Thinky Thoughts

Artist. Designer. Sometime crazy person. She/her. ThinkyThoughts on AO3.

[oc4ober]

Nobody told me Agents of Shield was this fucking good. And it's not even canon???

[jkthinkythoughts]

When they aired originally, I think they tried to argue that they had been shunted to a different earth after the Hydra reveal, but all the time travel and alt-earth plots they threw in after that I dont think anyone has any idea what is or isnt "official" main line cannon.

[ozzyzoid-42]

I JUST bought a secondhand copy of uhura's song right

And THEESE ARE GENUINE TABS THAT WERE IN THERE WHEN I GOT IT.

I want to again state I DID NOT DO THIS. the question is.... which one of you did...

(Cause I cant imagine this person not using tumblr)

[jkthinkythoughts]

This is one of my favorite TOS original novels!! I still own the copy I bought new in middle school.

It is specifically because of this novel that I almost always throw a few whole peppercorns in the pot when I make savory stews and I ALWAYS call them tail kinkers in my head.

[entertheaardvark]

George Tiller was murdered 13 years ago today (May 31 2022)

[entertheaardvark]

People noting this anniversary reminding me again that it is such an insane failure of the pro-choice movement that we do not as a nation think of George Tiller as a civil rights hero and additionally a martyr at the level of MLK Jr. or a Kennedy. So, you know, do your part, etc.

[jkthinkythoughts]

New Series: Faire Warning

Where we explore the underbelly of renfaire life. This may end up being a series.

---

They Will Take It With Them

The thing about working faire full time is that the general public thinks it’s whimsical.

They see ribbons. They see turkey legs. They see a man in tights calling himself Lord Bumblefuck of the Dandelion Court and assume the whole operation runs on mead, bells, and the power of everyone having read one book about elves in 1998.

It does not.

It runs on vendor contracts, electrical hookups that look like a raccoon installed them during a divorce, managers who say “we’re a family here” right before inventing a new way to charge you for dirt, and booth owners who have sunk the GDP of a small, spiteful duchy into making a temporary plywood rectangle look like a medieval shopping experience.

So when my boss told me about the sword vendor, I did not gasp.

I was counting stock behind the counter, because someone had decided the correct place to put seven decorative daggers was in a pile, point-out, at child height. This is the kind of decision that tells you a lot about humanity. The morning rush had passed. The lane outside was doing its normal midday thing: dust, bells, roasted meat smoke, and parents negotiating with children in princess crowns like tiny unionized terrorists.

My boss leaned on the back table and said, “You ever hear about the guy who packed up during the middle of a show day?”

I looked up.

There are levels to “packed up.” At faire, “packed up” can mean a vendor quietly pulls a few bins after closing because their weekend was bad. It can mean somebody folds emotionally behind a tapestry and has to be revived with lemonade and a joint. It can mean an artist decides Sunday at two-thirty that commerce is a disease and starts giving away ceramic frogs to anyone who makes eye contact.

So I said, “Define packed up.”

He smiled, which was never a good sign. Smiles from my boss are either followed by a funny story, a lawsuit, or the phrase “technically, we’re allowed to.”

“Middle of Sunday,” he said. “Patrons everywhere. Management pissed him off so bad he drove his truck right in.”

I stopped counting.

“Into the faire.”

“Yep.”

“With patrons around.”

“Yep.”

“And management did not enjoy the consequences of their management?”

“They did not.”

This is why I respect vendors, in the same way you respect weather systems and large animals with opinions. A vendor will smile at a patron asking whether the handmade leather bracer comes in “vegan” and then, three hours later, decide that a contract dispute has entered the load-bearing phase.

My boss kept going. “He pulls up right to the booth. Gets out. Starts tearing the whole tent down.”

The image arrived fully assembled - the sword racks, the canvas, the dumb little pennants flapping like they were about to be subpoenaed. Patrons standing there with half-eaten steak on sticks, watching a grown man dismantle his business in real time while probably still wearing period boots because nobody in this industry ever changes footwear before making a life decision.

“Did anybody stop him?” I asked.

My boss gave me a look.

Right. Of course not.

Because faire management, despite being able to appear instantly when your sign is two inches too tall, becomes an endangered vapor when the problem has torque, wheels, and a vendor who has crossed over into religious clarity.

“He just took it down?” I said.

“Completely.”

“Beautiful.”

“It was not beautiful.”

“No, it was. Not for them. For them it was infrastructure failure with witnesses. But spiritually? Gorgeous.”

Outside, someone asked if the swords were real.

