gbhsrspm

My semi-anonymous blog.

[gbhsrspm]

graun interviewer: lololol women complaining about sexual assault, crazies, amirite?????

ignoramus interviewee: hahaha they r so crazy, not like me, im not like the other girls, im a cool girl

graun: oh wow, the guy has been arrested, this makes u both look really bad, and it draws attention to some crimes that we mistakenly called a hoax because we didn’t bother to journalist, let’s just take it out shall we?

interviewer: THE GUARDIAN IS CENSORING ME AND I AM OPPRESSED

tbf, I agree that they should’ve left it in and not covered for any of the assholes involved.

[moonpaw]

first person fic: I-

me: I did nothing. you are not me. fuck you.

second person fic: 

YOU

me: oh shit maybe i did do that

[saanphoenix-deactivated20260411]

…Reading the notes, I’m starting to theorize that a lot of people didn’t read first-person novels before gravitating to fan fiction. Maybe I’m wrong. But I have always read a first-person piece with the understanding that the narrator is telling me what THEY did and not what I did.

Which is why, when I comes to these “Reader” fics that use first-person, I’m like, “Okay, but that’s not me that’s whoever the main character is.”

[allsortsoflicorice]

Really? This is the problem? People read first person fic as if it’s about themselves? If that’s true I don’t even know what to think. How can they read it that way? I don’t get it. 

[gbhsrspm]

This is the weirdest thing I’ve heard in my life. Just when I think there’s nothing new under the sun...

[spookybuttons-deactivated202101]

being from a poor country on the internet is always a frustrating experience because we feel all the time like second-class citizens of the world; we have struggles and problems and victories that people don’t usually care to listen and more than once I have had the experience of going like “Hey guys we just had a dam disaster that killed 300 people” or “guys look at the philippines there’s a typhoon happening on top of an active volcano while covid is spreading and the president told police to shoot the citizens”, only to have that immediately swallowed by people going “Did you guys see the new TRUMP TWEET??”

and that generally sucks and I’ve actually left online spaces/gradually withdrew from friends because of just how bad it makes me feel, but nothing makes this as clear as when the USA decides a cause is important and I am bombarded by news of issues that are just the norm to me, as if they were only recently discovered

people from third world countries have been dealing with police brutality for so long that it spans generations - my grandma protested and was violently repressed, my mother protested and was violently repressed, it has been no different with me, and I lack words to express how immensely frustrating it is to open social media every day to see people go

“hey did you know that THE GOVERNMENT can use THE POLICE to repress THE CITIZEN???”

yes. that is a thing. it is a thing the state does. it is a thing that is done by the state. I have noticed. we have been saying this for a while. we have been begging people to listen for a while, but when we say it what we usually get is ‘damn, look at those uncivilized places! fighting the police! how savage!’. yes, I know, it was the cops who started it. yes I know this is not how rubber bullets are meant to be used. yes I know that the tear gas - 

it’s exhausting. it’s exhausting to see people like greta thunberg become the voice of defending the amazon when we’ve had our own voices defending the amazon for years and actually dying from it. Nothing against her - she’s doing a good thing - but GOD do I wish people knew of Chico Mendes or even Marina Silva like they know of her. what we get instead is just “brazilians don’t care about the forest! good thing this european has shown up to save it!”

what it feels like is that a thing only matters if a rich country decides it does, and then swoops down to teach us savages about the importance of the cause. as if mexican students didn’t vanish from the face of the earth by daring to speak up against social injustice. as if the kids in hong kong weren’t resisting tooth-and-nail to keep their democracy while the state uses the police to repress them. as if this very same fight against racism and police brutality, in brazil, hadn’t cost marielle franco her life in an horrific way.

it just feels as if the USA is screaming “hey guys the room is on fire” and my charred skeleton is sitting there, staring at the charred skeletons of the venezuelans and chileans and argentineans and filipinos and mexicans and all other latinos and third worlders like is that so

[gbhsrspm]

Thank you for articulating this. I’m from one of the richer countries but one parent isn’t; there was a massacre there the year I was born and I’ve never met half my family. So we grew up with that perspective and the news always feels artificially selected in a way that’s hard to articulate to friends who have grown up without questioning it. Right now, wellmeaning friends are posting all a manner of change.org petitions and changing their profile pics and whatever else, and while I’m happy they care, and I hope it changes attitudes, it privately makes me wonder how they think the world *is*, y’know? Like, when they hear about refugees, what do they think they’re fleeing? And I appreciate it’s not the time to post about that, so those thoughts aren’t going up on facebook any time soon (and I really hope they don’t circulate widely here; there’s no need), but at the same time it feels really alienating and weird. I have been stressed, but more about what chaos in the USA might mean for the rest of the world. So haven’t been talking much about it because I feel like people would hear that as ‘I don’t care’ which isn’t it... and also frankly I don’t have the energy to qualify every statement with three paragraphs about how I do actually care. I think it’s good for people to be loud, and it hopefully helps prevent these things from being seen as normal everywhere, but yeah, it’s isolating.

[allsortsoflicorice]

Mental health

How can I persuade someone who needs mental health help to get it when they are resistant?

All suggestions gratefully received. 

