Plot Bunnies, Head Canon and other Ramblings

Australian, over 40. This is a spot where I put all the various fandom stuff that doesn't quite go anywhere else.

[megpie71]

A Not-So-Gentle Reminder:

Because my previous pinned post appears to be phrased entirely too politely.

No, I will not reblog your request for funding. Not even if you send it to me multiple times. Not even if you've had your account deleted multiple times. Not even if you beg me on bended knee. Not even if you are the most wholesome, most deserving, most wretched person on the entire fucking planet. I do not approve of e-begging and I will not facilitate it in any way.

What I will do is report you to Tumblr as a spammer and then permanently block you.

[writing-prompt-s]

There is a forbidden type of magic out there. It isn’t forbidden because it’s inherently evil, or forces you to lose your humanity, or requires human sacrifices - it’s just forbidden because it’s annoying as heck to fight against.

[hestia-and-the-court]

“Ma’am, I really must insist that you pay for the room and board I’ve been giving you! It’s been a week!”

“Fine, fine,” I grumble. “I have a few options for payment: I could give you paper money, cheap gaudy jewelry, chocolate coins, spiders, some pretty seashells-”

“Spiders????” he repeats, baffled.

“Spiders it is, then,” I agree equitably, and with a wave of my hand the bed I’ve been sleeping in for the last week turns into a writhing mass of various spiders.

Worth it.

—

“Stop right there! You’re under arrest for fraud, destruction of property, and-!”

I yawn. “Didn’t ask, don’t care.” A few gestures, and the guards’ swords are all transmuted into spiders, and then they’re too busy to worry about little ol’ me.

—

“You have insulted my honor and humiliated me in front of my children! I demand satisfaction! I demand a wizard’s duel!”

Shrugging, I say, “Sure, okay, whatever. Right here and now okay?”

The pompous wizard-noble blinks. “I- you don’t want to prepare? Get your wizard’s staff or anything?”

“Nah, I’m pretty good with somatic gestures.”

“Well, if you’re sure… here and now then! Have at you!” He slams his staff down on the ground dramatically, a small shockwave of fire radiating out from the impact.

So of course, I turn his staff into spiders.

“AHHHH WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK”

“So if you’re too busy screaming to cast spells, does that mean I win?”

“AUGH ONE OF THEM BIT ME”

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

—

After that, they start coming at me in waves, with cheap wands and staves and swords and bows bought in bulk, hoping to exhaust my magical reserves so they can get close enough to put a magic inhibitor on me.

They did not expect my reserves to be as vast as they were, not did they expect me to be able to transmute the inhibitors themselves into spiders.

“Didn’t you take Magic Basics in wizard college?” I yell at the panicking mages. “Inhibitors aren’t immune to magic until the moment they activate! Serious weak point in the design, tell your magitechnicians to fix that!”

—

So of course they try assassins next.

Poison fails, because I transmute any food and drink I get into spiders and then transmute them back. Pretty easy way to get rid of poison.

So then they try knives in dark alleys. The knives bruise through my full-body spider-silk outfit, but do not penetrate, and they only get one shot before they have bigger problems.

Next is killing me in my sleep. None live to report back that the human-shaped lump under the blankets is actually a mass of highly venomous spiders.

The kingdom throws everything it has at me, and I continue to walk away, heralded by the chittering of spiders and the screams of everyone else.

—

Finally, I stand before the king himself in his overly opulent throne room, and by now he is a broken shell of a man in the face of my unorthodox tactics.

Good.

“What do you want?” he practically sobs. “You’ve singlehandedly redirected the entire crown’s budget for the next three years into replacing every weapon you’ve turned into spiders. Much more and we’ll be invaded by our neighbors! We wouldn’t be able to resist being annexed! So what can I give you to make you stop doing this?!”

I pause and pretend to consider, tapping a finger against my chin thoughtfully. “You know, you sent my brother off to war a few years back. That conflict with the Yughs up north, I believe. He didn’t want to go, so your guards forced him at spearpoint. I haven’t seen him since.”

He seizes on that, as I expected. “Yes, yes, I’ll have him returned right away! Tell me his name and I’ll honorably release him from duty and have him escorted safely home!”

