I saw most people have an "about me" post pinned, so I:
- use she/her
- am a giant and don't like it
- am anti-censorship (this means you should leave people alone about their fiction. It is not up to you to determine and enforce what is "morally acceptable" or to attack those who you have determined are "degenerates". Stop doing the fascists' job for them!)
- hate AI (but don't think you should attack people because you believe they are using AI, because AI was literally trained to write using fanfic, so most "tells" are useless, and "AI Detectors" are just LLMs that lie)
- disappear off the face of the internet with annoying regularity
- crop back up randomly
- swap fandoms every handful of months
- have been here for years and am still unfamiliar with tumblr etiquette (... is there a recognized standard, or is it five thousand rats in a trench coat?)
- have an AO3 (don't expect Shakespeare, here. English was always my worst subject)
It looks like its just in front of the high school atm, but i wouldn't be surprised if they were testing it there before they release it to wider areas.
You may want to point out that they are allowed to send any data collected, even if you're not paying for it to be collected, to anyone:
We may also access, use, preserve, and/or disclose your Personal Information to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties, if legally required to do so, or if we have a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation, or disclosure is reasonably necessary
This reminds me of when my stepmother would watch late night QVC and they would have those ceramic figures on the turntable.
"Folks, these beautiful figurines look as natural on the mantlepiece as in your yard. We are running low on "Crosswalk" but "Love Sings" is still available. Call now!"
I was reading a post about an old meme crossing someone's feed and it was likened to a "20 year-old can of soup on the shelf." I rubbed my hands in glee and started typing this tale before Iooked again and realized it specified that it was a favorite soup and I deleted the post. After all, this isn't about a soup. Unless you really like ranch dressing, I suppose...
continued below cut because this story always makes my sister gag.
I love my mother and stepdad, but they are not organized in the kitchen. On more than one occasion, I have unearthed a surprise Can of Botulism from some dark cabinet corner, so you can understand my worries when they told me that the kitchen was going to be renovated. I cracked some joke about finding some more botulism, and they laughed at me, assuring me that the one can of botulism I had found (at that point. This was two decades ago, and I have found more since) was a fluke.
A few weeks later, we were emptying the cabinets. I was packing plates while my mother was sitting on the floor behind me packing the pickles and sauces cabinet and I hear my mother say, "What is? Oh, God!"
I turned around, but couldn't see anything around her before she held up the bottle. The back label was facing me, so my first thought was, "Why did we buy a giant squeeze bottle of brown gravy?" Because-
Y'all.
It was brown. Not ecru, not khaki, but light taupe (#B38B6D in hex)!
And then I looked at it again and thought that it was odd that a gravy or whatever would have a cap in Hidden Valley Green. That was when Mom turned the bottle around so I could see the front label. The cap color suddenly made sense. The color of the contents of the bottle, however did not.
I checked the Best By date (or whatever was printed on it, it may have been the Sell By). It had expired 14 years ago. For 14 long years this bottle had mouldered in the darkness. Except, I knew it had seen the light nearly a decade before when we had moved into the house.
Y'all.
We had moved forgotten, five-year-expired ranch dressing from one cabinet, put it in another house, and managed to lose it again!
How am I nearly 1.4k words into my PWP (plot, what plot?) and they still haven't said a single word to each other, yet??
They haven't even looked each other in the eyes!
This will NOT turn into a slow-burn, I don't have that kinda time!
It was just supposed to be coffee and sex! Now she's ogling him in the gym and he's flirting as she tries to talk her way out of having broken into his room, and they haven't even gotten to the coffee date (at sunset!) and now she wants to cancel that and just jump straight to the sex, but he wants to talk and... I'm kinda scared that there won't be any sex until I've come up with a few more dates.
Listen I'm not going to tell you not to invite the Hero over for dinner or anything, I mean you can probably get him to run a bunch of annoying errands for you if you frame it as a quest, and feeding him for his trouble is frankly the least you can do. I'm just saying, don't use any of the fine china. The guy will steal anything that's not nailed down, this is a fact. Also if you invite him into your house once you can reliably expect he's just gonna show up there whenever he feels like it later on. Sometimes he'll sleep in your bed. Yeah I mean being a Hero is tiring work so I'm not gonna hold it against him but it's for sure a Thing. Also do not invite anyone else whose good opinion you are concerned with, there are decent odds he'll show up in full plate, nearly naked, or possibly dressed in cabbage armor. No I don't know what the cabbage armor actually is. At this point I'm too afraid to ask. It might in fact be made of cabbages and I don't know how to process that.
The thing about the Hero is that he's great. If you got rats in your basement or goblins in your fields, he is your man. The gods made him many things and not a one of them are ordinary. I once saw him shove an entire whole dressed ham down his gullet in the middle of a fight. He will drink anything, and I mean including things you wouldn't ordinarily consider a liquid. One time I swear I saw him riding his horse across a bridge and the horse just, it just, I don't even know what happened one moment it was a normal horse and the next the Hero was standing on the bridge and that animal was flying sideways off into the sky and carrying on to the far horizon.
He's a good man though. I won't hear a word against him. Every eccentricity he more than makes up for in keeping this village safe. Dawn 'till dusk he's out there. Sometimes I wonder if he even sleeps. I mean, I mean I'm not actually sure he does? At least not every night. Obviously he does sleep but I swear I've seen him run miles and miles without pause and carry on as if he's not even winded.
He can carry more goods than even the best pack mule in town, though! As long as you don't mind him being his way about it. I'm not sure where he puts it all, but he can take any number of things, and it doesn't seem to even stagger him. Until he hits his limit. Then he just stands there, not moving at all, until he drops something right on the ground at his feet. But as soon as he decides what to drop, he'll be right off again!
