#People are right to be wary of this site after the Purge

[yukipri]

Having been here since Tumblr's Golden Days and having watched its slow decline into a graveyard (albeit one with a pretty active infestation of chittering goblins), it's been fascinating this past week.

Blogs that have been silent for years, that I'd assumed long dead and abandoned and among the many graves that litter this hellsite...are suddenly come back to life.

I'm not sure if it's more like seeing critters come out of a very, very long hibernation blinking around at how everything's a wee bit different from what they remember—or perhaps something a bit more timeless and undead, like vampires kicking open their coffins or zombies bursting out from the graves where they'd laid.

I hope the time has come for Tumblr's zombie reawakening.

Welcome back, y'all. Welcome back.

[razieltwelve]

Berserker (Fate/Zero x Final Rose)

Sigrid looks at the… man who had summoned her and feels nothing but pity. Yet as he speaks, as this haggard, sickly, wounded man tells her of his reason, she feels nothing but all-consuming rage. Dimly, she is aware of her Semblance activating, of Saviour’s restrictions releasing one after the other as the primal, basic desire to protect flares in her chest, as hot and heavy as magma.

“He dies now.” She ignores her Master’s startled cry and tears a hole through space and time. They reappear in the basement, and the rage she feels grows even greater. Her ears are ringing. Her jaw is clenched. Yet everything is crystal clear. It always is with Saviour. Beneath her, the… horde of worms convulses and recoils. 

“So… you managed to summon a Servant?” Zouken sneers. “And a powerful one at -” He trails off and stares dumbly at the sword sticking out of his chest. And then he laughs. “Really? Do you think something like that can…” He trails off. 

A savage smile crosses her lips.

“You are unworthy of life, unworthy even of existing. You may think yourself immortal, but my sword can sever the very foundations of Creation itself. You were dead the moment I came into this world.”

Saviour can craft weapons that embody and even transcend concepts and ideals. It can craft weapons that can overturn the very rules that govern Creation. One of the very first she learned to create was a sword capable of not simply killing whatever it hit but also extirpating the very idea of it. The sword didn’t kill things. It didn’t even erase them. It removed the very possibility or idea of their existence in the first place. Of course, the tricky part had been managing the effect to not go to far. It wouldn't do, after all, to use the sword on an opponent and wipe out everyone descended from them too.

In the case of Zouken, it removed him and all of his familiars, crest worms, and other horrors. 

As the Worms vanished, Sigrid leapt forward to catch Sakura. The girl stared at her with vacant eyes, and Sigrid’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. If only she’d been summoned earlier. Even just a little bit earlier…

“Here.” Sigrid stepped and reappeared next to Kariya. “Take her.”

“I…” He bowed as deeply as he could and then took Sakura in his arms. “Thank you.”

“We still have a Grail War to win,” Sigrid murmured. “But for tonight this will be enough.” She could feel the Grail even from a distance, and the corruption within it grated on her nerves. It was tempting to simply purge the accursed thing from existence, but she wanted to know more before she acted. “Wait.” She frowned. “When I killed Zouken, the taint within you was removed as well. However, your body has already been severely weakened. I can reverse the damage.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?” he asked quietly. “I… I just want to get Sakura away from this place.”

“Tomorrow then,” Sigrid agreed. “Do you want me to burn this place to the ground?”

“Yes,” Kariya replied. “Zouken… that… bastard sent the rest of my family away in case something went wrong during the Grail War. There’s nobody here but us. He gave me access to some accounts to help fund things during the Grail War, so we can find a hotel room or something.”

“All right. Once we’re out of here, I will destroy it. Perhaps later, it can be rebuilt, but the very ground here is impure. It will have to be cleansed first.”

“If I live through this,” Kariya said. “I’ll buy another house, somewhere else, somewhere without all of this… history.”

X     X     X

Sigrid was not especially renowned for her sneaking ability. It was largely a product of how she was used on the battlefield. Saviour had the finesse of a rapier… with the power of an avalanche. It was more efficient to force the enemy to gather its force, so she could crush them in a single decisive blow.

Of course, just because she wasn’t renowned for sneaking didn’t mean she was bad at it. Her mother had been on of the greatest huntresses the Yun had ever produced, and her cousins were all exceedingly sneaky as well. Through a combination of training and osmosis, she’d learned how to conceal herself with the best of them.

And weren’t the results from this little sneaking sessions fascinating?

With her presence concealed, she had a front row seat to the debacle that was Rider, Saber, and Lancer doing a combination of talking and fighting. Their masters were also nearby, and Saber’s had concealed himself particularly well. Assassin was lurking around too, but she had little interest in him. It as not arrogance but fact to say that someone who relied on surprise and concealment had little chance against Saviour.

And then Archer appeared.

His technique was interesting enough, and she wondered what expression he would have if she disrupted it. After all, Saviour was fully capable of cutting off the links between pocket dimensions and the normal world. True, such severance could be countered, but she wondered if he was capable of it. Still, in combat, she’d save that trick for the split-second before she attacked. By the time he noticed anything was amiss, he’d be dead.

Of course, that was when he decided to assert his dominance by spamming projectiles at everyone. In her mind, Kariya asked her to intervene. He despised Tokiomi - and Sigrid did too after learning he was the one who’d handed Sakura to Zouken - so he could hardly let him get an advantage this early in the game even if they had no intention of letting it play out to its conclusion.

Glad that she’d chosen to wear a suit for her sneaking (she did so love her mother’s sense of style), she leapt out into the open and summoned one of Saviour’s lesser blades. It would still suffice, and annoying Archer seemed like it would be fun. Certainly, Saviour wanted her to.

She landed in front of the group, and her blade swept out in a blur, too fast to follow. Half a dozen of Archer’s projectiles shattered like glass, and she bit back a smile at the look of outrage on his face.

“You dare!” he snarled as more portals formed. But even as he prepared to attack again, she could see a hint of wariness in his eyes. He must have taken a closer look at the sword in her hands. “What is that sword?”

“This?” She smiled thinly and tossed it aside. The blade disintegrated and another, slightly different one formed in her hands. “A trinket for one such as myself.”

She felt the unease of the other Servants behind her. From her understanding, just looking at her weaponry gave magus headaches since they were akin to Divine Constructs yet different in that they should not be able to exist. That made sense. Saviour itself was a Semblance that set itself apart from all else, imposing its will on everything and reshaping rules as it saw fit. If it happened to break all the rules, well, that was simply the cost of doing business.

“Hmph.” Archer sneered again. “It would seem you mongrels are in luck. I’ve seen enough. We shall finish this later.” He vanished, and Sigrid let him go before turning to the other Servants.

“Berserker?” Saber asked warily. “But…”

“I seem too lucid for one?” Sigrid understood the classification system. She had, at some point, been driven almost insane by her Semblance when awakening the third level, but she’d regained control. Still, it was enough for her to qualify, and she could feel Saviour’s influence more strongly now than at almost any point in her past life. Thankfully, her control was still intact. Right now, her Semblance wanted to slaughter all of her enemies and conquer the world. Still, it was curious seeing a counterpart from her earlier life summoned as Servant although from this world, not Remnant. “There are reasons for that, I suppose.”

Sigrid is not the master or reading people that her cousin, Victoria is, but she’s not half bad either. And Saviour really does see everything. It can see the protective way Saber has moved to stand between her and the white-haired woman. Rider, likewise, has moved his bulky frame between her and his Master. Only Lancer is more relaxed, and that is because he thinks his master is still concealed. It’s a joke, of course. Relying solely on magic for concealment is foolish. 

“I’m not here for a fight. I was ordered to observe. However, my Master wished to see if i could handle Archer’s projectiles. It would seem I can.”

“Your sword?” Saber asked. “I do not recognise it.”

“You wouldn’t. My legend was never about my sword. And I’m as good with a spear as I am with a sword, anyway.” The air shimmered beside her, and a spear appeared. Lancer’s eyes gleamed with interest, and she glanced at him. “Another time, Lancer. Your Master’s patience must be fading already.”

He winced and nodded. “I am being ordered to withdraw. My apologies. Perhaps next time we meet, we can test each other’s skill.”

The others withdraw soon after. Sigrid feels something in her stir at the sight of Saber and Irisviel. She knew them in her other life, or people who looked and acted much like they did. Still, it is Rider who has the parting word.

“Would you not join me?” Rider boomed jovially.

Sigrid inclined her head. “You are a king, are you not?” He nodded. “Then I must refuse. I have only ever served one royal family, and I see little reason to change that.” 

X     X     X

“You know,” Sigrid drawled. “If you hadn’t called to have the building evacuated, I’d have killed you where you stood.”

Kiritsugu fired on her without a second thought. She caught a bullet out of the air and letsthe others simply veer off into the walls of the construction site, a casual application of Saviour’s ability to bend space that had long long since become second nature. “Saber -”

“Save your command seal,” she said. “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have bothered to reveal myself.” She sat down on a slab of upraised concrete. “I’m simply curious.”

“About what?” He is wary, and he is right to be. She could sense Maiya moving into position, but a casual flick of her wrist embedded a sword in the wall beside her head. Of course, she could have just fired a projectile, but they didn’t know she could do that yet. “We’re having a polite conversation now. If you’re smart you’ll keep it that way.”