“Oh?” I raise one sardonic eyebrow. “Are you able to bring back the dead now, oh wise and glorious king?”

He pales, and it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve seen in years.

“You have nothing I want,” I growl, letting the anger slip through for the first time in years. “You cannot bring him back, you cannot make up for my loss with all the riches in your kingdom. The only thing I want is to take everything from you, the way you did to me. Your kingdom will bleed out of resources, one of the neighboring countries you’ve been trying to conquer for decades now will take advantage and annex this place, and you will either be executed or forced to work for a living for the first time in your life.”

I glare at him, and he refuses to meet my eyes. “You will lose everything you ever cared about in your life. One spider at a time.”

I transmute his throne and crown into spiders (non-deadly; he doesn’t get to escape my wrath that easily), then turn and walk away, ignoring his screams and sobs.

—

And that’s why, when the Yughs finally annexed the kingdom I grew up in, they preemptively made Transarachnomancy a forbidden magical art. Not sure how they intend to enforce that, mind, but I’m not looking to challenge that. I’ve gotten what I wanted; if some other aspiring mage wants to try and follow in my footsteps, that’s not my problem.

Besides, in terms of magical skill, I’ve always been an outlier anyway. Most mages would be lucky to turn just one knife into a spider at a time; I can turn ten thousand with a few gestures. I doubt anyone will outdo my legacy.

But hey, if you want to try and surpass Georgia of the Spiders? Feel free. I’ll welcome the competition.

[werechicken-deactivated20241121]

IM

[sniperct]

[anagramofbrat]

Amazing A+ no notes

[mxtr3ssquickly]

Perfection.

[megpie71]

This is definitely the spider equivalent of a shaggy dog story - so probably a great big hairy spider story.

Also, *grone*

[olderthannetfic]

What is with the sentiment I've started seeing regarding "taking back" kudos? Probably not a new thing and something I'm personally just stumbling upon. Still, why do some people want the ability to un-kudos a story? "later it ends up being icky" so? Why does it matter that much? There are many books and shows that I've enjoyed and publicly talked about enjoying that ended up finishing horribly. Who cares if I couldn't see the future? Do people actually check accounts that kudosed "bad" stories?

--

Yes, people absolutely do, and that is why AO3 won't let you follow a kudoser back to a list of what else they liked. It would be a good way to find things to read, but it would also be a vehicle for massive harassment campaigns.

[megpie71]

The thing to remember is that one of the oldest of online blood sports is finding out things about other people that you can use to hurt or harass them.

This is also one of the older offline blood sports, but being online makes it so much easier to do, and so much easier to dehumanise the person you're doing it to.

[markovchaingang]

hey you. teenage girl writing in her diary. quit talking about the boy you have a crush on and start writing about the current political situation, the valuation of currencies, and the level of technology your people hold. your diary might be the only piece of evidence our society existed after nuclear war fries all of our data backups. future historians don't need to know about damian, they need at least a secondhand accounts of the great water wars and whether or not your leaders truly did worship a deity called "the free hand of the market"

[mothnem]

Keep writing about your crush Teenaged Girl. About your clothes, and how that other girl wore the same dress as you. Paint me a picture of what you were like.

[enchantedlantern]

Historians are going to hear about Damian and they're gonna LIKE IT

[therealbeachfox]

Make those future Historians reverse engineer the socioeconomic hierarchies of the 21st century from dreamy descriptions of Damian's current fashions. It's giving them enrichment.

[vaspider]

Talk about the things you want to talk about. You never know what mysteries your diary might solve in future generations bc you are the only person who talks about something that other people thought was too obvious to talk about, like whatever that third condiment dish that used to be on the table with salt and pepper was for.

[rosstmcd]

Somebody should sell a product where you can write by, I dunno, etching onto ceramic plates or something that has a fair chance of surviving to be read by the archeologists of the future.

Because you know a minimum of 50% of people would be deliberately pranking those future scientists.

"Dear Diary (and future scientists, hi!) - how i wish I could sneak out to meet my secret boyfriend Damian tonight, but it's June 2nd and of course everybody has to stay home tonight with a whisk broom because of the carapaces."