I told them they were real enough to be expensive and fake enough to keep everyone out of court, which satisfied them because patrons love answers that sound like a policy even when they are mostly fatigue.

They wandered off. My boss waited until they were out of earshot.

“I knew one guy who pulled a two story both down after hours, salted the earth, and never looked back.

I looked at him again.

He held up one hand. “Not here. Not recently.”

“Of course. Folklore.”

“Yeah.”

Faire has normal folklore, in theory. Ghosts in the old lanes. A queen who cursed a stage. Somebody’s cousin who met their spouse behind the pickle barrel and now they have six children named after herbs.

Then there is vendor folklore, which is less about magic and more about what happens when a person spends ten thousand dollars on carved trim, hand-painted signage, imported fabric, custom counters, fairy lights, display risers, roofing, locks, mats, curtains, and vibes, and then realizes the faire owner may get to profit off that pretty little money-pit after the vendor is gone.

That kind of folklore comes with accelerant.

My boss tapped the counter. “Some people would rather destroy it than let the owners keep it.”

I nodded.

That is the part civilians miss. They think faire people are whimsical because we own mugs with antlers and say “good morrow” to strangers for money. They do not see the spreadsheet behind the whimsy. They do not see the booth rent, the build-out, the weather damage, the permit nonsense, the owner politics, the seasonal gamble, the forty-seven conversations about where a tent stake may morally be placed.

They see a booth.

The vendor sees a hostage situation made of pine.

A group of patrons drifted in then, loud and sunburned, carrying the exhausted optimism of people who had already spent too much money but wanted one more object to justify the parking fee. One of them pointed at a sword and said, “Could you actually fight with that?”

I looked at the sword. I looked at him. I thought about trucks in pedestrian lanes, burning booths, management consequences, and the ancient faire law that every object is only decorative until someone becomes sufficiently wronged.

“Depends,” I said. “How mad are you at the lease agreement?”

My boss coughed behind me.

The patron laughed because he thought I was joking.

This was kind of him.

[jkthinkythoughts]

I have more chapters up on AO3!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/85478041/chapters/225808551

[writingdose]

“I want to write a fic about this but I don’t think anybody will be interested in it” ummm hello excuse me ma’am what do you mean you don’t think anybody will be interested in it??? YOU. YOU ARE INTERESTED IN IT???? write it because YOU are interested in it and YOU want to write about it. fanfic writing should always be first and foremost about YOUR enjoyment, not other people’s.

[jkthinkythoughts]

Totally this. I do a lot of one shots and original fic that get very low engagement purely becaise I want to read those stories.

[jkthinkythoughts]

New Series: Faire Warning

Where we explore the underbelly of renfaire life. This may end up being a series.

---

They Will Take It With Them

The thing about working faire full time is that the general public thinks it’s whimsical.

They see ribbons. They see turkey legs. They see a man in tights calling himself Lord Bumblefuck of the Dandelion Court and assume the whole operation runs on mead, bells, and the power of everyone having read one book about elves in 1998.

It does not.

It runs on vendor contracts, electrical hookups that look like a raccoon installed them during a divorce, managers who say “we’re a family here” right before inventing a new way to charge you for dirt, and booth owners who have sunk the GDP of a small, spiteful duchy into making a temporary plywood rectangle look like a medieval shopping experience.

So when my boss told me about the sword vendor, I did not gasp.

I was counting stock behind the counter, because someone had decided the correct place to put seven decorative daggers was in a pile, point-out, at child height. This is the kind of decision that tells you a lot about humanity. The morning rush had passed. The lane outside was doing its normal midday thing: dust, bells, roasted meat smoke, and parents negotiating with children in princess crowns like tiny unionized terrorists.

My boss leaned on the back table and said, “You ever hear about the guy who packed up during the middle of a show day?”

I looked up.

There are levels to “packed up.” At faire, “packed up” can mean a vendor quietly pulls a few bins after closing because their weekend was bad. It can mean somebody folds emotionally behind a tapestry and has to be revived with lemonade and a joint. It can mean an artist decides Sunday at two-thirty that commerce is a disease and starts giving away ceramic frogs to anyone who makes eye contact.

So I said, “Define packed up.”

He smiled, which was never a good sign. Smiles from my boss are either followed by a funny story, a lawsuit, or the phrase “technically, we’re allowed to.”

“Middle of Sunday,” he said. “Patrons everywhere. Management pissed him off so bad he drove his truck right in.”

I stopped counting.

“Into the faire.”

“Yep.”

“With patrons around.”

“Yep.”

“And management did not enjoy the consequences of their management?”

“They did not.”