[gbhsrspm]

(hope it's not weird for me to comment on this but I've been in this situation, so thought it might be useful.) as others have said, it depends on the specific situation. personally I think it's about empathising with the person involved and avoiding making them feel pressured, though there are times when it's better to be a bit firmer, so yeah, it really depends on the situation. in general I think you should start the conversation without certainty that you know the best course of action, and be open to hearing their perspective-- but of course you know the details of your specific situation and whether it's past that point. couple of things that spring to mind, speaking from experience:  - remember there's a lot of bullshit. that doesn't mean everything's bullshit, but if someone's been having a tough time for a while, they've probably seen their share of corporate-mindfulness bullshit, bad therapists, apps, medication that did nothing, medication that just gave brain zaps, hokey diagnoses, bad philosophy, etc. they have reason to be jaded, and the stupid stuff IS stupid-- but there are good therapists out there, and meds that work, and it's worth persisting. it's better to acknowledge the chance that they MAY run into some bullshit, but that there's also a chance they may find something that helps, and if they're in a situation where whatever they're doing right now isn't working (or REALLY isn't working), they might as well try it.  - doctors etc will try to work with them to find something that works for them; so eg: if they really don't want to try medication, there will be other approaches.  - if they're scared that they'll alarm the medical staff by speaking honestly, may be useful to reassure them that despite pop media's depiction, nobody is incentivised to lock people up on a psych ward for saying the wrong thing. medical staff are a lot more competent than that; they've seen and heard it all before-- and if anyone still feels skeptical, remember that the hospitals need all the beds they can get.  - if it's more of a philosophical dislike of the psychiatric establishment, yep, again, there are a lot of real issues and fair points-- but those aren't the full story, and one can talk to real people every day who've had beneficial experiences, who found talking to a professional worked for them and changed their life for the better, or found this or that medication worked; it just doesn't make for good headlines-- so it's worth digging into how much the person is avoiding it based on an image they've built up in their head vs the reality.  - you can be frank. people get very tired of euphemisms and tiptoeing around and being treated like they're extra fragile. by not taking everything ultra seriously, it can make things feel a bit calmer. I tend to stay quite blithe and talk with dark humour, though will no doubt depend on the person involved and how well you know them.

... this stuff is really hard to convey over text. I've had these conversations; things got better; there are a lot of things I want to say but I'm wary of writing a long scrawl for what turns out to be a different situation. as someone else has noted, take care of yourself, give it time, and expect some hiccups along the way, and a bit/lot of going in circles. imo it's better for everyone involved if you can detach a bit.

[listing-to-port]

On writing

Write like you have nothing better to do. Write like a walrus is following you and wants to steal your overcoat. Write like you just sat down on a language bush and are trying to find the best way to ask someone to remove words from your buttocks with a colossal pair of tweezers. On rainy days, write like you have eaten too many beans and are trying to find a quiet portaloo. Write like the ink is rising and you do not have a snorkel. Only write! Write like your pen is a grumpy stallion. Write with heredity and purulence. Write like one of your bunny slippers has a hole in it and little bits of slipper stuff are coming out. Write like you’ve just swallowed a duck. Write like your aunt drove you to the supermarket of writing in a Ford Fiesta that smelled of sardines and always came to pick you up later at the end of your shift with her knitting. Write like your elbows would write, if they had fingers. Write like an accordion. Write stripily. And in the reaches of the night, in those desolate lonely watches when your thoughts wash up over and over and over and over and over on useless shores, ask yourself, must I write? And realise that you must, because in the reaches of the night it is really cold and if you don’t then that fucking walrus will steal your coat.

[justsomeantifas]

again, i was never, exactly, condemning ao3, just asking why some of you fully believe we can’t do better for content creators?

there should be a way, and a legal battle, to set up payments for authors if you want to without hiding their works to those who cant afford to pay

entirely stopping fanfic writers from making money off of their content (be it the corrupt legal system or the entity that hosts) doesn’t really help a lot of them create content.

and yes some of them would like money especially when they drive millions of views to websites that then make donations which are invested into stocks off said millions of views.

you should be asking for more for those you claim to appreciate, for yourselves.

[dancinbutterfly]

I’m going to link you, @zerocapitalism to the financials AGAIN  because you’re STILL talking out your ass.

Here it is AGAIN. I double dog DARE you to email the finance committee about this “stock investment” claim because I looked at the spreadsheets for 2019 and 2020. I didnt see it in the interest income section and they report To The Cent. So please, show me? I’m serious, I wanna see those receipts. After all, the 2020 budget has onley been updated through February and since you clearly know so much about the OTW.

Please.

Because here’s what I found. The entire organization - TOGETHER - have in 2019 Net Profit, literally, less money that a single(1) senior level NGO employee should be making as an annual salary. AND I KNOW BECAUSE I WORK IN NGOS AND I HAVE A MASTERS IN SOCIAL WORK WITH A FOCUS IN MACRO PRACTICE AND IVE LOOKED AT GRANT LIMITS FOR ETHICAL PRACTICE.

Also not that you care? The OTW finance committe are going to be having a public chat at 4pm EST, today, Saturday, April 25, in the year of the Christian lord 2020. It’s on that same website. FEEL FREE TO GO AND TALK TO THEM. YOURSELF. LIKE A PERSON instead of throwing ignorance around.

BUT FINE. IGNORE THAT!

