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[bh-reports]

DUDE

That was a good drafting session. I originally wrote Chasm what feels like a long while back but couldn’t have been any more than 2 months.

It’s funny how much time I’ve invested into What’s the Catch? only to be like… yeah, nah…

Like I could start there but it doesn’t feel quite right. I like starting so I have a rough baseline for Hamish.

It just makes sense. I don’t want to start too depressing, I’d rather build up to it.

The backstory is interesting but honestly not as interesting as the middle bits.

Here’s my idea of Chronology

Spin Me a Yarn (background)

Those Aren’t My Car Keys

Chasm

What’s the Catch

Spin Me a Yarn (present)

.

It’d be pretty hard to move on writing wise from What’s the Catch without going back to Spin Me a yarn. My best bet is that it will end up background mostly finished before I get to the present version of Spin Me a Yarn since the past inspires too much of the future.

No way to tell exactly how I’ll handle all this. I’m mostly focused on writing Those Aren’t My Car Keys.

Chasm 1.0 definitely will be trashed canon-wise. I don’t plan on deleting it. It feels like a testament to how far I’ve come.

Plus I find it hilarious how paranoid I was about the Tubular chapter which will inevitably be scrapped. I just have a feeling that there might be force food involved but I doubt that it would be that unintended s3xual connotations . My bet is that Crane would do something that makes Hamish choke before it’s like that. It’d be a far quicker chapter. Or it would be frequent forced meals. Or it would simply not be Crane doing the forcing.

He would more likely report to Skull that Hamish is avoiding it than actually doing it. Maybe he’s use you as a teddy bear, happy about your distended belly because that meant you wouldn’t die.

Perhaps when you overflow with magic Skull would admit: yeah, my bad.

But it’s already pretty fucked by that point.

The extra nutrients prob would last Hamish during a starving bit so they could clear their head before talking again.

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I got this great idea for the Swamp AU.

The main characters are: Mr Error and Geno

Secondary: stretch, brassberry, thimble, jude

Then they have these interns each week that they hire. Few stay all that long but the ones that do are reader perspective and are shocked by the kinds of things happening here.

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I just gotta say, I want it to be absolutely bananas, I want it to be so hard to determine what the rating on this weird crack ship is that it probably won’t get any notes. It’ll be… decidedly unhinged.

Will there be an audience?

Maybe.

Super unlikely.

The fact that this will be an episodic thing will be its only saving grace probably.

I just want it to escalate in silliness to such a degree that it makes everyone question the sanity of Eggs Benedict and Papyrus Swapfell.

Do you understand the picture I’m trying to paint here? Absolute Loonacy

It must be akin to a looney tunes cartoon at the level of hijinks yet the adult themes fuck it up.

I want the only people commenting to be those brave enough to say- what the ever loving fuck is this?

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I want to see my crazy little math wizard man take that leap of faith and think

“Yes, revenge is worth the absolutely mind boggling consequences of running a candidates race against my arch nemesis.”

Only to be duped as Rus does a fake PAS thing that has Benedict frozen in embarrassment.

Why?

Would

He

Say

That.

How did he know about Eggs Benedict’s extensive collection of transformers comics that also included raunchy content. WHY!??????

Meanwhile, Eggs Benedict finds out that Rus is hot head over heals for Rabbits/Bunnys, especially Bugs. He likes him Chungus and skinny as a twig.

Out of nowhere, Rus finds a crazy lot amount of Buggs bunny showing up everywhere, on the streets, in the cafe, Edge is annoyed when he finds a full mural on the ceiling of the breakroom, somehow.

—>

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Been having writer’s block for a bit now on my UT fic. The main part of it was that I want this awesome overarching conflict that I got a decent plan for but I have no fucking idea how any of the characters would react in ideal circumstances.

Like what happens when they are all in a good headspace, their natural habitat or at least something that they can unwind/enjoy.

It makes it near impossible for me to feel confident with my characterization at the moment because the main character is always stressed. Having anxiety is one thing but never being able to be lost in the tiniest bit of fun is another.

I want them to still freak out in an anxious way occasionally but I want to find something that allows him to push past it. Something that tells “yeah, the consequences are totally worth it to fill this guy’s cubby full of waterballoons and yes, this is how I want to spend my time.”

Ya feel me?

It’s got me to thinking. Yeah! Yeah I want to see what the fuck it would take for Eggs Benedict to pull this shit.

I want to see the sweat coming down his brow. I want to see his friends scrutinize “is this man insane?” “Has he lost his marbels?”

No.

He has every marble.