This is why I respect vendors, in the same way you respect weather systems and large animals with opinions. A vendor will smile at a patron asking whether the handmade leather bracer comes in “vegan” and then, three hours later, decide that a contract dispute has entered the load-bearing phase.

My boss kept going. “He pulls up right to the booth. Gets out. Starts tearing the whole tent down.”

The image arrived fully assembled - the sword racks, the canvas, the dumb little pennants flapping like they were about to be subpoenaed. Patrons standing there with half-eaten steak on sticks, watching a grown man dismantle his business in real time while probably still wearing period boots because nobody in this industry ever changes footwear before making a life decision.

“Did anybody stop him?” I asked.

My boss gave me a look.

Right. Of course not.

Because faire management, despite being able to appear instantly when your sign is two inches too tall, becomes an endangered vapor when the problem has torque, wheels, and a vendor who has crossed over into religious clarity.

“He just took it down?” I said.

“Completely.”

“Beautiful.”

“It was not beautiful.”

“No, it was. Not for them. For them it was infrastructure failure with witnesses. But spiritually? Gorgeous.”

Outside, someone asked if the swords were real.

I told them they were real enough to be expensive and fake enough to keep everyone out of court, which satisfied them because patrons love answers that sound like a policy even when they are mostly fatigue.

They wandered off. My boss waited until they were out of earshot.

“I knew one guy who pulled a two story both down after hours, salted the earth, and never looked back.

I looked at him again.

He held up one hand. “Not here. Not recently.”

“Of course. Folklore.”

“Yeah.”

Faire has normal folklore, in theory. Ghosts in the old lanes. A queen who cursed a stage. Somebody’s cousin who met their spouse behind the pickle barrel and now they have six children named after herbs.

Then there is vendor folklore, which is less about magic and more about what happens when a person spends ten thousand dollars on carved trim, hand-painted signage, imported fabric, custom counters, fairy lights, display risers, roofing, locks, mats, curtains, and vibes, and then realizes the faire owner may get to profit off that pretty little money-pit after the vendor is gone.

That kind of folklore comes with accelerant.

My boss tapped the counter. “Some people would rather destroy it than let the owners keep it.”

I nodded.

That is the part civilians miss. They think faire people are whimsical because we own mugs with antlers and say “good morrow” to strangers for money. They do not see the spreadsheet behind the whimsy. They do not see the booth rent, the build-out, the weather damage, the permit nonsense, the owner politics, the seasonal gamble, the forty-seven conversations about where a tent stake may morally be placed.

They see a booth.

The vendor sees a hostage situation made of pine.

A group of patrons drifted in then, loud and sunburned, carrying the exhausted optimism of people who had already spent too much money but wanted one more object to justify the parking fee. One of them pointed at a sword and said, “Could you actually fight with that?”

I looked at the sword. I looked at him. I thought about trucks in pedestrian lanes, burning booths, management consequences, and the ancient faire law that every object is only decorative until someone becomes sufficiently wronged.

“Depends,” I said. “How mad are you at the lease agreement?”

My boss coughed behind me.

The patron laughed because he thought I was joking.

This was kind of him.

[jkthinkythoughts]

I've turned this into an ongoing series, with more chapters available over on A03!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[jkthinkythoughts]

New Series: Faire Warning

Where we explore the underbelly of renfaire life. This may end up being a series.

---

They Will Take It With Them

The thing about working faire full time is that the general public thinks it’s whimsical.

They see ribbons. They see turkey legs. They see a man in tights calling himself Lord Bumblefuck of the Dandelion Court and assume the whole operation runs on mead, bells, and the power of everyone having read one book about elves in 1998.

It does not.

It runs on vendor contracts, electrical hookups that look like a raccoon installed them during a divorce, managers who say “we’re a family here” right before inventing a new way to charge you for dirt, and booth owners who have sunk the GDP of a small, spiteful duchy into making a temporary plywood rectangle look like a medieval shopping experience.

So when my boss told me about the sword vendor, I did not gasp.

I was counting stock behind the counter, because someone had decided the correct place to put seven decorative daggers was in a pile, point-out, at child height. This is the kind of decision that tells you a lot about humanity. The morning rush had passed. The lane outside was doing its normal midday thing: dust, bells, roasted meat smoke, and parents negotiating with children in princess crowns like tiny unionized terrorists.

My boss leaned on the back table and said, “You ever hear about the guy who packed up during the middle of a show day?”

I looked up.