Have you considered that not every fucking art form has to be goddamn capitalized on?

Because some of us wanted a SAFE PLACE - an ARCHIVE of OUR OWN, as @astolat​ phrased it - to PUT OUR SHIT.

See, like…. there are, 100% places to make money off our fanfiction work: Wattpad, Patreon, Gumroad, ko-fi!

All of these places welcome fanfiction in different ways and allow the sale of fanfiction by the artist for a profit! I’ve personally bought fic from people on Patreon and Gumroad and ko-fi! I’m happy to patronize them! They should use those mediums! We can also get in touch with people like Disney or Marvel or any other Property and say “hey we’d like to create for your property and get paid for it” and try to create for money that way! Totally a doable (if difficult) thing but it is a way that some people get work!

But here’s the thing that you, @zerocapitalism are either 1)fucking ignoring completely or 2) just refuse to hear: Archive Of Our Own doesn’t SERVE that purpose. It is not a place to get traffic or gain followers or clicks and it has no ads and is of no cost to use.

Because you see there was and is, definitely, a legal battle. We had it during the Bush Jr Administration: it was about Fair Use of Copyrighted Material and it happened AFTER people literally lost their jobs because they were outed for writing gay porn. I’m not kidding. I know you, @zerocapitalism think that it’s ridiculous but that’s what happened. People’s lives were absolutely ruined. Is it fair that people who make visual art get away with things that written art cant? No. Is that the status quo? YES IT FUCKING IS. And mostly, it hurts women and queer people because they’re the ones writing while men are at trade shows hocking their art while women writing fanfiction are getting C&Ds and told to kill themselves by antis and any other number of issues online because they’re not visible and appealing in the same way, since you specifically, in your post, ask why is art ok and not fiction.

But we now have Archive of Our Own with its many rules and it’s legal fund and it’s  REALLY SPECIFIC PURPOSE of BEING A SAFE PLACE TO FOR FANDOM TO PUT OUR SHIT.  After the legal battle and the purges and the doxxings and and and … this website with a VERY SPECIFIC PURPOSE is what we came out with, after the fighting was over. It is how it is because the legalities of the legal battle stated that as long as fanfic was in fair use, and no money was being made, we could write our fanfiction - and thats in America. That’s not even touching on the CRAZY shit with Article 13 in the EU. Cuz you see @zerocapitalism there are OTHER COUNTRIES and AO3 tries to account for their laws too when they can. Because we fanfic writers more than anything just needed a place to put our shit. The SPECIFIC PURPOSE that AO3 serves is to provide a PLACE FOR US TO PUT OUR STUFF safely without capitalist or government structures fucking touching our stuff. Because  they have. Many times. So many times. Including here on Tumblr. Shit, sometimes the the free speech stance gets them banned like in China which happened in February but not before a shit ton of Chinese fans uploaded a fuck ton of works that are still there, safe and sound which is the SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN - A PLACE FOR US TO PUT OUR STUFF WHERE IT IS SAFE.

Archive Of Our Own is a storage facility for people to put things that have been set out - under a set of parameters that obey the laws - for free access - made for free - to be shared as a collective by the people for the people - that will  not be taken down arbitrarily because of monetizing or fashion or fascism.

A socialistic fanfic collective was created by fanficcers for fanficcers so we could store our art in peace and hopefully one day be self-sufficient…but…. @zerocapitalism is mad… because…money is isnt being made.

Ah well…

[riptidemonzarc]

Mitsubishi Marxist: *sees an artist’s collective that is open to everyone; that they themselves can join or, failing that, can participate in discussions with; that operates on *two orders of magnitude less money* than Wiki-fucking-pedia; where anyone, for free, can express themselves however they want and can access pretty much any content they can imagine; where the people who provide the content can also *vote on the board* for ten measly bucks; and where actual grown-up lawyers will defend fans’ rights against literally the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the history of the world*

Mitsubishi Marxist: This must be destroyed. A *real* anti-capitalist organization would insist on building a profit-seeking revenue stream that it would grudgingly share with its content-providers. I am very intelligent.

[megpie71]

Let’s face it, if AO3 was making money, it would most likely need to be paid to the corporations which own the original works we’re fanficcing.  If we were lucky, some of it would trickle down to the writers and artists who actually do the creative work we’re enjoying consuming and re-thinking.  It would not go to fanfiction writers short of a complete and utter reversal of the entire legal structure of the publishing and media industries. 

This numpty not only doesn’t understand finance, they also don’t understand copyright law, intellectual property law, or the ways the various creative industries work out there in the (demi-regulated free market capitalist) Real World. 

(They also don’t understand the tech industries, in amongst all the other things they don’t understand - the fund-raising goals of AO3 are very low compared to, for example, the cost of full-time salaries for experienced system administrators and database wranglers.  You’d need a minimum of three of each to cover things 24/7, more like 6 of each to make sure everything was holding together properly and cover things like holidays, illness and so on.  Go look at the cost of the tech wranglers alone, and tell me AO3 isn’t a fucking bargain for the money we’re paying!)

But in all of this, I keep coming back, again and again, to the fact a blog with the name “zerocapitalism” is basically calling out the AO3 for not operating within a sufficiently capitalist paradigm.  How to lose credibility 101, passed with flying colours, kid.

