“happy new year!” i say. "excuse me,“ someone replies. it is gandalf. “but what do you mean? do you wish me a happy new year, or mean that it is a happy new year whether I want it or not; or that you feel happy this new year; or that it is a new year to be happy in?”
(Image description: the asexual, aromantic, queer chevron, polyamory, pansexual, intersex, leather, more color more pride, trans, and genderqueer pride flags with the words “the future of pride is radically inclusive” centered in white text.)
May 25th
Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days…
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Happy Glorious 25th of May, Discworlders! May your lilacs bloom and your angels rise up high!
Oh, and GNU Terry Pratchett of course :)
The lilacs are blooming…
Every year May 25th comes around and every year I have the need to put into words just why this book stayed with me for so long. But mostly it comes down to this: despite Night Watch’s sudden shift to a darker, heavier tone, it avoids being unnecessarily cruel to its characters just for the sake of plot. And of course, this is true of all the Discworld books, people striving to be better, to do better, but I think it’s significant in context of how dark this book is - especially since going by chronological reading order, this is the bleakest book we encounter up until this point.
This Ankh-Morpork that we’re submerged in is so alien at that point in her timeline, it’s gruesome and cruel and oppressive because it’s under a gruesome, cruel and oppressive tyrant. Yet despite that, there is still kindness in the heart of the book - it values old Vimes’ mercy and young Sam’s innocence, it values the fact that Vimes wants to avoid undue violence, to save as many as he can, and shield people from the tyranny for as long as he can.
It’s such an emotionally charged book and there is a lot of darkness in the story itself- a blood-thirsty serial killer, power-hungry men, ruthless paranoia, and the awful, inhumane underbelly of a regime - but where most other books would have done so, it avoids traumatizing its characters just to establish that. Darker shifts in tone so often entails that the narrative doles out meaningless suffering and trauma just to establish itself. Night Watch ultimately avoids that, because it uses other means to make the text feel heavy and oppressive. Part of it is from the plot itself, in that Vimes knows what happens behind closed doors, he know what Swing is capable of and the knowledge of that threat is high-risk enough to let readers know of the stakes.
The main emotional conflict instead comes from Vimes battling with himself, reconciling with wanting to go home versus, well, Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes, which means doing his best at saving everyone, history, timeline and causality be damned. We know that young Sam will become cynical and bitter and drunk somewhere down the line, we know that half the Night Watchmen will die, we know that the city will remain cruel despite this Hail Mary attempt at revolution. Which is why the narrative is so intent on telling us that Vimes’ kindness matters - in mentoring young Sam, in getting the prisoners off the Hurry-Up Wagon, in preventing undue riots and undue brutality, in keeping the fighting away from Barricade as long as possible. The city’s going to hell in a hand basket, might as well make people’s lives easier.
Vimes can’t save Ankh-Morpork from history taking its due course, but the powerful emotional catharsis is seeing him coming to the decision to try and save everyone anyway – simply because he can’t envision himself not doing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.
Because Night Watch in an inevitable tragedy - only one of the two stories can have a happy ending and in order for Sam Vimes to go back to the present, to his wife and his son and his Watch and his city, the revolution has to fail or else that timeline ceases to exist. There is no way for him to save both his men and his future but he’ll be damned if it doesn’t try - he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes otherwise. Every time it I re-read it still feels like he’s that close to succeeding.
It could have so easily been grimdark and ~gritty~ but ultimately it avoids because it centres on a few basic themes that forms the core in the story. The heart of it is about camaraderie of a handful of men too weird and incompetent and ugly, the tentative hope in the uprising, and the sheer bloody determination of Sam Vimes’ refusal to give up on the people around him.
Anonymous asked:
Does it cost anything to get an ao3 account? Because I want to get one but I am also penny-less.
Nope, AO3 is completely free to use.
Volunteers all over the world spend time and energy on keeping the site operational because they believe that fanworks should be accessible to anyone who wants to read them and legally protected from copyright holders who want to shut down nonprofit derivative works. AO3 remains ad-free and free to use because it is funded through donations, and I’d strongly recommend anyone who a) has money and b) enjoys fandom culture to donate to the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs AO3.
The “price” we pay for getting all of this for free is that we have to play by the rules:
- No making money off fanfiction. The AO3 legal team will have a hard time arguing that fanfiction is nonprofit, and thus not a threat to copyright holders, if half the archive’s users make money off their fanfics. This is also why AO3 doesn’t allow links to Patreon, Ko-fi and similar on the site.
