cruisin' for a bruisin'

[tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020]

i love that i have to go to menswear to find a shirt a human being in the world would wear and then when i do it takes me .5 seconds to find it. I love that

[tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020]

me: i need a plain black t shirt

target women’s section: would you like to have a giant scoop neck that would definitely like completely show at least one of your boobs. would you, an adult woman, like to wear a crop top? would you like to look like a human piñata. BLACK? I think you mean jewel tones babey!

target men’s section: yeah sure. it’s the first thing you see as you walk into the shirt aisle. have a good one

[themadcapmathematician]

Women’s section: would you like a shirt made out of tissue paper that costs $34.99??

Men’s section: here’s 25 normal tshirts for a quarter

[dare-to-dm]

Women’s Section: Would you like to play fucking guessing games with our arbitrary sizing systems and style names?  Also, we added a bunch of fake pockets for your personal inconvenience!

Men’s Section: Here’s a bunch of pants organized by the exact inch length of your waist and legs.  With pockets that can hold more than just a credit card.

[sammit-janet]

Women’s Section:  Oh you want a plain tee-shirt?  Here you go, it’s completely see through so you either have to a) wear something else over it or b) let everyone see your bra!

Men’s Section:  Here’s an amazingly comfortable shirt that no one can see your undergarments through.  Have a nice day!

[gutter-adonis]

Women’s section: if you’re a nerd? I guess you wanna show titties and have glitter huh???

Men’s section: Here this has the hogwarts crest on it and it’s like five bucks

[i-tried-and-i-lost]

Women’s section: you want shorts? I guess that means you want something really short huh??? Might even see your butt??

Men’s section: Here’s comfortable shorts that are longer than like 15 cm long, have a good day

[domiingoenfuego]

i found the post again

[small-town-spooks]

Women’s section:you want a hoodie? Well here’s one that’s tight fitting and accents the one thing you don’t want to be seen, miss!

Men’s section:hoodie? Oh sure, here’s a loose fitting one that is perfect for hiding lumps of death have a nice day young man

[astrophelos]

Women’s section: pockets? Yeah sure of course! We’ll give you fifty fake pockets.

Men’s section: you can put your first born in one of ten pockets and still have room for more things

[notlikeyoupeople]

The true story of my life.

[gahdamnpunk]

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

[willsmithsmackedtheshitoutofme]

Yooooo!

[viewtiful-kim-deactivated202105]

Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet makes a vlog To Cope ™

[notlikeyoupeople]

I think this is the most emotionally accessible Hamlet I’ve ever experienced.

[rafikecoyote]

* Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

[galaxy-of-the-guardians]

Arthur and Merlin + Onion headlines

[shenweing]

Guardian rewatch: Brother Black, we are family now.

[dancinbutterfly]

What Shen Wei Hears: Have a cup of tea, get to bed early, I’m 30 feet away if you need assistance with anything, which I’m sure you won’t as I know your secret identity as a ridiculously overpowered preternatural law enforcement agent.

What Zhao Yunlan Means: Xiao Wei, say the word and I will ride you so good it’ll knock your ass out like cold medicine. 

[sartorialadventure]

[micdotcom]

Watch: The most wonderful moment of joy came when he entered a Nazi guard bungalow.

[nerapalooza-blog]

We are the last generation who can hear from these survivors directly. Do not take that lightly. Do not waste that opportunity. Do not forget your freedom isn’t infinitely guarenteed. And do not, do not, let it happen again.

[thefloatingstone]

[naryrising]

You can read the post here for more info, but I wanted to just add a bit about what this entails from my POV, on the Support team.  Somewhere between ¼ to 1/3 of all our tickets last month were in Chinese (somewhere upwards of 300 out of 1200 or so), almost all from users just setting up their accounts or trying to find out how to get an invitation.  A lot of the tickets are what I’d characterize as “intro” tickets - they say hi, list favourite fandoms or pairings, or provide samples of fic they’ve written. Although this isn’t necessary on AO3, this is not uncommon in Chinese fandom sites that you have to prove your credentials to get in (in fact it wasn’t uncommon in English-language fandom sites 15-20 years ago).  We respond to all of these tickets, even the ones that just say hi.  We check whether the user has managed to receive their invite or get their account sent up, and if they haven’t, we help them do so.  This means taking every single ticket through our Chinese translation team twice, once so we make sure we understand the initial ticket, and then again to translate our reply. 

This is a challenging process, although we’ve found ways to streamline it and can normally get a reply out pretty quickly (like within a few days).  We do it because this is part of why AO3 exists in the first place - to provide a safe haven where users can post their works without worrying about censorship or sudden crackdowns on certain kinds of content.  We do it because this is important, and helping these users get their accounts and be able to share their works safely is why we’re here.  We hope that we’ll be able to help as many of them as possible.  

There have been a few (thankfully few, that I’ve seen) complaints about these new AO3 users not always knowing how things work - what language to tag with, or what fandom tags to use, for instance.  To this I would say:

1. Have patience and be considerate.  They are coming to a new site that they aren’t familiar with, and using it in a language they may not be expert in, and it might take a while to learn the ropes.  You can filter out works tagged in Chinese if you don’t want to see them.  Or just scroll past.  

2. You can report works tagged with the wrong language or the wrong fandom to our Policy and Abuse team using the link at the bottom of any page.  This will not cause the authors to “get in trouble” (a concern I’ve heard before, as people are reluctant to report for these reasons).  It means the Policy and Abuse team will contact them to ask them to change the language/fandom tag, and if the creator doesn’t, they can edit it directly. 