[vaspider]

These things do exist. :)

[megpie71]

I'm just gonna point people at the flamin' hot cheetohs sarcophagus.

[theauspolchronicles]

The vast majority of One Nation MPs quit before the end of their first term. They're either expelled or quit because of internal bickering and dysfunction. Pauline Hanson herself was kicked out of the party and wasn't part of it from 2002 to 2013.

Barnaby Joyce will not be a One Nation MP by the next election. David Farley will likely quit or be expelled by the end of this year.

What's missing from all this media obsession with how much One Nation is rising in the polls because of all the oxygen and hype the media is giving to it is the issue of longevity and stability. One Nation has never been stable. Barely any of its members maintain party allegiance after a year in office. Why aren't journalists bringing that up?

One Nation is not a viable alternative. It's the gutter where those too dysfunctional to be part of real political parties go to see if they can whip up enough racist scaremongering to keep their paycheck at the next election.

It doesn't matter how many seats One Nation wins at the next election. It won't have kept most of them by the time the next election afterwards happens. One Nation is a grift. A con. A trap for the disillusioned and angry who want change but don't realise One Nation is the worst way to make that happen.

[megpie71]

Boosting signal.

Pauline Hanson is saying she wants to have a go at being Prime Minister. Well, that's fine, she can want it. Clive Palmer wanted the job himself. Wanting is not the same as getting.

[cleo-fox]

Writing tips:

“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context

“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets

[maple-seed]

Both options convey that he's horny

[cleo-fox]

How dare you be funnier than me on my own post

[megpie71]

Is that a trumpet in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

[thedreamthieves]

i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.

[megpie71]

Again: Identity (who you are) is not the same thing as Ideology (what you think) and neither of these are the same as Actions (what you do).

Conflating all three of these is downright stupid.

[rohirric-hunter]

Hi no I'm pissed off about the age verification laws and bills again. So many grown adults out there going, "The internet should be safe for my children," with all the brazenness of someone walking into a bar and saying, "You need to stop serving alcoholic drinks because I want to drop my children off here all day while I'm at work." Except at the same time they're also demanding that arsenic be added to all the drinks, including the ones being served to children

[megpie71]

Boosting signal.

[shiropoint]

This is mesmerizing to watch.

[fuu-dog-treats]

actually physically painful to watch because you know months were spent masking all those frames for each of the kajillions of transitions in this

[ask-ickle-mod]

[thatsthat24]

Holy………..shmokes…….

[mozzarella-shenanigans]

Oh?? My god??

[pomrania]

I’ll try my best to describe this. It’s a video with a mash-up of a bunch of different Disney movies, set to a song that’s a mash-up of a bunch of other songs. That in and of itself wouldn’t make it praiseworthy, but this is DONE SO WELL that just, holy cow.

[drawnsnake]

HOLY SHIT

[cell113]

Every time I see this, I HAVE to watch.

It is Law.

[megpie71]

Brilliant work - boosting signal

[clonerightsagenda]

I think this is just a trend everywhere but I've been very frustrated this week by how much admin work is being outsourced to me as the patient/customer.

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

I feel like at a certain point these constant fetch quests become unreasonable?? Is it too much to expect these groups to communicate with each other instead of making me run back and forth between them???

[clonerightsagenda]

Made this post and then the new property manager (who started on Monday and only finally emailed us today because I sent a vaguely professionally hostile email to her boss because I hadn't heard anything and was not convinced she existed) asked for a list of open action items which her predecessor should have had but apparently wasn't keeping track of, which I learned when I met her boss and provided her with the list of open action items, which I guess tragically died in a fire in the last 2 weeks since she was sitting at my kitchen table, being menaced by the skull. How many people's jobs am I doing now

[hlahlahlahlahly]

Executive Function Theft

The phrase arrived in my head so completely formed and concrete that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t already established in the lexicon, but at

[clonerightsagenda]

It has a name!!!

[megpie71]

Boosting signal

[ao3commentoftheday]

Is using spell check okay at all now?

