Okay, so, I get it. Its a great site! You can post things there without worry that someone who claims that media seeing it and sending lawsuits on your ass.

You can write all sorts of things, and you can have it be taggable and organizable on this neat website.

It runs donations every now and again so that they can keep the site's servers (and therefore the stories) up. It also keeps a team of lawyers so that any person who takes issue will have to deal with actual law know how.

Thats great, and I love the site for the neat, organizable system it is. It sucks that people write shitty stuff, but fiction can help you run through situations you never want happening irl, and if you dont like it, don't read it!

But. Uh. Enough about ao3, the twitter post is made by a Thorki shipper. They emphasize the part of no censorship of adult content. Hm.

Okay look, you made a very rational post for the most part, and I am not trying to pick on you or start a fight (unlike my recent replies to anon where I let my cranky out full-steam).  You appear to be generally getting the drift, and I appreciate your moderate tone.  

I am not bitching at you, here.  I am kind of laughing at you, though.  In a gentle and non-aggressive way.

I, uh, I have some news for you... about the people who, y’know, founded AO3:

Oh this is... *chef's kiss* I haven't seen such delicious dramatic irony in the wild since the days when first-time New Who viewers would plaster their Doomsday liveblogs and distraught Tenth Doctor Feels reaction posts with that one "I'm in a glass case of emotion" gif.

ASTOLAT STARTED AO3?!?!?!?!?!?!

I should be used to these posts by now, but they never fail to crack me up.

AO3 was proposed in astolat’s 2007 post An Archive of One’s Own (making the Virginia Woolf reference even more obvious).

Always hilarious. A little sad, in that it shows how much people don’t look into the “About” pages or histories of popular websites, but also, delightful that AO3 is being used by people who have no idea why it was made; it’s just useful to them. (Which was absolutely the plan.)

But yeah. AO3 is never going to get rid of the underage sex, the incest, the sex-pollen orgies, the forced marriage fics, the mpreg, the underage incestuous forced-marriage sex pollen orgies resulting in mpreg fics... because those were the reason it was created.

@elfwreck AO3 was created in response to a series of actions being taken by several authors who didn't like fans writing content in the authors sandbox for themselves, for free, and sharing it with other fans. Entire archives of fan fiction were taken down and purged. LiveJournals were particularly affected by this, as well as many other sites I can't remember the names of right now (it's almost 6am and I haven't slept yet, forgive me).

That's why it's called Archive of Our Own. It's a fan-created, fan-run, fan-moderated archive of fan fiction that is well protected by lawyers so that the authors who just want to have fun and be creative don't have formal legal action taken against them again.

Yes, that happened. It was terrifying.

In case you ever run across a fic with a disclaimer on it that says something to the effect of: "don't own, not making money, please don't come after me" that's why. I remember putting those on my cringey af fics myself on ff.net, or fanfiction.net.

That site is another large reason why AO3 is what it is, too. FF.net decided one day that adult/mature content was no longer allowed, and they promptly removed all of it. Didn't inform the authors, nothing. Just... Whoosh. Gone. Mind you, they had a rating system, so if you didn't want to find explicit fics, it was easy not to. AFF.net, or adultfanfiction.net, was put in place rather quickly and it was alright for awhile, but ultimately a bandaid.

Then, AO3 came along, and the game changed. Things could be tagged, collated, and organised like never before, and part of that was because AO3 decided not to censor content. They decided not to because of the damage that had been done to the fanfiction community due to all the recent bans and purges. All of the tropes you mentioned have been around for way, waaaaay longer than AO3.

The site wasn't created to cater to ships, tropes, or kinky stuff; it was created to house fan fiction, no matter the type, and to keep the fans who wrote it from being legally attacked by angry authors. Anne Rice was one of the big names in this, btw. AO3 is a virtual library, essentially; they expect the reader to have responsibility about the media they consume.