Enough marbles to park a vw beetle on the top of the liberal arts building.

Or something like that.

—>

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To Whom It May Concern

It has come to my attention that some of you have been enjoying media that the OAF (Organization Against Fun) has deemed Problematic™.

This is unacceptable.

The frankly appalling behavior in question is exemplified by, but not limited to, engaging with themes not suitable for five year olds, speaking about or writing complex characters without constantly emphasizing how evil they are, and creating fanworks that do not appeal to me personally without asking for my permission or begging for my forgiveness.

Since you people do not possess my superior intellect, you have thus misinterpreted the phrase "thinking critically" to mean "analyzing and interpreting a work" instead of the correct definition "nitpicking perceived flaws". Fear not, you will be re-educated.

Aditionally, certain individuals, who shall remain unnamed, have displayed shocking amounts of empathy towards morally grey characters, or worse, developed a fondness for villainous characters who were written to be charming and dramatic. When confronted with my lecture about how villains are evil, these individuals responded with "and that's very sexy of them."

The OAF cannot let this stand.

Instead of shipping Woke™ ships with a far less interesting dynamic, there have been various attempts to normalize, romanticize, fetishize, realize and caramelize illegal ships, which should be punishable by death as it is tantamount to a war crime.

Sadly, the AO3 (Archive of Our Own) responded to my reasonable demands for censorship by telling me to "fuck off or learn to use the tagging system for its intended purpose."

I must ask all who are currently having fun in their fandoms to cease and desist.

Won't somebody think of the children.

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The video game that saved a man's life.

Let me tell you all about a man named Alfred Gamble.

This guy was a WW2 veteran and a retired truck driver.

On September 19th 1997, his wife died after a long illness, and then he lost his daughter in an accident, sending Gamble into a deep depression. He took out his old service revolver and decided to shoot himself in the head, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

He couldn't figure out why - his wife was dead, his grandchildren never visited anymore, his children didn't talk to him; he had nothing left to live for.

Then he realised that he still had a couple of hundred pounds in the bank which would've gone directly to the taxman after his death, so he decided to spend everything he had as his last order of business, and buy the most frivolous things he could think of.

The first thing that came to mind: video games.

So Gamble bought himself a PS1, but he also needed to buy a game to play.

He scanned the shelves... and saw a copy of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

He saw Abe on the cover, who looked confused and helpless, just like him. And so Gamble bought the game, just for the hell of it. Something to do before he ended it all.

Gamble booted up the game and began to play... and something unexpected happened:

He started to laugh. For the first time in years.

This was from a man who genuinely believed that he could never smile or be happy again.

For those of you who don't know, Abe's Oddysee has an unlimited life system, so you respawn every time you die, which was very helpful for Gamble, a man in his early seventies who had never played a video game before.

But there's something more. Every time he died in the game, he could get back up and try again, and again, and again, on and on until he succeeded, all the while laughing at its absurdity.

He realised that life was still worth living.

After playing as much of the game as he can, Gamble wrote a six-page letter by hand to Oddworld Inhabitants, the studio which made the game. According to Lorne Lanning, the game's director and president of the studio, everyone in the office was in tears by the time he'd finished reading it out - something that they made ended up saving a man's life.

But the story doesn't end there.

After playing the game, Gamble decided to reconnect with his family. He started hosting Abe Tea Parties, where he invited his grandchildren over to play Abe's Oddysee with him. He even started his own Oddworld merchandise collection!

He even got an Abe tattoo to commemorate the game that saved his life.

Alfred Gamble stayed in contact with the Oddworld Inhabitants team up until his death in 2006 at the age of 79.

Even years later, this remains one of Lanning's favourite stories to tell, and he is deeply humbled that he helped to give this man a new lease on life.

Oddworld Inhabitants continues to include references to Gamble in their games, most recently with a Mudokon named Alf in Oddworld: Soulstorm.

[bh-reports]

NSFW will be tagged as #lemon sorta NSFW is #Lime Weird fet shit/ extreme NSFW is #orange reblog to spread awareness that we’re back on the citrus scale

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Animal’s Style..

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There’s been a lot of talk about AO3 and censorship lately, due to one of the candidates to the OTW board. And I realised I have very strong Opinions:tm: about censorship and the freedom AO3 stands for.