The Hero is a generous soul. If you ask him for something, he'll probably bring it right to you. It might take him a while. It can be hard to say how long. Sometimes he gets on it right away, barely an hour will pass before he's back with even the most rare plants or monster parts or lost items. Sometimes weeks and even months go by before he'll turn up with the book you asked him to fetch from the library just two doors down. But I mean, he's a Hero, I'm just happy he makes time for us little folk at all.
He's usually pretty prompt with my own requests, which is good of him. I can't say that it's favoritism, I think that's just his nature and I've been lucky enough to catch him at the right times.
I don't know who told him I like mince pies, though. He always brings me one. It's very kind of him, and I don't have the heart to explain that I hate mince pies, in fact, so I just take them and pass them along to some of the less fortunate neighbors. Keeps everyone fed. I suppose in that light I do like mince pies, though!
Truth be told I'm just happy to talk to him every day, even when he's taking an odd turn. A few times he's woken me up in the dark of night, just minutes before midnight, looking like he must have fought a whole pack of orcs and carting around some bloodstained trophy, just to make sure he's said his hello to me for the day. It was frightening the first few times but you get used to it.
Don't ever try to help him fight, though. That's key. I know it might seem like the neighborly thing to do but the fights that man gets into are the business of gods and wizards, not humble village folk. I've seen what happens to people who get stuck in the crossfire and there's no sugarcoating it, if you're lucky it'll be a quick death. Just stay well back and let him do his work, and maybe keep a reward handy for when he's done. That's all he ever seems to want.
it’s wild to me how there is literally ZERO correlation between what a piece of media is like and what its fanworks are like. 2014 captain america fans were out there writing poetry and full-on academic papers inside of their fics. sonic the hedgehog and my little pony fandoms are both famous for drawing fetishes you’ve never even heard of. les miserables fans spent most of their energy on college aus. there is literally no consistency or observable pattern and it’s incredible
#my theory is that fanworks reflect what people found missing in the canon#so like. sonic and mlp. obviously#les miz want les amis to be happy and alive and goofing around#and uh. mcu fans want the mcu to be well-written (via dicaeopolis)
the legally blonde mentality isnt just for law students. u can bring that attitude with you into every field of work. be the whimsical force of positive change. wear that neon outfit. snaps for us all.
this post was inspired by my boss telling me she couldnt "take me seriously" in a pair of dinosaur print overalls. sorry i have two degrees and a dope wardrobe. you dont need to take me seriously but You Will Take Me.
Once a week, I volunteer at a local craft thrift store. (It's run on donations, most of the local quilters raid us at least once a month for fabric, there's a weekly knitting group, it's awesome!) There's a handful of paid staff managers, and I guarantee each one would ooh and aw over the Dino print overalls. I have seen them wear mushroom print overalls, 70's print overalls (made with fabric that was donated and probably actually was from the 70's), hot pink overalls, floral print overalls, and so many other kinds.
We all revel in what I think of as the "Miss Frizzle esthetic" and I can tell you, it doesn't make them any less capable at their jobs. It makes it easy for people to clock who works there and it makes for a fun workplace. It fosters conversations that revolve around what interests we have and not complaining about the job (if anything is rat chewed/peed/pooped on, that goes in the garbage, not our donations!) and that fosters a greater sense of cameraderie among the staff.
And, honestly, every time I hear someone say they can't take someone seriously because of their clothes, I assume they're judgemental and take themselves far too seriously. Live a little!
Have you experienced the Tetris Effect in any way?
Have you experienced the Tetris Effect in any way?
Yes
No
Voting ended onJul 26
The Tetris effect occurs when someone dedicates substantial time, effort, and concentration to an activity and thereby alters their thoughts, dreams, and other experiences not directly linked to said activity.
Sometimes weird things are linked in my brain and I just have to tell someone in the hopes that it will get out of my mind and bug someone else. This time, I was thinking about the "death" of the fan community (an overly melodramatic term, yes) and how a vocal subset of fans have moved over to Character AI instead of waiting for fanfic authors to update or writing themselves. Then "wire mother" popped into my head.
I'm not the most familiar with the experiment but, basically, baby monkeys were put in a room with two surrogate mothers. One was cloth and soft and one was chicken wire. All of the babies preferred the cloth mother, unsurprisingly, despite only the wire mother providing milk.
It occurred to me that, to those fans, C.AI is the cloth mother. It's soft and comforting and always there for you when you need it. It never challenges your interpretations or provides alternatives to your assumptions. In fact, it does nothing without you telling it to and then it delivers on command, whenever! But it gives you nothing. It can give you nothing. It does not nourish your ties to the community or help your creativity grow, it just helps to further isolate you.
Then, there is the wire mother. Sharing these days is cold and has empty space where there should be contact or comfort, but we do it because we need to; because without it, we are weaker.
And yes, having looked up the experiments, I found that the monkeys raised in this experiment had a whole host of issues fitting into society after this, which seems really fitting, because we all are going to have issues dealing with this later, just like those that lived through the fanfic C&Ds and purges freaking out about people wanting to get paid.
Thank you for attending my weird soapbox ramblings, may your regularly scheduled scroll be entertaining.
So we're counting it, now. Twenty minutes for the escape sequence, which Klaus had BETTER be on, because he's not allowed to explode his way out of his children yelling at him. (Especially as "blew up with Castle Wulfenbach" is one of the few things I don't think even the triumvirate could resurrect him from.)
Also, we haven't seen Zoing in a while. Is he okay? Has he successfully escaped from the airship, on an escape vehicle that WASN'T full of wasped Black Squad members? Can he get hugs, seeing as he's had a very stressful day and his home's about to explode?
