Sometimes I travel, sometimes I write.

This blog has not had a coherent theme since 2016 so why start now.

[welcometothejianghu]

Small Fandom Summer 2026!

For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:

Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3

Post it to AO3

And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.

Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count? A: Yes! Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely? A: Okay! Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small? A: Sure! Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else? A: Wherever! Q: What if-- A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.

And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:

So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.

There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.

Here's to creativity!

[welcometothejianghu]

Since some people have asked: There's now a Small Fandom Summer 2026 AO3 Collection! You can post your stuff right here! It's completely open and unmoderated, so if you think something goes there, well, go on and add it! Hopefully by the end of the summer, we'll have a nice little collection of stuff there.

And since some other people have asked: There's no start date for this, nor is this an end date. "Summer" in this context is an extremely arbitrary unit of measurement. I'm starting now because my personal summer runs from about mid-May to mid-August. Yours may vary.

I'm thrilled so many people have seemed excited about this! I hope it inspires the creation of a whole bunch of good stuff!

[luxatoid-deactivated20200723]

chipped

[abreathofatmosphere]

Man, this is such a perfect analogy. “Chipped”… Just damaged enough for it to show at times, but not nearly broken enough to warrant fixing. And so often does the chipped cup turn itself to show its undamaged side.

[arc-hammer]

someone put it in words

[urlocalfrogmammy]

i love this. this is a beautiful way of setting out how a lot of people feel

[the-slythering-raven]

​I have seen this post some 50 times and everytime I softly whispered ‘Fuck’ to myself cuz it hits SO close to home

[highabovethecloudssomewhere]

A couple years ago, I was staying with a friend for New Year’s and we’d decided to drive down to this adorable strip of locally-owned small business shops and check them out. The bakery was particularly crowded and since I wasn’t planning to buy anything, I waited outside. It’d been snowing, and since moving I’d picked up a “Californian-experiences-true-midwest-winter-for-the-first-time” habit of making at least one (1) tiny snowman every opportunity I get

so I built a little snowman on one of the small tables on this strip. 

after about three minutes of cramming ice together, I hear, “Do you want espresso beans for the eyes?” and I turn around and there’s this gal leaning precariously far out the window of her coffee shop, surrounded by her coworkers, holding out her hand and said espresso beans.

I think of those strangers often. just the thought of them all looking out the window to see this random stranger on the corner in the snow building a tiny snowman and deciding to join in, make it special for no other reason than that they wanted to. people are so, so precious and I’m never going to forget that moment.

[anistarrose]

if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"

[brainrockets]

Do not let your child suffer from spicy bananas!

[charlesoberonn]

This looks like a fucking parody post, or an edgy edit, but it’s 100% official real Flintstones.

[charlesoberonn]

Clarification: I don’t hate this book, I love it, it’s amazing. It’s just that taking a step back and looking it out of context is still really funny. Especially the line “We participated in a genocide, Barney.”

[femboy-fever]

ok but imagine them in their cartoon forms saying this dialogue i’m

[wondermanaging]

can we have some context to this, perhaps?

[charlesoberonn]

Bedrock is having a mayoral election. One of the candidates is a violent war mongering asshole that riles people up against the lizard people. This reminds Fred and Barney of their time in the army.

Back then the father of said violent candidate was riling people up against the “tree people”. Fred, Barney, and other soldiers fought what they believed to be a defensive measure against the tree people. Turns out, it was actually an invasion, in order to kill off the tree people and take over their forest to build Bedrock.

That’s what Fred means when he says he and Barney participated in a genocide. They literally did.

(Extra fun fact, Barney adopted a tree person baby after the war, and his son Bamm-Bamm is the last tree person.)

[connard-cynique-deactivated2024]

just fucking read it

http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Flintstones

[fuocogo]

There are a lot of interesting things about this post but the AK-47 shaped spear is what really got me

[actuallyjuststealingmemes]

This is just as wild with the context

[birdscreaming15-deactivated2020]

[charlesoberonn]

Some of my favorite moments in the series

[esoteric-merit]

From the foreword to 2021 print of the comic.