Btw, I'm not trying to start a fight or anything; I only wanted to educate you if you didn't know. I think it's very important to preserve our own history, because it's so unique and also because things have changed so much and so rapidly. If you did already know all this background, then please just disregard 💚

AO3 was created for a lot of reasons; protection from authors who got upset at fanfic involving their characters was one of them.

Mainly - it was created for fic that was at risk of being thrown off other platforms. It was created after Strikethrough and Fanlib, with several of the founders still coping with the sudden closing of Detention.

“Fics that might be challenged by authors” was a large category AO3 was built to welcome. AO3′s founders looked into the legalities of Rice’s claims, and the history of things like Yarbro’s legal action against a fanzine, and decided: No more. We’re done with fanworks being squished by the mere threat of lawyers, without fans having any idea how copyright law actually works.

Extreme kink was another big category: Fic and art with content that regularly got thrown off of hosting sites, regardless of the legality, because it squicked someone who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the “don’t like? don’t click” warnings.The definition of “extreme kink” shifted around a lot; in some places, any slash pairing was considered “adult rated” and “too kinky.” In others, slash was fine; explicit sex was not. In others, sex was fine, but any hint of BDSM would get a work removed. And so on. Lots of shifting goalposts. 

AO3 wasn’t specifically focused around “extreme kinky smut,” but it was made with that content specifically in mind; the terms of service and acceptable content policies were shaped by “how do we allow for stuff that’s going to disturb or offend a lot of people?” Content that would bother fans was just as important as allowing content that would bother outsiders, authors and media companies and moralistic crusaders trying to purge the world of whatever fictional tropes were most hated this year.

(@lesdeuxcygnes I don’t think we’re in disagreement, just focused on different parts of the history.)

"You can write all sorts of things, and you can have it be taggable and organizable on this neat website. "

"It sucks that people write shitty stuff, but fiction can help you run through situations you never want happening irl, and if you dont like it, don't read it!"

"But. Uh. Enough about ao3, the twitter post is made by a Thorki shipper."

All of this. AO3 was created to be permissive of any type of content that isn't actually illegal, explicitly because there was a well-documented history--which its founders lived through personally--showing that any other kind of censorship of the material posted would inevitably open the site up to bad actors who would weaponize the TOS to go after whatever type of content they didn't like. And no, not just the three or four types people who give AO3 flak always cite. Never just that. Often not even starting with that.

The conclusion this incredibly dedicated group of fans with legal knowledge and years of fandom experience came to after great deliberation was that obviously, censoring illegal content is necessary for the protection of fanworks and the archive. But the second you try to start censoring works beyond what's actually illegal, the TOS is open to abuse and the archive is no longer protected. Because no matter how specific or careful you think you're being, it will never be specific or careful enough not to open the door to third parties who want to exploit the TOS to censor content they don't personally like.

Want an example? Fics containing sexual content involving underage characters. Seems straightforward, right? Should be super easy to ban that at least!

Underage according to which state or country? And what counts as sexual content? Does this change if the characters are queer? Can you guarantee any possible person interpreting the TOS will have all the same answers to those questions as you?

If two 17-year-old boys kiss or hold hands, does that scene logically get lumped in with a graphically described sex scene between a man and woman in their 30s, and banned accordingly since the characters are underage? I would say no, you might say no...but there are a TON of people in the world that would say yes, absolutely. And that isn't some edge case. That is a very real and prominent pillar of the arguments homophobes make against ANY queer content especially in traditional children's and young adult's media. And it all starts with saying "just ban underage sexual content" as if the whole world understands and agrees on the definition of all those words.

I am a licensor/content creator and I approve the core of the above message.

(And I’ve had a long day, so if you feel the need to fight me over this, please wait till tomorrow. Otherwise, just tag your fic here “not you DD” and get on with it, secure in the knowledge that I don’t read fanfics set in my universes on AO3.)