- Proper tagging. AO3’s tagging system is an excellent way of finding fics that are exactly what you want to read and filtering out the stuff you don’t like. Incest pairings aren’t your jam? Good news! You can exclude the “incest” tag from your search, and those Fëanor/Fingolfin stories are GONE. However, this relies on authors actively utilising the tags, at least to warn for content that is obviously potentially upsetting to some readers: Incest, underage shipping, death, gore, suicide, self-harm …
- Don’t be an asshole. Don’t like a fic? The “back” button is right there. You don’t have to read things you don’t like. Don’t ruin some 15-year-old’s day by leaving a nasty comment on their Legolas/Reader fic with wonky grammar.
- Leave kudos and comments on the stories you like. Even if the comment is “only” a heart emoji or a simple “I love it!”. Even if the fic is 5 years old and you’re not sure the author is still active in the fandom. Even if the fic already has 50 comments. Tell an author that you love their story and you might just have made their day or their whole week.
This ended up a bit longer than intended, but my point is that AO3 is an amazing site which gives fanfiction authors and readers all the tools they need to publish and read the stories they love, and it’s all for free thanks to the volunteers and everyone who donates to the OTW.
Allllllllll the love to fic writers right now, past and present. I don’t think I would have slept in the last week without ao3 (all the love to creators and keepers of our own archive!) and a story to calm my brain and remind me of love. Y'all are heroes, and I am endlessly grateful.
I can’t think of a better demonstration of the trust AO3 has built up with its extraordinarily invested userbase than the fact that, when they had to make an emergency change that affects the Tickybox Stat Numbers For Your Monkey Brain To Obsess Over, literally all the comments are “that blows and my monkey brain is sad, but we understand and we love you, thanks for keeping the site running as smoothly as you can.” Like. Can you imagine a Tumblr or LiveJournal staff post getting that kind of response?
BIG, HUGE thanks to @rollychan for crunching the numbers and making the charts. This data is based on 4,639 respondents to the kudos poll.
What do kudos mean?
Respondents were able to select all meanings that apply to them.
According to people who self-identify as readers:
- 1872 mean “This fic was awesome! I loved it!”
- 966 mean “I recommend this story!”
- 1494 mean “Thank you so much for sharing your story!”
- 1238 mean “Good job”
- 103 mean “It was okay, but not good enough for me to comment”
- 571 mean “I finished the entire story”
According to people who self-identify as writers:
- 12 mean “This fic was awesome! I loved it!”
- 8 mean “I recommend this story!”
- 13 mean “Thank you so much for sharing your story!”
- 17 mean “Good job”
- 11 mean “It was okay, but not good enough for me to comment”
- 10 mean “I finished the entire story”
According to people who self-identify as both readers and writers:
- 922 mean “This fic was awesome! I loved it!”
- 496 mean “I recommend this story!”
- 790 mean “Thank you so much for sharing your story!”
- 724 mean “Good job”
- 155 mean “It was okay, but not good enough for me to comment”
- 324 mean “I finished the entire story”
The poll currently has 10,160 respondents. I am going to stop accepting responses at this point and link these results. I hope you find this as interesting as I do! I learned a thing!
We’re making a few behind-the-scenes changes to kudos to make sure the Archive can continue to handle the tremendous number of them (659 million and counting!) that users and guests have left over the years. Kudos will continue to work the same, but there will be a new check in the database to make extra certain duplicate kudos can’t be left. This will result in a one-time drop in kudos on works that already have duplicates.
We’re running out of room in the kudos table, so these behind-the-scenes changes are necessary to ensure you can keep leaving kudos for a long time to come. The removal of duplicate kudos – which were the result of a bug – is a side effect of the changes we’re making to keep kudos working.
\o/
For those who were wondering, the duplicate kudos weren’t the problem. The 659 million hearts as a whole were almost too big for the old system to handle. So the coders are shifting over to a new way to store kudos. That new way requires that all kudos on a work be unique, so the database will check that from now on. Because databases require consistency in their rules, it means the old duplicates must also be removed.
Three cheers for the coding volunteers, who saw this coming and prepared for it!
