Here’s the thing: authors know when they get a rec on an older story. There’s a telltale uptick of kudos (with a 10-15% comment rate if you’re lucky) in your digest email.
The thing is, there’s no way to know where these people are coming from. In the before, when fandom was more in the corners we all knew about, you could search LJ or a message board or whatever social bookmarking site we were using. You could join the community and participate.
You could get a little dopamine hit by seeing someone tell their friends why they loved your story.
Anymore, those recs are hidden in discords, or in tiktoks or instagram slideshows that you can’t search for. They’re inaccessible, not discoverable unless you’re already there. You may never know why 27 people left kudos on an old story of yours, what they liked and found in your writing. You just get the thumbs up and a kinda lovely feeling, cause these could be your people. You could like them, maybe. You could be friends.
But you’ll never find out why they stopped by, or what people are saying about you begging your back, and that’s sad.
So thank you to the people who still do public red lists on this webbed site. You are my sunshine, and I’m appreciative of all of you.
Please believe me when I say I have never knowingly shared AI artwork in my life, but this one is so godawful that it defies any sort of categorisation.
THIS was posted by the current President....
Presumably it was supposed to project an image of utter masculinity.... which would surely test even the most soulless of generative AI programs, but this... THIS?
This may simultaneously be amongst the most horrifying AND most gay things I've seen in my long life.
The closest thing I can think of is those old Sino/Soviet posters all about men striving together which just looks like they're a slightly adorable gay couple, sometimes bringing up their kids together.
The central image strives for manliness, though I can only hear Jabba the Hutt's theme playing in my head as I look at it.
But the near naked, ALL MALE, totally toned (and possibly cloned) cheerleaders gleefully flinging their pompoms with gay [sic] abandon makes JC Leyendecker's work look butch.
Transphobia is about to be signed into law in the UK. We can fight this.
I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.
Last year we broke the record for an LGBT+ mass lobby of Parliament. Will you help us break it again? Join us on 25th June 2026 to demand be
The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.
Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.
A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:
Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.
Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.
Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns
Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.
I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.
It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:
Worried about what to say?
Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. You will also get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.
Money issues?
Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.
Got a refusal or no response from your MP?
Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.
Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:
Organisations can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination.
e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).
Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee.
If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)
Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).
A women’s only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).
Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).
Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.
I have also made a PDF printout of QR codes for the government petition, email your MP tool, and mass lobby link to pass around your communities. DM me and I'll send it to you.
Some of you only care about winning arguments by submission and fail to consider that an outcome where you have rights but people are clueless liberals is still a marked improvement.
#youre right and you should say it#its the same as when people bring up how patriarchy hurts cis men too#and lefties will sneer at you ‘who cares? it hurts women more!!!’#like thanks dipshit i know that#but some of us are more concerned with getting people to fight on our side in the first place#rather than rejecting any potential ally that doesnt get an A+ on the moral purity test#(hint: when you create barriers to entry to your political movement rather than creating more pathways to join.#you end up with less allies and less power to achieve your goals.)
Also, a clueless liberal ally is still on the path to becoming a leftist. Most people don't start out as leftists. It is something people have to become, and you are making it harder by being an ass.
"Likely also why being in this rural area I work in is so exhausting because the guys are so pent-up and perverted and nasty because EVERYTHING outside of their Hanbali norm is "extreme perversion" and this makes them think it's okay to harrass people. They'll mistreat me because I don't veil my face (I'm still wearing a surgical mask most of the time to avoid disease?!) or have... embroidered sleeves. People in my home region used to complain about young guys from Riyadh/the central region in general visiting because they act like deranged horndogs, they'll trash the place, commit vandalism, sexual harrassment, etc., because they're not used to how things are in places that are more educated, have more foreigners, have people ascribing to different schools of Islamic thought in them, etc."
-----
I've lived and worked in societies that are deemed "sooo polite" by westerners. It's got "chastity" laws. Apparently "super safe" (unless you're a woman, but apparently that doesn't count when we're talking crime statistics). Under its strict etiquette and 'saving face' behavior heavily restricting open emotion and "western depravity", the underbelly of these places were rampant with extreme sexual perversion. Because everything was deemed depraved, they truly lost touch with what's actually depraved and what isn't.
In societies where girls and boys grow up together, in households where brothers have sisters, where teenagers grow up dating and learning safe sex, men are likelier to see women as people and are likelier to have a healthier approach to sex as adults. In societies where they keep "chaste" and "appropriate" and "pure" by segregating children by gender and are taught to only abstain, men more often view women as aliens and objects and sex is often loaded with trauma. In a society where fantasies are shamed and kinks are hidden away, people are likelier to have unhealthy relationships with these things, and lose sight of the difference between harmless kinks and real-life harm. In societies where drugs are all demonized, people don't know how to tell the difference between getting high on weed and dying from cocaine overdose. And the lack of healthy education and discussion around these things always results in more real-life victims that don't get help.
Just like how pearl-clutchers clog up FBI phone lines reporting "CSAM" that's literally a cartoon and the FBI have to beg them to stop wasting their time so they can focus on actual CSAM.
As always, puritans be on this post like "kinky porn = sex with children" because the first thing they think about in a kink is children in sexual situations. I swear, the people that are always screaming about protecting children think way more about sexualizing children than normal people do.
This causes real harm. And if you can't tell the difference between fictional fantasy enjoyed by consenting adults and real-life child abuse, you need help because this shit harms real people. Start by getting off the internet and getting an education.
FLY is a story about a boy who gets a second chance. Help his story take flight June 9th 11am EST on Kickstarter. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings I hope this story lifts the world to a brighter place.
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
writers really will spend twenty minutes pacing around the kitchen thinking “this scene is genius” and then sit down to type and suddenly remember approximately three words and one emotional vibe
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental, on your humble flat, or help you at the automat.”
Like literally the most famous song about how much girls love jewellry is just explaining the importance of getting jewellry for when your partner leaves you penniless and alone.
The founder of Girl Scouting in the US, Juliette Gordon Low, funded her first troop by selling her pearl necklace, which was her only belonging after her husband died and left everything to his mistress.
She founded Girl Scouts to teach girls self-sufficiency so they wouldn’t have to go through what she went through when her husband died and she didn’t know how to take care of herself.
While we’re on the subject, let’s please also remember that historically disenfranchised communities who had to worry about frequently being run out of town often bought expensive jewelry with their limited funds not because they were greedy or tacky or classless, but rather because you can’t sew a real estate investment into the lining of your coat, and the powers that be can’t freeze a diamond necklace the way that they can freeze a bank account.
I thought I might share one of my new tattoos. A couple years ago, a dear friend and I coined the term “fish bag moment”
A fish bag moment might be sitting all alone in an empty new apartment after coming out and upending your life, or starting a new job in a brand new line of work because it’s closer to your dreams
It’s what happens when you take a leap of faith or make a hard decision for yourself, when the future is so hard to visualize and everything feels scary. You’re just a fish in a bag and you can’t see where you’re going
It didn’t just survive the kiln, it thrived ❤️ to anyone out there who needs to hear it right now, rest assured: even if the path forward seems unclear, you’re on your way, and I’m proud of you
At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.
The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.
It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.
The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.
This map required:
North and South Vietnam in it
All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated
Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)
Has Laos and Cambodia in it
Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it
So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'
I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.
Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.
The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.
The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc
At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"
My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond
good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map
My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.
We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.