I want this to be an actual poll, so I'm gonna need a REALLY big sample size, so do ANYTHING you can to get this around! Reblog it! Kung-pow-penis me, if you have to! Wreck my notifications! Just do ANYTHING!

90% of arguments about media could just be solved by saying “different people like different things in their stories” and leaving it at that

this person probably humanizes cops/racists, rape, child abuse, incest etc as long as its fictional lol

this is a good and normal leap in logic to make from this post!

I certainly hope they do, and not just when it’s fictional. Humanizing them is an important step in stopping the actual real-world harm.

If you recognize that they’re human, then you can understand it’s an issue of rationale and perspective, not Inherent Evil - and you can learn to think like an adversary. This is the first step in developing a good security mindset. That mindset, in turn, is the first tool you need to build functional safety measures and protections for your community.

There’s an added bonus, too - if you recognize that they’re people, you’ll notice that not many people are villains in their own narratives. They aren’t choosing to be evil, they’re rationalizing their harmful choices. And you start asking questions.

If you recognize that cops are people, you learn to ask yourself “Am I being reactionary, authoritarian, and needlessly violent?”

If you recognize that racists are people, you learn to recognize and unpack the racist lessons you were taught.

If you learn that rapists are people, you learn to actively verify consent.

By recognizing that terrible people are not Inherently Bad, but choosing to do terrible things for reasons they think justify them, you get better at protecting yourself from them - and protecting everyone around you from your worst tendencies. It’s a difficult and ongoing process, but it’ll protect you far better than any list of specific Bad Things to watch out for.

There’s a flipside to this, of course, and it’s important:

Anyone who tells you that your enemies are inhuman monsters is using you.

Either they’re trying to convince you that they couldn’t possibly be an Enemy because they’re a normal person… or they’re trying to keep you from noticing the little rationalizations. To convince you that atrocity is okay when you do it.

Don’t fall for either lie.

That last point there is really important. How often do people get away with truly atrocious shit, because everyone around them thinks that inhuman monster thing?

Of course my friend can’t be a rapist. They’re my friend, not some inhuman monster!

Of course my sibling doesn’t hit and gaslight their spouse. They’re my sibling, not some inhuman monster!

etc etc etc

So all the little and big things that point to [fill in blank] doing [thing] are rationalized and explained away. Because [fill in blank] is a person and not some inhuman monster, so they’d never!

By dehumanizing people who commit atrocities, we blind ourselves to the ability to do that shit in people we first and foremost see as people already (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) and in ourselves.

Parents Supporting Their LGBT Kids During Pride Month.

Fuck spreading hate like wildfire, spread this! Compassion, love and pride during pride month!!

Some poc parents showing their support because images like these are rarely shown and hard to find.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

SPREAD THIS LIKE WILD FIRE.

Whump Reference Digest/FAQ

Q: My character was shot/stabbed/impaled in the abdomen, how can I treat them if I don't have a hospital available in my story? A: They're probably going to die, but you can buy time by packing the wound and not letting them eat or drink anything until they get to a place with surgery.

Q: My character is shot/stabbed/impaled in the chest, how can I treat them if I don't have a hospital available in my story? A: They're probably going to die, but you can buy time by quickly putting your hand over the wound to prevent air going into the chest cavity before they can get to a place with surgery.

Q: My character was shot/stabbed/impailed in the shoulder, how can I treat them if I don't have a hospital available in my story? A: They're probably not going to die, but they will probably have lasting difficulties using that arm. Packing the wound and getting to surgery as soon as possible might minimize this.

Q: How long does it take for someone's wound to get infected? A: Signs of infection can start within about 12 hours for really dirty wounds, but normally it takes a few days. Cleaning and caring properly for wounds can decrease chances of infection.

Q: Can I clean a wound with vodka/whisky/wine? A: No. One, you shouldn't be using any kind of alcohol/hydrogen peroxide/iodine to clean wounds (just water or saline), and two, there's not enough alcohol in any of those things to disinfect anything.