There are levels to “packed up.” At faire, “packed up” can mean a vendor quietly pulls a few bins after closing because their weekend was bad. It can mean somebody folds emotionally behind a tapestry and has to be revived with lemonade and a joint. It can mean an artist decides Sunday at two-thirty that commerce is a disease and starts giving away ceramic frogs to anyone who makes eye contact.

So I said, “Define packed up.”

He smiled, which was never a good sign. Smiles from my boss are either followed by a funny story, a lawsuit, or the phrase “technically, we’re allowed to.”

“Middle of Sunday,” he said. “Patrons everywhere. Management pissed him off so bad he drove his truck right in.”

I stopped counting.

“Into the faire.”

“Yep.”

“With patrons around.”

“Yep.”

“And management did not enjoy the consequences of their management?”

“They did not.”

This is why I respect vendors, in the same way you respect weather systems and large animals with opinions. A vendor will smile at a patron asking whether the handmade leather bracer comes in “vegan” and then, three hours later, decide that a contract dispute has entered the load-bearing phase.

My boss kept going. “He pulls up right to the booth. Gets out. Starts tearing the whole tent down.”

The image arrived fully assembled - the sword racks, the canvas, the dumb little pennants flapping like they were about to be subpoenaed. Patrons standing there with half-eaten steak on sticks, watching a grown man dismantle his business in real time while probably still wearing period boots because nobody in this industry ever changes footwear before making a life decision.

“Did anybody stop him?” I asked.

My boss gave me a look.

Right. Of course not.

Because faire management, despite being able to appear instantly when your sign is two inches too tall, becomes an endangered vapor when the problem has torque, wheels, and a vendor who has crossed over into religious clarity.

“He just took it down?” I said.

“Completely.”

“Beautiful.”

“It was not beautiful.”

“No, it was. Not for them. For them it was infrastructure failure with witnesses. But spiritually? Gorgeous.”

Outside, someone asked if the swords were real.

I told them they were real enough to be expensive and fake enough to keep everyone out of court, which satisfied them because patrons love answers that sound like a policy even when they are mostly fatigue.

They wandered off. My boss waited until they were out of earshot.

“I knew one guy who pulled a two story both down after hours, salted the earth, and never looked back.

I looked at him again.

He held up one hand. “Not here. Not recently.”

“Of course. Folklore.”

“Yeah.”

Faire has normal folklore, in theory. Ghosts in the old lanes. A queen who cursed a stage. Somebody’s cousin who met their spouse behind the pickle barrel and now they have six children named after herbs.

Then there is vendor folklore, which is less about magic and more about what happens when a person spends ten thousand dollars on carved trim, hand-painted signage, imported fabric, custom counters, fairy lights, display risers, roofing, locks, mats, curtains, and vibes, and then realizes the faire owner may get to profit off that pretty little money-pit after the vendor is gone.

That kind of folklore comes with accelerant.

My boss tapped the counter. “Some people would rather destroy it than let the owners keep it.”

I nodded.

That is the part civilians miss. They think faire people are whimsical because we own mugs with antlers and say “good morrow” to strangers for money. They do not see the spreadsheet behind the whimsy. They do not see the booth rent, the build-out, the weather damage, the permit nonsense, the owner politics, the seasonal gamble, the forty-seven conversations about where a tent stake may morally be placed.

They see a booth.

The vendor sees a hostage situation made of pine.

A group of patrons drifted in then, loud and sunburned, carrying the exhausted optimism of people who had already spent too much money but wanted one more object to justify the parking fee. One of them pointed at a sword and said, “Could you actually fight with that?”

I looked at the sword. I looked at him. I thought about trucks in pedestrian lanes, burning booths, management consequences, and the ancient faire law that every object is only decorative until someone becomes sufficiently wronged.

“Depends,” I said. “How mad are you at the lease agreement?”

My boss coughed behind me.

The patron laughed because he thought I was joking.

This was kind of him.

[writing-prompt-s]

Your landlord just kicked you out and sold all your possessions, but that's fine because it means that Cursed Amulet of Poverty that inflicts financial misfortune on its owner as well as debilitating ailments on whoever dares to sell or give it away is now someone else's problem.

[jkthinkythoughts]

When the landlord came with the lock-man and two boys from the yard, John was sitting on a bare floor with a cracked cup between his feet and fever in his joints.

Rain beat the window. The sash had swollen in its frame. Damp ran down the wall, and the room smelled of soot and sickness.

“You had warning,” the landlord said.

John looked up at him. The man wore a fur-lined coat over a good blue waistcoat. Behind him, the lock-man worked the door with his iron tools, though it already stood open.