[allsortsoflicorice]

I absolutely hate the idea of making money from fanfic. Not just because of the whole question of intellectual property rights; that’s another issue. I hate it because monetising fannish activities destroys their democratic nature. 

It’s already bad enough that we have kudos-envy and big-name-fan worship. Imagine how much exponentially worse it would be if there were some fics earning their authors the kind of loot popular influencers on youtube can command, while others were earning nothing. The inequality would destroy the fan community. 

I write and share fanfic because I love doing it. If you want to make money from your writing, go write something original and see if anyone wants to buy it. Nowadays that’s easy to do online. Or go to any of the many platforms Dancinbutterfly listed where you can charge or solicit donations for your fanfic. If your fic is popular, you may make some money. Which you may then have to spend on lawyers’ fees, when you’re taken to court for profiting from violating copyright.

But no… you’re greedy for a slice of AO3s pie, that’s all it is. 

I get all the appreciation I need through the kudos and comments my readers leave for me, and even more, from the friendly, egalitarian relationships I enjoy with them. 

[megpie71]

I actually agree with this. 

I write fanfiction as a HOBBY.  Which is, I suspect, something our OP up there really needs to have explained to them.  I don’t write as a profession, because I took a good long look at the world of professional writing, and realised my autistic self would essentially spend the whole time I was doing it in one long meltdown.  Professional writing, as far as I’m concerned, requires a lot of mental abilities and skills I have zero chance of acquiring.  It would require me to be increasing my capacity for executive functioning sight out of mind (and that’s not happening - I’m at my limit at present, and that limit is only going to diminish as I get older). 

I write as a hobby.  It’s something I do to relax, to have fun, to play around with ideas I enjoy about canon, to query themes and ideas I’ve run across in canon and so on.  I don’t do it to make money - and seriously, not everything everyone does NEEDS to be about making money (the notion that it could be, or that it should be, or that it has to be, is actually a construct and artefact of late-stage neo-liberal capitalism… and again, I’m rather surprised a blog by the name of “zerocapitalism” is busy pushing this particular capitalist paradigm so hard).  I share my writing with other people to find out what they think of it - but I primarily write for myself.

As an amateur writer, I’m allowed to experiment with things like genre, narrative structures, reader positioning, and so on.  I’m allowed to tackle themes (like mental illness and neurodiversity) which aren’t “popular” or “saleable”, because I’m not doing it to make money.  As an amateur writer, I’m allowed to put out something which isn’t perfectly spelled, or grammatically correct and so on - because it doesn’t have to be (that I don’t do this is just an expression on my part of consideration for my readers).  But when I write, I don’t have to consider “the market” - and I should be allowed not to. 

[gbhsrspm]

"Imagine how much exponentially worse it would be" -- you don't have to imagine it. Wattpad exists, and it's a nightmare. Think fics littered with ads, algorithms that assess writing style and give it a number so you can better 'target your market', and all the other repulsive qualities which come of viewing art as 'content creation', through a capitalistic lens. Works are promoted or invisible based on whether the authors are already popular. The forums are super prescriptive about both style and themes. Write adult fiction? That will be hidden from searches. You can see how capitalism damages art in realtime: risks are out, and everyone is pushed toward the same 'safe' writing style, with the same bland prose, designed to be 'consumed' by as many people as possible, because of the culture of reducing everything to numbers and catering to advertisers. I value Ao3 for giving me a small corner of the internet where people are not trying to squeeze every last coin out of their work, and I value the experimentation and variety that comes with that. People write out of love. If you'd like to participate in a hypercapitalist fiction space, you have plenty of choices; Ao3 is the option for those of us who actually detest the structures and behaviours promoted by capitalism, and would like to avoid participating in capitalism as much as possible. Now we just need an equivalent space for original fiction! :) (am actually slowly working on this; best I've come up with so far is to do it as a dreamwidth community; not the best interface for navigating chapters but dreamwidth offers robust permisions options and text formatting so is the most promising option I’ve found so far /off-topic)

(And yes, I honestly find it scary how deep the neo-liberal propaganda goes. Assuming OP isn't a troll blog, they've devoted an account to attempting to oppose capitalism and they still don't recognise how capitalism is influencing their own worldview and value system. Suppose it's hard to recognise when surrounded by it; I hope this discussion makes them question some of their assumptions about how the world should work. Also, yes yes yes on the point of tech salaries! The code repo alone has close to 100 contributors! US tech salaries are six figures! Maybe they don't realise that most open source development is funded by companies...)

[allsortsoflicorice]

Ancient Greek actor famed for fluffing lines

Can anyone link me to the post about the actor from the ancient world who is remembered to this day for fluffing his lines? Or can anyone tell me his name?

Thanks

[gbhsrspm]

I don’t think this is the guy you’re thinking of, but there’s also Demosthenes, the famed orator. His first attempt at public speaking went so badly that his embarrassed reaction was depicted in an illustration over 2000 years later, which is featured on his Wikipedia page today.  We printed off a copy and stuck it on the wall because... been there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosthenes#/media/File%3AHe_lefts_assembly%2C_hiding_his_face_in_his_cloak.jpg

[shinelikethunder]

Listen, if the conversation happening around third-party AO3 apps were any of the following, we’d be cool:

“this app doesn’t even offer useful features in exchange for ads/subscriptions, it just looks like a skeevy cash grab”

“this app may be misleading users into thinking they need an ad-ridden app to access something they can already get for free”

“authors are bound by the ToS to keep their work strictly noncommercial, so it’s pretty fucked-up that third-party app developers can monetize all they want”

“monetizing this shit could draw the ire of corporate legal departments, and creators and/or AO3 could end up in the crossfire”

“does this app respect edits and deletions? does it bypass access controls on NSFW and archive-locked works?”