Q: Can a person pass an infection to someone else without knowing they have it? A: Yes. Someone can be very infectious before they show symptoms of many infectious diseases, or may have an asymptomatic infection but still be able to spread disease.

Q: How do you know if someone has appendicitis? A: You basically try to find out if the sac holding the abdominal organs is inflamed near where we'd expect the appendix to be. You can do this by jiggling the person's abdomen and seeing if it hurts in the lower right corner.

Q: Can you kill someone by injecting them with air? A: Only if you're really dedicated. It takes about 20mL of air to kill someone when injected into a vein. And that's a lot of air when you consider most of the syringes we use in a hospital setting for IV injections are like 3mL. Injecting air into muscle is very painful but will not cause death (though if it's a lot it might cause damage to a limb).

Q: How fast do injections work? A: Most injections into the muscle or fat work in about 20-30 mins. Most injections into a vein work in about 2-5 minutes. Nothing works immediately.

Q: Can you drug someone by stabbing them in the neck with a needle? A: I mean, the drug will probably get into them that way, but you're very unlikely to hit a vein and very likely to hit something you could hurt, like a nerve or the windpipe. Best case you're probably going to hit a muscle (see above for onset times).

Q: What's a drug with an easy antidote? A: Insulin or an opioid. With insulin the antidote is sugar, with an opioid the antidote is naloxone which you can get without a prescription in many places.

Q: I need a general anesthetic that a lay person can administer.... In an apocalypse. A: It's Ether. You can make it with everclear and a car battery.

Q: Are people always monitored in a hospital? A: No. What monitoring they get is completely dependent on why they're in the hospital. Most people in a hospital are not monitored at all beyond vitals every 12 hours.

Q: Are people always shirtless in the hospital? A: No. Usually they wear hospital gowns.

Q: What does TV get wrong about hospitals? A: How pretty people are. Normally people are all bruised up, haven't bathed in days and are covered with tape.

Q: What antibiotics should I stockpile? A: Ideally, none. Unless you are a literal doctor and know how to use them.

Q: When do you restrain someone in a hospital? A: Only when they are a danger to themselves and the staff and nothing else is working to decrease that danger.

Q: What drugs are used to restrain someone? A: Usually haloperidol, diphenhydramine, and lorazepam.

Q: How does someone get a keraunographic marking? A: By being near a lightning strike. They only last a few days, though.

Q: Can you breathe with no heartbeat? A: No

Q: What does defibrillation do? A: It briefly stops the heart in the hope that it will restart in a normal rhythm.

Q: Do I have to break ribs if I'm doing CPR? A: Depends on your patient. A kid is less likely to have broken ribs after CPR, but an older adult is probably going to have broken ribs. It just kind of depends on the patient.

Q: What blood types can give/receive from each other? A: A-  can give to  A-, A+, AB-, AB+ A+ can give to  A+, AB+ B- can give to B-, B+, AB-, AB+ B+ can give to B+, AB+ AB- can give to AB-, AB+ AB+ can give to AB+ O- can give to A-, A+, B-, B+, AB-, AB+, O-, O+ (generally, O- can give to any recipient) O+ can give to A+, B+, AB+, O+

A- can receive from A-, O- A+ can receive from A-, A+, O-, O+ B- can receive from B-, O- B+ can receive from B-, B+, O-, O+ AB- can receive from A-, B-, AB-, O- AB+ can receive from A-, A+, B-, B+, AB-, AB+, O-, O+ (generally, AB+ can receive from any donor) O- can receive from O- O+ can receive from O-, O+

Q: How do I make someone unconscious without hurting them? A: Unconciousness is difficult to achieve without running the serious risk of killing or disabling them for a long time. We're talking weeks or months of disability after a head injury that knocked someone out. Probably the best way is to try to drug someone to the point where they wouldn't remember what happened/would sleep really readily, but they could still maintain their airway.

Q: What does trauma mean in a hospital context? A: Any injury is considered trauma, while an illness is not.