Automatic Dark Mode on AO3
Do you use dark mode on your phone or computer? Do you wish AO3 would switch to dark mode when your device did? Good news! AO3 recently added a new option for skins that can help with that.
Here’s what you need to do to make AO3 automatically switch to the Reversi skin when you enable dark mode on your device:
- Log in.
- Copy the CSS for Reversi.
- Go to the Create New Skin page.
- Leave the “Type” field set to “Site Skin.”
- Every skin on the Archive has to have a unique name, so fill in the “Title” field with something like “Your Name’s Automatic Dark Mode.”
- Paste the CSS for Reversi into the big “CSS” field.
- Where it says “Advanced,” press the “Show ↓” button to reveal more options.
- In the section that says “Choose @media,” check the box for “(prefers-color-scheme: dark).” It’s one of the last options on the list, so you’ll have to scroll.
- Press “Submit” to save your skin.
- Press “Use” to apply it.
If your device is currently set to light mode, you won’t notice anything. But when you switch your device to dark mode, the Reversi skin will be applied to the Archive! When you switch back to light mode, you’ll see the regular white and red layout again.
For information on browser compatibility, please refer to MDN’s prefers-color-scheme page.
For help with AO3 site skins, please check the Skins and Archive Interface FAQ.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am an AO3 volunteer, but this is not an official post.
Seriously, tho: y’all hate what’s on AO3 so much?
GO MAKE YOUR OWN SITE.
I mean, let’s face it: if they did create their own site, they’d be learning valuable, marketable, saleable skills - even if they tried and failed, they’d still be learning at least some of what’s required to set up and host a fan-fiction website (or indeed any other kind of data repository). Yeah, they’d be taking a risk - but learning how to take a risk, and decide whether the risk is worth taking is another economically saleable skill. Nailing down what they think of as “acceptable” and how to precisely define this, note where the edge cases lie, come up with rules about how to make decisions on those edge cases and so on? That is a TREMENDOUSLY useful skill, folks! Negotiating things like contracts with suppliers, coders and so on (if you’re not going to go the “wholly volunteer” way that the OTW did) is another useful skill. Managing the money for the project, figuring out how much you need, how much you can raise, what you can do with what you’ve raised, and so on… another valuable skill.
Really, there is a lot to be gained by getting up, getting out there, and taking a swing at setting up their own fanfic archive. If nothing else, it’s a wonderful way of gaining resume fodder, because it shows you’re able to do all these things, and you have all these skills.
The one skill the AO3 detractors do appear to be cultivating in abundance, however, is the one which is least economically valued. Folks, the market for “people who can sit on their arses and point out all the flaws in a project without offering worthwhile solutions” is absolutely and utterly saturated to the point of crystallisation. Nobody is going to pay you to do that.
(Also, if you hate AO3 that much, you don’t have to use it. Promise.)
They are not interested in making their own site. They are interested in getting power and exerting control over others - especially people, especially womenm who are their elders. They are interesting in forcing others to do what they want and live the way they think is best. They are little fascists.
“Folks, the market for “people who can sit on their arses and point out all the flaws in a project without offering worthwhile solutions” is absolutely and utterly saturated to the point of crystallisation.”
@megpie71 Thank you for this phrasing; it’s perfect! :’)
Long essay incoming…
One big irony in all this is that it is incredibly easy to set up a dev instance of Ao3 (I tried it this weekend; hope to squash some bugs!). They don’t even need to write their own code! xD But of course, it’s not about that. They already have spaces they could use– fanfiction.net, wattpad– these platforms censor, and invite correspondingly dull writing as a result. Because that’s the thing. You need freedom of expression for art to flourish.
What this lot want is the quality of writing on Ao3, but they also want to tell artists what to do, and they don’t realise that these things are mutually exclusive. The specific moral panics are irrelevant; they’re upset because they can’t handle the word ‘no’.
I think part of this is because they’re used to being treated like customers. Most software these folks encounter is vended by companies, and they’re told it’s designed to serve them. These companies constantly repeat things like 'your opinion matters’, and they care about their number of users– so there’s a group here trying to apply tactics that are used to protest businesses. They think if enough people who contribute nothing make enough noise, Ao3 will feel pressured to change, to 'satisfy the customer base’, or something.