His eyes narrowed, and Maiya backed away. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Why the Grail?” she asked. “You’re an assassin. Perhaps the Einzbern hired you, but I doubt that’s the whole story.” She glanced back at the collapsing hotel. “Oh, and Kayneth isn’t dead.”

“What?”

“We’ll come back to that. But why do you want the Grail?”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

So, this is just an idea I came up with. I’m just poking the metaphorical tree to see what falls out. Out of the first three bearers of Saviour (Lightning, Averia, and Sigrid), Sigrid is the one most likely to be summoned as a Berserker. Otherwise, she is likely to arrive as either a Saber or a Lancer. Unlike Averia, she probably wouldn’t qualify as an Assassin since Averia actually did a lot of those missions whereas Sigrid was more commonly deployed as the proverbial big gun for Arendelle.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

You can find my original fiction on Amazon here.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Americans opposed to President Trump are constantly asking some version of this question: “Why won’t Republicans break with Trump?”

The personalities on Fox News are largely standing with the president amid the controversy over the Trump administration pushing Ukrainian officials to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son. So are Republicans in Congress. Vice President Mike Pence and others inside the Trump administration are also defending the president’s actions involving Ukraine (a shift from when one-time Trump advisers like Dan Coats would sometimes signal disagreement with the president’s stances).

But looking at Trump’s standing only among people currently inside of powerful Republican-controlled spaces — the party itself, Fox News, the White House, etc. — presents an incomplete picture and understates opposition to Trump among Republican politicians and activists. Almost by definition, that opposition can’t happen within the obvious GOP spaces — the president and his acolytes have accumulated enough power that it’s increasingly hard to be both be anti-Trump and a Republican in good standing at a major conservative institution.

So Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan left the GOP and became an independent. Former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina lost in a primary last year to an opponent endorsed by Trump after speaking out against the president. And just last Friday, Fox News anchor and occasional Trump critic Sheppard Smith resigned,1 as did Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who had occasionally clashed with the president.

Indeed, widen your lens and you can find all kinds of anti-Trump sentiment in conservative and right-leaning circles. This anti-Trump bloc, in addition to Republicans still supporting the president, might have lots of sway as impeachment unfolds — if they can reach GOP voters.

The media

You could create your very own conservative, anti-Trump TV network if you hired all the Trump-skeptical Republicans who regularly appear as talking heads on CNN and MSNBC. CNN, for example, has Amanda Carpenter, Charlie Dent, John Kasich, and Mia Love. MSNBC boasts Carlos Curbelo, Susan Del Percio, Elise Jordan, Mike Murphy, Jennifer Rubin, Joe Scarborough, Michael Steele, Charlie Sykes, Nicole Wallace, George Will and Rick Tyler.2

Yes, most conservative pundits on Fox News are heartily pro-Trump, but not all conservative pundits are on Fox News.

Elected officials

There were 241 Republicans in the U.S. House in early 2017, at the start of Trump’s tenure. Since then, more than a quarter have either been defeated at the ballot box, in last November’s elections (29), or retired (36).3 Some of them, such as former Rep. Mia Love of Utah, blame Trump’s unpopularity for their defeats. Others, such as Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, hint that they are leaving Congress in part because they are uncomfortable with the direction Trump is taking the GOP, as the Washington Post recently reported in a story detailing the exodus of House Republicans.

There is also a group of Trump-skeptical governors and senators — most notably former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — who left their posts after 2018. And then you have figures like former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois , ex-Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts and Sanford, all of whom are running long-shot primary challenges to Trump. Former Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who has publicly come out against Trump, is suing his state’s Republican Party in an effort to overturn its decision to cancel next year’s Republican primary, a move designed in part to boost the president.

So, in addition to that conservative, anti-Trump cable channel, you could also piece together a Senate majority (51 people) from Republicans who have previously served in either the House or the Senate but who have been publicly wary of Trump.

Senior Republican staffers

OK, if you’re going to have a shadow, anti-Trump GOP Senate, you need some experienced Republican operatives to staff it. You won’t have to look too hard.

In a clear and public rebuke to Trump, chiefs of staff for Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush recently told the New York Times that the presidents they served would never have asked for help winning an election from a foreign government. A group of conservative lawyers, many of whom served in top positions in the Department of Justice under Reagan or one of the Bushes, are supporting the impeachment inquiry.

Moreover, plenty of people who served in senior roles in the Trump administration itself, including H.R. McMaster (national security adviser), Anthony Scaramucci (communications director) and Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) have distanced themselves from the president.

Again, the Republican staffers currently in the White House are defending the president, but that might mask some broader disagreement among senior-level Republican staffers.

Conservative institutions

Many organizations on the right, such as the Heritage Foundation, are in lockstep with the president. But others — the Cato Institute, the Niskanen Center — are fairly critical of him

Or, take the white evangelical conservative movement as a whole. It is often portrayed as totally behind the president, and news stories often cite people like Jerry Falwell Jr. who are closely allied with the president to show that. But white evangelicals aren’t completely aligned with Trump — a generational gap has begun to open up. And really, people like Falwell, who runs a small Christian college (Liberty University), are more accurately described as evangelical leaders who support Trump, rather than evangelical leaders. overall. J.D. Greear, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, is more clearly a “leader” of America’s evangelicals — and he is kind of lukewarm about Trump.

So it’s important to understand that many conservative organizations and power centers on the right are strongly behind Trump, but also that increasingly “conservative” has come to mean “pro-Trump,” a narrative that writes out of the story organizations and people who had what were considered fairly rightly-leaning views pre-Trump.

OK, I admit this is an imprecise exercise. What overall percentage of elite Republicans — conservative media figures, current and former members of Congress, current and former administration officials, etc. — oppose Trump? That’s basically impossible to quantify.

But I think it’s higher than often portrayed — because some opposition lives in non-GOP spaces where people aren’t looking, and because much of it is also hidden from view, as elected Republicans face strong incentives to stand by Trump publicly.

All of this helps explain why Republican voters are among the most loyal-to-Trump constituencies in the Republican Party. Surveys have long suggested that between 85 and 90 percent of Republican voters approve of the president. Only about 13 percent of people who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 said that they disapproved of Trump in a poll conducted in late 2018 and early 2019 by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of impeachment polls, about 14 percent of Republicans support impeachment.

I wrote recently about how rank-and-file voters often follow cues from elites, noting that impeachment support increased among Democrats after the party unified around the idea. So maybe if we had full data on the views of all Republican elites, we’d find that about 10 to 15 percent oppose Trump, perfectly in line with voters.

But I think that the safer assumption is this: Trump has in many ways successfully purged his critics from the power centers of the GOP. So a potential resistance to him among Republican elites doesn’t just face the obvious challenge that he’s the president and popular among GOP voters. Republican elites who are wary of Trump are also not well situated to make their case to rank-and-file Republican voters. They are working in lobbying shops or boardrooms instead of on Capitol Hill, speaking to audiences on CNN and MSNBC instead of Fox News, and outside of the administration instead of inside it.

The facts of the Ukraine case, or its politics, could open more doors for those anti-Trump voices in those pro-Trump spaces. That would likely have profound effects on the views of GOP voters.

For now, though, the Trump-skeptical bloc in Congress remains a small part of the overall Trump-skeptical conservative coalition.

[maniacalmachinist]

Predator/DND (Pt 3)

CHAPTER 3:  INVESTIGATION

Hachende was awoken to the sudden thud of the structure, and a couple of familiar voices.

“Look Lars, you lost the bet with Durgo . . . just go pay the drunken half-pint and suck it up.”

“Sven, we didn’t even get to see the steward . . . they had those guards drag that carcass in, not us.

The one called Sven shook it’s head, “Don’t blame me . . . you know that dwarf doesn’t play fair when he drinks . . . hell, the little fucker doesn’t play fair when he’s sober either.  But the fact remains you made a bet and lost . . . go pay up.”

Lars ooman groaned, “Fuck you . . . you pay the little shit.  You’re the one who insisted on drinking last night.”  Hachende made a mental note to study oomans longer before a hunt . . . their chattering almost sounded ridiculous.  There was then a knocking sound . . .

“Wagh come . . . Wagh here fa’ da guys . . . May’uh says we go back wit dah’ Silvah man. Find Why Vern den . . . but I don’t know no Vern.”  It rubbed it’s head . . . Hachende figured this tusked creature was some kind of leader . . . it definitely has the other two outclassed in size and strength.

“What the hell are you talking about Wagh?” responded Lars.

The tusked one beat it’s chest, clearly asserting it’s authority, “May’uh want us show Silvah Man dah den we found dead t’ing.  May’uh wan ohner-us wit’ helpin him look ‘round.  Wagh important now.”

Sven shook it’s head, “Silver man . . . honestly, you make no sense sometimes Wagh, but let’s go.”

The tusked one grunted, “Yes . . . le’s go . . . uh, you smell some’tin funny?”  It seemed to sniff.

Lars snorted, “Between you and the animals Wagh, I don’t smell anything different.”

******************************************************

Gyremar had slept well that night, even if it was in a room meant for humanoids . . . well, furnished anyway.  The Mayors previous had requisitioned lodging for the Dragon ages past, a hut permanently frozen on the inside with various furnishings crafted out of the enchanted ice.  Each mayor had included a writing desk with stationery and parchment for their draconian guest, as well as paintings of the Mayors lucky enough to have worked with him.  He glanced at the wall the night before, marveling at the detail put into these leaders that had worked closely with him.

