#and to whose benefit?

[acquired-elfroot]

lol, do you ever think about the fact that Felassan was almost certainly the one who talked clan Virnehn into summoning Imshael in the first place?

he had been in touch with the clan for years, he and Solas both knew Imshael from waaaay back, and Solas had specifically tasked him with retrieving the eluvian key - which Imshael knew the location of. i'm one hundred percent sure that Felassan was the one to first plant the idea for the keeper, knowing full well just how that would go.

i'm a thousand percent sure that it was Solas' idea in the first place.

and you just know neither of those ancient elven assholes would ever accept blame for it either

"I merely offered guidance" "I gave no orders" "they chose to summon the demon" "if they're so beholden to suggestion they're not so much a person as a weathervane"

i love me some amoral trickster shitheads.

[mariocki]

Airport (1970)

"The instruction book said that was impossible."

"That's one nice thing about the 707. It can do everything but read."

[snakebites-and-ink]

I want to be a dragon I want to be a fish I want to be an angel I want to be a bird I want to be a god. But alas.

[clumsypuppy]

i wrote this as a joke because I wanted to strangle a guy watching tiktoks without headphones on the bus, but im genuinely disturbed that we've gotten to a point where convenience comes first. and it depresses me even more that its used to justify and monetize greed

[auroraboringaliceinwonderland]

If I get one more fucking ad for fucking ozempic I’m going to fucking rage

[floorpancakes]

funny thought that just came to me do you think watanuki would start crying getting spooned for the first time because he's emotionally overwhelmed

[baejax-the-great]

Archive-locking the fics that YOU WROTE and are thus 100% yours to decide what to do with 'hurting people' is so silly tbh. Skill issue on their part. Wish those people could be normal about the amazing fics that writers like you put out & be understanding or at the very least respectful of the choices that writers make about how and where they make their fics available. Especially in light of recent ai training theft and nonsense & all that.

I hope this doesn't sour the fic writing & sharing experience for you too much. I love your writing & think you're very talented & skilled!

There seem to be dual attitudes I'm coming up against recently (and obviously these are not held by everyone, I don't even know that they are held by a majority, but they are certainly held by a plurality).

The first is that authors should be grateful that readers deign to read what they put out there. I think this stems from the "content creation" mentality and the idea that everyone who posts things wants as massive as an audience as possible (for monetization purposes which... isn't a thing in fanfic). I think this mindset also leads to readers demanding that people write specific tropes/pairings/whatever, or threatening basically to take their business elsewhere. "Nobody will read unless you do [X]." 1. Not true and 2. Okay, you weren't my audience.

(I also think authors circulating those posts about how badly they want comments/kudos feeds this mentality of readers doing authors a favor by even clicking on the fic. "Wow, if people are so desperate for attention, then mine must be worth an awful lot!")

Fanfic ain't a business, and I write for myself. Readers choosing to read my work isn't a privilege or an honor they are bestowing upon me (nor are comments for that matter), just as me posting my writing where they can see it isn't a privilege or an honor for them. We are both engaging in hobbies and a love of some media, and sometimes we will overlap and connect and sometimes we won't. Readers aren't reading out of altruism for attention-starved authors, and authors aren't writing out of altruism for content-hungry readers.

And there are those who will read these paragraphs above and think to themselves "wow, what an ungrateful author," and that's exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, it's delightful and rewarding to receive comments on fics and chat with people about Blorbo and the Situations. But it should be delightful from both sides of the exchange, or why the hell are we doing this? If I'm meant to be grateful for every commenter who jumps into my inbox, then every commenter in my inbox better be grateful for me, and I can tell you right now there is a population who is not. There is a population who sees me as a service provider for their entertainment, and whatever form I take in their brain, it is not shaped like a full person.

This attitude also leads to people thinking that things like lorefm are no big deal. Don't I want to get my work in front of more eyeballs (or ears)? Don't I want to broaden my audience? And once I put my work out there for readers to see, should I be shocked (or express any negative emotions at all) when someone plagiarizes/scrapes it for AI/demands updates rudely/reads it on a monetized youtube channel/binds it and sells it for profit?

The other idea I've been coming up against is almost the opposite of this--that because some readers form attachments to fic, deleting that fic (or even archive-locking it!) is actively harming those readers. Sure, they can't be bothered to hit the download button or get an AO3 account, but that's no reason not to think of these strangers first before doing what I want with my creative output.

Yall, life is ephemeral. There are things we will see and enjoy and never find again for one reason or another, and it's not harm being done to us, it's just the nature of existence. Having an emotional reaction to something does not give you any sort of ownership over that thing. Artists are allowed to change their minds about whether they want that art in the wild, particularly given that it's free. Maybe it's because I utilize the library a lot, but reading a book and then losing access to that book is not a crime against you, it's just a normal thing that happens. If you read something and it means that much to you, there are ways to avoid losing it (download it).

