-

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[cawcky-musings]

I'm about to piss off a lot of people, but fuck it. Random acts of kindness are largely worthless in the grand scheme of things. The brutal truth is that kindness without strategy is emotional masturbation. It feels good for a moment, but creates nothing lasting. When was the last time someone's random kindness fundamentally changed how you saw them? Now, when was the last time you were blown away by someone who showed up with exactly the support you needed precisely when you needed it most? That second person understands calculated kindness.

-The Art of Calculated Kindness: Machiavelli's Hidden Weapon

[cawcky-musings]

Isn't all this just emotional manipulation? It's a fair question, and the answer depends entirely on your intention. If your goal is to exploit others for personal gain, with no concern for their well-being, then yes - that's manipulation, not calculated kindness. But if your intention is to create win/win scenarios, to make your kindness more effective, to ensure your compassion actually accomplishes something positive, that's strategy, not manipulation. Manipulation seeks to control others against their interests. Calculated kindness seeks to influence outcomes for mutual benefit. The most ethical people aren't those who refuse to think strategically about their kindness. The most ethical are those who ensure their kindness actually works. Because, let's confront another uncomfortable truth. Ineffective kindness is often more about making yourself feel good than genuinely helping others.

-The Art of Calculated Kindness: Machiavelli's Hidden Weapon

[cawcky-musings]

Respect emerges from compassion backed by boundaries, not endless accommodation.

-The Art of Calculated Kindness: Machiavelli's Hidden Weapon

[fea-resources]

I Am A Chronological Roleplayer

I largely prefer and feel more comfortable with interactions and threads that happen on a fairly consistent timeline. Some people like to just do a billion little self-contained one-shot RPs, but I prefer to build actual lasting dynamics between characters that evolve over time. Part of that is limiting threads and making those threads actually carry meaning, but part of that is also not doing a lot of interactions "out of order" or starting a lot of "dead-end" threads that lead to nowhere or fizzle out halfway through, just to drop and start new things without seeing any prior developments through to some kind of conclusion.

So many times I've had multiple interactions with people that felt disjointed from one another and clumsy, where a development of character or relationship would happen in one thread that's supposed to be earlier in time than events in another, but the events of that "past" timeline thread would have drastically shifted the way my muse responded and behaved in a "future" timeline thread. Or alternatively, another "past" thread was heading towards certain developments, but the conclusion of those developments was never reached, left hanging in limbo.

And listen, I get it. Inspiration fluctuates sometimes where you just have muse for one interaction and not another. Some people don't care about building an ongoing storyline with certain muses and are fine with a million little threads that all feel like little self-contained AUs of each other. There's nothing wrong with that, and this isn't about guilting people when they'd like to continue a certain interaction but the inspiration just ran dry. To each their own style of play.

Its just not for me.

I like my threads to be building blocks of each other, where what happens in them actually matters and can be referenced back to in future interactions in some way.

I like to be able to write interactions where I can point and say "due to developments that happened with this specific version of that particular interpretation of a muse, this is how things would uniquely play out in this thread, these are the unique doors that are opened up because of those past interactions", because that's how actual organic interactions between people work. Different events that happen between people shapes how they interact.

It feels awkward and immersion-breaking having a bunch of disjointed timelines where the events happening in each thread have no impact on each other, or I'm suddenly having to scramble to shoehorn in an important and behavior-altering event that only recently happened in one thread, but is supposed to be in the "past" of another thread, where my muse is acting differently as if they have total amnesia of these events.

This doesn't mean never doing threads out of a particular order, or never dropping threads if they're just not really vibing, or never retconning certain things when they don't feel comfortable or meaningful, or that you can't ever discuss or play out certain "past" interactions that would change things after it should have been important.

It just means being a little more selective and thoughtful about the interactions that do happen, not just starting a million-and-one threads that never get finished, and using those interactions as a spring-board to build off of each other as you keep throwing specific characters together.

