When I see people say "abolish copyright, it only serves big corporations," I imagine saying, "The whole system of employment only serves big corporations....so abolish wages. People appreciate service workers and will tip them even if they don't have to."
Like. Clearly you have not tried to pay the bills on book sales.
We definitely need to reform the copyright system so they actually protect small creators instead of Disney, but a state of total anarchy has never yet been demonstrated to protect the vulnerable. In the absence of regulation, the strong oppress the weak. Bad regulation only helps them oppress the weak more, but no regulation is not the answer.
How to do that is a complicated question. I have some ideas. But I feel like once the end goal is protecting the individual who does the creative work, it's not that hard to brainstorm better solutions.
I saw someone say "as a work for hire creator, you're not using copyright anyway" and I knew then that that person should never be given any power whatsoever.
What an incredible honor to be surrounded by such talented creatives in a celebration of queer life, love, and perseverance 🩵🩵🩵
I settled on a triptych design with the left and right panels depicting each man’s ’death’ (Afghanistan and Reichenbach Falls respectively) and a sort of ‘revival’ in the center as they finally come together. Of course the retirement cottage and plenty of Victorian flower language are included as well.
I hope y’all got your copies and enjoy! Thank you again for the chance to contribute to this fantastic project 🩵🏳️🌈🏡
one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.
and none of these people wanted to walk away from a guaranteed job, so very few of them ever quit. they just kept doing the same show eight nights a week... for twenty or thirty years... and by the time it finally closed last year most of these musicians (who had been working together for DECADES) hated each other and really really fucking loathed phantom. I can't stop thinking about it. it's indescribably hellish to imagine but also the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.
[ID: excerpt from an article reading: One of my favorite stories, which should drive anyone who has every played in a band crazy-- there’s this bassoon player who has sat next to the same clarinet player since 1988. She’s convinced he plays half a note4 flat on every note he’s every played. He denies this. /]
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
i got inspired by antique furniture -> decided to try and make a wooden doll.
she is whittled entirely out of balsa wood with a craft knife, and colored with wood dye. the cabinet has miniature hinges made of tube beads and a metal rod, and closes with a magnet. she absolutely should hold a sentimental & important object, but i don't have any that are the correct size, so i just put in some cute trinkets.
after i made my wooden doll, i was musing about what other unusual materials i might use for a bjd. my partner suggested paper, and also gave me access to their craft paper collection -> i made this.
she is almost entirely made of paper & cardboard. the joints are wooden beads & worbla, because i did figure out a way to make ball joints out of paper, but it really was not worth the effort. all her limbs have tubes of rolled-up cardboard in them to keep the structure sturdy, and the origami flowers are glued around those.
this is extremely different from any doll i've made before, and i had so much fun working with pretty papers & figuring out how to turn them into a poseable 3d object.
Prince of the Unknown: An ongoing Beast!Wirt saga, it's a gorgeous coming of age story for both Beatrice and Wirt, that richly expands the Unknown and has an underlying mystery at it's core slowly being unraveled about what exactly it means to become the Beast.
worthy: A very different spin on the idea of Beast!Wirt that unfolds in a tense atmospheric mystery. One of my all time favorite fics, so good I had to write my own version of it.
age-appropriate: This is a very silly fic about Wirt and Sara at a party, it's just a very fun light-hearted story about teenagers drinking and trying to show each other up.
From MarchenMaiden on ao3:
Twilight: A thought provoking little interaction between the Beast and Lorna that's lingered in my mind for several years now.
From limeta on ao3:
The Unknown's Preferred: I'm definitely a little biased because this one was written for me, but it's really wonderful. Part of a completed series that explores a universe where Wirt becomes the Beast... but the Beast is also around, it's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a fresh take on Beast!Wirt. It's a really fun time as a whole, but this is an interesting excerpt about the Beast and the way he fits into the Unknown.
From @nellynee:
Over the River and Through the Wood (to my sweetheart's house we go): There are several fics out there about just what Anna was doing while her father was off being the Beast's lanternbearer, but this one is my favorite. It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite Ray Bradbury short stories, sort of a romance, but it reads more like a fairytale. I really can't recommend it enough.