Seeing this particular attitude extend out to "not making your fic available for as many people to read as possible is harming them" is beyond bizarre. If I woke up tomorrow and deleted everything I have ever written, there would still be thousands upon thousands upon thousands of beautiful, emotional, meaningful fics out there for people to read. They would lack for nothing. Would some people be upset? Probably. Would I be hurting them? No, not really.

Sometimes people have negative emotions because of our actions, but that doesn't mean we did anything to them. This is one of those times.

Lastly, this AI and everything else bullshit really has taken a toll on my enthusiasm for posting my work. It's one thing for companies to try to pillage every thought, every word, every stroke of a pen or paintbrush to enrich themselves while actively making the planet an unbearable and inhospitable place to live, it's another when fellow fans are telling you that "Whelp that's just life, what did you expect, give us your content anyway or you're a bad person and if you complain, then I'll be taking my business elsewhere, you sensitive, entitled creative, lol."

[parisofpeoplez]

I never liked Lady Jin in part 1, but I hate her in part 2.

[katoska]

If Conrad hadn't been lying in Lucky Day and had just been mentally unstable, how do you explain his treatment of Ruby during his "reveal"? How do you explain the "ha, gotcha" at UNIT? Conrad and his friends sure acted like it had all been a big prank to use Ruby to get at UNIT, and I doubt they are all insane, so what was that? Though, tbh, I don't really understand what the rubbersuits were supposed to prove, anyway. UNIT very obviously did not fake these aliens.

I'll agree that Conrad seems a bit erratic, but that could just be bad writing because DW likes dramatic villains. It doesn't follow that he's just misguided.

Thank you for your ask. I'm gonna assume you've caught up with my previous posts about Conrad being a real conspiracy nutter, not a grifter (I ought to tag those). Not sure if this is going to make sense if you haven't.

I actually had some thoughts about that scene because the rubber suits tripped me up, too. I think I found an interpretation that works, but let's first get to Ruby:

tldr: The rubber suits were meant to cause doubt about UNIT/aliens in Ruby because Ruby seemed brainwashed, and then when it became clear that Ruby had a direct line to Kate and was on first-name basis with her, Conrad flipped.

I think Conrad's sudden cruelty to Ruby actually makes more sense under the reading that he genuinely believed UNIT was an evil organisation who faked aliens to scare people so the people in power remain in power, than if you believe that he was a grifter who faked a weeks-long relationship for his podcast, got his friends in on that plan, sort of admitted this live on camera and then was mean to his fake girlfriend still live on cam, while his ThinkTank friends are in the background wearing rubber suits.

As long as you don't believe that plan had really been about exposing UNIT to the world, that is.

Grifter or genuine conspiracy theorist, this plan wouldn't make him - or Think Tank - look good, has some massive holes, and is too morally shitty even as ends-justifying-means for me to believe that he'd get a whole friend group in on it. Which is why I think that that - it being a big, planned stunt - was a spontaneous lie to save face after a prank went wrong. It worked as accidental PR because Kate made the huge mistake of arresting them, and that arrest got backlash and got more people thinking that aliens could be faked, but I don't think it was planned that way, because the plan, frankly, would be dumb. If they thought UNIT was faking aliens bc aliens aren't real, they'd have assumed UNIT wouldn't show up for other people's fake aliens. If they thought UNIT was legit - which assumes that whole friend group is grifters - they all chose to mess with the Men in Black for a stunt with uncertain payoff and very real risk of getting hurt, so that'd be a terrible grift.

What I think happened is, Conrad and his friends did play that prank on Ruby, but it was to disprove aliens to Ruby by showing her how easy it is to convincingly fake those. Same as when Harry Houdini went around showing people the mechanics of doing a "seance", except Houdini afaik didn't pretend to be a medium and went "sike! Do you see now how fake this is?" to vulnerable people who believed they were going to talk to their dead spouse, cause that would be a bit fucked up.

I assume Conrad was supposed to play innocent to the end since the goal was to make Ruby doubt in aliens/UNIT without breaking up the relationship. Which, again, still fucked up, esp the "I can be the Doctor for you" part (which again does not fit the Big Planned Stunt narrative), but what can you do to deprogram someone if you can't trust The System? Fuck knows what "the Doctor" gave her, or what normal doctors would do if she went in for therapy now that most people seem to believe UNIT's narrative.

