I am an alien inside a structure @squeakygeeky - Tumblr Blog

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

AAAAAAAaaaaghhhhh! Finally, after working on this (and mostly just sitting on this) for over a year I have posted the thing!

A professor in search of a fresh start begins a new job at a university in Bangkok and befriends a librarian. Little does he know, this is no ordinary university, it’s a BL university! But will the laws of BL help or hinder their relationship when it’s supposed to be the students falling in love? Although not a fanfiction of any particular show, this probably won't make sense if you've never seen a Thai boyslove drama before. Spot the tropes! End: He’s a brilliant academic, he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months, he just apologized to a lamppost after bumping into it. Book: He’s smol, he’s a librarian, he’s ready to fight god, he’s wearing a bowtie.

This is sort of a parody, although not quite to the degree of A Man Who Defies the World of BL. All my best jokes are in here. Please read and share, since it's not tied to any particular fandom I'm not really sure how to get it in front of the right people's eyeballs, so please be patient with the sheer number of times I'm likely to post about this.

I just really hope someone picks up on what I consider to be the central joke...

@heretherebedork @iguessitsjustme @absolutebl @so-much-yet-to-learn sorry for tagging you directly, please don't feel pressured, it's just that either you were here from the beginning or I know I've mentioned this story to you before.

#thai bl #thai ql #y novel #bookends by squeakygeeky #fanwork #how do i even tag this?

Extrovert friend made plans with me and got mixed up and didn't show. I was trying to be all chill and not obsessively confirm things and thusly ended up at soul line dance class alone and slightly frazzled (I do not possess soul). On the bright side I'm in favor of any plans that happen within 15min of my house and I needed the cardio. Now to watch my shows.

#rl stuff and things #this is your sign to obsessively confirm plans like an anxious person instead of trying to pretend not to be an anxious person

bugshroom

there should be a pill you can take one time that will shrivel up your uterus and abort it through one last horrible period

I think I've become the official Food Disposal Friend to Kdrama Friend and now I have now been delivered an entire tray of leftover enchiladas from a mutual acquaintance's party. This is not the first time or even the third time something similar has happened.

#rl stuff and things

hayaomiyazaki

scrappy cats by Léo Forest (b. 1985, France)

winry-lucy-beth

I've recently learned that escaping enshitification is actually really easy. When I was younger I would use FOSS (free and open source software) because I usually couldn't afford anything else. Back then the paid options were usually significantly better than the unpaid options so when I finally got money I started using the paid stuff and completely forgot that Foss existed.

If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.

In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90℅ of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100℅ less obnoxious.

So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.

Operating systems

Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.

Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100℅ better than windows.

Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.

Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.

Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.

Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)

Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.

Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.

Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)

Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available

Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available

Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.

News software:

Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!

Apps (I only know for android)

Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.

Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.

Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100℅ stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.

Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.

Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100℅ anonymous or private.

I think that's it. There are still a lot software varieties I am slowly finding.

centrumlumina

LibreOffice is a FOSS Office suite that can handle word docs, spreadsheets, presentations and databases.

prismatic-bell

I know people get mad at the name, and I understand why, but straight-up I've been using GIMP for 15 years and it's a good solid art program made under the GNU program. It's worth a look.

penrosesun

To add:

Blender is an amazing FOSS suite for 3D modeling and animation, as well as digital sculpting and motion tracking. Pros use it. It’s a staple in game development. It’s what the Academy Award winning film “Flow” was made on. It’s not the bland name alternative to an industry standard; it is an industry standard.

Krita is a fantastic FOSS application for digital painting. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who uses it has loved it to death.

OBS is the absolute go-to choice for screen recording and live streaming. You can use it to record your entire desktop or a specific window, capture audio from multiple sources, and even add overlays, webcam feeds, or transitions to your videos.

VLC Media Player is the best media player, hands down. It’s lightweight, it’s reliable, it supports virtually every audio and video format known to man, and it has built in media conversion and even basic editing. I truly can’t imagine why anyone would use a media player that isn’t this one. It’s just the best there is, easily, no contest.

Audacity is a fantastic multi-track audio editor and recorder. It’s free and it’s good, and podcasters love it for a reason.

And believe it or not, Thunderbird is a really good email client now. I’m not even joking. If you used it back in the day and hated it, please give it another chance, because the glow up is unreal.

dontbesoevil

Yes to all of this, but beware that while the code is open source, Proton is for-profit and private. I personally use Posteo for my emails, it's 1€/month, but even more privacy-focused than some of the other alternative and also open-source.

And in terms of VPN, I would recommend Mullvad which is even more privacy-focused and also uses an open-source software.

#saving for later tag

roostercrowned

DON’T become even a casual nerd about historical fashion because you’ll start looking at pseudo-medieval fantasy and going “that jacket and those breeches are 200 years apart and reflect extremely different social movements” and “oh no they were NOT making shirts like that prior to industrialization” and “a fly front? in MY ~1500s???”

I've dropped off the face of the earth a little IRL, not just on tumblr, but I am still very much around and not making any major life changes, so I was very surprised to have a friend come up to me at a gathering recently and try to make conversation about my upcoming move.

Then today I was with 'Kdrama friend' (back from Spain, yay) and she told me about how a completely different person started talking to her about the fact that I was moving, like I was moving out of town and it was a done deal happening in the near future. We're close enough for her to be able to say she was pretty sure that was not the case, and she swears she didn't accidentally start the rumor.

The craziest thing is that one of my stress fantasies had been moving, or faking that I'd moved, just so people would stop asking me to do things, so I had this weird moment of doubting reality and wondering if I'd actually gone and done that and couldn't remember.

I'm so tempted to roll with it and try to start some sort of crazy rumor like I'm moving to Thailand to stalk Jeff Satur full time, but I'm just not a practical jokes person and by now word should be spreading that I am in fact doing nothing. I do intend to launch a full investigation, by which I mean try to figure out who thinks I'm moving and where they heard it from, and ideally where I'm moving, because I would love to know. My current theories are that someone is moving, but it's not me, or that somehow missing one party made people think I was packing for Australia.

#rl stuff and things #i really hope my community isn't conspiring to ship me to siberia

This is one of the ducks that basically lives at my apartment building. He came over and we had a little chat, but he didn't seem that interested in my offering of frozen peas. Not sure what the neighbors have been feeding them.

#rl stuff and things #in case you were wondering what I've been doing with my life

Local vintage store got me with their targeted marketing and ornithology knowledge

#fujoshi fashion #forager vintage

catgirlcadaver-deactivated20241

I am looking neither respectfully nor disrespectfully. I gaze without recognition of your form, and without understanding.

theofficialjonbeers

Me without my glasses

threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat

i am looking disbespectacledly

A lot of bee activity outside my window. Will continue monitoring the situation.

#beenado 2

I met my new next door neighbor and she's Vietnamese, so I feel like it's time for my Vietnamese language learning hobby to make a comeback. When I run into her again I really need to learn which dialect she speaks.

I also really need to learn some phrases that don't relate to love confessions...

#rl stuff and things #the idea of actually speaking any Vietnamese is intimidating #it's not even the tones it's the everything

houseofliterature

I want to k n o w. I want to understand literature references, I want to lay on grass in the summer and recognize constellations, I want to read books from all around the world, I want to know how history affects our everyday life, I want to learn how to play the piano, I wanto to learn diffrent poems written by diffrent authors and be able to recite them by heart, I want to learn diffrent languages. I want education to be accessible. I want to fall in love with every single day.