And, well, nope. Because Ao3 does not need them. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of leverage (and the entire reason why Ao3 has the model it does, lol). They think of themselves as customers. They are not. They don’t understand that when companies care about the number of users, it’s because those users can be monetised, and that that does not apply here. They try to shame Ao3 for a lack of an app, without realising that companies just push apps for tracking and advertising purposes, and a mobile website works equally well. I think they believe that Ao3 ultimately aspires to look 'professional’ and 'corporate’, and they don’t perceive that a demographic that has been systematically economically disenfranchised has had quite some time to reject the capitalist aesthetic. :P
(And of course they’re authoritarians who don’t read enough to spot the obvious historical parallels, or the obvious misogyny. It’s fascinating material for sociologists!)
Well, there’s my rant. Fwiw, you see the same dynamics in all sorts of free software projects. People believe that if they use something, anyone involved in creating or maintaining it owes them a favour. It’s very strange.
Fic Event Collections
If you're running an event with a fic collection on AO3 it is helpful to include information in the event profile.
- Name of the event
- Name of the group participating (if it's not open to everyone)
- Link to a post or page where people can find out more
Doing this makes it easy for people to find your fics, join your groups, and participate in your events in the future.
wow, what a gorgeous month to remember autism isn’t a disease and there’s no “cure for autism” and there shouldn’t have to be one just because allistic people can’t get the hell over themselves and realise other people experience the world differently and have different needs and require different accommodations. terrific.
trilllizard666
autism is literally a neurological and development condition but ok sure yeah keep with the feel good platitudes, you absolute tit
lethal-cuddles
There’s a strong difference between a “disease” and a “condition”, you absolute tit
Think of it this way. 83% of computers (laptop and desktop) use Windows. 13% use Mac. The vast majority of software is developed for windows, with another significant fraction developed for or adapted to mac, because that’s what most people use and it’s all most people understand.
Now imaging you’re one of the 1.4% of computers are running Linux. This doesn’t mean you’ve got a windows machine with a virus, it doesn’t mean your computer is broken, it doesn’t mean it needs to get replaced with a more common operating system. It’s not quite as good at some things most people take for granted, but it’s significantly better at a bunch of other things. But if you have a problem with your computer, the vast majority of people won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. They’ll give advice for how to deal with a similar issue on their own computer, and it will be worthless. The only people with any idea what you’re going through are going to be on linux forums. And you can mostly muddle through all the things everybody else can do with improvisation and lots of WINE, but it sure would be nice if the devs of that video game you were looking forward to would like, acknowledge the existence of your demographic.
Now imagine that on top of all that, the primary linux support system had been taken over by a bunch of assholes who’ve never so much as looked at a command prompt in their lives. but who have declared themselves the Voice of Linux Users and keep spending millions of dollars on campaigns “educating” everybody about how using linux makes you a fundamentally bad and stupid person so your laptop needs to be burned immediately to force you to get a correct computer.
lethal-cuddles
i love that analogy so fucking much
sisterhandgrenadeofforgiveness
As an IT person who uses linux and as a mother of one, possibly two autistic kids:
This is an excellent analogy.
theexoticvet-deactivated2022070
The states casting ballots on Super Tuesday together comprise 40% of the U.S. population. If your state is listed below - you’re one of them! Early voting is open today and tomorrow in many areas - be sure to check out what’s going on in your local area, and vote!
✅🏳️🌈🇺🇸🏳️🌈✅
Alabama
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Maine
Massachusetts
Minnesota
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Via PrideVMC
Touched By A Russian Troll
So, I got one of those “you have interacted with a Russian troll” emails from tumblr as well. And here I was congratulating myself that I had escaped the scourge when it came to Facebook.
I looked at the URLs and didn’t recognize any of them; so I’m assuming this means that at some point I liked or reblogged a post that one of my followers had liked or reblogged which was at some point born on a troll farm.
Whatever it was that I wound up propagating, I apologize for the part I had in it. And while I’m at it, I’d like to talk about the word “propaganda.”
Reblogging this because we will undoubtedly see even more Russian trolling this fall.
And lo, the Russian trolls are back and so far it looks like they are focusing on the two most polarizing candidates: Buttercup and Sanders.
I am not a Sanders fan and do not want him to get the nomination, but I will still say that the following things are true:
* Though he knew about this before it came out publicly, I don’t believe Sanders has done anything to solicit Russian assistance and it’s not his fault they’re trying to give it to him.
