yeah I have no idea either

Hi! If you for some reason notice me unfollowing you its cause im not on here anymore really so im just going through all my follows, nothing against you. Just type something in the search and it'll probably will be there

[academicssay]

[themirokai]

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

[charlesoberonn]

[penrosesun]

You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

lawyer fun fact! sometimes you need to sue someone before your insurance will pay for your medical bills (because your insurance would rather the other person pay for your medical bills so they don’t have to)! sometimes you need to sue because what you’d get from insurance isn’t enough to pay for all of your medical bills! sometimes you want to change a specific thing, like a dangerous practice or defective part, and that’s not going to happen if you just ask nicely!

most truly ridiculous lawsuits get screened before they’re even filed (because someone goes to an attorney and that attorney is like “yeah you don’t have a case here”) or very shortly after they’re filed (because judges can toss out cases that have zero merit). 99% of the time, if it sounds ridiculous but somehow it went all the way to someone suing and winning in a jury trial, it probably wasn’t actually as absurd as it sounds.

[polararts]

[smarmykemetic]

the occult implications of large parts of modern society being okay with "pleather" and "vegan leather" (plastics and micro plastics existing everywhere from placentas to the bottom of the ocean), rather than using the skins of animals who will ultimately die no matter what we do

[zoskyto-art]

So about that Bruno… 👀🐀

[calitsnow]

Encanto is coming out today and I can't wait > <.

I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible but still wanted to celebrate its release. I do not hide either that Bruno is adorable and that if he turns out to be the bad guy I will surely not hold the shock.

Anyway, this drawing is supposed to be a much bigger piece but we'll see if I can finish it one day.

[pearl-fem]

Immaterial Girl: The Myth of the Man-Made Woman by RadFemFatale

[ryan-sometimes]

COVID is slowly becoming a “third world” disease. While first world countries are hoarding vaccines, having doses for populations many times their size, third world countries can’t get any because pharma companies want to sell to the first world countries first. Even then, first world countries will receive them first. While rich countries recover from COVID, they will forget about the pandemic while many other countries live the absolute worst moment of the pandemic without being able to vaccinate their population.

[ryan-sometimes]

Watch also when some first world countries finish vaccinating their populations, they will turn to third world countries and “donate” or sell surplus vaccines. People in these countries will go “Oh how sweet! The government is donating vaccines to the poorer countries <3” when it was their hoarding that led to many, many third world citizens dying before they could even get vaccinated in the first place.

[comradesaucegay]

african and latin american countries are also pushed by pfizer to give up sovereign assets as part of their vaccine agreement

[nanalineni]

Yo europeans, sign the fucking petition, get the european commission to lift the patents

No Profit on Pandemic! Sign now!

Everyone deserves protection from COVID-19.

[nanalineni]

This is not a bullshit useless change dot org petition by the way this is an actual thing with legal consequences. If this petition gets to a million signatures, the european commission HAS to examine it.

[queerqueerspawn]

They need not only a million signatures but to pass thresholds in at least seven member states - which only Belgium has done so so far. Especially if you have Italian, Irish, or Cypriot citizenship, please sign. Sign it in general, but try to circulate if you can to anyone with those nationalities specifically.

[leosuncancervenus]

231,195 / 1,000,000 signatures as of 10/28/21

[hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon]

237,730  /  1,000,000  signatures as of 11/28/21 and the Signatory Deadline(it has to be signed by this date) is January 8th, 2022.

PLEASE sign, especially if you’re from one of the countries that has not reached it’s threshold. (France, Sweden, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria…basically every country except Italy and Belgium)

Minimum thresholds must be met in at least five more countries in addition to the 1,000,000 signatures requirement.

The countries closest to reaching their minimum threshold are Ireland(89% of required signatures), France(75%), The Netherlands (75%), Spain (69%), and Cyprus (46%). If you or anyone you know have citizenship in these countries, please sign it, encourage them to sign it, and pass it forward.

If the requirements are met, the European Commission will be forced to examine this and take legal action. Real change is a possibility if enough signatures are collected.

Spread this.

[chthonicillness]

i think there should be more stories about gay people coming back from the dead

[split-at-the-seems-deactivated2]

[chthonicillness]

ok points for originality on this one

[salamispots]

another thing sorta related to that last post

[ohimart]

goodsprings

[thehmn]

I much prefer body neutrality to body positivity.

It fits perfectly with the way I’ve been raised. You don’t have to LOVE your body. You just have it. And you just have to accept that other people have bodies too. Just bodies. No reason to insist that they’re beautiful.

I read all those posts by Finns who are used to sauna naked with family members and it very much reminded me of my own Danish upbringing where sunbathing and bathing was often done with naked or topless adults. I know that sounds weird to Americans, maybe even suspicious, but it wasn’t. It’s was just a healthy, neutral approach to the body. The body wasn’t automatically a sexual thing that had to be attractive or desired. I’m happy I was raised like that.

[cyber-phobia]

Does white-hair Izuku have any little habits that, combined with his looks, absolutely terrify AllMight?

I think All Might needs a break.

[shima-draws]

Find me in between.

Extra glitchy version under the cut!

Keep reading

[tervensage-deactivated20180403]

Today in peak trans… Journalist posts article about man raping female infant. Journalist quickly attacked by trans activists and branded a TERF for mentioning that the infant was female. Also featuring Katelyn Burns, notable trans activist, with a charming and not at all disgusting comment.

[cecaeliawitch]

when you don’t really care about the women and girls of the world suffering bc of sex-based oppression, you’re just really mad that it’s getting in the way of your nonsense narrative of gender-based oppression

[oceanlesbian]

“it makes little difference what it is that a rapist sticks his dick into” - i love how astoundingly male this statement and sentiment is. of course males understand that the stats are damning - and check out the dehumanization, “what it is” -  and will do anything to dismiss the phenomenon of male violence against female people.

if transwomen were Real Women and our Sisters, what would it cost them to acknowledge that a huge amount of violence does in fact target their female-born sisters?