Each writer has a specific style of writing and interactions they thrive with. My style is to have unique and meaningful, long-lasting developments between characters that actually stick and mean something farther than the boundaries of one self-contained thread. For that to actually happen and feel rewarding to me, there needs to be some sort of timeline coherency where each interaction holds actual impact, and for that to realistically happen, its always preferred that interactions happen in at least some vague semblance of "in order" of each other.

[maxkirin]

So, let me guess– you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.

It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?

I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.

((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))

Want more writerly content? Follow maxkirin.tumblr.com!

[studyquill]

Word Counter - Not only does it count the number of words you’ve written, it tells you which words are used most often and how many times they appear.

Tip Of My Tongue - Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t figure out what it is? This site searches words by letters, length, definition, and more to alleviate that.

Readability Score - This calculates a multitude of text statistics, including character, syllable, word, and sentence count, characters and syllables per word, words per sentence, and average grade level.

Writer’s Block (Desktop Application) - This free application for your computer will block out everything on your computer until you meet a certain word count or spend a certain amount of time writing.

Cliche Finder - It does what the name says.

Write Rhymes - It’ll find rhymes for words as you write.

Verbix - This site conjugates verbs, because English is a weird language.

Graviax - This grammar checker is much more comprehensive than Microsoft Word, again, because English is a weird language.

Sorry for how short this is! I wanted to only include things I genuinely find useful. p>

[fea-resources]

I think that as long as we respect and value the actual muns behind the screen, we as roleplayers should be comfortable with characters being wrong, and yeah sometimes they grow and learn, but sometimes they also just continue being wrong about certain things and continue to believe their own internal narratives without writer intervention to force them to see the error of their ways and their wrong-think and that's okay. Yes, even some of the bad, ugly, stupid, or just plain immoral internal narratives. Destroy the idea that all of your fictional barbie dolls have to be sanitized and palatable to be worth writing or interacting with. Doing so just reduces them down to a sterile, boring caricature appealing to shallow puritanical echo-chamber propaganda pieces instead of a 3-dimensional imperfect person who genuinely believes their view is the correct one and they're not going to change it (or at least not easily). They're fictional. They're not killing anyone. Have a little fun with it. It's not your job to make your character a narrative mouth-piece of teaching other people how to have a moral compass. Its also not a requirement of you as the writer to always have your character get things right about or only ever think nice, fluffy things about other peoples' characters even if you as the writer know the correct answers. Just get comfortable with your muses being wrong and if it makes sense for that character and the circumstances, go ahead and keep driving it home how much they still believe they're right even when they couldn't be more wrong.

[fea-resources]

Matching Length vs Matching Effort

Commonly in the RPC you have two sides of what is essentially the same coin.

On one side, you have people who struggle with the anxiety that they're not giving enough in a reply (and some aren't, but we'll get to that in a moment). Typically, these are the same people who will insist you don't have to match length with them, so long as the effort is there.

On another side, you have people who are not only not matching post length, but they're not matching effort. People who just suck all the fun out of interactions because they're not really trying, they're just firing off the most bare-bones, thoughtless mush that took them five seconds to think of.

Generally speaking, it's usually pretty obvious to most experienced roleplayers the difference between someone who is writing short replies that are still effortful and deliberate, and people who just kind of don't care about what content they provide their partners with.

In the vast majority of cases, I've found that most roleplayers fall into the former category. People who are in fact here to give effort.

But anxiety persists that we aren't good enough for our partners, that if we don't match length then we're not trying hard enough, or we aren't as good of a writer, or other people won't like what we have to give.

The fact of the matter is, it really depends.

Length is not the most important thing, and my personal rule of thumb is not "does this post match an arbitrary word count?", but "does this post get across everything that it needs to get across?"

This isn't just about including every little thing I think I need to include and communicate to my partners or my muse. It's also about knowing what and when to omit things towards a narrative purpose.

The fact of the matter is, you can write an entire novel and still give people nothing to work with. You can respond to paragraphs and paragraphs with a single word as a reply, and still be making effort.

That sounds silly, right? But stick with me for a moment, because I'm actually using a real example from an actual roleplay I've done.