There was a knock on the door, diverting his thoughts for a moment, “Enter.”

“Ah, Steward . . . our expedition is almost ready . . . we sent for the four who found the carcass to guide the team, and guard if necessary, and we’ve heard the Druid will be meeting all of you there.” Stated the Mayor, “Will you be needing anything else?”

“Yes . . . if could you spare one magi as well . . . there’s a taste in the chill wind, and it reeks of our visitor.”

Jonas blinked, “You think it’s here?”

“I suspect it’s closer than we think . . . a magi would work well with the team, and perhaps keep everyone alive a bit better than I can alone.”

“Of course . . . any field of magic you would prefer?”

Gyre pondered a moment, “Basic arcane and enchantment would suffice.”

The Mayor nodded, “Hmmmm, young Jessica Sable might do . . . she’s had a few years, but has been good at enhancing equipment as of late, and seems to do pretty well with those magic bolts.”

Gyyre nodded, “She’ll do I suppose . . . though if she’s that young, I’m wary of her safety.”

Jonus chuckled, “Compared to you Steward, everyone is young.”

Gyre couldn’t help but chuff in mild amusement, “Well played . . . “

The group assembled, the humans Lars and Sven were verbally jabbing each other back and forth, being led by the Orc Wagh.  A dwarf named Durgo staggered out of his home later after giving a kiss to his wife and children, and seemed to look at Gyre with an uneasy eye, “Eh laddie, I dunnae be seein’ ya ‘roun’ b’fore . . . “

Gyre decided to have a bit of fun, “Steward Gyremar . . . and you would be?”

“Aside from fucking drunk?!” chirped Lars.

“Ya be watchin’ ya tongue lad . . . Durgo Ironwrought, and nae be tuffer’n in the fiel’ o’ tha mines.”  He hefted his axe with pride, and Gyre could tell the usual dwarf overcompensation in their metalwork.

He inspected the axe, “Hmmmm, Steelforge era from the look of it . . . heirloom from a grandparent I suspect.”  He looked at the axe head and handle, “Oh, a hint of darksteel and enhancement runes.”

“Bloody ‘ell, ya know ya craft’in boy . . . “

“It’s good work . . . though it would be better if it weren’t a fake . . . “

Durgo went red in the face, “Wha’ ya mean, fake!!  I’ve cut down many o’ foe wit’ me Darkslice!?!?”

Gyre snorted, “Oh I don’t doubt it . . . but if you look at the rune imprint on the back of the axe head, it’s wrong . . . the style is Steelforge era, to be sure . . . but the emblem is from the Steamcore clan.  If memory serves, they were exiled from the Steelforge domain a century or two later.”

“Wha?  Ya dunnae be knowin’ . . . “ Durgo glanced at the rune . . . “Well bloody fell . . . I knew me gramps were a LIAR!!”

Wagh points at Gyre, “See . . . Silvah man . . . Wagh say hello to Silvah man!”  Gyre snorts, waving at the Orc.

The two humans start laughing, then look to the Mayor, “So where’s this almighty dragon, Halfpine?”  Gyre turned and smirked at the Mayor, whispering something in another tongue.

Jonus snorted, “He’ll be dropping in later, but will be meeting up with you at the site. Gyremar is the go-to guy for the him though, so if you have a question ask him.  Oh, and there will be a druid waiting at the den as well.”

“HEEEEY wait up!!!” Came a feminine scream several homes down, a young woman carrying a short staff in one hand and wearing caster robes.  She pants heavily when arriving at the carts, “Oooh . . . thanks . . . so sorry.  My rooster didn’t sound the morning call like it usually does. I didn’t even have enough time to check the coop when the mayor knocked on my door.”

Gyre nods, “It’s perfectly fine . . . everyone else had just arrived not too long ago.”

“Oh thank the gods . . . “ She looks at Gyre, eyes wide, “Yo . . . you’re “ He puts up a finger to his lips with a smirk, “Yes, I’m the Dragon’s adjutant.”  She seemed to blush, and snort, “Oh, I had hoped to actually meet him . . . but I guess that will be later.”  Her acting skills would be less than adequate to the trained eye.

“Yes, there were other matters he had to attend to first, but he will arrive at the site eventually.”

She looked at Lars and Sven, “Oh . . . don’t tell me I have to work with you fools again.”

“Awww, don’t be like that . . . we now you loved those artistic expressions to help with your studies.”

Jessica huffed, “I’m sorry, but pictures of your genitals doesn’t exactly help . . . “

“Awww, and here I thought women liked it bigger . . . “ chimed Lars.

“To use your language, don’t fuck with a woman who can accidentally make things smaller while talking in her sleep.”  The two seemed to wince, but Durgo was breaking out in laughter.  

Gyre snorted, “Oh this will be interesting in more ways than one . . . “

**********************************************************

The trip to the Wyvern’s den took a little longer than Sven remembered, but they had several more people, and Jessica had to stop often as the cart induced motion sickness.  He kept glancing at the silver “adjutant” but something felt a bit off . . . like the air itself was colder, but less hostile around him, as if the winds themselves were being diverted.  In a way, he looked like a Dragonborn with those claws and horns, so it made sense that he’d be associated with the steward. But, recalling some of the village history, the Steward never once sent a Dragonborn . . . a notion dawned on him, and his eyes went wide.  The eyes of the “adjutant” moved to his, as if knowing what thoughts went through his mind . . . but he smirked.  He slowly got the feeling that the Steward himself was playing with them.  He just dead-panned his gaze back to the front.

He didn’t see a hand smacking him, “Fuck, Sven . . . snap out of it . . . look like you just saw the damn ghost of the first mayor or something.”

Sven could only grunt at the blow, “Ah, fuck you . . . and you might not be far off that point . . . “

“Ah, just shut up . . . we’re almost to the den.”

Wagh hopped off, and leapt forward, grabbing his favorite club and sniffed around, “Funny smell not here . . . “

Lars face palmed, “Wagh, the wind’s blowing . . . “

Wagh shrugged, “Uh . . . wha?”

Sven snorted, “Just forget it . . . we’ll set up camp while our guests inspect things, no telling how long we’ll be here.”

Gyre dismounted from the cart, helping Jessica out . . . she stumbled a bit, not having fully recovered from her last “purge.”  

“Ugggh . . . get that damn thing fixed . . . I couldn’t hold down breakfast for crying out loud . . . bleeggh!”  Gyre patted her back.

“Don’t think it was the cart’s fault . . . I suggest looking into ways to improve your constitution while traveling . . . perhaps pack a lion’s heart potion next time.”

“Hurgle!  That stuff’s expensive . . . even to craft on my own, half the ingredients don’t grow here.”

Gyre snorted with a smile, “Ah, but in alchemy you just need to combine the traits and mix with the right magic . . . one plant, or even animal, can be substituted for another.  I suggest talking with the village healer on the matter.”

In no mood to argue, Jessica just nodded and grunted.  Gyre looked up, and noticed a woman near the den, waving her stave, “Northmount forest welcomes you, villagers of Lightcross and Steward of Northmount!”

Wagh scratches his head, “Uhhh . . . who Stew’rd?  Not know no Stew’rd.”

There was a huge belly laugh from the Dwarf, “Aye, tha’ ol drag’n be but a myth lass . . . has’na been seen in decades, ‘e has.  Silver boy here is jus’ a del’gate a’ best.”  He clapped Gyre on the shoulder, almost regretting the instant chill in his hand.  “Aye aye ya, Laddie, ya be col’ as fuck . . .”  With a low chuckle, Gyre turned around, smirking at the dwarf as he let his draconic eye become apparent, becoming silver with a dark slit before returning to a more humanoid ocular.  “Well . . . I . . . errr . . . fook me sideways!!”

Sven laughed, though it seemed more expressed out of relief than a result of the comedy playing out before him.

“Yes, I am the Steward . . . now that I’ve had my fun, shall we continue?”  He waved back at the druidess, making his way up to her with Jessica in tow.  The four stooges just stood there, dumbfounded . . . though Wagh most of all.

“Silvah man name is Stew’rd?  Him named aftah meal or somet’in?”  The other three groaned, or laughed.

“Ah, we tellin’ ya later lad . . . le’s just git this camp setup while the brains ‘andle tha scene.”

******************************************************************

The dead wyvern’s cave was at the top of a small hill, the snow lightly packed as Gyre and Jessica made their way the entrance.

“Hail to you, Frostmoon druid, this is my aide Jessica Sable, a Lightcross mage . . . I take it you’ve gleaned something of import?”  Jessica waved simply, with Sedira nodding curtly at the two.

“I’ll show you, but it’s quite confusing . . . oh, and do mind the smell, this wyvern wasn’t keen on keeping it’s den floor tidy.”

Gyre glanced at Jessica, “I’m not sure your stomach can handle this part . . . “

She took a deep breath, and muttered a small spell, “I . . . I don’t have a choice . . . I want to know too what magic was involved here for a lone warrior to do this.”