Q: What does the path through the hospital/recovery look like for a trauma victim? Emergency department > Surgery > ICU if bad enough > Med Surg floor > rehab if unable to safely return home yet > home. They might bounce back and forth between these a few times depending on needs.

Q: How does amnesia work? A: The most common types of amnesia are amnesia of events just before or just after an injury, as well as difficulty forming memories after an injury. Amnesia of one's entire life while retaining skills and language, though a good story element, is not a thing that happens physically. A guy named Ansel Bourne just forgot who he was one time psychogenically and we've been making that happen in fiction ever since.

Q: Can I make IV fluids myself at home? How can I administer them? A: With the right equipment, maybe. But rectoclysis is safer.

shoutout to the guy who created a parody account of cinemasins where instead of pointing out every single flaw in a film, he just pointed out things he liked about the movie. you're so right cinemawins its so much more fun to like things

CinemaWins once said "Every movie, with very little exception, is someone's favorite, I like to find out why." and that sentence alone is worth more than every single thing the CinemaSins guys have ever created.

Liam and Taliesin Moments (requested by @samuraiko )

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.

Dear sweet gods above and below and sideways. Where is my Nopetopus?!

Never ever EVER give anybody worldwide rights to anything of yours. EVER. Gaaaaaaahhhh.

(There are also about ten other things wrong with that contract that are BAD EVIL HORRIBLE NOISOME AND VILE. But if I get started enumerating them right now, before I do something about my blood sugar, it'll turn me into a pissed-off person for the rest of the day. Sweet THOTH on his e-bike but these people are fucking shameless.)

(starts rummaging around on the desk for the text of the Excommunication Curse against the Reivers to pronounce it against these schmucks)

..GAAAAAH. :/

forgot to post these here. tears of the kingdom+long term nuclear waste storage warnings

reblogging now that the game is real!

come watch eurovision we got:

funky uncle squad ready to throw hands with the nearest dictator

human neon conga line

thor in a toyota

pagan wedding rituals

edgar allan poe

token boyband

tiny woman in a box

possessed barbie dolls

xena, warrior singer

matrix cosplayers

glam rock fire lord ozai

cyberpunk ninjas and modern art sculptures

and lastly, europe when the votes come in

Ok, but if you’re an independent contractor in the US and this happens? Find a lawyer, because you might have just gotten a huge payday.

Your position was just referred to as employment. Independent contractors do not have employers; they do not have employment. Congrats, your contact at this company just provided evidence that you were illegally missclassified.

This contact is claiming that you have set hours you’re obligated to fulfill. Unless a work task can only be done at a set time for practical reasons (i.e. you’re an audio freelancer paid to support a live event that occurs at a particular time and requires a certain amount of pre-show setup), a company cannot set an independent contractor’s work hours. This is further evidence that you were missclassified.

The whole exchange establishes that the company is interpreting an employer-employee relationship rather than expecting a service. Discipline and potential for firing (you cannot fire an independent contractor; no longer purchasing their service is not equivalent) establish that this person views themselves as a manager. Independent contractors cannot have managers.

This one text exchange could:

If the company is going to screw you over like that, may as well make them pay for it.

Since this is getting a lot of reblogs, here’s a federal source that can help you determine if you’re illegally classified as a contractor:

You can also file a form with the IRS to force the company to correct your classification (assuming you meet the criteria), without necessarily having to sue:

Keep in mind that this is just federal. Most states also prohibit missclassification as an independent contractor; and even if states have more lenient rules, companies still have to comply with this federal law. The rules have largely been bipartisan and existed for decades, so they’re common.

States also have an interest in having regulations about missclassification: it’s a significant loss of tax revenue. Your self employment tax does not fully equal what a company would have paid for you in payroll taxes.

A lawyer can help point you in the right direction if a company is currently missclassifying you.