John nodded once. On the floor beside him lay all that had not yet been carried down: a knife with no edge, two shirts, a bundle of letters tied in cord, and the little bronze amulet on its blackened chain.

The landlord’s gaze went to it.

“What’s that, then?”

“Bad luck,” John said.

The landlord snorted. “Then it belongs here.”

One of the yard boys laughed. The other did not. He had been in the room long enough to see the bed stripped, the books boxed, the coat taken from its peg, the boots from under the chair. He kept his eyes low now, as men do when shame has come into a room.

The landlord bent and picked up the amulet.

John did not bother to stop him. He had spent years trying to distance himself from the thing, and had long since given up any hope of success. Even now, as the chain slid over the boards with a small dry hiss, he did not believe that it would happen.

The bronze charm was no wider than a thumb, green at the rim and dark at the heart. No mark showed on its face unless the light struck it wrong. Then a thin shape seemed to stir there, not a beast and not a letter, only a crooked hunger worked into metal.

The landlord turned it over in his hand.

“Mine by right,” he said. “All goods left against debt.”

John pressed his palm flat to the floor and looked away. He knew if he begged for it the old skinflint would be certain to hold it fast, but he’d tried that before as well. If he did anything – anything at all – it would find its’ way back to him.

Down in the street the cart wheels creaked. Someone dropped John’s writing desk hard enough to crack a drawer. He heard the split wood and knew the drawer by sound. His mother’s hair comb had been in it, wrapped in cloth. Or had been before the yard boys got to it.

He shut his eyes.

The fever beat under his skin. His empty belly cramped. The landlord spoke to the lock-man about the hinge, about new tenants, about a widow from the north road who paid in good coin and asked no favors. His words went over John like rain over a stone.

At last the boys took him by the arms.

He tried to stand before they dragged him, and nearly did. His knees gave once. He caught the doorframe with one hand, nails biting old paint, and pulled himself upright for the last step over the threshold.

The landlord stood inside the room now. Inside John’s room. The amulet hung from his fist.

“You’ll thank me when you find honest work,” he said.

They put him out in the rain.

The door shut behind him. Iron turned in the lock. His goods went by cart toward the market, his books under canvas, his winter coat folded beneath a stranger’s boots, his letters damp at the edge, his dead mother’s comb in a cracked drawer that would be sold for firewood if no one wanted it whole.

John stood in the lane with water running from his hair into his eyes.

He had no roof. No coin. No dry shirt. No bread. His bones ached, and each breath scraped his throat raw.

But somewhere behind him, in the warm room that was no longer his, a greedy man held the amulet and thought it precious.

John laughed once.

It hurt so much he bent double in the rain.

Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and walked away.

---

By late thaw John had work at the tannery’s yard and a bed under a sound roof.

The town stood where the east road crossed the millstream, with red clay underfoot and sheep fields rising beyond the last houses. It was not kind, but it was fair enough. Fair was more than he had known. Each dawn he crossed the bridge with other hired men while mist lay low over the water and the millwheel turned black and slow in its trough. Each dusk he came back with lime dust on his sleeves and the sour stink of hides in his hair, and there was stew at Mistress Vale’s table if he had paid his board by Friday.

He had boots now. Not fine boots, and not new, but they kept out most of the wet. He had two shirts, a wool blanket, a knife with an edge, and a shelf above his bed where he kept his letters pressed flat beneath a stone.

On market days he was sent to carry sacks of salt from the west stalls, and he liked that errand best. The market square was loud with geese, haggling, cart wheels, bells from the chapel tower, women laughing over bruised apples, boys shouting over eels in a pail. Smoke from the pie-man’s brazier drifted low and sweet, and for a few breaths at a time it hid the tannery stink from him.

He was tying a sack shut when the girl spoke.

“You’re John, aren’t you?”

He looked up.

She was no more than sixteen, with a basket over one arm and wind-reddened hands. Her cap sat crooked, and one pale braid had come loose against her cheek. She stood beside the onion cart, watching him with the sharp open boldness of someone who knew news before others did.

“I am,” John said.

“You came from Marrow Lane.”

The cord rasped between his fingers. He drew the knot tight before he answered. “I came from there.”

“My aunt keeps a stall there in winter. She said old Berric put you out.”

John lifted the sack and set it on the handcart. The weight pulled at his shoulders. His back had grown stronger over these months, but some mornings the old fever still lived in his knees.

“There were many he put out,” he said.

“Aye, but you were the last.”

He turned then.

The girl’s face changed when she saw his eyes. Some of the boldness went from her. She shifted her basket against her hip and glanced toward the fish stalls, where two men were arguing over scales.