“Be at your own peril then . . . come . . . “ the druidess guided them to the cave, and Gyre picked up the smell of rotting flesh and refuse instantly,

“Ugh . . . nasty vermin at best . . . my cohort have more manners.”

“Wyverns aren’t as gracious and intelligent as the Dragonkine, Steward . . . this is no exception.  From first glance, it preferred to eat on the ceiling, and let the remains fall . . . probably to mask the scent, or keep competition away.  Maybe even lure certain scavengers when food was scarce.”

Gyre nodded, looking around the cave . . . if he was a lesser creature, the sight of littered bones and rotting flesh, both frozen and semi-fresh would have made his stomach heave.  “Let us see the astral mark then . . . “

The druidess nodded, “Jessica, if you would channel magics into me, it will speed this process along.”  Jessica nodded, if a bit confused

“Don’t worry, young Sable . . . you’ll see it too in your mind’s eye while channeling.  The druid will take care of the rest, so consider this another of your lessons.”  The  young woman nodded, loosening her stance, while taking the posture of focus.  The druidess began her chant, a series of magic circles began to form . . . red, yellow, and blue, all shifting and moving vertically . . . a series of images began to appear.  The wyvern’s image was given a teal color, it’s body clinging to the ceiling as the druidess hypothesized.

“Guessing these are it’s last moments.”

“The rocks and plants felt much going on, great Steward . . . hmmmm, it senses a trespasser.”

Gyre turned his gaze to the creature, it seemed to rustle a bit . . . suddenly a green image emerged. What appeared to be a tall humanoid, it’s body armored, but not in anything he recognized.  It had long tendrils coming from the back of it’s head, each of which seemed adorned in some kind of clamp, all imprinted with some strange markings.  The way it moved was like watching a mountain cat stalking prey, cautious but confident . . . it pulled a small pipe from the small of it’s back.  What surprised him is that with a flick of it’s wrist, the pipe elongated into a rather vicious double ended spear.

“My word . . . that is a gradient of smithing I’ve never seen before . . . this creature seems to be from a race that’s made the hunt an art in and of itself . . . can you hold this image?”

The Druidess nodded, halting the creature just as the wyvern snuck it’s tail from the ceiling. The mask had a degree of similar decoration . . . the symbols from the tendril clamps mirrored along some of the mask’s features.  In a way, it resembled some of the conventional helms that adventurers had used through the ages, but this one stretched up over the creature’s forehead, which was large on it’s own based on the position of the hair-tendrils.  He continued inspecting the image, noticing a disc-like object on both of it’s thighs.  “Fells . . . I would almost call this creature an orc, but those tendrils aren’t like that of any humanoid I’ve encountered . . . “

“If I may Steward . . . I do recall stories of the Northmount Banshee . . . we have a few texts from an era where an unknown creature was beheading certain animals and travelers, while leaving skinned carcasses.  It was said to disappear into the snow, and would playback the voices of the hunted, or make a roar like something never encountered . . . both hollow, and bone chilling.” Jessica recanted, eyes closed while focusing the magics.

Gyre blinked, “I’m not aware of these stories, and I’ve been here a long time.”

“This was some decades before you were recognized as the Steward . . . when the White Wyrm still controlled this territory.”

“Oh her . . . that fallen thing should never have been allowed dominion here . . . glad I was rid of her . . . but there may be some merit to the story.  When I met Carmix’la, she appeared deeply injured, as if some fight had gone awry.  Some of her scales were burned in a way I couldn’t fathom.”

“Yes, that would be the one Steward . . . according to records, the death of the White Wyrm coincided with the end of the skinning and strung up corpses.”

Gyre chuffed, “And my rather unorthodox promotion to Steward.”

[raygoodwinmajournal]

101 - Social Media, its use in the Zeitgeist and Personal Reflections

It is no secret that I have had a rocky and turbulent relationship with social media over the years. I have been through all emotions with it, from loving it to completely loathing what it is and what it can do to a person. The idea of being connected to many people digitally seems like a good idea, but it brings up a multitude of emotions which cannot be ignored. Surely the idea of being connected to people you know, and people you don’t would be a fantastic opportunity to network and share experiences? For me, this hasn’t entirely been the case.

To see where I am coming from, I must talk about my own social media history and where it started for me to be where I am today. The first social media site I signed up for was Facebook, all the way back in 2009 when I was 14 years old. It was amazing, I was able to talk to people that I knew in primary school which I hadn’t seen since I moved to the other end of the country a few years prior. And, as a teenager, most things in life are new and exciting - I had no idea how it would come to affect me at the time. Not long after in November 2009, I signed up for Twitter. This was a different kettle of fish, with Twitter being a lot more open to different people, even celebrities and people of a certain notoriety. At the time, these were massive deals and social media was really up and coming as something that most people didn’t really have. Even at this time it was in its infancy. I think I also signed up for Bebo, but that was as useful as a chocolate teapot. Having these sites are all well and good, only if you have people to know and add. At 14, I didn’t really have any friends and even then, felt alienated from my contemporaries because I didn’t feel that I fitted in amongst the crowd - I had ‘friends’, but they never felt true. This carried on for many years throughout my teens, using Facebook and Twitter and even thinking then why on earth I was doing what I was doing. Around 2011/2012, I signed up for Instagram which became the biggest bugbear in my time on social media, which went through multiple iterations and accounts. 

Eventually, I deleted my first Facebook account but was quickly resurrected. I wanted to break free from the digital shackles but never could pluck up the courage, which looking back at that way of thinking is completely absurd. How can one not have the courage to not use a particular website, unless they are addicted to it? This brings into question the very reason why one would use social media. Are they keeping in contact with friends and family they don’t have immediate access to, or are they intentionally manipulated to keep them on the site? Social media websites are intentionally created in such a way to increase time on site, so that they can create more money and keep afloat. These sites are made so that you become addicted to refreshing the page and hoping that a little red circle pops up with a number on it displaying how many notifications are on it. It starts to turn into a digital slot machine, pulling the lever and anticipating a winning number. They are essentially digital Skinner Boxes. For years, I did this because unbeknownst to me, I was addicted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I was wasting time by flicking through feeds, looking at people’s status’ whom I didn’t care for, but did it anyway, for hours. Then I would switch to Instagram and fall into the abyss that is the explore page, which is just a chasm of useless flashy images relating to what you react with. Then I’d switch to seeing people’s stories and seeing what they were up to or sharing. Twitter would rear its head and I’d see what was happening in the world. 

This went on for too long and I started to become listless and filled with malaise. This was the start of me becoming wary of what social media was doing to me, which was only around 2016/2017. Even though that was a number of years ago now, it still went on until rather recently when I would uninstall all social media apps from my phone to ease my TOS and not waste so much time. But, I kept hanging on by a thread because I had become so dependent on scrolling and endlessly scrolling uselessly. I hated the fact that I detested these sites yet still crawled back to them and not using them to my advantage. Instead, I was wasting my time by ingesting images and information that was of no use to me such as people from school I hadn’t seen in years having children, estranged friends showing their new car modifications and sunny beach photos. Why do I need to see this? I don’t care about these people and what they’re doing with their lives, especially when they are doing much better than me. For most of my life, I have had to deal with depression and anxiety, which would often lead to derealisation from my surroundings and depersonalisation. Scrolling for hours made me feel even less of a human than felt before logging on - something had to change.

Eventually, I gradually weaned myself off of social media by deleting apps from my phone, and not allowing my browsers to save my login details so that I had to type everything out, acting as a form of deterrent. This partly worked, but I still relapsed for a lack of a better term. But the only way that I could stop using it is to completely deactivate and eradicate these accounts and apps from my life. It wasn’t until November 2020 that I was able to do it properly with Instagram, deleting my personal account and not looking back. I decided to keep my professional account because it is a platform where my work is shown and can be used for my career. But more on that in a later paragraph. Twitter was also next to go, firstly deleting all tweets, profile picture and cover photo just in case I needed the account for something. Twitter had become a dangerously caustic cesspit of political opinions and grossly misinformed ideas. I didn’t want that kind of negativity in my life whilst I was taking action and bettering my mental wellbeing, so it had to go. This for me was my most bittersweet encounter with deleting any social media account, as it had survived over 11 years with being relatively active. Yet the cons out weighed the pros, so it was laid to rest in February 2021. Facebook was revived for me after many years of not using it, but this was because I had to participate in the third year closed group during Lockdown in March 2020. This is still live, and mainly used for SU work. Reddit is also a site that I use from time to time, with an account I made 2015. This is a site I don’t view as social media and is a good resource for helpful information and communities. There are areas to avoid such as the Tik-Tok filled subreddits containing useless videos and pictures, but for the most part are useful in the right instances. 

My professional Instagram account is the only account that survived my social media purge because of the ability to share my work, network with industry professionals and follow people who are of key interest. I haven’t posted on this account since November 2020, but occasionally post a story about recent happenings such as being included in the Photograd Conjunction zine and to generally check in. My recent project work hasn’t been shared on this account yet, and will be once I am ready to show what I have been doing. It has been rather nice not to have any pressure and thinking I should be creating work for my followers instead of myself, because for a time I did think that. I was hung up on how many likes a post would get and how the audience was engaging, and if it was bad I would think again about what I was doing. I soon realised that it didn’t matter and I wasn’t happy with what I was creating, so I focused on myself rather than the audience on ones and zeros. 