“wait, this random app is collecting login credentials?”

“whose ire will be drawn towards AO3 if Apple decides this app isn’t bowdlerized enough for their tastes?”

But that’s not the conversation you’re having, is it? That’s all secondary. Y’all are talking as though any third-party viewer app whatsoever is somehow “stealing” your work by existing. You know, the way an RSS reader is “stealing” your blog when it requests the full text of a post. Or the way you “didn’t consent to have your work taken out of context” when someone views your Tumblr posts in the Washboard app. Or the way Discord’s auto-embed previews are “stealing” fanart. Any online RSS reader is probably running ads to cover its server costs, btw. What are the ethics of that?

And once it’s been framed as “stopping content thieves,” apparently that end justifies absolutely any means of takedown, regardless of the actual nature of specific apps. Brigading, finding the dev’s personal accounts and harassing them there, doxxing, review flooding, sending spurious DMCA notices about apps that aren’t even hosting content, tugging Mama Apple’s skirts and pointing at the exact content AO3 exists to protect as reason to nuke it for Purity Crimes… what the fuck, guys. What moral high ground could you possibly hope to occupy by tattling about all the icky, nasty porn on AO3, all to force an arbitrary takedown of an access point you find dodgy for unrelated reasons? I sure as fuck didn’t consent to having my fic used for that.

Do you have any idea what kind of chilling effect this all has on fans who might want to create third-party apps with actual, useful additional features? Because y’all aren’t exactly drawing distinctions between the sinners and the saints, here–you’re at “see AO3 app, burn it to the motherfucking ground.” Right now, one of my Discord servers has multiple members completely reassessing whether/how to share fandom-related coding projects and how to keep their identity firewalled, so they don’t get fucking doxxed if some underinformed moral panic lumps them in with whatever witches are getting hunted next week. Is that likely to happen to fans trying to contribute helpful extra functionality, noncommercially, out of their own pockets if necessary? I don’t fucking know! I realize the vehemence of this incident is mostly driven by the monetization, but the way y’all are talking sure isn’t giving me faith in your willingness to even consider that distinction.

Just… take a step back. Be willing to make distinctions and articulate the boundaries of your wrath. Consider what you’re actually objecting to. Consider analogous cases. Ask yourself if whatever you’re saying goes for them, too, and if not why not. Fan, as the old saying goes, is a tool-using animal–consider which tools your condemnation applies to before you put it on full blast. Also, you know, put the fucking pitchforks down and take a step back from whatever the mob mentality is telling you would be totally proportionate and justifiable as a response. It doesn’t have a great track record of holding up the next morning.

[gbhsrspm]

Thisssss. I’ve been facepalming for a solid 4 days. Some folk really need to learn more about technology. It’s a browser!

[whetstonefires]

honestly a strong argument for continuing to use my ffdotnet account is that the ‘traffic stats’ page for each story has a column listing the number of words in each chapter, in between ‘chapter name’ and ‘views this month.’ information that is to my knowledge collated nowhere else. at least that i can access.

so if i stopped posting my multichapter fics on fanfiction.net, i would have to go into the individual story docs, and figure out where each chapter began and ended, and highlight each one to get a wordcount, and note these numbers all down, so i could know whether the new chapter is unusually long or short by the standards of this specific fic.

[brawltogethernow]

Yeah I wish AO3 showed this? Like on the full-page chapter index. It shows up in e-mail notifications for new chapters, so the information is floating around somewhere.

[whetstonefires]

yeah i find overall ao3 de-emphasizes individual chapters of a story, compared to ffdotnet, when it comes to data handling? there’s a focus on viewing the work as a unit and chapters as an internal subdivision. (and if you don’t like that structure you have the series option, which i love and which actually brought me over originally lol)

which focus is good in a lot of ways–it’s too easy for one-shots to get devalued in an attention-based economy yk? kudos per chapter would be Bad–but exasperating in this respect.

[whetstonefires]

…actually come to think of it i agreed it must be there in my tags, but it occurs to me that the draft version of a story notably never features a wordcount.

so it’s possible the number in the update email is generated by logging the difference between the current wordcount and previous wordcount for the entire fic at the point of update, and there actually isn’t anything on AO3 tracking chapter length at all.

[ingridverse]

Anyone familiar with the process of writing & submitting code to ao3? I know they’re open source/volunteer run.

[whetstonefires]

pretty sure it’s all done in-house, you gotta get on the team and the developments are planned centrally. AO3 is really well organized.

[gbhsrspm]

Anyone can submit code for known issues, but it might take a while for a change to go in if it’s not part of the planned development roadmap. If it’s not a known issue, you’d need to file a ticket for it first. They have contributing guidelines here: https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchive/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md which include a link to the developer docs (code’s in the same repo). (There is also a very unofficial docker WIP dev env floating around in a pull request over at: https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchive/pull/3661 . That’s not supported in any way, and the comments have a list of tweaks you’d need to make to get it working, but it mayyy save you some time if you’re already familiar with docker; sometimes the dev vagrant box is out of sync with the newest config)

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

You know what I think the key to writing a novel is?

