[prettyflyforajeskai]

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I couldn’t resist

[liberty-outlaw]

I knew exactly what I was in for but that didn’t stop me from absolutely losing it

[starwarsheritageposts]

star wars heritage post

[valoisfulcanellideux]

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

It's interesting that the member of Bells Hells most vocally sympathetic to Liliana last episode wasn't Imogen, but Laudna. Imogen of course loves her mother and wants to believe the best of her, but her repeat experiences of reaching out to her and getting nothing but cult rhetoric and vague reassurances have left her jaded to the idea that her mother could ever truly change even if she helps them

But Laudna extends sympathy to Liliana, saying she understands what it's like to be a person designed by a force outside oneself and at the mercy of their designs and whims. And I do think Laudna understands what that feels like! It's a pretty apt description of her relationship with Delilah as she perceives it. But I'm doubtful of how accurately it describes Liliana and the other Ruidusborn's relationship with Predathos, especially since we know from Imogen's role in the story that they can resist, they can fight back, and they can choose not to follow the siren's song of Ruidus. But I think Laudna sees enough of her own story in Liliana, and is lacking enough in emotional maturity, that she's drawing a one-to-one comparison where it doesn't really exist

What makes this especially interesting/odd is that there are characters in all this that do have a fairly equivalent experience to Laudna: Derrig and Will. The people killed for convenience as part of a larger plot that they were in no way involved in; murdered as a simple means to an end. But it's a woman that's part of the group that perpetrated that violence that Laudna chooses to relate to

[enki2]

[paper-mario-wiki]

"south dakota" is the only state with 2 words making up its name

[rubensmuse]

[specialagentartemis]

ngl I keep forgetting that Hobby Lobby is a real store that people go to. That people actually think of it as a craft store and not as a crazy Christian mass artifact smuggler. I google "Hobby Lobby" and get a page full of results that make me go "wtf is this craft supplies and operating hours shit, I thought we all knew this place for smuggling looted cuneiform tablets out of Iraq"

[specialagentartemis]

#sorry what??? #I knew them as the store with the Christian right wing owners that refused to pay for employee birth control as part of health insurance #what is this about cuneiform tablet looting

They are also that! And it comes from the same place.

Since 2009, the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby started taking advantage of the wars in Iraq to buy stolen and looted cuneiform tablets and clay artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia. A lot of them were suspected to have been stolen from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in the chaos of the US invasion in 2003. The Hobby Lobby owners used HL profits to smuggle these artifacts into the US (taking them out of Iraq is illegal so they listed them as tile samples from Turkey and Israel, more friendly nations to the US). Eventually the customs officials seized them, and the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2017 when the news really broke about just how many ancient Middle Eastern artifacts were smuggled into the country. They were doing this to stock their "Museum of the Bible" that purports to prove the literal truth of the Bible... using stolen Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, somehow. Idk.

They also had sixteen Dead Sea Scrolls that turned out to be forgeries but that's only tangentially related.

Hobby Lobby and its owners were fined and ordered to return, again, thousands of artifacts back to Iraq. For years they KEPT finding more artifacts of Hobby Lobby's that turned out to be stolen, looted, and smuggled. It's one of the biggest artifact smuggling scandals in recent history. And it separated artifacts from their context and permanently damaged the ability to learn new things from them, even though archaeologists subsequently have been trying.

The court case was called "United States v. Approximately Four Hundred and Fifty Cuneiform Tablets."

[sleepy-vix]

libraries are actually so so cool like seriously theres free wifi and free books and free computer usage and free seating and free shelter and free aircon ??? how could you not like the library

[omgpoindexter]

the chances of a nurseydex mention on ngozi’s twitter are low but never zero

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

Speaking of books it's been a while since I've seen one of these posts going around & I'm curious so everyone could you tell me what you are reading rn in the tags please

[pixiegeldof]

CHAPPELL ROAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY KIRT BARNETT FOR POLYESTER ZINE

[dinerva]

“in the comics” is such a great phrase you can lie about anything and no one will check. in the comics wonder woman has on panel passionate lesbian sex with cheetah

[screebyy]

i enter the saloon. i offer my beloved an unwrapped lump of goat cheese that has been in my pocket for 3 weeks. i bleed out on the floor.

[the-crone]

My new bread pans make the most... Symmetrical loaves & they scare me kinda

[the-crone]

THE TAURUSES ARE BULLYING ME!!!!!

[btfreek]

I’m terribly sorry and I’m sure I’m not the first to point it out but this is like the fifth time I’ve seen this on my dash and it’s driving me nuts bc the bread is clearly a 4x4, not a 2x4

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

Since it doesn’t have any grain it looks like a 4x4 MDF which is so incredibly cursed

[juh-was-deactivated19691231-dea]

if it doesn’t have any grain then what’s it made out of 🤔🤔

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

oh my god fuck off

[beggars-opera]

It’s fun to ride on the M B T A

(the train is half an hour late)

[shakespearerants]

My favourite Eliot Spencer character trait is Friend-shaped To Children. Nate can't look at children without crying. Sophie is politely baffled at the concept of Humans Who Don't Understand Complicated Psychological Concepts Because They Are Literally 6 Years Old. Hardison has older brother energy, which is to say children are comfortable in his presence but they don't actively seek him out, unless of course to play an epic prank akin to the great tradition of Ring and Ditch or Spell ICUP. Parker will try to protect any child she can, but under-12s without autistic criminal intent don't really connect with her, unless of course they are Traumatized™.

Eliot Spencer is continuously sought out by children of all ages. Traumatized or not? Does not matter. Literally baby or cool teen? Does not matter. They will come up to him while he is glaring daggers or actively planning to murder someone and ask him to hold their hands through the security check at the airport. And you know what? He does. He holds their hand every single time.

[miss-holloways]

Say what you will about redemption but the character premises for the two new leads absolutely slap. "Hardison's 20 year old hacker little sister who grew up with the highlight reel of leverage decides to join and learns the gritty details that were left out of storytime" and "guy who would probably be a mark under different circumstances decides to Do Better and get kidnapped into the team about it" are both objectively funky ideas.

[erisenyo]

Having thoughts about how Toph found people at the Earth Rumble who treated her as an equal and respected her for her skill and listened to her. How she became the Blind Bandit there and the first people to ever take her seriously were The Gecko and Fire Nation Man and the others.

And then she joins the Gaang, people who also treat her as an equal and respect her skill and listen to her, and she starts calling them Twinkle Toes and Snoozles and Sugar Queen and Captain Boomerang.

She's giving them stage names. Because gaining her stage name was the most empowering thing that happened to her up to that point. Because stage names are earned. Because the people who were kindest to her in her life (by treating her how she wanted to be treated) were people who went by things like The Boulder.

[aenramsden]

#having thoughts about this little chaos gremlin and all the ways she shows affection in non traditional ways