In writing groups I'm in it's grammar and spell check is for newbies and those wanting a crutch or a cheat code.

I'm going to be frank with you, anon. Those writing groups sound toxic as fuck and I'd recommend finding a better place to spend your time.

Grammar check and spell check are embedded in most word processing software and have been since the 1990s. People don't have to use them if they don't want to, of course, but there's nothing wrong with using them.

English spelling is famously a bastardization of French multiplied by German divided by Latin with fifty other languages thrown in for fun. And don't even get me started on the Great Vowel Shift.

All that to say, being bad at spelling is not a moral failing nor is it a sign of weak character. It's a fact of life for an overwhelming majority of people writing in English.

Or, to put it another way, would you tell a near-sighted person such as myself that wearing glasses is a cheat code and that I should just "see better"? I really hope not.

[lytefoot]

Spell check - yes, literally every time. Spell checking was, like, the third thing people wanted personal computers to do, after calculating mortgage payments and balancing their checkbook. (Maybe fourth, playing blackjack is on that list somewhere.) If you were a serious writer, your typewriter had a rudimentary spell checker in it by the late 1970s!

People who refuse to use a spell checker are the same kind of pretentious assholes that think you shouldn't use a calculator ever. Absolutely there are steps you can take to improve your spelling, and being able to spell most words easily will make the writing process easier and more fluent. (Although you'll get a lot more mileage out of improving your touch typing.) But use the spell checker. Also use a calculator when you want to know the answer to a long division problem.

Grammar check - iffy, and it depends on the software. I don't use it because I think a lot of what it calls "grammar" is actually a point of style that I disagree with. However, if you find that when you're typing quickly you often omit or double words, grammar check is a really efficient way to type that.

Stuff like Grammarly's "reword this"? This is questionable. Now you're getting into something that is no longer your writing. If you're trying to build your voice, don't do it, because the voice you'll build is someone else's.

Asking ChatGPT to reword something for you? Now that is a crutch for people who don't want to learn to write.

Spelling and grammar checkers are no substitute for proofreading, but they are useful tools to help you conform to the conventions of standard English. Don't take their word as gospel, make sure to look up words if you're not 100% sure which option from the spell checker you want, and take every recommendation of the grammar checker with a grain of salt. And find better writers groups.

[megpie71]

Seconding all of the above, with the note that the thing to be aware of is where the limitations of various tools lie.

Using spelling and grammar checkers cannot substitute for learning the skills of spelling and grammar entirely - but they can make the process of proofreading a lot easier to run through, because they will point out your errors rather than letting them be lost and overwhelmed by the good stuff you've put around them.

Be aware that a spell-check program (even the best ones out there) is not able to handle things like homophones (words that sound alike, but mean different things), homographs (words which are spelled alike, but mean different things), or anagrams (two valid words composed of the same set of letters, each arranged differently, and meaning different things). So if you've made a mistake and put "bugle" where you meant to put "bulge", your spell-check program won't notice.

(Your readers, meanwhile, probably will).

Grammar checkers in most word processing programs tend to be optimised for creating corporate documents - corporate reports to managers, for example. Which means that a grammar checker which is set to proof read a corporate report is going to look at your sonnet (or your free verse) and metaphorically have a breakdown.

All tools are imperfect, and part of learning how to use a tool well involves recognising when the tool you have handy isn't going to be able to do the job. Often, the best way to learn this is to do things the long, hard, tool-free way at first, then use the tools so you can see where they can help you, and where they will hinder.

[pjharvey-moved-deactivated20250]

people need to accept that some gay/lgbt people are terrible and some gay/lgbt people are boring and it doesnt make them Actually Straight or anything

[pjharvey-moved-deactivated20250]

big pet peeve of mine is gay internet users talking about ellen degeneres and pete buttigieg and acting like they’re “basically straight” as if both these people aren’t literally married to someone of the same sex sleeping in the same bed with them and having gay sex with their gay spouses and as if ellen degeneres coming out wasn’t such a huge moment in the lesbian community and pop culture as a whole that the biggest lesbian website for decades after that was called afterellen like unfortunately being gay doesn’t make you immune to being friends with war criminals.