(Or anything really: art, comics, music, etc.)

Not forcing yourself to do it.

So many artists and writers quit on a piece because they lose the inspiration and try to force themselves to create the vision that was made when the ideas were swirling in their head.

Don’t force your masterpieces, people. The inspiration will come back. If you are meant to finish it, you will. Don’t make yourself do it for your followers, readers, or even yourself if you feel like you’re forcing yourself. You’ll end up dreading it.

It’s okay to set it aside until your back in that mental space. Once you feel like you have no choice, your passion will become a burden. Don’t do that to yourself. If you need the time, take it. Please.

[allsortsoflicorice]

While I completely agree with adopting a not-forcing-yourself approach if that’s what works for you, I respectfully disagree that not forcing yourself is the key to writing a novel. At least, nobody told Charles Dickens that. As is well known, he published many of his most famous novels as weekly serials, and missing the deadline was not an option. Dickens had to write to live. Shakespeare ditto. If he had a commission from the Queen for a play to be performed at Twelfth Night, he bloody well had to make himself write it. He couldn’t afford to sit around relaxing until his muse deigned to visit. 

Of course it’s okay to take time off and not force yourself. Whatever makes you happy is okay. But it would be a mistake to believe that all the world’s masterpieces were written by authors who simply waited for inspiration to come to them.  In fact, I’d say this is probably one of the biggest misconceptions about the writers’ life. Many, many masterpieces have been written by people who were writing to tight deadlines and literally paid by the word. 

[meteorstricken]

As someone who struggles with more than my fair share of depressive bouts, I would say that forcing myself is actually a necessity sometimes if I want to be anything other than a sad pile of a person, laying on the floor and contemplating what a lovely shade of eggshell white the ceiling is. 

Sometimes the key to success or enjoyment is to force at least those first few minutes of doing the thing, whatever it is. Most of the time, I’ll find that I’m lucky enough that a little light-switch will click in my brain–a feeling of, “Oh, that’s right. I do like doing this. I suppose I can spend some time writing rather than staring at the wall and hopelessly whining that all things not wall-staring related are too dull and not worth the effort.”

For me, chasing down and recapturing that passionate, inspired mental space is a must if I don’t want it to be nothing but a rare, blink-and-you-miss-it spark. It’s not coming back on its own–not frequently, anyway. I either go after it or I lose it.

[gbhsrspm]

Yeah, I'm another one who requires the complete opposite of the original advice. Am speaking from experience; I've drafted 4 novels (though none good enough to publish yet, sadly) and some 100,000ish words of fanfic. I draw and compose. I work fulltime in a different field. This advice might work for OP but I would never finish a project if I followed it.

[ao3commentoftheday]

When writing from a character POV, how do I keep something that he's plotting as a secret for the readers too? Long story short my protagonist is secretly carrying a knife, and they will use it to stab someone by the end of the chapter. I planned this to be a shocker for the reader, but I'm struggling to explain my character POV without mentioning their feelings about the knife. Also, their intention was going for the kill all along, but faking kindness to get closer. halp!

The difficulty in not foreshadowing it at all is that it will come out of nowhere and your readers won’t be so much “suprised” as they will be “what the actual fuck?”

Without knowing the whole story, I’d say give the character a chance to find/get the knife if this isn’t something they always have on them. You could set this up a chapter or two ahead as well, if you don’t want it to feel like “Oh yes. Here is this plot point I need to make sure I have with me. Can’t forget about that!” Otherwise, just make it a casual action in the midst of other things so that readers won’t give it any extra special significance.

Faking kindness could be done by having them externally kind and internally grumbling. You could also do something like: “Sure,” they said, smiling stiffly. Their bright tone was slightly marred by the way they clenched their teeth. You still want to give your readers a heads up that POV character doesn’t like this person, otherwise the stabbing won’t make any sense. It’ll just be shock value. 

Instead of referring to the knife specifically, you can have them touch the pocket where the knife is or reassure themselves that the weight of it is still strapped to their leg etc. Their hand tapped impatiently against their thigh, fingers drumming over the solid weight of the knife strapped there. This conversation was never going to end. 

By having that reference to the knife in the middle of the rest of it, the reader remembers it’s there but isn’t immediately thinking about how it’s going to be used. 

Basically: foreshadowing is your friend. Keep it subtle, but make sure it’s there. Without it, readers will feel like you played an unfair trick on them rather than surprising them. They should be able to reread the chapter and pick up on the hints you dropped. 

Anyone else have thoughts here? 

[allsortsoflicorice]

A lot depends on whether you’re writing in the first person or the third. Also, do you want the readers to have absolutely no idea that anything bad is going to happen, or do you want to build an ominous but ill-defined sense of unease in them? Do you want them to know Character has the knife, but not how s/he intends to use it? Do you want them to know her/his kindness is fake? Or should they not even know about the knife? TBH if you’re doing any kind of stream of consciousness, I don’t really know how you could conceal both knife and intention from your readers while keeping good faith with them. 