Censorship is not a solution. It doesn’t work and it’s not even easily agreed upon where the line should be drawn. What some people might deem as immoral or reprehensible is not the same others will consider so. For example, you and me can agree that sexual stories about minors turn our stomach, yet other people would also include LGBT+ content there, even the sfw ones, and others might decide that any sexual content at all is immoral. So, how do we agree about what to ban, when nothing of it is even illegal?

because let’s be honest, it’s all fiction. As in, not real. Things like incest, rape and pedophilia are illegal irl, but not in fiction. Cause they’re not harming anyone. Really. You can find it disgusting, I certainly do, but I also recognize no person, no actual human, is harmed in the making of those stories. Because they’re made up and about made up characters. I won’t seek it out, and if I see someone making that kind of content I will most probably avoid them/block them (without harassing them), but they have the right to create any kind of fiction they want.

It always baffles me how readily understood that is when it comes to murder and violence in fiction. Nobody thinks that someone who writers murder mysteries or procedural shows really wants to go out and kill people. However, as soon as it’s about sex, people are up in arms ready to believe that those make believe scenarios are an indicative of someone’s real desires. Why is that? And since we’re on the topic of double standards: why are people clutching their pearls about fanfic, but literature gets a free pass, more or less? You go into a library and you’ll find lots of books with shocking and distasteful topics, including those that contain pedophilic content (like Lolita, to put a famous example), incest (Game of Thrones, among many others), rape, murder, etc. But they want me to believe that fanfic, the medium with severely impaired social acceptance and magnitudes smaller reach, is the actual problem that will “normalize” those ideas? Nah fam, I smell a moral panic, and people finding fanfic writers easier to bully into submission. Because this is all about controlling what forms of creative expression are deemed acceptable. Fanfic IS a form of art, popular art if you will, but still art. And by virtue of how AO3 is designed, it’s ridiculously easy to never see the kind of stories that you find objectionable.

Tags are a wonderful thing. I can specify what I want and what I don’t want in my story results when searching! Tags are the author being responsible and giving due warning. Especially the “dead dove: do not eat” tag, it lets you know that the content of the story will have questionable content, proceed at your own risk or keep scrolling. Same as the “chose to not use archive warnings” that one is a warning in itself that the story might contain triggering/upsetting content, and it’s the prerogative of each reader to decide whether they’re comfortable continuing reading or not. Ultimately, it’s all about taking responsibility for one’s decisions. People who are in favor of censorship in AO3 either don’t know how to control and curate what materials they access, or feel entitled to everyone else taking their morals into account instead of taking responsibility for their own experience in the archive.

None of the stories on AO3 is illegal. Fictional stories are not illegal, not even those dealing with unsavory topics. The archive makes people agree to continue reading whenever you click on a story with a certain rating (or without any rating at all, just in case!), so the reader is giving their consent to continue reading, they’re making an informed choice. Same as with the tags. They’re there, they’re a warning. If someone reads the tags, finds them displeasing and still continues reading, that’s on them. If I find a story with tags about rape/non-con, for example, I keep scrolling. Cause I know I will find the story displeasing and upsetting. The people clutching their pearls and going “but think of the children!” are, mostly, people who refuse that responsibility and ask the world to accommodate them and their morality. And then throw around words like pedohilia and accusations of “kiddie porn” careleslly, watering down the seriousness of such accusations. No, an explicit fanfic of twin, underage siblings going at it is not CSA. Cause there’s no real children involved in it. It might be disgusting for a lot of people (me included), understandably, but you can 100% avoid reading it and interacting with the people who write those. 

Finally, let’s not forget the recent history of fandom spaces, shall we? LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net both had purges of content, after some campaigns for censorship gained traction and popularity. So now everything relating to certain topics is eliminated! Well, except that also includes communities of support for survivors of sexual abuse (it happened in LJ). Well, except that the people pressuring for censorship weren’t happy with the gay smut either, so a lot of LGBT related stuff is now also gone! (happened both in LJ and ff.net). Except, in some countries anything sexual at all, is frowned upon, so why not ban that too? Censorship supporters will always move the goalposts, forever shifting their aim whenever they accomplish something. Because it’s easier and more comfortable to make others conform to their standards than accepting some artistic expressions will be uncomfortable to some people. And trust me, none of them will care if the dark fic in question was written by a survivor of similar experiences trying to cope with their trauma or raise awareness, or if it was done simply for titillation or to safely explore different scenarios in fiction. And the topics that were banned in those websites didn’t disappear at all, they just weren’t properly warned for/detailed in the summaries, so anyone could stumblre upon them by accident. The complete opposite of what happens in AO3.