I have a writing partner I've known now for almost two decades. We've written basically everything together. We've even contested with each other, just to see what would happen, for who could write the longest single reply while still making sense and allowing easy room for the next person to do something (we both ended up writing replies that were almost 6,000 words each).

I've also given the same partner a single word reply before, after they wrote me several paragraphs.

The post simply read Nothing.

Some people will look at that and immediately nope out. "I would never write a response after that. What am I supposed to do with that? I'd just quit. Clearly the other person doesn't value my effort at all".

But this wasn't laziness or an inability to come up with something more. This was completely deliberate, narrative choice.

Why, you may ask? Because the only thing my scene needed was a single word to move the narration along.

For context, the scene we were playing was a character of mine, who couldn't swim, had fallen overboard on a ship and drowned. My partner's character pulled them out of the water and gave them CPR to try and resuscitate them.

Could I have written paragraphs and paragraphs describing how my character had drowned or was basically functionally dead? Yeah, I could have. But it wouldn't have changed a single thing about what the other person's character did next or moved the plot along any faster. And a whole lot of detailed fluff about my character just lying there, failing to be brought back to life, wouldn't have been as much of a narrative gut-punch as that single word.

Because in that case, the distinct difference in the length of my partner's reply, only to get back a single word, reflected the same feeling in the roleplay scene. All of that effort to save someone's life, and there's just nothing. (The character was saved in the next reply, btw).

Certainly, I don't recommend doing what I did in most roleplay scenarios. This just happened to be one rare case where it was appropriate to break the usual rules.

But that's the thing about Length vs Effort, and even effort itself. Once you understand the rules inside and out, you can also allow yourself to -- by deliberate and appropriate choice -- break them sometimes.

But we're not really here to talk about how to break rules to give the most minimalist replies you can. That example was only there to prove a point that length really doesn't matter, so long as what you've written fits and keeps things moving.

Roleplays are kind of like the tides. Sometimes you have high tide, and sometimes low, but it fluctuates. Some of the best roleplays can dwindle down to single line replies, because the current events of that thread need less detail or more room for input from your partner's character to keep things moving. Sometimes a single line reply can spawn ten paragraphs in reply.

Neither direction means one roleplayer is better or lesser, that one person is putting in more or less effort than the other. There's nothing wrong of course with looking at a reply and asking yourself "Is my reply missing something else that should be there?", and genuinely working on giving the best that you can give, but 10 paragraphs of meaningless fluff just to make your post length bigger is still 10 paragraphs of fluff.

Effort sometimes is about knowing not just when to give more, but when its okay, and even better, to give less.

If the other person gives you ten paragraphs and it makes sense why you'd only give five, that's not a failure on your part, it just means that was exactly the right amount of things that needed to be written, so long as what you wrote is a springboard that carries Meaning.

Once you realize that, really realize it and take it to heart, a lot of the anxiety you have about writing will disappear and writing will become a lot easier and more fun. The other writers who really matter -- and who are probably struggling with the same exact anxiety as you are -- will notice that effort and reciprocate it, no matter whether you're writing one-liners or novella.

[notelvira]

HALT! Do you have sensory issues? Overwhelmed by sound in a messy environment? Desperately wanting to write that essay/fanfiction but your ADHD is getting on the way? In need of atmospheric sound for your tabletop game??

Please let me introduce you to MyNoise.net - a lifesaver on all aspects.

Mynoise provides an incredible index of noise machine generators with personalizing sliders to suit your every taste.

Missing the sound of a lively coffee shop during the pandemic? They have that. That specific, calming noise of a public park in a peaceful afternoon? they have that. Rain sounds? City sounds? Want to fuck around and listen to some uninterrupted Gregorian chants? They have that also!

According to the website:

"myNoise generators cover the whole audible frequency range, from 20Hz to 20kHz, over 10 color-coded sliders. Through a simple but accurate calibration process, all myNoise generators can be shaped to your personal hearing thresholds and compensate for your audio equipment and listening environment deficiencies, including the presence and nature of background noise. Calibration is unique to this website, and makes calibrated noise machines stand out from regular white noise machines. During the calibration process, we are able to measure your personal hearing levels, and adapt our noises accordingly. If you are suffering from age-related hearing, you'll be surprised to hear frequencies you thought were lost."