I think that social media is inherently bad, and can have profound effects on one's mental health which can be extremely dangerous to the right, or wrong person. Whilst I do think that social media is terrible, and not having any access to it is massively freeing, it can certainly be useful in the right application. Professionally, I feel that is a must in the day and age, with everything becoming more digitally connected and employers potentially seeing what you are up to in the digital world. I feel that the way of using social media is very important, and should be used as a tool instead of a time wasting method and mindlessly scrolling the hours away. I was unhappy for a long time, and some of that can be attributed to social media and its use in my life. By cutting the chain from myself to the anchor which was social media, I feel less like a scrolling robot with a blank stare into a screen and more like a human being - as much as I can in this digital landscape. As we have become more digitally connected, I felt more disconnected from the people around me, which has been heightened since the pandemic and not being able to see family and friends. The added benefit of not having any personal social media accounts, there is so much free time for me to do what I like with. 

Instead of looking blankly at the screen at things that I cared zilch for, I can get on with more important things such as doing work for my MA, cleaning the house, walking, listening to music and doing mindfulness activities. In this strange digital wasteland of a landscape, I think it is a good idea to take a step back and think about how social media affects one’s life. If it is negative, then it is possibly time to either have a break, or completely cut ties with it. If it is of no use and only contains negativity, then why keep it? If you can’t use it to your own benefit and get something positive, then it is of little use. Just like a lot of things, it is a tool, such as the mobile phone. I don’t think that smartphones are bad, it is just how they are used by the majority. They are incredibly powerful tools which are pocket computers, which used correctly can be invaluable. It took me a long time to realise that they aren’t a bad thing, it is just how they are used. If things are too complicated and messy, forms of digital minimalism is a good route to take. By keeping phones free of mess, social media apps and old documents, they can be powerful tools which can be very useful in a multitude of settings. The fact that I have a handheld camera, notepad, encyclopedia, music player, video player which can also take phone calls, text messages and emails still blows my mind. Instead of using the phone as a time wasting tool, make use of its abilities and improve workflow and benefit oneself. The only downside is that we are still slaves to technology which is so deeply ingrained in society now that it cannot be undone unless something catastrophic happens which renders all technology useless. 

In short, social media can be extremely caustic and to be used with caution. If one wants to blindly keep scrolling autonomously with no thoughts - be my guest. But, if you want to use it to your advantage, you can change how it is used just by taking the plunge and not looking back. For now, my professional account will be just so and the app shan’t be on my phone and only accessible via my browser needing my login details. It allows me to have a place where I can show work, talk to certain people and potentially have clients find me or vice versa. Yet, social media is where some of my alienation stems from for me, as people blindly stare into their phones giving short grunted answers to questions as their thumbs manoeuvre them through an arid wasteland of memes and cultural detritus. I used to be one of those people, and it is horrible to see people become so distant and withdrawn looking at lolcats and dancing imbeciles. In the end, I felt like I wasn’t a human being and something had to change, as I became withdrawn from my very being on this rock hurtling through the void. But who is to blame: The person for being suckered into the app with little to no ability of self control, or the developers for intentionally creating the app in such a way that a person can’t look elsewhere and has to come back?

[greatrunner]

Hey, I remeber you talking about alternative platforms to Tumblr awhile back. What are your opinions on WritScrib?

WritScrib (T) definitely sounds like an interesting platform for folk who want to monetize their blogging experience. That seems like their main sell here. I’m not entirely sure that’s what I want, since I don’t know the ins-and-outs of their use of copyright. Will my content still be mine, or are they paying me to give them the rights to my content? What exactly is it that they’re willing to pay for, and what are the quality standards? Or is it like DeviantART wherein you can have an account, not monetize anything, but you have that option?

Pillowfort also sounds like a solid and interesting alternative to tumblr, but I’m on the fence about that as well with some of the rules and ideas they’re throwing around (like a limited number of edits after 100 “reblogs”. I’d like complete control over my content even after it gets “reblogged”, thnx). Then there’s the fact that they’re vague about what they consider a “call-out” post (because website staff for any site are notorious for allowing harassment to prevail, while users have to do the work of protecting themselves or warning others, because they don’t wanna lose “user revenue”).

Right now both sites want to go back to the “good ole days of LiveJournal” and, well, one part of me is like “cool”, and the other part of me is wary. The only thing I really miss about LJ’s long-form blogging is the ability to control who could follow your personal blog or communities, post-screening (who could see it, and who couldn’t even if they were or weren’t following you), tag editing (no weird misspelled duplicates popping up when you type in a keyword), user-friendly layouts (with font and color-friendly adjustment settings), blog profiles, and well, content control. I could do without the elitism that used to run rampant on that site.

(I’m kinda curious as to whether or not you can import your blogs from tumblr to either website, or are the websites just too different for that?)

Dreamwidth.org gives me that, but it’s a ghost town, and most folk don’t want to go there because some not so great people from LJ lurk there (I really can’t blame them). But, it remains the only long-form blogging website that maintains (like LiveJournal did) that all information you posted on the account will be purged/erased once you deactivate it and it remains that way for 60 days.

At the moment Wordpress is looking better than either site (esp. for back-up purposes), but I also know that website has a rule wherein once you create an account and post content on it, you can’t delete the account, they’ll just ‘hide’ it so to speak (so, basically, the content belongs to them whether or not you want to get rid of it).

My one curiosity about Pillowfort and WritScrib is whether or not they have any Black, or non-Black webmasters or website support? How are they gonna handle racism and racially motivated harassment? Most blogging websites don’t handle that bit gracefully at all.

[sissearchkittpu-blog]

Online dating for guys

Top 10 Online Dating Profile Examples & Why They’re Successful The proposition can be frustrating and intimidating, especially if you don't know what's out there or where to start.  How it works: is built for more interaction and engagement.  It roughly takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete, so the dating site is for men who are serious about finding a partner.  A lot of dating websites offer free trial periods to give singles a taste of what the interface is like before they subscribe.  How it works: Filling out the Elite Singles questionnaire is a long and lengthy undertaking.

A Guy's Perspective on Online Dating Most people I know enjoy those things.  Girls fancy mystery as long as the truth gradually comes to light as the relationship progresses.  This list of the 13 Best Online Dating Sites for Men is definitely a good place to start! Dating websites take a lot of time, from filling out your profile to crafting a flirtatious message.  Then you want to mention something authentic.  Those messages made me run far, far away from online dating.  I was taught Reiki in Romania, where I lived for two years.  What Does This All Mean For You? A woman's perspective on this dating profile: This guy is a walking dichotomy.

amolatin reviews Archives There Have Been Scams, Which Makes People Wary Last of all, some dating sites attract scammers looking to target emotionally vulnerable singles online.  Since 1995, has been one of the leading names in online dating, with millions upon millions of users in 25 countries speaking more than eight languages.  Some let you browse profiles for free, others give you a set number of messages to send — whatever it is, you should explore the dating network for free before making a commitment to a monthly subscription.  Avoided being bitten by vampires, but yes, they do have them there.  If you're a single gay man, then chances are you're already on Grindr.  When there's a lot of competition for a woman's attention, they have to filter whom they want to respond to right off the bat.

Best dating sites for men 2019: Find love, a hookup, and all the rest This means the men and women who are on Elite Singles are generally in their mid-30s to late-50s.  Then you might have some leeway.  If you win my sweepstakes, you will automatically win a chance to do these things with me as well.  Online dating is the perfect primer for learning how to sell yourself.  These details can be exclusionary or affirming depending on who is reading your profile.

amolatin reviews Archives As with everything in life, balance is the key to a happy, satisfied life.  The personal description is nice and concise, covers lots of really intriguing things such as places travelled and what he does to keep fit.  Women will look for the one bad one and decide not to email you because of it.  In dating, attitude is everything, so wallow a little with us and then get back out there.  A mix of seriousness added in would make these profiles perfect! Also, I would love to be blessed with the lady of my life.  Things To Consider When Dating Online Few people realize that most dating sites keep all users listed indefinitely, and some refuse to purge their database of old members, even if said former members have found love and deactivated their account.

A Guy's Perspective on Online Dating Personally, I think there is so much more to be gained from talking with someone face to face — you are able to read their body language and listen to intonation in their voice, which are much better indicators than online messages or profiles.  I do have a bone to pick with his profile, well a few bones.  Both of these will act as great conversation starters and attract like-minded women.  Again thank you for your advice.  A few things important to me: Jesus Christ, God, music, movies, laughter, sex, and peace of mind.

The 6 Ugly Truths of Online Dating Moreover, Match is considered the blueprint for all other dating sites that came after it.  So Happn is there to be your wing-man or should we say wing-app to meet the people you find attractive and interesting in the real world.  Rather we chat, talk, engage in conversation to get to know each other instead of us reading through a long page in this section about each other.  You just sign up with your existing Facebook account and the dating site populates your likes, personality, and photos so all you have to do is match with potential lovers.  If you're a single man and you're continuously striking out on Tinder, then maybe you should consider leveling up to the gold standard in online dating.