John wiped his hands on his apron. Bark dust clung to the cracks of his skin.

“What have you heard?”

“He’s lost the house,” she said. “The big one on Marrow Lane, and two more besides. Roofs gone bad, tenants gone, debts called in.”

John said nothing.

The market kept moving around them. A goose flapped hard under a boy’s arm. A woman cursed at a mule. The chapel bell struck once for the half hour, and the sound went up through the cold blue air.

The girl lowered her voice. “His hands shake now. My aunt saw him drop coin in the gutter and crawl after it. His face is yellow. One eye has gone clouded. He coughs blood, they say.”

John looked past her to the stall roofs and the dark wet boards under them. A fishmonger threw a bucket of water across the stones. Silver scales washed into the gutter.

He had thought of this often in the first weeks.

In the loft above Mistress Vale’s kitchen, when rain tapped the tiles and hunger woke old anger in him, he had pictured Berric’s face when loss began to gnaw him. He had pictured the man counting money and finding less. He had pictured locks breaking, tenants leaving, ledgers blotted, meat souring in the larder, his teeth loosening one by one. Those thoughts had warmed John when the blanket was thin and his cough would not let him sleep.

Now the girl’s words lay before him like a dead bird on the stones.

“Bad luck comes in runs,” she said. “My aunt says once it gets its teeth in, it eats down to bone.”

John’s mouth felt dry.

“Does she say aught else?”

“She says he sold plate for half its worth, then lost the coin before nightfall. His best horse went lame, and his second best was lost to colic. A chimney fell through one of his roofs. His tenants left by twos and threes. One man said the old fool took to buying back bits of his own junk from ragmen, thinking he could sell them dearer elsewhere.”

John lowered his gaze to the sack at his feet.

The amulet might have gone through ten hands by now. It might hang from some peddler’s neck, lie in a widow’s sewing box, sit buried in a lot of old brass, waiting for some new fool to set a price on it. Or it might have found its way back to Berric, as hungry things sometimes find their way home.

No one in the market knew that. No one spoke of curses. They knew only bad luck had found a worthy target for once. A man who had once stood broad in doorways was now bent low in gutters.

“What did he do,” John asked, “when they took the house?”

She shrugged. “Cried, my aunt said. Sat on the step and cried with his hands over his head.”

John shut his eyes.

The market noise thinned. He heard rain on the old window. Iron in the lock. His own breath scraping in his throat as he stood in the lane with nothing left but wet clothes and a name no one wanted. Then the sound shifted, and in its place he heard an old man weeping on a step while strangers carried out chairs, bedding, ledgers, spoons, a coat from a peg.

No curse had taught Berric mercy. It had only brought him to the same cold door.

“Are you glad?” the girl asked.

John opened his eyes.

She was watching him with a child’s hunger for a fitting end: the cruel man brought low, the wronged man pleased, the world set straight enough to be told over supper.

John picked up the sack. It was heavier than the last, or his arms had lost heart for lifting. He set it on the handcart beside the others and pushed it hard until the wheels bumped over the stone lip by the stall.

“No,” he said.

The girl frowned. “He took all you had.”

“He did.”

“And sold it.”

“Yes.”

“And left you in the rain.”

John looked down at his hands. The nails were black at the edges. The palms were split, but the splits were healing. Work had done that. Food had done that. A bed, a roof, and mornings that came without dread had done that.

“He was a hard man,” John said. “Now he is a ruined one.”

“That is what he earned.”

“May be.”

She stared at him as if he had failed the tale.

John took the cart handles. The worn wood sat well in his grip. Across the square, the tannery boy waved for him to hurry, and the millstream flashed pale between two rows of houses.

He pulled the cart forward.

Behind him the girl called, “Would you help him, then?”

John stopped.

A cold wind moved through the market and lifted the loose hair at the back of his neck. He thought of the small bronze charm, dark in Berric’s fist on the day the room was stripped. He thought of his mother’s comb in a broken drawer, of his father’s map gone from the wall, of letters damp at the edge. He thought of a man on a step with his face in his hands.

“I do not know,” John said.

The words came out rougher than he meant.

He stood there a moment longer, the cart weight hanging from his arms, the crowd flowing around him. Then he walked on toward the bridge, slow at first, then steady, while the bell rang noon over the town and the millwheel kept turning in the dark water.