[gbhsrspm]

If you can (eg: the tone isn’t too serious), I’d suggest double entendre. That is, write ambiguous statements, that a reader without context (on a first read) will interpret as friendly, but which will have the complete opposite meaning on a reread. ‘He couldn’t wait to be close to him’; ‘Finally, alone together!’ and other, better things, which I’m relieved I’m not required to think up, but which should be possible for someone cleverer than me. You might want to work words like ‘sharp’ and ‘pointed’ in there in general description, for added teasing. Though be prepared for your reader to ¬_¬  at you.

[gbhsrspm]

Had a dream where I was browsing tumblr and there were these two posts: post 1 was a funny video with a caption ‘this anised me’ and post 2 was a followup post saying ‘that was meant to say ‘amused’ but actually aniseed is great so I’m going with it’

and just ??? how is my brain constructing typos in my sleep...

[auncyen]

game script

For anyone who wants a good resource about the original FF7 game: Yinza’s script is love. Especially since it’s broken into sections, making it a little easier to look for something if you remember about where/when it happened but not any keywords to ctrl+f for.

[allsortsoflicorice]

Agreed. It’s been my go-to resource for years. 

[gbhsrspm]

Ohh, this reminds me; a while back I wrote a python script that uses Yinza’s game script as input and groups lines by character, because I wanted to be able to skim all a character’s lines for fanfic-voice purposes  and ctrl+f got annoying. I meant to put the script/output somewhere public so people could use it, then forgot about it. My code’s horrible and the output is not formatted (unlike the original beautiful script!), but if anyone’s interested I can dig it up.

(And yeah, even though the translation Yinza’s script is based on is a little different to the translation I played, I’ve still been relying on it for years! It’s wonderful. Thanks, Yinza! :))

[ao3commentoftheday]

How the heck do people write short fics??? Any time I try to plan something that I WANT to be small and simple, wHOOPS suddenly there's 50 characters navigating a lengthy plot with many shenanigans in order to save the world and people are dying probably. Not - everything - has - to - be - like - thiiiiiiis ugh. Short fic writers, please share your secrets!

There are a few things I do when I’m writing one shots and short fics:

have a simple, direct plot that doesn’t take a lot of twists and turns

just write one or two scenes with no particular ‘plot’ but an emotional goal

skip the details and descriptions for the most part

spend more time on dialogue and/or moving the plot forward than on giving a full picture of the scenes

Extras / OCs that only serve one purpose don’t get full backstories and descriptions. They don’t need them. They’re lucky if they get more than a name.

When I’m writing short fic (which is most of the time), it’s more of a sketch than a painting. I’m getting the ideas across but I’m not filling in all the bits and pieces that I could. 

Short fic authors: what advice do you have for anon? How do you manage to NOT write 300K? 

[gbhsrspm]

Haha, it's fun to hear tales from the other side! I almost exclusively write shortfic, and I envy people who can write longer works. :) I think I lean that way because I'm a procrastinatory mess; I always wrote academic essays the night before, preferred exams to coursework, etc etc etc. So I guess having 0 self-discipline is your friend? It forces you to write things that you can draft out in full in one sitting. (How do people keep the energy going for longer things???) I do sometimes come up with longer plot-based stories, but I prefer to keep those as daydreams. (I like daydreaming and editing, whereas writing the first draft can be a bit of a chore) I haaaaate that feeling when you're a few thousand words in, and you can see the end, and then you realise there should be another scene and OH DEAR GOD NOT ANOTHER THOUSAND WORDS

Most of my fics start life as comedy sketches: dialogue exchanges of 3-5 lines. Then I add some details about the who, the where and the why, along with some misc. worldbuilding and irrelevant internal monologues. I try to draw things out just enough to create a satisfying 'punchline'. (If you're thinking in terms of punchlines, it's easy to feel the rhythm of when to stop.) By that point I tend to have a few hundred words, which already feels long to me (that's three whole digits!). But I can handle things up to about two thousand words. Three thousand, and I'm exhausted. At that point, I'm quite likely to rush an ending just to get it over with...

Anyway, yeah, I'd suggest starting from a joke or idea or conversation, rather than a plot. 'Character's attitude to x', 'description of a place', 'misc. wordplay', etc. Focus on the prose rather than on the events (this has the useful side-effect of being very tiring). Maybe read some 4-panel comics to get a feel for the rhythm and to see what gets cut out. I often take short anecdotes from my real life and work them into fanfic, so those have a natural conclusion. I also think it can help to be a bit detached from the narrative, and to see it as something you're sculpting, rather than something you're pouring your own emotions into, if you don't want to be tempted to add elements.

My tumblr posts are comparatively rambling; sorry.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Amazon Is Looking More and More Like a Nation-State

Amazon is levying taxes on French businesses after France approved a tax on the tech giant.

Most politicians don’t understand how to confront Amazon’s market power. The most recent example is in France, where last month a decision was made to levy a 3 percent tax on Big Tech firms with global revenues higher than €750 million (~$830 million) and French revenues exceeding €25 million.

Amazon responded by simply levying its own tax on French businesses and increasing seller fees by 3 percent. As countries across the European Union consider their own plans to tax Big Tech monopolies instead of breaking them up, it’s hard to imagine why every company won’t follow Amazon’s example. The ability to levy taxes is typically reserved for states, but corporations have made it increasingly clear they’re eager to challenge and usurp any nation-state’s sovereignty.

