chillichats

[chillichats]

What exactly is ao3 bookmark etiquette? because apparently this is something that has escaped my knowledge. I don’t really write on ao3 much, and like the only times I have I’ve been bullied away by my comment section so.. what am I missing here?

I mean, I personally hate the word "etiquette" in these kinds of situations. It implies that not being an asshole is optional or a courtesy as opposed to the base expectation when interacting with content.

There's a pretty longstanding argument brewing between authors and readers on ao3 as to what should be put in public bookmarks on a fic. Readers argue that they should be able to put anything they want in those bookmarks, including reviews of the fic, ratings, negative comments, etc because they are "a reader's space." Authors argue that, since the bookmarks are attached to their fics and cannot be removed, negative commentary or unsolicited criticisms shouldn't be placed in public bookmarks, only private.

These two groups aren't monoliths, there's obviously some crossover. But largely your opinion is shaped by how you primarily use ao3. This is crystallized in discussions over on r/ao3 which is overall a reader-biased space. Folks there will bend over backwards there to tell you that readers can and should put anything they want in public bookmarks and if you have a problem with that, you're just an ungrateful author.

This is what I call the "bean soup" problem. Some folks use their bookmarks as a record of every fic they've read and want their opinions saved/marked on each fic. They often want to share these reviews with fellow readers who also use their bookmarks as a reading list. They believe that having their honest, critical, opinion centered in the bookmark is more important than being kind to the author or even considerate of their work.

The thing is, it's usually pretty taboo to review/criticize authors (of books, etc) to their faces. Perfectly fine on a site like Goodreads, but leaving a crappy bookmark on a fic is like slipping your handwritten review into a copy of a book the author uses personally. It's just shitty, no matter how you spin it. And you're forced to carry that bookmark around with you everywhere. Anyone who opens the bookmarks can see your rant about how the author sucks and you only give this fic a 6/10 yada yada.

[chillichats]

I am small and I can't do very much. That is the despair of an individual in a big and violent world. But the plants teach me it is okay to be small. Everything is either small, or made of things that are small. We are all connected. Symbiosis.

So, on the subject of bugs.

It is the fourth summer of the Meadow. My plants grow strong and wild and cover more space than ever before. I have worked to eradicate the invasive lawn grass and carefully curate large clumps of only native species (with a few esteemed naturalized weeds allowed---I have no quarrel with Chicory, it has a positive effect on the ecosystem).

I have tall, huge native Field Thistles, multitudes of tough and aggressive evening primrose, wild strawberry spreading everywhere, a dozen vigorous gray-headed coneflowers, giant clumps of cup-plant, and so many asters and goldenrods that I've had to start targeting them in my weeding.

Yes, yes, I have the showy ones like purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans, but I also encourage and cultivate weird little weeds that are too inconspicuous or ugly to be often planted on purpose. White avens, lanceleaf frogfruit, nettle-leaf vervain.

There are too many plants. I'll spend forever listing them all. What is really interesting, is what's happened with the bugs.

Every year, there has been a much bigger variety and population of insects. I am both seeing many more species, and seeing the same species in much, much larger numbers. Even on the same plants that were already there 4 years ago, I can see way more bugs.

Flower flies, for instance. There are tiny yellow and black flies known as flower flies that are very beneficial for gardeners, because their larvae are predators that attack aphids. It used to be that I could often see a dozen, but now I see hundreds of them every time I go outside!

Or wasps. There are more species of wasps than I possibly could have imagined. It used to be that I would only see the reddish paper wasps, the ones that make big paper nests in the eaves of your house, but now, there are dozens of different wasps. Some are black, others black and white, others black and yellow, others black and brown, and they come in all different sizes. A bunch of blue-black wasps with white stripes live in the log next to my pond.

I identified them and looked up the species, and they had not been studied at all since the 1960's. Supposedly they are solitary species, but several different wasps have made nests inside the log right next to each other. That's the first interesting thing. The second interesting thing is that the nests were first inhabited last summer, and the same species of wasp still lives in them, so their town has been inhabited for multiple years instead of being abandoned when the larvae emerge. Has the next generation taken over the old nests? I am observing something about the species that is not known to science.

Wasps are hated and feared, but my wasps have never been anything but peaceful and polite, and they have so much beauty and importance in the ecosystem.

And the bees! I am observing bees this year that I had never even heard of before. Many of them are so tiny, I doubt they could even reach the nectar in large flowers like purple coneflower. What if the small, inconspicuous flowers are essential for smaller pollinators like the tiny bees? That would make sense. Different flowers evolved to attract different bees.

Beetles, ants, leafhoppers, flies, moths, butterflies, all kinds of bugs. Specific plants attract specific bugs, but it is not the plants individually that restore insect biodiversity, it is the way the plants interact and form a bigger ecosystem.

What I mean is, as my garden grew, the increase in bugs was not linear in relationship to the plants, it was exponential. The combination of the many different plants into an ecosystem attracted many more bugs than would be expected from the sum of each plant individually.

I remember the emptiness and barrenness before. I see it around me when I visit other places. The disappearance of bugs. The insect apocalypse. It's so clear to me now. The cause is biotic homogenization. I call it plant sameness.

Everywhere around me, landscapes have been made into expanses of the same few plants. But when plant sameness is replaced by variety and diversity, many plants interacting in many different ways, everything changes.