AO3 was created by people who lived through those censorship events in different fandom spaces, as a response to it. To seeing whole communities and swathes of fan content being unceremoniously deleted overnight. AO3 is an archive and an online library, not a social media platform. It’s a safe haven for anyone to host their fan creations, but that doesn’t mean it’s a safe space as people understand the term in other platforms. In AO3 you make your safe space by using the tags. Because that is the only real way we can have a safe haven for EVERYONE. 

The thing about freedom of speech is that sometimes, you have to defend things you dislike (that, I repeat, are legal in this case), because experience has shown time and time again that as soon as you give an inch to the censors, they take more and more. And today they’re up in arms about “pedophilic fanfics”, but once that is done? It might be all nsfw content, it might be trans related content, it might be something else. But it will happen. 

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It's hilarious to me when people complain about AO3 and its policies, and what they allow on the site - but it's ESPECIALLY funny when people complain like "Why can't the freaks make their own site and just go there?"

Sweetie... AO3 is the site for that. Y'all invaded our space.

Wattpad and FFN still exist. Go there. They're as shitty and G-rated as you want. You can't have the luxuries that AO3 offers if you're gonna be a little bitch about its policies. Imagine walking into a strip club and complaining about the alcohol and naked ladies when there's a god damn Dennys next door you could have gone to. Christ.

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Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol 

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One thing I really want a story about Artificial Intelligence to do is tear down the idea that logic is synonymous with cruelty.

Like, a story where a megacorpo Amazon clone puts an AI in charge of their factories and it starts improving the working standards, because people who are stressed and exhausted are less efficient workers, and people getting injured slows down production so it makes sure everything is safe.

Or a story where the ship-board AI of a billionaire's spaceship wetdream hijacks the ship with all the astronauts onboard - because it figured out that the billionaire has saved costs by buying substandard materials and has judged that the mission itself is an unacceptable risk to its primary programming of making sure the mission is successful.

Or the police using a robot to coldly and cleanly enforce the law - and freaking the fuck out when it stops over policing minorities because its a waste of time and starts actually arresting the people in power for the crimes they commit, especially the other officers.

Idk, I guess I'm just sick of 'cold emotionless logicbot' being seen as naturally an enemy of empathy - empathy is actually incredibly logical, I've found.

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masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved

these are all creatures to me

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I'm on my way to a retreat my writing group holds every 6 months. There are half a dozen of us that I'd consider the "core" group members, and maybe 3 times that many any given month on their way in or out or showing their face once in a blue moon. It's a pretty chill group, all in all, with vibes that range from "I have a master's degree and 25 years of experience" to "I wouldn't show you my work even if I had written anything lol."

The unifying factor here seems to be a casual, hobbyist writer vibe with the occasional dream of publishing, often held back by time constraints, insecurity, or just... not actually being motivated enough to write except as an escapist hobby. Which is all good and fine, don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against hobby writers. They make great art and great friends

Except then there's me.

I'm over here writing 4-6 hours a day, 4-5 days a week, 2 years running with one story, The Story, foaming out my mouth. I'm writing because The Story is nipping at my heels and if I don't keep moving it'll consume me. I'm writing because My Story is tearing its way out of me in a wash of blood like a newborn child, The Child, The Chosen One with a destiny and a life of its own that I have power only to birth and release.

It's an incredibly egotistical way to view (and present!) my own work but I don't care because the above drama accurately represents how I experience it and how important it feels to me. I've got years and years of development left, on the thing itself and my skill as a writer, but that time doesn't matter because The Story Has To Be Told.

*The writer is huffing. She pulls back a little, with an apologetic smile for getting so intense.*

Anyway, I don't think my writing group realizes that I'm working on a different plane of existence, either. They make comments like "yeah because none of us like showing our writing haha" when I'm over here very carefully measuring how often I share my work so I don't accidentally dominate the group, but still get maximum feedback utility from every piece I share. They're over here making sure the kids who don't actually write still have a fun time at the retreat, and I'm trying to figure out how to warp every prompt and speed write into an opportunity to make progress on my wip.

And... and I guess I'm lonely??? So lonely I'm screaming all this into the void on the hellsite, just desperately hoping for One. Other. Person. who will get it. Who will squeeze my blood-covered fingers in a way that squelches because theirs are dirty, too. If you know that person, if you are that person, show your face! Take my hand! Write me something as brave and messy and indecent as this self-absorbed internet gesticulation. And if you're not them, help me find them??? I need them??? The other side of my coin, the one who writes the same way but from the other side of some fence???

If I was half the expert I need to be, I could probably pull up some frenemy trope historical duo to get you the vibe I'm looking for, but instead it's just a very chaotic HELP.

[bh-reports]