no consequences. Our refugee centers serve moldy food and don't provide basic hygiene, beds and blankets. We imprison kids. What you're seeing in the US is all here, just better hidden.

[dykepuffs]

Oh god, I have possibly realised that the reason that people think of Europe as "Not having ICE" is because ours doesn't have a single snappy name, because in each individual EU country (And also EFTA countries and the UK) calls their border screws a different name, and then the very American idea of interdepartmental rivalry assumes that they don't work together hand in glove...

[queeranarchism]

idk, Europe is also just better at the propaganda and at hiding their cruelty from view. The name 'Frontex' should be well known and should inspire the same rage and revulsion as 'ICE' but most people don't know who they are and what they do.

[sagegarnish]

🦀 Kudos Crab 🦀

If you are scrolling and see Kudos Crab, your fics will be blessed!

You will get good comments and kudos!

You will beat your writers block!

GO AND WRITE!

[saywhat-politics]

CALL YOUR SENATORS!!!

[reading-writing-revolution]

[mtg-talk]

I don't usually make political posts on here but please call your senator if you're in the USA.

[attenashe-deactivated20190606]

things that always make me happy: serial commenters. there are three types

1) reading a longfic chapter by chapter, leaving an increasingly emotional comment on every chapter, descends into keysmashes near the end: outstanding

2) read one fic by accident, clicked the author name, now working steadily through the backlog and commenting on everything, I wake up to an AO3 inbox full of enthusiasm: precious beyond words

3) the longterm serial commenter whose comment begins with I don’t even know this fandom but because they have followed me from somewhere else: stunning. humbling. magical.

[fineillsignup]

these are all *chef’s kiss* and I want to add one more: 4) left a comment a while ago, comes back and leaves another comment on the same fic, telling you that they’re coming back to reread the fic: angels. blessings. lifesavers.

[animentality]

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[chaifootsteps]

#Please little bird

[meriwetherwrites]

I love that the modern-day tumblr post equivalent of chain emails only requires me to reblog a relatively pleasant image instead of forward an email to a bunch of my friends and family members to quell my raging anxiety.

[nightguardmod]

It’s a win win. I get a bit of hope, you get a cute birb photo

[the-haiku-bot]

It’s a win win. I

get a bit of hope, you get

a cute birb photo

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[roben-like-me]

What the fuck is a kudos ratio??? Kudos are for the authors to know you enjoyed their work not for people to automatically discredit a fic because the “hits to kudos” ratio is “off”?????

The commercialisation of fics is truly destroying fandom culture

[feychild1225]

Once again a reminder that there is only one kudo per fic but if people are rereading or coming back for multiple chapters the hit rate can be up there. Judging a fic by some mythological kudo to hits ratio is the worst way to find good fics to read.

[maryellencarter]

Hits to *bookmarks* oddly seems to be a lot more balanced even though you also get only one bookmark per fic? But presumably if you're bookmarking a fic it's also one you're rereading a lot, where most people (me included) will kudos pretty much any fic we enjoyed enough to finish.

[grumfy]

yeah actually we removed the big bad wolf from the little red riding hood story because portraying violence against minors is really messed up. yeah. yeah also the wolf narrative was really predatory and had had some icky grooming vibes and a fable meant for literal children shouldn’t have implied p*do shit and grape so now little red riding hood goes into the woods and nothing happens and she goes to grandma’s house. don’t worry our kids will still stick to the path and know not to follow to wolves implicitly because we told them to and children should always do as their told. just like little red riding hood does now.

[cordezshenanigans]

I literally played The Wolf in the musical Into The Woods in college and one woman started saying weird shit about me because she thought I was playing the role "a little too well"

Luckily, the director was sane, and when he heard about that he pulled her aside and was like "girl he's supposed to play the role well. That's the fucking point"

And meanwhile, the girl who was playing Little Red was actually glad, even relieved, when she saw I was cast as The Wolf, because we knew each other and she felt safe with me and trusted that I wouldn't use the scene as an excuse to actually creep on her

All that to say, there really are people out there who will read Little Red Riding Hood, or even sign up to participate in an adaptation of the story, and go "ummm The Wolf is kind of problematic"

[24hrsoda]

dick grayson spend his entire childhood as an only child. i hate the “oldest sibling forced to grow up and parents his younger siblings” woobification. i hate the “eldest daughter” bullshit.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.

If you're an author, please use this database to see if you could qualify for that sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

I have never ever ever in my life asked someone to blaze my posts.

But if you want to throw me some pennies blaze this. I want ALL OF THE AUTHORS to know that they have the opportunities to get some sweet sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

Like to charge. Reblog to cast that Anthropic will have to pay out the ass.

-fae

[gothiccharmschool]

Oh look, my book is in there. GIVE ME MONEY.

[elodieunderglass]

Interestingly, I reblogged this thinking it might be interesting for my followers - but as I’m not an author I didn’t think further.

Then I did think for a second. I realised I had fallen into the classic tumblr trap of believing that Authorship Equals Fantasy Fiction Writer. It’s amazing how that gets into your own head.

I went back and found a clutch of my scientific papers on there.

Not something that’s worth me pursuing any farther - and a lot of those works are very openly open access, and so they are honestly the exact sort of content that SHOULD be used to train responsible models. But worth remembering that it’s very common on tumblr to think of all writing as, like, genre fiction, and there are other types of writing too.

[cassolotl]

“First of its kind” AI settlement: Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion

Settlement shows AI companies can face consequences for pirated training data.

Authors revealed today that Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion and destroy all copies of the books the AI company pirated to train its artificial intelligence models. In a press release provided to Ars, the authors confirmed that the settlement is "believed to be the largest publicly reported recovery in the history of US copyright litigation." Covering 500,000 works that Anthropic pirated for AI training, if a court approves the settlement, each author will receive $3,000 per work that Anthropic stole. "Depending on the number of claims submitted, the final figure per work could be higher," the press release noted.

each author will receive $3,000 per work

[henshengs]

Tbh I think fandom generally needs to get better at sitting with the uncomfortable fact that a story/fanwork/meme/whatever can hurt one person and help another

[sensicalabsurdities]

This is why I think “tag warning” culture is kinder and more constructive than cancel culture / “no problematic content” culture. One size does not fit all, but if we learn to be more aware of the fact that the same thing can be emotionally validating or cathartic to one person and upsetting to another, and pick up a general mindset of thinking before we post, “what might people need a heads up for in this content?”, we grow more compassionate, more thoughtful, and more understanding of the differences in people’s experiences.

[cozysafechaotic]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[levitatingbiscuits]

do you think ma and pa kent had to pretend to be antivaxxers so that they wouldn't have to explain why their son of steel keeps breaking the syringes. do you think they still flee in shame every time they run into smallville's only pediatrician at church or the farmers market so they dont have to explain why their boy still hasnt had a tetanus shot even though he regularly works around farm equipment. do you think the town vet wonders why the kents give their various farm animals shots when necessary but not their only son. do you think it keeps them up at night.

[dc-comics-heritage-posts]

dc comics heritage post