Fantastic addition

I was watching a VM fanvid about the twins (as one does) and once I finished making dumb noises I went back and took a bunch of screencaps “for later”. “Later” turned out to be the last couple of weeks at work on various breaks - I doodled and then inked with markers on an A4 page (I think the American equivalent is “letter”? anyway). And then added the screencaps, because why not.

Also, a couple of other screencaps, because sometimes you just gotta cuddle your emotional support bff/gnome ^^

I am SO WEAK for actor vs character photos and you made a SMÖRGÅSBORD of all of my favorite snacks YES! YES! THANK YOU FOR THIS! 💚💚💚

*casually draping my arm around your shoulder and gesturing with my other hand*

Now hear me out, pal, what if– what if I think ALL culture, art and writing are important and worth preserving, regardless of who wrote it and whether or not they’re deemed marketable by the capitalist institution?

I went to an exhibition of folk art once at a major national gallery. It was so vibrant and fascinating and culturally important - more so in a lot of ways than some of the art in the main galleries because this was art made by common people as something for pleasure or to express something in their lives. Sometimes it was made as a commission for someone but not for the aristocracy necessarily, it was made to be lived with and to be enjoyed.

The other notable thing about this exhibition was that it was so sparse.

Folk art, craft, it isn’t kept. It doesn’t last. A rich person hasn’t deemed it the cream of the crop and declared it to be worth a whole bunch of money so unless it is kept out of sheer love, it disappears when it’s owner is gone. It’s an ephemeral act of craft and creativity made by people that might be an expert in their specific field but one that isn’t currently deemed ‘high art’ or commercially popular or just plain fashionable enough to be kept after the owner or the artist is gone.

Sometimes this can be because the creators are marginalised groups and sometimes they don’t have the access to artistic and creative training. Sometimes they are just doing something they love and are good at but which no one else appreciates at that point in time.

Sometimes their motivations aren’t based in getting published or bought by collectors or whatever. Sometimes someone just wants to create.

The act of creating is what makes art art. It’s the intention. It’s not the result.

So yeah. Like. Fuck you dickweed. Not everything is about you and not everything is for you.

I’m an archivist and historian by profession, and a volunteer with AO3 since 2010. Often the most interesting and significant things in archives are things that were never “meant” to be preserved (notes in margins, candid photos, fliers and posters and ephemera). And AO3 absolutely serves as an archive, so saying that it doesn’t “really” archive or preserve things is actively stupid and false. For instance, AO3’s Open Doors project preserves and saves fanworks from sites that are defunct or no longer maintained, and is engaged in digitizing paper zines from the pre-internet period. That is 100% the definition of archiving and preserving material that would otherwise be lost.

But archives (I mean real, professional, official archives staffed by people with advanced degrees who get paid to be there) also have projects that look very much like AO3. For instance, many archives organized ways for people to submit materials about their experiences during COVID-19. This includes stuff like: poetry, diary entries, personal reflections, people’s feelings and thoughts. People self-submitting their own written material, unfiltered, honest, not highly polished or professionally published, was like gold to archives.

So, you might say, ok, that’s people reflecting about an important historical event, that tells future historians things they will want to know, that’s important. Not like AO3.

Now let’s imagine that we could discover a lost body of ordinary people’s writing from 100 or 300 or 500 years ago. A huge collection of the things everyday people, not just elite wealthy highly educated men, were thinking about, their fantasies and fears and hopes and things they loved, and how they felt about the books they read or the plays they saw or the music they listened to, from 1900 or 1700 or 1500. People’s writings, in their own words, without a filter. The graffiti at Pompeii, or Onfim’s writing lessons, or Ea-Nasir’s hate mail, but in 50k or 500k word installments instead of 5 or 10 or 50 word snippets. That would be, and I’m not exaggerating here, a literal gold mine for historians and literary scholars and linguists and anthropologists and all kinds of other fields. It would be the source material for countless research projects and dissertations and books.