Cause, look, going by conspiracist!Conrad's POV, Ruby would've seemed extremely brainwashed. Conrad came into contact with a substance, next thing he sees a monster, then sees Ruby complaining about getting the same goo on her and hears her talking about monsters (and having visited the Beatles). He sees "the Doctor" give her some other substance to keep the monster away. Conrad spent alot of time researching UNIT, going as far back as the Yetis at least (1967, different "Doctor", different "friends" of the Doctor; we know some of his friends are never seen again), and then weeks listening to Ruby about her Season 1 adventures, about Goblins and Space Babies and getting trapped in a bass and about Gods, and how the Doctor is wonderful but she feels traumatised by her experiences, and he nods along while looking disturbed, because she sounds delusional. Like, even by Doctor Who standards, Ruby's adventures were bonkers. Conrad then literally stops his friend from interrogating Ruby about UNIT because Ruby was so upset in that scene, which doesn't fit at all with the mean dickhead - whether grifter or deeply unethical "journalist" - he later seemed to be.

The dickhead only came out after it became clear to him that poor, apparently brainwashed Ruby had a direct line to UNIT, could get them to ride in guns blazing, and was on a first name basis with Kate Stuart. This, to a paranoid alien-disbeliever, would not have looked good. It would have looked like she'd been In On It with UNIT all along, and had been dating and lying to the leader of anti-UNIT ThinkTank to throw him off their scent. Was Conrad or ThinkTank actually so important that UNIT would try to honey trap them? Ofc not, but try telling a conspiracy theorist that. I mean, a part of him knows that he's not important enough for them to take notice ("You don't even remember me, do you?"), but little logical inconsistencies like that would get in the way of his delusions of grandeur. So I think his evil monologue was basically a "Aha, you think you were tricking me by lying to me, pretending to like me to spy on me, but I was actually tricking you to spy on you! I never liked you anyway!" But I think him telling his friend in the pub to leave Ruby alone shows that he had cared about her, I don't see another explanation for that scene, cause it fits neither the "fake dating as unethical journalism for a good cause" nor "lying grifter" theories. It looks like he saw Ruby's pain as genuine - albeit misinformed - and didn't want to add to it.

If we go with the grifter interpretation, otoh, I'm supposed to believe he faked a weeks-long relationship (even the early clumsiness and the awkward moment after "if you have time for a quick one"??? Masterful manipulation, that one /s) for more subs and that he assumed that admitting on cam to faking the relationship wouldn't lose him fans. I'm supposed to ignore that he didn't take a medicine that he allegedly believed would work as advertised (anti-vaxx grifters still get their shots), and that he stormed UNIT HQ by himself even though grifters wouldn't do that. I'd have to take the obviously forced confession as true, and hand-wave multiple signs that the guy is not quite right in the head ("Did I imagine that?" re: being in the Tardis). Oh, also, I'm supposed to side with his abusive Mum and take her view that her son keeps making shit up as proof that he was always a pathological liar, even though we saw that little Conrad was being truthful and we saw him bring proof because he was clearly used to not being believed. Which is not surprising, because he was a kid, growing up in the Whoniverse, before aliens were acknowledged to exist.

And don't even get me started on what else people see in him based on the "grifter" interpretation. (Well, tbf, Wish World is repressive and conservative, but that's bc it's meant to invoke doubt in the Doctor specifically, so he gets shoved in the closet and has a boring office job and has to listen as Conrad taunts him on his way to work that UNIT employee Jo Grant the Doctor's companions leave him and his adventures behind to get married and have babies. And yet, when the Doctor himself said "you'd be saving [Kate by marrying] her", it did not cause a slip for him, cause yeah, he does consider a domestic life safer, at least compared to some jobs).

[nova-moon13]

[gu6chan]

oh yeah!!!! forgot to mention this is my last day at work :') honestly the pay wasn't the greatest (not complaing though, this is a public position and it was certainly enough to get by) but ngl this was probably one of the most enjoyable jobs ive had 😭❤️ for a ridiculously conservative population like this im glad they seemed to enjoy the numerous marxist solutions to all their problems getting slid in under the reasoning of "community/small town values" and "neighbours having each other's back" and 5 minute small talk about how taxes work at the line in the grocery store lmao

[agnesandhilda]

rip nanami kento you would've loved marx's theory of alienated labor

[eclipsecrowned]

Me talking with friends about how bad a villain muse got shafted by an unevenly baked canon with no room for him to be fully explored as the most interesting character in that split narrative vs me talking with an ex collaborator about how the narrative is clearly not black and white even if you want to fuck the anime boy protag

[sobeksewerrat]

I'm not Jewish so I can't really say anything in absolute certainty but I'm pretty sure some of you guys care more about hating on Jews than actually helping Palestinians

[cementcornfield]

good lord my inbox is a mess lmao

[florida3exclamationpoints]

I didn't realize Alec Baldwin was on trial already but if he doesn't get found guilty .........