My Soul Is a Haunted Little Forest

[happylittlehauntedforest]

We awaken from the depths of our sleepy angst

The Sleeper has Awakened. In this case, the Sleeper is the Dragon Age fandom

[happylittlehauntedforest]

I had an Idea

I had an idea. I would get back into writing but since I don't have the time I need to fully flesh out original works I'd write fanfiction for 2 pieces of media I am currently consuming. Let me tell you my house has never been cleaner.

[sophiamcdougall]

I fucking knew it, I SAID it: they're making ADHD people the next culture war targets. They will 'just ask questions' until we lose every scrap of ground we've gained in the last decade and more. We may not quite inspire the same level of hatred as a sexual minority, but we can very easily be made to inspire disdain and that also works.

They will strip us of our accomodations and our medications and try to stifle any sense of shared identity, and if that kills some of us, oh well. So long as it fuels another outrage cycle, fine.

So many of the tropes they've been using on trans people work extremely well on ADHD people too! "There are too many of these people suddenly! It must be a fad! It spreads through friend groups! And online! People are going private for diagnoses and that's bad! They are using pOwERfUl medical interventions and we think it's freaky!"

I saw the first ripples of this in terf circles about two years ago. And of course it's spread.

6% of British ADHD people lost their jobs in the last year thanks to the meds shortage. SIX PER CENT! And that just made these ghouls go "ooh, tasty, what else can we do?"

Recently an 'expert' was on the BBC saying people see ADHD diagnosis as a "golden ticket." Laurence Fox has been ranting that the condition doesn't exist and threatening "'you won't poison my child's body [with ADHD meds] against my consent"

People need to be aware this is going to get worse. Maybe, if we're lucky, it won't get really bad. But it's going to get worse than it is now.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Why We Re-Watch Our Favorite films?

Future ADHD

[happylittlehauntedforest]

Red Bridge over a River

[valoisfulcanellideux]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[happylittlehauntedforest]

As someone with an AO3 account, I can tell you I am glad I only allow registered users to comment.

[happylittlehauntedforest]

Started playing Baldur's Gate 3 - late to the party - and every time I see Withers in my head I say "Old Man Withers" like I am in Scooby Doo revealing the bad guy in the bad rubber mask. I don't know why I do this, other than it is because of his name.

[happylittlehauntedforest]

What April Showers are gifting my garden

[happylittlehauntedforest]

Love Through Observation

I was never taught to love myself

They say you have to in order to love others

I was taught by observing

How he cared for me while sick

Tired, hurt, and crying

I ask what he would do and do it

And in so doing learned that I am worthy of loving myself

[happylittlehauntedforest]

how to spend a Tuesday night after cleaning

[happylittlehauntedforest]

Taken 5 years ago with permission to be on the property somewhere in the rural Southeast