And that's not all. When I say 'incredible' I really mean it; I've found myself using the website on multiple occasions, for work, creative and stress-related issues, and the variety of machines provided cannot be overstated. You've got animal noises, nature soundscapes, street sounds, meditation aids, melody-based lullabies, magical soundscapes, medieval ambiance, situation specific sounds, white noise generators-- and a lot more!!! They even have noise to block out IRL sounds you don't want to hear.

Just take a brief look at what the index page provides:

There's something for EVERYONE. And it's all for free! It's been for free for years, and it is the creator's wish that it remains accessible to everyone who might need this kind of aid in life. I am using it to write this post right now. Though if you read some of the above index, you may have noticed that the support for the website has been very low lately.

Which brings me to the reason I'm making this post. Mynoise is curated and maintained by a single person:

Please check out the Mynoise Index for yourself, donate if you can, and tell your friends who might be interested ♡

[fea-resources]

Unhinged Discord Commentary As RP Starters Pt. 1

*throws sparkles everywhere* This is how you cheer someone up, right?

There's some places you don't want sparkles.

Shame on the lame.

I didn't run into a wall this time. I ran into the fridge.

How can one go through life never saying words like "sexy" or "sexual". Like, what else would you say? "Intercoursy"? "Intercoursal"?

Okay but where are their NOSES.

Why is that cute? Science explain please.

RABBIT STEW FOR THE RABBIT STEW GOD.

The horse confirmed for a necrophiliac.

Let the bear and horse be together.

Horse x Bear forever.

He's a slut. All you need to know.

Slap a sexy bunny suit on his ass. Go. Live out your dreams.

He's a slut, not a stripper.

*throws a brick* Stay down this time.

Love is like a machine… sometimes you need a good screw to fix it.

Hey good lookin', what's cookin'? Get it? Because I'm an arsonist.

I'd really like to thump your bible.

I'm agnostic but damn I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy.

You'd be surprised how many are curious to taste human flesh.

Well I didn't say he was a slut without talent.

That may be but [Name] just might kill him with embarrassment first.

He never counted on SEX APPEAL. Should've sent a lesbian, not a gay.

Oh, I'm still gonna fuck with your assets. Emphasis on the Ass.

Well that's good. I hear murder is frowned upon.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS PROMISED. SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME OVER.

You tell me. You're the one tryna serenade me to bed and then stab me, ya kinky fuck.

I trusted you! …not sure why since we, like… just met.

CLOSE YOUR EYES SO I CAN KILL YOU.

Are you telling me you don't want adventure, glory, and best of all, FIERY DEATH?

Adventure and glory sound nice but… I don't know about that last part. I'll get back to you on that one.

The answer is "Yes" cuz let's be real, bards only immortalize the ones that die.

In other news I didn't think it was possible to almost choke on a hiccup yet here we are.

"You had accountability issues as a child"… wait, do you actually think I outgrew those?

I probably committed more blasphemy than anyone else in that whole building but damn it was fun.

One day [Name's] gonna hit just the wrong nerve and I'm gonna grab that scarf and strangle them with it.

Let grandpa bemoan his age.

May the salt be with you.

The mosquitos never bother me and everyone asks why and I tell them its because I have too much salt flowing through my veins.

*chugs a whole jar of pickle juice without breaking eye contact*

Consume them. C O N S U M E.

I changed my mind, that's Plan C. We're skipping B.

That was bad and you should feel bad. But I know you won't, so I don't know why I said it.

I've been laying here like a jellyfish on the beach for an hour but sleep is just not happening.

Yes, I had to. I would literally die if I didn't do it. I'd explode. Poof. It'd be awful. [Name] bits everywhere.

Wanna help me shove a slut into a volcano?

Man, I almost didn't have to be a Top for once but SOMEONE. TRIED TO KILL ME.

I would say to stab [Name] but then I remember that he likes it.

I'll bet a dick up the ass that you can't beat me.

Don't fuck where, fuck me.