[megpie71]

As I keep on saying: Identity (who you are) doesn't say anything about Ideology (what you believe, what motivates you, etc).

[depsidase]

[megpie71]

Isn't end-stage capitalism wonderful?

[famylee83]

This man needs to be hunted for sport.

[gremlinzeeeeeero]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE MADE HIMSELF ONE TOO

[teaboot]

genuine question why you making that "humans are adorable" post even though humanity do horrible things such as genocide, racism, discrimination, ableism, sexism, rape, sexual abuse, and more?

i thought you aware on how awful people can be since judging from things you reblog you are aware of ongoing genocide and witnessing autistic children abused for their condition

Every day I choose to believe that every human being is fundamentally the same. That every adult was once a child, that every child had fears and hopes and joys, and every person desires to live happily and free of pain.

This does not absolve them of their cruelties. This does not condone or minimize their transgressions. This simply is to say, "I too could become monstrous: what would it take to push me there, and how could I prevent it, and if I could not prevent it, how could I stop?"

I believe that to be human is to be an animal like any other. I believe that we are not evil. Because if I believed that humanity was evil, fundamentally cruel, and incapable of better, what hope would I have? What purpose? What life could I live, as a plague surrounded by plagues?

I don't believe that people are good because I have not seen evil actions. I believe that people are good because I have to.

Do you understand?

I must believe in humanity. I must believe in kindness. I must believe in good, and change, and positive intent.

Because otherwise, I'd have nothing to live for.

Because otherwise, all I would have is myself, and self-loathing, and decades of existence in all directions, and a hopeless wasteland to spend it in.

I am not an individual naturally inclined towards trust. This takes effort. This is a survival strategy

[megpie71]

Boosting signal

[doyouknowthisbook-poll]

Do you know which book this is from?

.

I’ve read this book before, and I like it!

I can tell which book this is from based on this excerpt, but I haven't read it

I started reading this, but didn’t finish it (or I am reading it currently)

I haven’t read this book, but I like this excerpt!

I’ve read this book before, and I don’t like it

I haven’t read this book and I don’t like this excerpt

Voting ended onMay 23

Please reblog the polls, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people read the excerpt with an open mind 💖📚 Title and author will be revealed after the poll's conclusion.

Thank you @redribbonofficial for the submission! 😄

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

The reason why so many of y'all's feminism sucks is because you still believe deep down in your hearts that there are only two kinds of people in the world: precious, ethereal, fragile dollthings called "women", and violent, lustful, rage-fueled apes called "men". Until you throw that idea away, 3rd-grade-tier "girls rule boys drool, girls are princesses and boys are stinky :(" is as feminist as we'll ever get-- and I hope it's obvious that that's lightyears away from the bare minimum of where we need to be.

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

I don't know how I'm supposed to explain to ostensibly trans-friendly feminists that "women are beautiful soft things made of glass, men are obsessed with violence and sex" is exactly what the patriarchy wants you to believe. Patriarchy wants you to believe that being a woman and/or having a vagina (patriarchy generally believes those two things are synonymous) makes one shatter on impact with reality. It makes you easier to control if you are scared shitless of the other half of the population, and it makes you more compliant with your lot in life if you believe it is in the nature of the other half of the population to rape and kill rather than realise those were choices those individual rapists and murderers made. There is no way to make gender essentialism progressive and feminist, because it is one of patriarchy's tools of subjugation. Stop trying to make it progressive.

And I can scream all of that from the rooftops over and over again, and what I hear in reply is "Trans men really are men because no woman would ever decide to become an inherently evil repugnant rapist ape", and "You're so right. Trans women are women because they too are pretty delicate little objects I can fuck", and "You're non-binary? So are you fucktoy non-binary or sexpest non-binary?", and my patience runs ever thinner.

[megpie71]

Boosting signal.

I grew up in the era of "girls can do whatever they want to do, and they can be the equal of boys". It is frankly bewildering for me to see "feminism" these days openly embracing the idea that all "real" women are these meek, fragile little flowers who will be irreparably damaged if they have to deal with anything outside the domestic sphere...