Dating Tips Do you want to travel to all the continents? All to be met with no reply or other acknowledgment for it.  Everyone jumps the gun, telling you to personalize each message you send.  But, you see, I was an of OkCupid.  This guy does a great job at putting the girl at ease.  I got some In the online dating world, sometimes a picture is the only thing you have to create a great first impression.

Online Dating Tips For Men I find the opposite is true Tony.  Romantic gestures, affection, good communication and mutual consideration keep things alive.  He finds a way of standing out by incorporating an anagram in his profile—very witty and original.  I should note I'm a bit older than the average, highly-desirable range for ladies of 29-35, so younger women may get even more.  With no response it compels us to do zany things to get your attention and prompt a reply — even if a negative one.  Then, yesterday, I read this really great profile.  Well, you need a fantastic profile that really showcases your strengths, attractiveness and wants in a partnership or relationship be it casual or long term - the process is the same.

Online Dating Tips for Men There are pitfalls and potholes on the way to finding love—in his first piece for us, David Oragui helps us navigate the bumpy terrain of online dating.  The dating site is also responsible for thousands of lifelong matches and marriages over the last 20 years or so.  Enjoy keeping fit — played rugby for 20 years and try to keep in shape without being too fanatical about it! I have a neglected 12-string-guitar named Calypso, who now only has 10.  These guys have revealed very little about who they are, in a sense.  It seems restrictive, but is so confident with their intelligent matching system that they do all the hard work for you.

[hub-pub-bub]

The Archive of Our Own, one of the internet’s most well-known fanfiction archives, has been nominated for a Hugo Award this year, a significant honor in the sci-fi/fantasy literature world.

The Hugos are the annual science fiction and fantasy awards, which are handed out every year at Worldcon. They are sourced and voted on by Worldcon attendees, and, along with the Nebulas, they’re considered the speculative literary community’s most prestigious awards. The nominees were announced on April 2, drawn from 1,800 nominating members using write-in ballots. Among them, under the Best Related Work category, was the Archive of Our Own, universally affectionately shorthanded as AO3.

The Best Related Work category has traditionally included books or essays that involve critical commentary, tie-in works, or other works adjacent to speculative fiction. While the category can include some experimental entries, it’s very rare for it to include an entire website — and Hugo members have never nominated unpublished fanfiction before. But now the Hugo voters are suggesting that an entire fanfiction archive constitutes a single “related work.”

If you, like me, are a certain kind of internet person, this statement will fill you with an internal glow brighter than the combined light pollution of 40 Manhattans, as you sort through your personal list of favorite fanfics that are technically now all Hugo nominees, along with the archive itself: Steve Rogers at 100. The Pure and Simple Truth. Killing Elvis. I am Groot.

You might be thinking: Okay, so they nominated a fanfic website. How did that happen?

Allow me to explain.

The Archive of Our Own was born out of fans rebelling against corporate exploitation

AO3 isn’t just a fanfic archive: It’s the most well-known project from an organization called the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW). The OTW is an entirely fan-run nonprofit organization, with thousands of members and hundreds of volunteers devoted to protecting, preserving, and defending fanworks and their legal right to exist. There’s a whole backstory here, and it comes down to a group of fans — mostly women — deciding to take the fates of their fanworks into their own hands. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the OTW from 2008 to2016 and served on its development and membership committee from 2011 to 2014.)

The OTW, and subsequently AO3, was founded in response to a single 2007 LiveJournal postwritten by an influential fanfic writer called astolat. Astolat, a well-known writer of queer (also known as “slash”) fics with a large readership amid a community of other influential slash fans, was responding to community uproar over the creation of a company called “FanLib,” which had, like many companies before it, attempted to disrupt the fanfiction community by commodifying fanfiction and exploiting fans for their work.

As astolat noted in her post:

[T]he people behind fanlib ... don’t actually care about fanfic, the fanfic community, or anything except making money off content created entirely by other people and getting media attention. They don’t have a single fanfic reader or writer on their board; they don’t even have a single woman on their board. They’re creating a lawsuit-bait site while being bad potential defendants, and they deserve to be chased out being pelted with rocks.

It’s common for companies to exploit members of fanwork communities, demanding that writers pay to have their work distinguished or offering to pay them very little money to produce fanwork; fans know to be wary of it. Over time, writers developed swift and mobilized ways to protect themselves, essentially forming walls around their independent, creative garden. The goal: keep it free and flourishing. How most fans manage this is by insisting on their right to create noncommercial, “transformative” fanfiction — the legally protected term for works that qualify as Fair Use in US copyright law.

But if the sites that host fanfiction aren’t also on the side of content creators, then fans may struggle to successfully create, post, and share fanworks online. In 2007, most fanfiction hosting sites were either tiny or large and commercialized — like FanLib and LiveJournal itself. That meant fans were vulnerable to takedowns, content purges, and general exploitationbased on fans’ legally precarious position and the internalized shame over their works that had been drilled into many fanfiction writers — who, again, tend to be mainly women, queer, and genderqueer members of fandom.

Astolat’s big idea was straightforward but revolutionary: Why not build an entirely self-sufficient, creator-funded archive to protect fanworks?

“We are sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and piles of content around us, and other people are going to look at that and see an opportunity,” she wrote. “And they are going to end up creating the front doors that new fanfic writers walk through, unless we stand up and build our OWN front door.”

The Archive of Our Own would become that front door.

The Archive of Our Own became about much more than just hosting fanfic

Fans immediately got behind astolat’s summons and began mapping out their ideal fanfiction archive. But it quickly became obvious during the planning that what they needed wasn’t justan archive, but rather an overall approach to combating fanfiction’s perpetually endangered status. What astolat proposed would essentially become the backbone of the OTW, which was officially founded in September 2007, a few months after her post.

The OTW evolved into five distinct projects:

The Archive of Our Own, which launched in an invite-only beta form on November 14, 2009, formally pledges “to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate.”

Fanlore, an open source wiki focused on preserving fandom history and collective knowledge

Transformative Works and Cultures, a peer-edited academic journal devoted to advancing fandom scholarship

Open Doors, a fanworks preservation project that identifies older fanfiction archives in danger of shuttering and being lost to time, then rescuing them by transferring their contents to AO3

Formalized legal advocacy for fanworks and other transformative works through the organization’s legal committee, which does things like filing and joining amicus briefs in cases impacting the fan community. The committee also educates fans on important laws and alerts them about changes to laws throughout the world that could impact fanwork practices.

A lot of this might seem needlessly trumped up — you might wonder, for example, why it would be so important to keep a tiny online fanfiction collection from disappearing. But these projects illustrate that the OTW’s ultimate goal isn’t just to combat specific exploitative corporate practices — it’s to empower fans.

Remember, the OTW was created by fans who had spent years, in some cases even decades, facing stigmatization, censorship, legal troubles, hosting sites abruptly deleting their work, and in many cases authorial wrath, all because of the generally negative cultural view of fanfiction. Indeed, even years after the OTW was formed, fans are still trying to overcome many tired, shaming, often openly sexist stereotypes about fanfiction.

But none of these stereotypes aligned with fans’ experiences of fandom as a deeply creative, flourishing space that gives voice to misfits and marginalized members of society. Moreover, fandom has given rise to a thriving culture of empowered writers, who embraced the idea and practice of fanfiction as a fully legitimate literary craft in its own right. By launching a multifaceted service designed to protect fanworks, fans were sending a public message to outsiders, as well as to themselves, that their work was legitimate and not something to be ashamed of.

The Archive of Our Own has had a fundamental role in altering the way we think about fanfiction

That empowered attitude arising among fans who built and used AO3 would coincide with a sea change in the way we think about fanfiction.

The creation of the AO3 in 2009 happened parallel to the rise of social media. This was a highly significant coincidence for fandom. AO3 was formed as an independent, fully non-corporatized community just when the internet was dividing into venture capital-funded platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. The more these types of spaces consolidated the “free” internet, the more necessary a site like AO3 became to fans worried that their hosting ISPs wouldn’t be willing to entertain their defense of fair use against a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice — an issue many YouTube creators are all too familiar with.

But social media was also hugely responsible for mainstreaming transformative fandom — the women-dominated side of fandom that emphasizes creating new world-building and fanworks, often critiquing or deconstructing the source material. Before social media, fans clung to the idea of the fourth wall, a kind of mythical secret barrier and “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allowed them to conduct their activities without outside scrutiny. But by the launch of AO3, social media was giving marginalized people new, important public platforms. It was also making visible the importance of transformative fandom spaces, where historically marginalized fans could express the diversity of their experiences and identities. The collective desire for what was essentially a shame filter around fanworks was finally fading.

But with the rise of social media, fans were suddenly newly able to discuss their fandom activities in public alongside other fans. The AO3 and Tumblr in particular operated in synergy, as fans new and old came to Tumblr, adopted AO3 as a unique, beloved fanfiction site, and passed along the communal narrative of the OTW as an important safe haven for fans.

And those fans were becoming more vocal and open about writing fanfiction than at any previous point in cultural history. AO3’s founding in 2009 was still several years before the phenomenon of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011, which would really open the floodgates on mainstream acceptance of fanfiction. But on Tumblr, which was quietly making its own enormous cultural impact, AO3 was becoming a household name, synonymous with fangirls, queer fanfic, and fandom itself.

halftheday

Follow

As of 2019, the archive boasts 4.7 million stories in more than 30,000 recognized fandoms (currently ranging from 07-Ghost to 킹덤) in 11 broad categories, posted by 1.8 million users and read by untold millions more. It receives an average of 179 million views a month; SimilarWeb ranks it as the No. 2 literary website (after the corporate fiction/fanfic site Wattpad), and within the top 200 websites globally.