[adicttive]

[chryza]

Me when I see the word beaʃte

In my head: ah! The archaic form of the letter s! Being a casual scholar of linguistics myself I am well aware that though it resembles the letter f in modern typography in fact it is phonetically identical to s! How foolish it would be to stumble into such a simple lexiconical pitfall!

Me aloud to myself every time: beeft

[homunculus-argument]

Those who think that wisdom and whimsy are mutually exclusive have neither. It's vitally important to do the right thing when the consequences are dire, and to do a whole bunch of utterly frivolous silly dumb shit when it doesn't matter what you do.

[localcryptidsteg]

Often, the wise thing must be disguised as silly frivolous dumb shit in order to actually work

[homunculus-argument]

Nobody's going to let you do anything if they think it's actually going to work.

[optical-trapping]

[apolladay]

Wikipedia describes the game tag as follows: "Tag is a playground game involving one or more players chasing other players in an attempt to "tag" and mark them out of play, typically by touching with a hand. ... The last one tagged during tag is "It" for the next round."

However, when I was growing up, whenever the player who was "It" tagged another player, the tagger would stop being It and the player who was tagged would become It instead. The game continued indefinitely, with all players engaged the whole time, and there was no "out."

The article also describes a variant sometimes known as "zombie tag," where anyone who gets tagged becomes It in addition to the other player(s) who were already It. In this way, "being It" would spread until everyone had been tagged.

When you were a kid, which of these variants did the game Tag refer to? (Or the equivalent name if you used another regional variant like "tig" or "chase.") This is not referring to other variants such as freeze tag, unless that's what you and your playmates called Tag.

If you get tagged, you're out

If you get tagged, you become It

Everyone who gets tagged becomes It for the rest of the game (zombie tag)

Our version of Tag worked differently than any of these

We did not play Tag when I was a child

Wikipedia describes the game tag as follows: "Tag is a playground game involving one or more players chasing other players in an attempt to "tag" and mark them out of play, typically by touching with a hand. ... The last one tagged during tag is "It" for the next round." However, when I was growing up, whenever the player who was "It" tagged another player, the tagger would stop being It and the player who was tagged would become It instead. The game continued indefinitely, with all players engaged the whole time, and there was no "out." The article also describes a variant sometimes known as "zombie tag," where anyone who gets tagged becomes It in addition to the other player(s) who were already It. In this way, "being It" would spread until everyone had been tagged. When you were a kid, which of these variants did the game Tag refer to? (Or the equivalent name if you used another regional variant like "tig" or "chase.") This is not referring to other variants such as freeze tag, unless that's what you and your playmates called Tag.

If you get tagged, you're out

If you get tagged, you become It

Everyone who gets tagged becomes It for the rest of the game (zombie tag)

Our version of Tag worked differently than any of these

We did not play Tag when I was a child

Remaining time: 6 days 15 hours

[captainofthenx02]

I'm British so we called it tig because we have to be special, but it was very much that if you were tigged you were now it. It got chaotic when you had your entire class of 25 kids playing.

[fox-bright]

... all at once?

[alexanderwales]

Here's a legal PSA:

If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Genuinely, I think the most publicly visible AI advance so far this year is how thoroughly and abruptly the "image generators can't do legible text" problem has beem fixed.

For those who haven't been paying attention, this is a recent ChatGPT output. It can do this sort of dense sensible text in images totally one shot, so don't rely on bad text to identify AI images any more.

[crypticspyder]

Was the text also generated? was it generated before, and given as an input, or was it generated with the image?

[not-terezi-pyrope]

The text was its own invention.

Here is the entire interaction that produced this image:

I've seen other people do much more sinister things with this! You can produce 100% realistic fake screenshots of news articles, tweets, that sort of thing, if you can convince the bot it's kosher to do so.

[theothin]

[phaeton-flier]

[geneljumalon]

The Legend of Zelda   —   The Master Sword    

[approximateknowledge]

"this would be so good if it was good" might just be my favourite sentence to use when analysing any media

because it's not a meaningless thing to say

some things will always be mid at best, but sometimes things that suck could be so good, if only they were good

[dragon-in-a-fez]

under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??

[emotional-support-husband]

As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.

[chekhovs-raygun]

i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.