[chillichats]

my 7 year old is currently singing "H-O-T-C-O-C-O, you should make me Hot Cocoa" and I am legitimate impressed

[chillichats]

Congress is back in session this week. If any of these Republican senators represent you, let them know in no uncertain terms that they must not enact Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that would make devastating cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs to finance tax cuts predominantly going to the super rich.

[chillichats]

Whenever I do worldbuilding I try to keep this image in mind

[chillichats]

Personally I think I'm shockingly normal for someone who has spent every day on the internet since they were 12

[chillichats]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[chillichats]

Pig Latin

[chillichats]

Spent tonight at a local short film festival. One of the shorts was made by two 12 year olds in their backyard and it was the best short of the entire night

[chillichats]

ghost stories are alarmingly easy to spread tbh

when I was like ten I was walking back from the chip shop near my gran's house with a neighbour and we took a short cut down an alley which was enclosed by garages except for one part which was wire fenced and led to the electricity shack

and while I was walking I chucked a chip over the fence. the girl walking with me, C, reasonably asks why I did that

"oh, don't you know?" I say, as if I'm not equally out of my own loop

she shakes her head. the enclosed alleyway has no streetlights. it's after dark. the shack is isolated in the distance.

"a little girl who lived up on the court climbed the fence once on a dare. she went up to the shack and touched it, but there was a wire sticking out, and when she touched it, she got electrocuted and died, right there. if you come back in the daylight, you can still see the black mark."

[editor's note: the court was the smaller road off the side of the crescent, which was the one C's family and my gran lived on. the houses there were slightly more expensive and newer, almost all occupied by wealthy commuters to the city, where most of the crescent houses were occupied by retirees and locals who worked on the trading estate. naturally, crescent kids hated the court. houses there got bricked about once a month.]

"no she didn't," C says

I made up this story for absolutely no reason and with no plan, but I'm not gonna back down now. "sure she did. and if you go past on your way back from the shops and you don't leave her an offering, she'll follow you home through the streetlights. one flickers behind you, then the next, then the next, until you get home. and then the lights start to flocked inside the house. even if you turn out all the electrics before bed, it'll be too late. she's inside. and you'll wake up on the night and see her, and she'll be so awful to see it'll stop your heart."

[editor's note: the streetlights always flickered. this was because our neighbour monkey george kept setting the junction boxes on fire]

"I never did before and she never followed me home!"

"do you come down the alley after dark? or do you take the main road with the streetlights?" I knew she didn't use the shortcut, because I'd been the one to talk her into it that night. she was three years younger than me and scared of the dark.

C claims not to believe me, but she throws a chip over the fence too, and walks the rest of the way looking over her shoulder. I get to pride myself for the night on being good at scary stories, and don't think much more about it.

fast forward six or seven years. I'm back in town. I'm on my way back from the chip shop, taking the same shortcut home. ahead of me on the road are a couple of kids I vaguely recognise as old playmates' younger siblings.

they stop, and I watch one fish out three sweeties from the pack they're sharing. they take one each and throw them over the fence. they carry on walking.

I realise that this is probably my fault, as are any resulting pest control issues around the old electricity shack.

when I get to the fence, I throw a chip over.

[chillichats]

Hi not that anyone cares but i just discovered the fanlore page for dracula, the fandom

and it's fucking awesome. it's fucking bizarre to see the people that i usually see on the tag and all the silly jokes that never get out of this weird community put in an wikipedia-esque article

like, here are some of the ones that made me giggle and kick my feet over seeing it mentioned

and last but not least

i just think it's so cool that out of nowhere such a beautiful community that centers around something like dracula. i mean that's what fandom is at its core but with dracula daily the concept and idea of it is so silly that makes that realization about fandom and fan communities on the internet as a whole so blatant that for a moment you forget the bad rep, the controversies and all the negative things associated with fandom (not neccesarily because dracula daily doesn't have that, but because of the sillyness of it all, as i said) and you realise how special and incredible and just beautiful is the fact that we can connect in this way and have fun and be silly and make jokes and be a community. like damn. fandom is the best thing that the internet has to offer, and for me dracula daily exemplifies that so well.

now, more than ever, with the way that corporations and greedy billionaires are making the internet worse, and hate becoming in many corners the main currency, and ai slop overtaking, we should celebrate and cheerish genuine things like these that are spontaneously born out of love and passion because they remind us that the internet is not dead because we are still alive.

[chillichats]

sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really. 

[chillichats]

hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

[chillichats]

just layers and layers to this thing, huh.

[chillichats]

shoutout to the time in 2021 I was having scary seizurelike episodes that sent me to the neurologist, after having barely slept all week due to being a nervous wreck over my symptoms and shit.

when I sat down to describe what I was going through to the (young, very soft spoken) phys assistant taking my notes I started audibly almost crying . The whole time he’s furiously working on a tablet thing that I assumed he was writing my symptoms down on

in the midst of me having a mild nervous breakdown during my monologue he slowly turns the tablet to me after closing whatever program he had open and just fuckin stare-smiles at me all placidly til I notice the wallpaper the laptop is set to— a lovingly decorated collage of Lord Farquaad from Shrek

once I noticed I stopped dead in my tracks and we sat there staring at another for a solid minute til I broke down wheeze laughing, upon which he picked up the tablet and scurried off wordlessly. I just sat there dumbfounded til the doc showed up. 10/10 doctor experience ngl

I didn’t own a phone at the time to get any proof so this my best artistic recreation

[chillichats]

got ink?

[chillichats]

my favorite thing about navigating fanfiction is finding a really good one and being all “oh boy this was good, I hope they have more!” and literally every other story they’ve ever written was for like Miami Vice