If you remember Strikethrough or the FF.net porn ban or similar purges, please keep them in mind and consider that these users are going through something similar or potentially worse.  This is why AO3 exists.  We are doing our best to try and help make the transition smooth.  

[eabevella]

I am a Taiwanese and I’d like to put some context behind the recent influx of China based AO3 users.

China is tightening their freedom of speech in recent years after Xi has became the chairman (he even canceled the 10 years long term of service of chairman, meaning he can stay as the leader of China as long as he lives–he has became a dictator).

They censor words that are deemed “sensitive”, you can’t type anything to criticize the chinise government. Big social media platform won’t even post the posts containing sensitive words. You don’t have the freedom of publish books without the books being approved by the government either.

To disguise this whole Ninety Eighty-Four nightmare, they started to pick on the easy target: the women and the minorities (China is getting more and more misogynistic as a result of the government trying to control their male population through encouraging them to control the female population through “chinese tradition family value” but that’s another story).

Last year, the chinese government arrested a woman who is a famous yaoi/BL novel writer named 天一 and sentenced her 10 years in jail for “selling obscene publications” and “illegal publication” (she’s not the only BL writer who got arrested. Meanwhile, multiple cases where men raped women only get about 2 years of jail time in China). It’s a warning to anyone who want to publish anything that’s “not approved” by the government that they can literally ruin you. 

Just recently the chinese government “contacted” website owners of one of their largest romance/yaoi/slash fiction sites 晉江 and announced that for now on, for the sake of a Clean Society, they can’t write anything that’s slightly “obscene”. No sex scene, no sexual interaction, they can’t even write any bodily interaction below neck (I’m not kidding here).

But that’s not their actual goal. They also listed other restriction such as: can’t write anything that’s about the government, the military, the police, “sensitive history”, “race problems”, which is… you basically can’t write anything that might be used as a tool to criticize the government (as many novels did).

This recent development really hurt the chinese fanfic writers. They can’t write anything without the fear of being put on the guillotine by the government to show their control. Most of them don’t even think that deep politically, they just want to write slash fictions. But there are no platform safe in China, that’s why the sudden influx of chinese users to AO3.

I bet it won’t be long before AO3 got banned in China, but until then, be a little bit patient to them. As much as I hate the chinese government, I pity their people.

[zoooe14]

I’m crying so loud…As a Chinese, you don’t know how your kindness meant to us. When I’m young, I read 1984, and I thought this story is so unrealistic, but now, it’s getting tougher and tougher for fanfic and the writer in China. Thank you ao3. Thank you for the people who care about Chinese people. (hope I didn’t spell anything wrong)

[wrangletangle]

The OTW’s account on Weibo, the biggest Chinese social media site, is constantly fielding questions from Chinese users about how to get invitations, how to post, all of it. Chinese fans deeply want to learn how to use AO3. The difference between Lofter’s posting system and AO3′s is perhaps even wider than the gulf between Tumblr and AO3. But imagine if you had to navigate across that gap in a language you didn’t speak, using translation programs that don’t understand fan terminology.

This is exactly what the AO3 was built to deal with. We just didn’t get a chance to get the internationalization done first, so things may be bumpy for a while. We are all part of fandom, so let’s take care not to leave anyone out.

[wetwareproblem]

Just in case it isn’t clear to anyone? This. This right here is precisely why the AO3 doesn’t police content or remove things that are icky or obscene.

Because it’s not you who defines what’s obscene. It’s the authorities.

[systlin]

I saw a thing and thought it seemed like something you might find cool

-This is GENIUS-Systlin-

[quousque]

oh holy shit that’s AWESOME

[kompanie-mutter-deactivated2021]

@athene-ergane I feel like you would appreciate this

[thenatsdorf]

Sweet cat rescued from the streets of Brooklyn, NY. (via flatbushcats)

[massejasse]

Oh, the differns in his eyes..

[lightningcatters-deactivated202]

zhao yunlan’s face in the 3 seconds after shen wei shouts at the regent in his office really is just Man Discovers New Kink, News At 11, huh?

[superwholockian93]

The Truth™

[fanning-out]

Bai Yu, also Master of Microexpressions:

Bonus:

[slipping-into-madness]

[artist-assassin-deactivated2021]

[celtic-pyro-deactivated20230725]

Two souls of the damned being punished to an eternity of torture.

[anarchy-kisses]

May I present to you:

Book seller

Crystal seller

He sells flowers

She will sell you a pumpkin this fall

Would you like to purchase.. bean?

They are regulars. They buy mushrooms for soup

She has more options

Don’t be scared, he’s just been doing this for years and is passionate about garlic

Can I interest you in...melon?

Witch’s familiar needs coins to buy ingredients from toad next door

Please trust reliable, small business owners

[anachronic-cobra]

Tom Hiddleston has said more than once that he imagines Loki going to Earth in the 70s and running a Night Club

Why have I not seen any Night Club Owner Loki fanfics?

Where's my Lucifer-esque Loki fanfic where he slips back to Earth after Avengers and owns a popular night club and solves crime with the help of a good-hearted NYPD detective who doesn't believe he's the real Loki while he simultaneously avoids the attention of the Avengers in a constant series of heist-like maneuvers to keep them from ever seeing him?

Tony Stark visits a popular new nightclub called Trick and Loki dives out the nearest 12th-story window, drink still in hand

[justlookatthosesausages]

Member of the “Sorry, I didn’t hear what you just told me, because there are those two people talking 5 meters away, a child crying on the opposite sidewalk, and 3 cars passing by, on all of which my brain focused and put at equal volume in my ear instead of politely putting your sound first” squad

[ruinedchildhood]

[sufferingmermaidlesbian]

here’s the movie if anyone’s interested

[notlikeyoupeople]

!!!