Now, historical value isn’t particularly why I work on and contribute my writing to AO3. I work on AO3 because I think having a secure and reliable site, that isn’t vulnerable to whims and technical failures and changing policies, that is free to use and free of advertising, where people can safely post their fanworks is important. I think giving enjoyment and relaxation and comfort to people is worthwhile in and of itself, even if it wasn’t a contribution to the historical record.

But it fucking chaps my hide AS A HISTORIAN to have people say “ah, this collection of ordinary people’s writing, it’s pointless and meaningless, no one cares,” when that is an overt lie. Tell me you’ve never talked to a historian in your fucking life without telling me you’ve never talked to a historian in your fucking life. Historians eat this stuff up with a spoon.

🗣 WRITERS AREN'T SHUTTING DOWN HOLLYWOOD THE NETWORKS ARE

Can you imagine a person writing progressive books for the simple reason that the person IS progressive?

Wild concept! Absolutely bizarre, fellas!

I love frisbee

That’s no frisbee, that’s a boomerang

this is the worst that anyone's ever done at bowling, we are so lucky to have it caught on video

Okay, so for starters I have to start this with saying that @myrling-art​‘s calling dndice “math rocks” is the most perfect thing ever and I regret that it’s so completely untranslatable into French because I want to use it all the time :D

Also, speaking of the lovely Myrling, she asked me a week ago if she could send me a set of RPG dice, just because!? She likes to give dice to friends, especially if they’re just starting to play?? And I got them in the post today!!

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WAIT WAIT YOU GOT THE PACKAGE ALREADY?? 😱 See, this is why we can never leave the EU, because the postal services is on par with fricking WW1 (this is a compliment). 😆 That's incredible! (Also, I found a stamp with the tiniest little baguette in a basket, so of course I had to pick that~)

AAAAH I'M SO HAPPY YOU LIKE THEM!! 😍 I love the photo you took of both sets together. The new ones look like your original dice's evil twins! 💜🖤 Hopefully, they are not. Let me know if they behave!

I will shamelessly drop the link to the Lindorm Dice online shop here for anyone who it may concern, because they do ship worlwide and the couple running the business are the loveliest people (they tend to sneak in an extra die or sticker such as that dice goblin in their packages 🥰): https://www.lindormdice.com/

HAPPY ROLLING!! 🎲

✨THE THIEF AND THE PROPHET ✨ CHAPTER 1: 【  SEVEN SWORDS OF THE HERMIT 】

「 Over a year and a half after the miracle had been restored, the village is humming with excitement in preparation for the union of Dolores Madrigal and Mariano Guzman. Now that the extended family is back in town, Pepa and Julieta make sure their brother is no longer the odd one out of the wedding plans. Although he is glad to be reunited with his family, Bruno still feels he needs to tread lightly in hopes not to disappoint. In a moment of quiet self-reflection, the chiming of a traveling jewelry merchant catches Bruno surprise...  」

CHAPTER 1 of my ENCANTO x ROAD TO EL DORADO crossover comic.

Thank you to EVERYONE who has been patiently waiting for this. I first saw this movie a little over a year ago during a busy and stressful time. As much as it pains me not to be able to dedicate as much time to personal projects anymore, it's a reminder of how fortunate I am to be working full-time in my dream career in animation. 

I hope you stick around for the rest of the story. There is so much information in every panel. NOTHING is without meaning. 

CHAPTER 2: We'll touch base with some of Bruno's nieces and nephews, hear from a few folks around town, and get a glimpse into Chel's home life and her history in The Encanto. Is this even the same Chel that we know from centuries ago? 

Until then! ✨

[ Please feel free to leave feedback :)]

He’s dumb and cunning and scared and reckless and sleazy and a thot and a little shit and he didn’t know he was a dad, and he lies and he made a promise and he left and he came back and he’s a little guy and he’s powerful and he cried because he couldn’t save his friend and he hums to himself sometimes, he’s the most bard ever and I kinda love him to bits