* Take anything you see on line from a Sanders supporter who you don’t know or whose account is new with a grain of salt, especially if it’s highly inflammatory. Also if it were me I’d just avoid Twitter entirely during campaign season, but I always avoid Twitter, so.
* The fact that these Russian agents (I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT RUSSIAN AGENTS ARE A REAL FUCKING THING IN 20 FUCKING 20 BUT THEY ARE AND WTF IS UP WITH THIS TIMELINE) believe that Sanders will lose to Buttercup in the general doesn’t mean he necessarily will. In other words, if you supported Sanders before there is no reason to change that now.
* Again, I beg of you: Think before you propagate. Don’t spread stuff just because you agree with it or because it fills you with passion. Be a person who helps screen out Russian bullshit–whether or not it’s helping your candidate or making you feel righteous anger.
* God DAMN this is weird. Like, back in the 30s it would have been sort of normal for the Soviet government to clandestinely support a candidate like Sanders but it would have been for entirely different reasons. Back in the 80s I would have been like, oh you paranoid bastards, of course Russia is not interfering in our elections, you’re just trying to convince everyone that the entire Democratic Party is a bunch of Communists and sleeper agents and anyway the Russians love their children too. It’s 2020 and now I’m just like, fuck Putin, fuck Buttercup, fuck the Internets, fuck this noise.
* Ok, maybe clip out that last bit if you’re gonna reblog this.
Can’t snip on reblog but here’s the thing.
-Think before you propagate. Don’t spread stuff just because you agree with it or because it fills you with passion. Be a person who helps screen out Russian bullshit
Try to gently explain the reasoning behind this to the people you have soft social power with. Off channel or back channel. It’s sort of paying forward those How to read commercials lessons.
-Back in the 30s it would have been sort of normal for the Soviet government to clandestinely support a candidate like Sanders but it would have been for entirely different reasons.
Cancel culture is already leapfrogging to McCarthyism. Let’s all leverage our knowledge of 20th Century agitprop, yadda yadda and be the heroes we know we can be. Dropping good memes to those in need, punching trolls thoughtfully, singing in the dark and damp.
Be baleen, be livers. Strain the poison and we will win. Together.
Anonymous asked:
I teach ESL, and one of my Chinese students told me (out of nowhere) that she’d heard about a “terrible” website called AO3 where “unbalanced fans” post untrue articles about celebrities. I don’t think she’d ever heard of AO3 beyond the stuff she was telling me, but I get the impression she’d been talking to some people who felt a lot of outrage. She’s a very nice and thoughtful person, working with the information she had. I think she equated the website with a kind of cyber bullying.
Oh dear.
Looks like another anon confirmed this already, but my first thought was this was spillover from the Untamed RPF drama I saw mentioned on twitter yesterday. Apparently some Chinese fans were mad about the characterization of Xiao Zhan in a fic (always-a-girl? prostitute?) and someone decided to report the entire AO3 to the Chinese government? Or that is the third-hand rumor at least.
Also I tried to search weibo for AO3 mentions using only chrome’s translation function. I did get some results that might be relevant, but mainly it looks like word soup.
there’s some sitewide hashtag making fun(?) of Xiao Zhan fans, possibly involving rice.
Yeah, this is just explicit RPF wank, Chinese flavor, but otherwise same as past RPF wanks.
The only truly unique thing to come from it is “a trump” as a unit of measurement for works for a character or relationship. As in, “my ship is moderate-sized, at 3 trumps.” This refers to the number of works in Trump’s character tag on AO3, so it’s a moving target.
#fandom#purity wank#chinese fandom purity wank yay?#us politics#i feel bad for the author who was attacked#but otherwise this is very ordinary wank#your usual 'i will report ao3 to the fbi!'#but with the chinese internet administration in its place#and someone saying it's offensive to ship Putin with Trump because Putin is Eastern Orthodox and believes homosexuality is a sin#and a bunch of 'how dare you make our (definitely an adult) baby a prostitute in this fic!'#and paying people to reblog posts in favor of the people attacking the author#and someone claiming to be a lawyer and pro writer on the internet saying that ao3 can't have these kinds of works#where 'these kinds of works' are 'works where real people I stan are fictionalized as prostitutes'#and massive numbers of folks not understanding what ao3's policies are#but mostly there's a lot of popcorning#from chinese fans#wt comments