For all of this to have grown out of a bunch of slash fangirls wanting a place to read their queer fanfiction is remarkable, especially given that those women planned, designed, and hand-coded the site from the ground up, all by themselves — a massive project undertaken during an era where women were still fighting to be taken seriously as designers and coders throughout Silicon Valley. (The AO3 runs on the Ruby on Rails source engine, for any tech types wondering.)

It’s been lauded for its incredibly sophisticated filtering system, which allows fans to aggressively curate their reading experiences. This requires a volunteer team of “tag wranglers,” whose sole job is to curate the many user-generated tags added to the archive daily; that’s in addition to the other hundreds of volunteers who maintain the site and contribute to the OTW’s other projects.

Also astonishing is that it remains supported fully by fans, who have kept the archive funded and the servers running purely through donations for the past decade. (For comparison, the internet’s other bastion of grassroots community, Reddit, was bought by Condé Nast in 2006, the year before the OTW was formed.)

What’s perhaps even more remarkable than all of this, given the legacy of cultural shame around fanfiction that the archive was formed in part to resist, is that AO3 has helped rehabilitate how fanfiction is perceived by the mainstream. In 2013, Time magazine named the Archive one of the best sites on the web. There are AO3 tag generators and a tag-of-the-day Tumblr. “You have already left kudos here” is a lowkey internet meme. It’s not uncommon to see once-isolated fans recognize each other on public transit because of the unmistakable look of the AO3 interface. AO3 has arguably boosted the average internet user’s understanding of fanfiction — and, crucially, this familiarity has come from a positive outgrowth of fandom community, rather than a corporatized promotion of it.

That legacy is represented by AO3’s Hugo nomination, recognized as a “huge deal” among followers of the archive and awards body.

This is a HUGE DEAL. This is a chance to say "fanfic is a legitimate and vital part of fandom" on our biggest stage.

— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire)

April 2, 2019

Much of AO3’s story is a story of alienation, of being an online outsider. Fanfiction is primarilythe bastion of women, queer, and genderqueer fans, who have long been barred from traditionally sanctioned (if equally culturally maligned) curatorial fandom, often due to prejudices. (Remember the “fake geek girl” meme?) Women have also been kept from Silicon Valley. Fanfiction is still dismissed as a serious literary genre, lampooned as something only shrill teen girls write — even though many of those girls grow up to become Hugo-winning authors themselves (who still write fanfiction).

The Hugos themselves, along with the broader culture of speculative fiction, have been undergoing a decade-long period of progressive reform to be more inclusive and diverse that neatly coincides with the rise of AO3. The Hugos have always represented innovation in genre and fandom, created by a lot of geeks and misfits, and AO3 represents the rise of a set of geeks and misfits who have long been invisible to Hugo voters.

Although this is the first year a fanfiction archive has been nominated, transformative fandom has slipped into or near the nominations before. The podcast Fangirl Happy Hour has been nominated several times in the category of Best Fancast, and the podcast Be the Serpent, which explicitly critiques and analyzes fanfiction by framing it as an important speculative literary tradition, is also nominated for Best Fancast this year. Several bloggers known for championing fanfiction, like Foz Meadows, have received nods within the Best Fan Writing category in recent years too.

So AO3’s nomination, given the turn the Hugos have gradually been making to embrace fandom more explicitly, feels less remarkable than inevitable — not just a legitimate literary organization saying, “We see you,” but rather, “We see you, and you’re one of us.”

The awards are a long-deserved acknowledgment of the tremendous driving force of creators working together to create a space for themselves — the strength of their talent, community, technology, literary skill, and sheer passion in making the world a little more their own.

[hopefulminty]

So, this post exists due to the perfect storm of insomnia, randomly realizing that I had posted on here 99 times (and should therefore do something different for the 100th post), and several of the topics covered below coming up in real life.

In other words, here is an author interview with myself.

Yes, that’s right. I’m actually asking myself a bunch of questions, answering them/TMI-ing all over the place, and posting the results on here.

Insomnia really does make me do weird things... 

Why are you called hopefulminty?

 My username comes from two usernames that I’ve used in the past. The hopeful part’s been around since I was in middle school. Two of my friends and I decided to dress up as hippies for Halloween one year. We called ourselves Faith, Charity, and Hope. I started using variations of the word ‘hope’ for various sites after that. The minty part started when I was in high school. I wasn’t feeling the name ‘hope’ one day, so I looked around the room until my eyes landed on a pack of gum. I said the word ‘minty’ out loud and the rest is history. I will answer online to Hope, Minty, or now Hopefulminty. Any of those are fine.

Who are you?

I don’t like to give out specifics about myself that I feel could be used to identify me. That’s one of the things that was drilled into my head when I was young and actually stuck, so I don’t use my real name online, give my location, etc, etc. (Though I do share stories online that are kind of unique, but I don’t think they could be used to identify me unless you happen to live in this area/know people I know.)

Basically, I’m female, American (east coast, that’s as specific as I’m going to be), somewhere on the ace/demi spectrum, and old enough that I think I’m pretty much a senior citizen in the DEH fandom.

Old enough that when I saw Alex Boniello’s tweet about having shirts that are older than Andrew Feldman, I very quickly thought about my wardrobe, did the math, and laughed because I have at least two t-shirts that I’ve had since I was in elementary school that actually are older than the child who is going to be playing Evan next.

Does that weird you out?

A little bit, but not really. It would if I actually pictured any of the actors while I’m writing. When I do visualize the characters, I picture the versions that solely exist in my head now and don’t particularly resemble anyone who has played the parts.

I will say that I hope for his sake that he’s more emotionally/mentally mature than I was at sixteen. I know there’s no way I could’ve handled being the lead in a popular Broadway show, even if I’d had the talent to pull it off.

Actually, I don’t think I could handle that now. I’d hate the attention and would probably crumble under the pressure.

Is it weird being an older fan?

Again, kind of, but not really. I’ve been in and out of different fandoms since I was old enough to know that they existed. (Eleven, I think?) There’ve been times when I’ve been really active, times when I’ve been a lurker, times when I’ve been on the outskirts and only occasionally popped into something. (Kind of like I am now with DEH, I think.)

I was pretty active in various Harry Potter RPGs when I was in high school. There were players of all different ages in those. The youngest ones were teens, like myself. The oldest players were in their 60s. I thought that was kind of awesome at the time and actually still do.

Should younger fans be wary of older fans?

This is one of the topics that have come up in my real life recently. My sister-in-law found out that my nephew’s on some kind of gaming board and has online friends who are significantly older than him.

I told her that from my experience I’d say it’s not someone’s age you have to be worried about, not if that’s literally the only thing making you pause. It’s not that people hit a certain age and automatically turn into creepers who should be pushed out of fandoms and not allowed to interact with younger fans at all.

Growing up, all my real life friends were super into various fandoms. We were always dragging each other to things and driving each other crazy by going on about our latest obsessions.

A lot of them have given up that part of their lives now. In some cases, they’ve moved on because they’ve had to, because things like work and school and ensuring that their basic needs are met are more important than writing fan fic and venting about annoying plot holes. In other cases, they’ve stopped because they feel like they should stop, because they feel like they’re too old for things they now see as childish.

Do they have a point? Possibly. I don’t really care enough to worry about that though.

I’d say as a general recommendation to fans of all ages, just be smart and safe and trust your instincts. Avoid people and situations that make you uncomfortable and report ones you think might be dangerous.

How long have you been writing?

Pretty much since I learned how to write. I’ve always liked making up stories. My dad loves to tell the story of how he realized that I have a vivid imagination. He says I was about three or four years old and had spent the entire day scouring the house for toys. I’m the Surprise Kid in my family (meaning that my siblings are all older and were totally out of the house by the time I was five), so there were a lot of random toys around when I was growing up.

After hearing me drag things down to the basement all day, my dad finally decided he should go see what I was up to. He went down there and (according to him) there were hundreds of dolls, stuffed animals, and action figures all over the place, arranged in what he could instantly tell was some kind of complicated pattern. He asked me what I was doing and I then proceeded to spend the next ninety minutes (again, according to him, so probably an exaggeration) telling him all about the crazy complicated world I’d created where each toy had a name, a family, and multiple friends/rivals.

When my mom got home that night, he told her they had to be careful because they were raising a creative child.

How long have you been writing fan fic?

Since middle school. The first fic I can remember writing was for the show JAG (another side effect of being the Surprise Kid, you spend a lot of time watching tv with your parents). It was terrible and I didn’t post it anywhere. (It was actually purposely terrible because I was annoyed about having to watch that show all the time.)

The first fics that I posted were about Harry Potter. I also posted a couple Buffy stories when I was in high school.

I haven’t posted a lot of stories because I have a really bad habit of abandoning things that I’m working on. So, I only post something if it’s done or I’m reasonably certain that I’m going to see it through until the end.

Where can your old stories be found?

Nowhere.

