re-reading my own fic because the author has exactly my taste in tropes, ships the same ships in the right way, and also shares my sense of humour. what a find, what a revelation. i hope they write more of this sort of thing.
If the internet wasn’t anonymous anymore i would stop writing/posting fic and a part of my soul would die. I don’t want to post fic under my real name i don’t wish to be perceived i wish to be known on an incredibly deep level without something superficial like my name attached. Writing fic is like stripping naked but leaving your face out of the shot
in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.
for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.
so how can you help?
boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.
learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.
get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.
donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.
People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.
For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.
The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.
Seeing author's notes for sex pollen fic like 'they're already in love before they have sex!!' always makes me go 'yes I should hope so, the angsty pining before, during and after the sex is the point of the vast majority of sex pollen fic and precisely what I'm here for and have been here for years'.
It's fine if you don't like sex pollen for whatever reason, but *so many* fic tropes boil down to 'a contrived situation arises that forces our faves to kiss and admit their feelings to each other', and sex pollen is just another contrived situation.
Have some faith that your readers can read tags, summaries, and then the fic itself, which obviously has the characters blatantly pining for each other.
I miss the old, good internet, but I don’t want to bring it back.
I want a new, good internet. One where users can’t be locked in because we make it legal to:
• reverse-engineer products and services, so you can leave a social media platform but still send and receive messages from the people you leave behind;
• jailbreak your devices so you can remove antifeatures like surveillance, ink-locking or repair-blocking;
• move your media and files out of the silo whence they originated and into any player you want.
I want a new, good internet where we constrain the conduct of tech companies, banning unfair labor practices, deceptive marketing, corporate hostage-taking and other forms of rent-extraction.
I want a new, good internet where it’s both illegal to impose bossware on your employees, and where those employees can legally hack the bossware their bosses shove down their throats.
I want a new, good internet where creative workers and their audiences can reliably connect with one another, where news reporting isn’t held hostage to extractive processes.
I want a new, good internet where we seize the means of computation so that the digital infrastructure that connects our romantic, personal, political, civic, economic, educational and family and social lives is operated by and for the people who use it.
-Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet
Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato
Me: have you heard about watch order? Do you know the watch order? Hey. Hey. Are you aware that season one is out of order and requires a specific watching order. Hey. Hey. Hey. Have I told you about watch order yet?