…thanks. I totally. Feel so much better now. About my impending doom.

Man, it really sucks down here. I pity you, small man.

Small enough to reach places in a time of crisis? Yeah, except in the crisis of reaching the top shelf.

Well I know what rabbits do to anything that holds still long enough. But do continue.

Needs more well-cooked faces.

Now I know why my parents sheltered me.

*confused rabbit squawking*

That may be so but I'm not the one with a thing for the head fucker.

Instruction manual: do not buy the [Name] pet if you are not prepared to say "god damn it" at least twice per day.

This is going to get me killed, oh god yes.

HOW DARE YOU SSS-SSSSS-SSSS-SSSPEAK THE TONGUE OF MY SSSS-SSS-SSSSSSSS-SSSNAKE PEOPLE 🐍

I salted my head off to Hell and back the other day so now its your turn.

Hold my acupuncture pins.

Fuck them and rescue the high horse they rode in on because that horse doesn't deserve to be ridden by them.

It's mid-June, yet I can't feel my toes.

Just chant "shadow no shadowing" three times. It worked on the dog.

I had to read it three times because the first two times I read it as "his mum is IN the ground" and I was like… wow, that's dark, and then I realized it said his mum IS the ground.

Hey, I'm not judging, except… no, wait, I'm totally judging.

Don't know what you're talking about there, Salty McSalterson.

So you know that one night in minecraft we were rushing to get back home and got ourselves and the path blown to Hell by creepers? I went to fill those holes in and guess what shows up as I'm working on filling them with no way out.

I'd say they should put their dukes up but tell them to put their leggies up instead because that's all they have.

So would this be a bad time to say "its the thought that counts"?

A baby? I don't have time for a baby. I can barely handle my own job. Babies are trouble. Put it in the mailbox and send it back, and if I see a head or a leg sticking back out, you are gone.

Devour him! ...Imeanwhat. Sorry, what, no cannibalism here.

They seem like a Diapers-Until-6-Years-Old kinda person.

Can we be like. Drugged-pot-hippies-but-not-really-high together?

Earlier I was like "I'm worried" and another person told me "you need to stop worrying, it's concerning".

Bright eyed and bushy tailed is a squirrel on crack.

So… death = normally taboo cuddles and affection? I should die more often.

Cuddleslut Mode Activated.

Help me sink [Name] to the bottom of the ocean. I don't know where s/he went wrong but I'm ending them.

I'm sorry that s/he's probably gonna corrupt the shit out of [Name], but conversely, [Name]'s not sorry at all.

'What AREN'T we up to?' is a better question. What we're up IN is the answer.

Screw you and your fricking long legs!

Listen to that wind moan. Wind doesn't have hands but it does blow.

Maybe a chair to the face will quiet them down.

So where do I get these highs you have? It must be nice.

I have no idea where my highs come from. They just pop in and serenade you and then sneak off the next morning like a filthy hoe after a good night of steamy sex-- I have no idea what I'm saying anymore A LO HA OOOIIIIII...

Don't you dare moan you sinner!

[thoughtcascades]

sometimes “i did my best” is just a way to avoid saying “i gave up when it got hard”

[thoughtcascades]

being hurt doesn’t excuse how many people you stepped on trying to fix it

[confessionsofa-roleplayer]

Your autism isn't more important than someone else's autism. If you are in a space, either the rpc, fandom or anywhere else, and you use your autism to harass others or have your way and get away from being called out, you are a dick. The reason why people can't stand you in the fandom isn't because of your autism, is because people avoid you for being an asshole. Signed: someone with autism xoxo

[blackheartbiohazards]

You know, one time I read a fanfic and it triggered my psychosis, sent me into a month long episode THEN a whole year later I was on ao3 just mindlessly scrolling, I came across the fanfic title and it gave me a panic attack, but something compelled me to click it, i didn't read it but i did scroll through it, why? mental illness.