Amazon, however, may be in a league of its own as it threatens to not only dominate the market, but become the market.

[greenjudy]

There is a special vertigo science fiction writers feel when real life busts out shit like this. 

[allsortsoflicorice]

And you know what’s really scary - we all keep using Amazon. It’s like our brains are incapable of making the connection. We have no one but ourselves to blame for this. Power corrupts: practically anybody given Jeff Bezos’ scale of power would abuse it the way he has. 

[gbhsrspm]

It's difficult (impossible?) to avoid Amazon on today's internet. I've heard Amazon jokily described as a cloud-hosting firm with a supermarket attached, and yep, that's pretty much it. It makes most of its income from AWS. Wattpad forums? Hosted on AWS. Tumblr? Hosted on AWS.

For business users, the big alternatives seem to be Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Then you have Whatever The Hell IBM Is Doing (they apparently make money from cloud but I have no idea what they're selling or who they're selling it to, RedHat acquisition aside. I assume it's B2B and not super visible unless you're already on their sales rolodex, but maybe I just don't pay enough attention). Thennnn you get the raft of cloud providers who've been steadily laying people off for years (often cited in out-of-date 'alternatives to AWS!' blogs :(), who often bet on OpenStack (ie: open source cloud tech), then realised cloud would not turn them into Amazon overnight and bailed when HPE bailed. And some smaller companies who had no idea what they were doing in the space to begin with but just started 'selling cloud' because it was a buzzword. Companies who bought services from these firms got burned. At the best of times, it can take a bit of research to distinguish which firms actually know what they're doing, and there was a biiiiig buzz a few years back. So businesses are cautious, there's a lot of general turmoil around, and when companies are choosing what to use, they trust the big firms to remain stable, cue monopoly. (I beliiiiieve the recent European cloud project is partly a response to a big EU cloud provider stopping its OpenStack sales; I suspect they've cast around for alternatives and become alarmed that the big ones are US-based. But this is purely speculation on my part.)

AWS is horrible to use, but everyone knows about it and it's Already Set Up by Someone Else. It has a bunch of features, thanks to Amazon's practice of swiping code from open source projects and contributing nothing back in return, which has led to some efforts (eg: redis) using new licenses to try to prevent this.

Possibly the cultures of some of the bigger firms will shift from the inside; it's common for senior people to play musical chairs between the big firms and bring their teams with them. And I know Canonical (company behind Ubuntu) has been headhunting cloud folk of late, so maybe we'll see something interesting from them.

Anyway, as an end user, I think the main thing to do is to use free software* where possible, and contribute to and support free software more generally, so that we can be less dependent on whatever bigcorp that inevitably runs on Amazon or suchlike. Try using linux! If you're hosting a box someplace, don't use AWS. Get off slack and get back on IRC. If you work at one of the big firms, try to shift the culture toward something more open and collaborative. Read up on free software and why it matters. I'd be very happy to see the internet shift back from a few proprietary silos to more general interest forums and things, a diversity of search engines, etc. But yeah, we need a cultural shift, and more open infrastructure, and I'm not sure more than a handful of people even perceive the problem. (but I think fandom is brilliantly placed to see why having work hosted by big corporate entities, with no way to retrieve said work, can go wrong, and why we need to preserve the ability to host our own.)

*'Free' here is specific terminology; it doesn't mean 'software you don't pay for'; it means (very!) roughly 'software you're free to use however' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

[gbhsrspm]

Google snippets look dangerously official.

[listing-to-port]

Seven messages from 2100

1. Hi its 2100 here. Congratulations on ur new baby! Dont forget, u need to get them an IP address before u leave hospital. Otherwise under the illegal immigration act 2086 ur car is legally obliged to take riders without an IP address to the nearest detention centre. 2. Hi, still 2100. Come to the local truck factory this weekend, we are seeding the consciousnesses of 80 new trucks from individually mapped chick brains. It is so cute when they cluster round mother factory and honk for their first taste of biodiesel! 3. Hi its 2100, u will have to wait to use ur car it is updating to fix a critical vulnerability in the code governing vehicle speed past adverts from ur key sponsors. Or I dunno u can use w/o updating but u might get hacked on the motorway. 4 Hi its 2100 again. I dont know what ur objecting to this is correct international English as specified by the 24th Edition Oxford International English Standards. 5. Hi, guess when? Anyway following the communities act 2097 ur toaster is legally obliged to provide relationship advice. Try it out! U can sue ur toaster if it tells u to stay in a bad relationship so it will probably tell you to leave the bastard whatever u say to it. 6. Hi, 2100. Yes I know. Anyway u dont want to go out today, there r gangs of pensioners in robotic exoskeletons on the streets and they have jailbroken them which u need to do to get them to go up stairs properly but it also means they have no prohibition on trampling ur tender unprotected flesh underfoot. 7. Hi u know when it is. I just wanted to add, u cant go out today anyway, ur door is waiting for a message from ur key sponsors to download and ur no 1 key sponsor is offline right now bcos its connection is being held hostage by hacked mining robots. But u should definitely go out tomorrow bcos u need to do something patriotic to top up ur citizenship points. Have a nice day!