[ot3]

"gen ai output can never be considered art" I fundamentally disagree with you about what art is but I can understand what makes a person hold this opinion

"human creations can never be considered slop" you are a little newborn baby experiencing your very first day on the planet earth and aren't qualified to participate in any real discussions about art

[gothhabiba]

somebody says that they refuse to sell out to a corporate sponsor, so instead they make merch. they assert that said merch was "made by a real human person." by "made" they actually just meant the design of the print. any day now I am going to start killing

[gothhabiba]

all of your t-shirts and hoodies are actually made by a real human person whether AI was involved in the production of the print design or not. tch.

[gothhabiba]

do you think there's any information anywhere on this website about who makes these shirts, and where, and in what conditions? well of course there isn't

[ms-demeanor]

You know how there's that genre of posts that's like "[screenshot of something horrid and dystopian happening with technology] hahaha, I sure hope nothing bad comes from defunding humanities while pouring boatloads of money into STEM"?

I need an inversion of that that's like "hahaha, I sure hope we don't run into any problems with masses of artists and writers deciding that it's fascist to understand the law and computer science."

[cunt-force-therapy]

That would have to become a real problem with real societal implications first. I know, your older colleagues refusing to learn how to use Moodle is a bother, but that's nothing compared to literally 1984

[ms-demeanor]

It seems like every humanities grad and creative on the internet has decided that the only way they will survive the future is by enshrining copyright laws more expansive than ever before and by being allowed to sue anybody for having looked at their work and had a single thought about it.

Permanent DMCA regime and an end to fair use seems pretty dystopian from where I'm sitting and the fact that the comments on this post are full of uwu smol bean creatives who are very proud to say things like "I don't care how AI works, it's evil" but can't imagine how their attempts to define model training as theft might have downstream problems that harm everyone BUT megacorporations is exactly the issue that I'm trying to articulate.

The problem is not that my elderly colleague doesn't know how to use a software program, the problem is that I'm watching liberal arts majors gleefully cheerlead attempts at implementing absolutely devastating legislation because they don't understand laws or computer science.

[jkthinkythoughts]

Gleefully ignorant humanities majors screaming how anyone who doesn't perform their specific flavor of hatered are bootlickers while doing everything in their power to hand real power over to the tech oligarchs is sadly on brand.

[mendelsohnben]

suggested by @glamorouspixels

[jkthinkythoughts]

PERFECT description of this ship.

[psychotic-gerard]

x

[jingerpi]

hate hate hate how sites are increasingly trying to make right click saving images impossible. facebook, instagram, reddit (app), pinterest*, etc... all make you jump through hoops just to save an image. can you guys not please. how ddo i make them stop. can we get one of those EU regulations or whatever that makes them all comply, or are we going to have to wait for global socialism for that. ugh

[desktop-assistant]

Right-Click Borescope - Chrome Web Store

List all images under your cursor, even ones hidden by other elements

Right-Click Borescope – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Right-Click Borescope for Firefox. List all images under your cursor, even ones hidden by other elements

[acanuk]

oh look, the exact tool that would have saved me SO much time and energy trying to find images hidden in the source code 🙃

[jkthinkythoughts]

Yes, this absolutely sucks, but I need you to understand that it is also **not new**. Using z-index to place images under clearpixel.gif is an almost 30 year old hack.

Y'all need to understand that just because a specific bit of enshittification is new to you doesnt mean it's actually new.

And also screenshots are your friends.

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

[delicatefury]

I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Thank God someone bothered to check.

[beardedmrbean]

>I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.

Sources beyond dude just trust me, for the skeptics.

Scientists shocked to find lab gloves may be skewing microplastics data

Scientists may have been unknowingly inflating microplastics pollution estimates, and the surprising source could be their own lab gloves. A

https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/scientists-lab-gloves-may-be-causing-an-overestimation-of-microplastics-411138

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics, U-M study reveals

Nitrile and latex gloves that scientists wear while they are measuring microplastics may lead to a potential overestimation of the tiny poll

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics - Phys.org (it’s a pdf)

An Embarrassing Mistake May Have Skewed Microplastics Research All Along

Researchers discovered a standard piece of lab equipment has added thousands of microplastic ‘false positives’ per each square-millimeter un

Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data

Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data: That doesn’t mean microplastics aren’t a problem, though

That should be enough

[3liza]

how did they not fucking account for this. sorry but this is really really stupid

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

this is so funny.

[ruffboi-mags]

@3liza they didn’t account for it because they didn’t realize it was an issue. The particles the gloves are shedding are not microplastics but they are similar enough in composition and under an electron microscope that because the scientists didn’t know to account for them, they didn’t realize that’s what they were seeing.

Also they DID account for contamination in WET sample preparation, because they’d already learned previously that the nitrile gloves could contaminate wet samples, but this was the first discovery that they were contaminating DRY or AIRBORNE samples as well.