So like... ya

This is me responding to your old(?) post about someone else's fiction not being able to hurt you, this is probably just a me thing but mental illness makes you do things and react to things in insane ways that sometimes you cant control. I knew while reading that it was affecting me in some way, but I kept reading because well, I'm mentally ill, and then a month of my life dissapeared lol

I think I'm trying to make a point about something but I'm not sure

I did after the fact comment to the author and just kinda, told them about what happened, but I didn't harrassed them or something, -

-but when something does what this fanfiction did to me then you're basically obligated to let the creator know I think(they are a really good writer), I'm an adult and the fanfic was in the ballpark of something I would read and if like, 59% of it was taken out and it had a happy ending I would be fine but oh well

Oh boy, I'm starting to have a panic attack just typing this out holy hell anyways uh, I'm not disagreeing with you(?) but I am saying, don't be too quick to dismiss someone who says a piece of fiction fucked with them? idk sorry, have a good one

My friend, the fiction didn't harm you.

Your mental illness harmed you.

Random writers on the internet are not responsible for managing your mental illness for you.

You are responsible for managing your mental illness.

I knew while reading that it was affecting me in some way, but I kept reading because well, I'm mentally ill

This is self harm. You were engaging in self-harming behavior by continuing to read a fanfiction that you knew was triggering to you.

👉 You are responsible for managing your mental illness.

👉 Writers are not responsible for managing your mental illness for you.

And I hate to tell you this but messaging the author about it was absolutely harassing the author.

[ableedingpen]

"I think I'm trying to make a point about something but I'm not sure"

Yeah you are.

You're trying to show that saying 'someone else's fiction isn't able to harm you' is wrong, actually, look, it harmed you! when in actuality, you just harmed yourself.

I am fascinated to see what your comment to the author was.

"Hi, I read the warnings for this fic, then read the fic and it triggered me for some reason and caused a month long a psychotic episode, and then I read your fic again on purpose, knowing that it triggered me before, and gave myself a panic attack, and you know I'm obliged to tell you this, next time can you just change half of your fic and give it a happy ending so I won't trigger myself, thanks"

No one needs to read that on a work they put time and effort into.

I was reading a fic that involved a medical procedure that gave me a panic attack out of nowhere, but that wasn't on the author. That was a me problem.

It's a me problem that is so far divorced from the author and what they wrote that telling them about it would be cruel.

And that was a me problem that I didn't even know I had until that point - I can't imagine =knowing= that I'm about to read something that would trigger me and STILL blaming the author and their fic.

[melamemea]

it is not your followers' obligation or responsibility to make sure that you feel acknowledged on tumblr, for while we all feel down, insecure and in need of reassurance from time to time it is not under any circumstances on your followers to make sure that you feel loved. they are people, individuals who have their own lives, so to place your need for reassurance in the hands of someone else is selfish. it is not other people's job to make you feel good about yourself in a hobby.

[psycheterminal]

Treat anything on Discord as media that will be lost

Do not use Discord to host your files. Do not rely on Discord to preserve your text. DO NOT RELY ON DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PRESERVATION OR HOSTING!!

It CAN be lost, it WILL be lost! You must consider Discord as a part of the Core Internet, controlled by one company that hosts the servers.

I thought it was impressive at first that it replaced IRC, but now I am horrified. If the company behind Discord went under today, how many friends would you lose?

How many relationships? How much writing?

You may think this won't happen, but I remember when AIM went down and along with it, entire novels worth of interaction with my oldest friend.

IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. NO COMPANY IS INFALLIBLE.

Back up your files! Download anything you've saved to Discord NOW, before the API changes go into effect! And DO NOT RELY ON THEM FOR HOLDING IMPORTANT FILES!

[bright-eyed-sunshine]

Here is a program that lets you download any and all of your discord DMs, your servers, everything. You can set the format (raw text, html (dark and light), and others. You can even download the uploaded files not just the text, though that may be just for the command-line version not the GUI window version.

GitHub - Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter: Exports Discord chat logs to a file

Exports Discord chat logs to a file. Contribute to Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter development by creating an account on GitHub.

Please back up your conversations, your stories. I have a backup of everything I care about that runs once a week, with full attachment backups every several months. I write stories on discord, and would be devastated if someone happened to them. You have to have your own local copies of every file you care about.