ladylongbow

[ladylongbow]

[ladylongbow]

Im personally convinced that shen yuan would have had a rantsona youtube channel

Hey guys I'm Peerless Cucumber and today we're gonna be talking about drama in the PIDW community

[ladylongbow]

We need to do what we can to protect the Internet Archive. Here is a petition that you can sign.

This petition alone might not be enough, but everything we can throw at this counts.

[ladylongbow]

This post is not about ballet.

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sometimes nifty characters come from lousy media, but they still deserve a loving home! and that's where fanfic comes in

[ladylongbow]

"we're going to build dense housing in this historical area! some will be affordable!"

"great! that will help ease our city's need for it. and I assume it will look like the architecture around it, right? to blend well and because dense housing dates at least back to the Roman empire- and that's just in western history -so the ideas are not contradictory?"

"no, no, no! it's going to be minimalist! sleek! modern!"

"and the public wants that in a historical neighborhood?"

"nope, we've had massive backlash."

"so why not just make the buildings in a style that blends better?"

"those styles are...uh...not eco-friendly!"

"but don't buildings from back then have better mechanisms for passive heating and cooling since they came from an era before A/C and central heat? and haven't studies shown that new buildings should actually have thicker walls and smaller windows, which used to be more common, for more efficiency? and that heating/cooling one room at a time is also more energy-efficient, so open-concept isn't all that green? and wouldn't construction that involves less plastic, while not perfect by any means, involve less non-biodegradable waste? also, aren't modern buildings significantly more dangerous in the event of a fire, due to plastic outgassing and faster-burning materials?"

"no comment."

"and don't a lot of people like decorated buildings and living spaces?"

"some of them like simple minimalism!"

"okay, then how about some of the new housing is in an older style and some is more modern? a compromise?"

"who cares about how it looks? we just need housing!"

"are you saying people who need housing don't deserve to live someplace nice?"

"but...well...I...all that ornamentation is too expensive!"

"and why did the mass production of things like wood and plaster trim for homes, and ornamental hardware, stop? besides changing tastes and to the extent that it has- which is not universal, by the way; you CAN still find some of this stuff for sale"

"because we didn't want to pay the workers fair wages when unionization became more commonplace."

"how many yachts does the CEO of this development company have?"

"...five."

"the defense rests"

[ladylongbow]

[ladylongbow]

Little bit funny how people's dislike of Harry Potter has now lapsed into like complete and total dismissal. The other day I was at a flower show and the theme for the displays at this particular flower show were book themed. And of course an admiring crowd went round and did the circuit of displays, ooh-ing and aah-ing at various renditions of The Railway Children and Little Red Riding Hood and taking photos. All extremely cool. And then they got to the Harry Potter section and there was just a complete blank look on a lot of people's faces. They didn't even comment like with the other displays, they simply walked by giving each other what-the-fuck-is-this shrugs. My sister is getting offered the opportunity to go to Harry Potter World by her college for art purposes this year and she said people were so distinctly unpsyched by even the offer of a very cheap coach trip and abysmally low priced tickets that they were already counting themselves out of the trip months in advance. There are stores with discount Gryffindor lunchboxes and scarves piling up desperately by the masses. Little stickers on them denoting price drops. Some stickers on top of others. Nobody gives a fuck about Harry Potter. It's all terribly exciting. I hope the HBO show is the nail in the coffin and we can finally put this shambolic corpse to a stake through the chest rest

[ladylongbow]

I still love this website so much because it feels like the last connection we have to an internet that doesn’t exist anymore like I can come on here and scroll through posts that are literally just funny or beautiful or interesting with no intention to sell me something or influence me we are all just here for a laugh. Nothing is just for laughs anymore EXCEPT tumblr dot com

[ladylongbow]

“how to recognize AI in fanfic” — hey so this is another not-gentle reminder that AI stole from us. it’s using OUR words and OUR sentences and OUR styles.

writing “long” paragraphs is not a sign of AI — it’s a common narrative choice many writers make both in fanfiction and in traditionally published novels, and AI stole it from us.

using an em dash is not a sign of AI. it’s a stylistic sentence choice that’s been an option in place of commas and semicolons for a very long time, and AI stole it from us.

long sentence structures are not a sign of AI, but are yet another stylistic choice writers often make to create a cadence and tone that mimics the flow of poetry, and AI stole it from us.

“YA narrative breaks”? i don’t even know what the fuck this means, but i can guarantee that AI stole it from us.

italics are once again a stylistic choice that many writers love to use to create emphasis, and it’s a more stylistically acceptable and traditional form of emphasis than bold or underline text. oh, and just to be extra clear: AI STOLE IT FROM US.

stop creating fandom witch hunts over AI when you know fuck all about what it means to sit and write a story, and to spend hours fiddling with sentence structure and dialogue to get the exact right tone. writers will stop writing out of fear that their work “sounds like AI” — IT DOESNT! AI STOLE FROM US! AI SOUNDS LIKE US! — and after a while, all that will be available on AO3 is shitty AI-generated fanfiction.

because yeah, people are going to continue to use AI to write fanfiction whether you “call them out” or not. but making a laughable thread on X that uses asinine criteria is not going to fix that problem. it will just push the real writers out because people will accuse them of using AI when they haven’t, and they will (rightfully) stop writing for spaces that attack them.

anyway. fuck ai.

[ladylongbow]

Check out this beautiful cow I met in Panama (we traded fresh palm fronds for pets)

A MODEL! SO LOVELY!!

[ladylongbow]

Julia Roberts at Notting Hill’s 1999 Premiere

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to me, correctly using 5+ commas in a single sentence is like perfectly executing a combo in a fighting game. to me.

[ladylongbow]

As someone who's been a lover of traditional folk music from the British Isles for several decades, one thing I've learned is that "True Love" didn't always mean what you think it means. In the older songs, "true love" is not some mystical quality, some type of connection that is magically better than other Loves. No. A love that is "true" merely means that your Love is "true TO YOU." "True" as in faithful and loyal and trustworthy. A lover who will stand by you and with you no matter what comes. True the way a good sword is True. True the way a good knight is loyal. The contrast is "False Love," which is a lover who betrays you, who cannot be trusted.

"True Love" isn't something you find, it's a vow and a choice that you make, every day, to BE TRUE.

[ladylongbow]

I think Clark did the Grew Up In A Small Town Thing where he'd been to Lois' apartment enough times that he thought it would be fine if he just went in to make dinner, like entering someone's house through the screen door, forgetting that Lois is paranoid and grew up in a city and has a Door Bat for this exact scenario. The question is how many times after this does Lois still grab the bat and how many times has she accidentally hit Clark?

[ladylongbow]

adulthood is just telling yourself “and after i’ve done THAT i can finally relax” with increasing desperation