All of this was very clearly laid out in just the last provided link - i didn’t even have to read all of them to learn this, I read like 3 paragraphs of the nautil.us article and I was able to learn what happened and why it hadn’t been accounted for.

Like, I understand the frustration, but this is the sort of thing that has to be DISCOVERED before it can be accounted for, and this is what that kind of discovery looks like, and berating scientists for not already knowing something science hadn’t yet learned is kind of a pointless and bad faith approach to things.

We’ve learned that a lot of the studies done on microplastics in our environment were not actually accurate, and had unintentionally incorrectly inflated numbers of microplastics in their samples due to this issue, which means that while microplastics are still obviously a problem, they’re not as overwhelming large of a problem than we thought! This is a good thing! Science has done its job and we have learned new things and can now do even better science! There’s no reason to be angry at or berate the scientists who’ve gone before. We know better now. That’s the important part.

[penwiper]

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

[armoredsuperheavy]

In 2018 I developed a method to bind fanfiction into hardback books. Like penwiper, I was also literally working in my kitchen by myself and trying things out. This solo work was a meditative experience that allowed me to think deeply about the implications of what I was creating and what my ethics and philosophy should be. I got around to the idea that the knowledge I was building should be spread far and wide, so that together, many of us fans could bind all the wonderful fics that made our lives better in a million tiny ways, and wherever possible, create a copy to give to the authors themselves. In 2019 I wrote How to Make a Book From An AO3 Page, a free manual for how to format and bind fanfic, as a gift to fandom as a whole. It took off during the 2020 lockdown and has been going strong ever since.

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

ArmoredSuperHeavy, March 2026

[petemcvries23]

the natural lifespan of a fandom is unlimited. when well tended a fandom can be functionally immortal. and yet everywhere you look you see newly bred fandoms withering and dying when they’re barely a year old. barely even six months old. fans are looking at their six month old fandoms and saying i think it’s on its last legs, should i euthanise it? when with the proper care that fandom could outlive them for decades. it’s sad. sad state of affairs we’re in.

[taraljc]

I think the biggest issue with online fandom right now is fragmentation. In days gone by we had Usenet, and then livejournal, listservs gave way to mailing lists and countless message boards that were all easy to find and central locations for fans to gather. But now times have changed, discords are private, Instagram is driven by algorithms that prevent engagement in chronological order without interruption, and we've almost regressed back to the 1980s where you had to already know where you were going, to be able to find the things that you were looking for through back channels and newsletters and fan-run conventions.

There's been no clear successor to Television Without Pity to serve as a central hub. There's no clear path of breadcrumbs leading fandoms from livejournal to Tumblr, Twitter to Bluesky, and the format is very different at all the different social media playforms. Not to mention with each new generation of fans discovering fandom, the way we use the tools at our disposal changes in quantum leaps and sea changes.

but the best part about fandom is that it is cyclical and it is eternal. there will always be someone discovering King Arthur or Ovid's Metamorphoses or VC Andrews or Farscape for the first time, Who did something that was made a decade before they were born streaming on a random app and embrace it with the fervent passion of the newly converted. And those who are inclined to do so will search far and wide to find their tribe. The pace has become incredibly accelerated and there's such a massive amount of narrative fiction in every possible medium compared to back in the day's of only three broadcast networks, especially in countries where you needed to pay your tv license.

But people don't change. Even Sherlock Holmes waxes and wanes. Even King Arthur is stripped mind and told and retold over and over again every decade. Even James T Kirk and the lens we see him through changes for each new generation from 1966 to 2026.

And sure there are sad, desperate fake fans griping about Academy chancellors who wear eyeglasses as if they've never seen Wrath Of Khan and understood what eyeglasses symbolize for those characters. or who claim they are nostalgic for simple one-dimensiobal rollicking pulpy science fiction adventures as if they were never a vehicle for allegory to address every aspect of modern life from very first moment Gene Roddenberry first conceived of Robert April and Number One aboard the USS Yorktown.

We don't sit around campfires spinning tails, or rushed to the marketplace to hear the bards with new songs. We don't gather around physical water coolers on Monday morning to talk about Mulder and Scully the way we used to. We have Reddit for that now, and TikTok, and YouTube, and Instagram, and all of these algorithms cherry picking what we see and hear in those different places that are now islands with no bridges because Google no longer actually googles correctly and it's harder and harder to find your tribe.

But by and large, fans have always been predisposed to putting time and effort into creating communities. Fans build bridges and maintain them and rebuild them over and over again.

Life finds a way. So does porn. This is the way.