Nowhere online, that is. They’re possibly still on my old computer that’s now in my parents’ basement.

I took down everything I’d posted when I was a teenager years ago. I reached a point where I hated knowing that the stories were out there and made them disappear.

Though, actually, there may be an X-Files story out there somewhere that I co-wrote with my best friend when we were fourteen.

But probably not because I think she did a similar purge when we finished high school.

Which Hogwarts House are you in?

I’m a Huffleclaw/Ravenpuff. At eleven, I would’ve been sorted into Ravenclaw. Nowadays, I feel like I’m a combination of the two.

Which Harry Potter do you relate to the most?

Luna. Definitely Luna. Though, my best friend says I’m a really weird combination of Luna and Hermione.

How did you realize you’re asexual?

This is another topic that came up in real life recently because my friend’s cousin thinks she might be ace.

It’s also something I’ve talked about a lot because it’s pretty much the only high school story I have that I think could be a subplot in a YA movie/book. The character based on me would be the baby ace who was sort of mentored by the lead lesbian couple for a couple weeks.

I started feeling like I was different from my friends when I was in fourth grade. I didn’t get it at all when they started going on about having crushes and wanting boyfriends. Everyone told me that would change as I got older, but it never did.

By middle school, people started telling me that I must be gay since I didn’t have any interest in boys. Part of me could see their point, but I didn’t have any interest in girls either and, as far as I could tell, that was a pretty significant part of being gay.

In eighth grade, I went to the mall with two of my friends and we ended up sitting in the food court and people-watching. My one friend elbowed me, pointed to a boy our age, and asked if I thought he was cute. My response (which has become friend group legend, so this is exact) was, “Well, he doesn’t have any visible warts, so maybe?”

My other friend (who was proudly bisexual) then pointed to a girl sitting across from us and asked the same question. I stared at her for a minute before saying that I wondered what conditioner she used because her hair was so shiny.

My friends shook their heads at me and asked if that was really all I was thinking. They touched my arms and assured me they’d still love me if I was gay. 

Which was nice to hear and part of me wished that I thought I was gay because then I’d be something. The problem was that I really didn’t get how people developed crushes on other people. I didn’t get the idea of looking at someone and thinking they were attractive. I didn’t get the idea of wanting to be physical with another person. None of those things made sense to me at all.

The following year, I started going to a really conservative Christian high school. I mean, really conservative. Almost every teacher I had there mentioned at least once that we were doing God’s work when we voted for Republicans.

(In case you’re wondering, no, I wasn’t sent there as a form of punishment. The story of how I ended up there is really long/boring. Just know that my family doesn’t believe the majority of the things I was taught there.)

So, a few things about me:

1.      I’m a really socially/generally anxious, awkward, introverted person. I never shut up around my family and friends, but put me in a room of strangers and I freeze. This was especially true when I was a teenager. (I can almost appear to be “normal” now...)

2.      I’ve had the same basic friend group since elementary school, but none of them went to high school with me. So, I spent four years as an outsider. The tv episode I relate to the most is the episode of Gilmore Girls where Rory was called into the guidance counselor’s office because she liked to eat lunch by herself. That was me. Multiple times. Many, many times. They finally gave up when my mom told them that I had friends outside of school and that I come from a large, close-knit family (I have over 30 cousins, for starters) and I liked spending my lunches alone because they gave me a chance to recharge my internal battery.

3.      I’m pretty much the most non-confrontational person you’ll ever meet. I hate arguing with people and I hate being put on the spot, especially when I feel like I don’t have any allies. I’m so non-confrontational that I wouldn’t correct people when they mispronounced my name when I was a teenager. Which happened a lot because I have a pretty unique real name. I’m slightly better about that now. These days, I’ll correct someone once and then let it slide if they keep saying my name wrong. Unless I know they’re going to become a regular part of my life, then I go through the whole ‘let’s say it together’ thing until they get it right.

4.      I’m also the most “quietly stubborn” person you’ll ever meet. Pretty much everyone I know has called me that at least once. If I’m talking to someone about something that matters to me and I’m convinced I’m right, I will not back down no matter what. Which is the exact opposite of how I am 99% of the time. Usually, I’ll at the very least acknowledge that the other person has a point and try to change subjects. 

So, the point of all that is to show how it was a pretty big deal when I started speaking up in school about things I didn’t agree with. I spoke up when a teacher told the class that women were put on the earth to serve men. I spoke up when another teacher told us that Jewish people go to hell. And I spoke up when a teacher told us that it is impossible for gay people to go to heaven, but it is possible for serial killers to get in.

(The logic for that one being that gay people will never repent because they don’t think what they’re doing is wrong, but it’s possible for serial killers to eventually become remorseful and repent their sins.)

My fairly passionate, but extremely awkward, defense of gay people led my classmates to decide that I must be gay. Which soon meant that the entire school thought I must be gay.

This happened a few weeks before the end of my junior year. Up until that point, I’d managed to fly under the radar for the most part. People who were considered “different” really stood out at my school. Everyone knew who the seven Jewish kids were. Everyone knew which kids liked reading/watching fantasy books/movies because the teachers always cautioned them that things like Harry Potter could lead you astray. (I was in that group, but I was quiet about it. The worst thing that happened to me was that my Spanish teacher said she’d pray for me when she saw I was reading one of the Anita Blake books.)

And everyone knew the lesbian couple. Because there was only one. Because there were only two students in the entire school who were publicly out.

Even I knew who they were, which was semi-surprising because they were seniors and I spent most of my time outside class with my head down, my earbuds in, and my nose stuck in a book.

So, anyway, it didn’t take long for everyone to decide that I was our school’s third lesbian. People started coming up to me and saying they’d pray for me. The first time that happened, I blinked and, without thinking about it, told the girl I’d pray for her too. That seemed to annoy her, so that became my go-to response whenever someone approached me.

At the end of the day, a girl who was considered one of the school’s spiritual leaders asked me if I was sure I was gay because I seemed so nice. I started to say that I wasn’t, but stopped myself when the girl’s friend laughed and said that even I knew how shameful it was to be gay, that I’d just argued with the teacher because I wanted attention.

Which caused a dilemma for me. My sixteen-year-old, panicked, stressed out brain could only see two possible options. I could either pretend to be something that I was fairly certain I wasn’t or I could let those girls go around telling everyone that I, the great defender of gays, knew deep down that being gay was wrong.

So, I stammered that I hadn’t understood their question at first and that yeah, I really was gay.

I spent the next few days avoiding people as much as possible. I started waiting inside for my mom to pick me up at the end of the day instead of going outside with everyone else. On my third day of doing that, the lesbian couple approached me and asked if I knew who they were. I said I did and they said they’d heard I was having a rough week. 

They then asked me a series of questions. Some subtle, some direct. At the end of their interrogation, they exchanged a look and one of them said, “Oh, so you’re asexual then.”

Which is how I learned that asexuality is a thing. I went home and read up on it and was surprised to realize that there actually was a name for what I was. It was really exciting.

Sorry to disappoint, but the lesbians didn’t become my new best friends after that. They only had two more weeks of school at that point and we weren’t in any of the same classes. We didn’t even have the same lunch period. They always made it a point to say hi to me in the hall though and I think I’m still Facebook friends with them.

One day, about a week after they approached me, one of them came running up to me between classes to tell me that her girlfriend had done something stupid. 

Her girlfriend had told a guy who was being obnoxious that they had pulled me into their relationship and we were having all kinds of threesomes.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I think I turned a million shades of red and stuttered uncontrollably for a minute or two. I finally told her that I was okay with that. I said they could say whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t actually expect me to do any of the things they claimed I was doing.

That comment made her grin and say, “Spoken like a true asexual.”

Do you think asexual writers should be allowed to write about characters who aren’t asexual?

This is another question that came up recently. My least favorite brother-in-law loves to say he’s playing devil’s advocate before asking people really annoying/terrible questions. He asked me this one at Thanksgiving this year.

My response was simply that it’s stupid to try to tell people they can only write about characters like themselves. That doing that would make the entire fantasy genre go away and, hopefully, there wouldn’t be any novels about murderers.

Writers like to make up stories and develop characters and relationships. They try to put themselves in their character’s heads and express how they’re feeling.

For me, that sometimes means drawing from my own experiences, sometimes it means thinking about things I’ve seen/heard, and sometimes it means using my imagination to come up with a character’s reaction.

Am I successful at portraying romantic relationships? I really have no idea. I walked away when he asked me that because I’m the absolute worst judge of my own stories. I have a like/hate (never love/hate) relationship with everything I write. I’ll just say that I don’t think being on the ace spectrum should stop me from writing the stories I want to write.

How did you get into DEH?

Another side effect of being the Surprise Kid is that it gives your parents a lot of opportunities to teach you about their interests. My dad managed to get me into British tv shows and my mom successfully managed to pass her love of musicals onto me, though, for her, that love does not extend to DEH. She can’t stand the music from that show.

I got into it when I decided to watch clips from the Tonys on YouTube. I was blown away by ‘Waving Through a Window’ because that song seriously would’ve been my personal theme song if it had come out when I was in high school. So, naturally, I had to find out more about the show. 

I haven’t seen it live, but I have read the script and watched a bootleg. That got me into it enough that I started coming up with stories I wanted to write.

Which character do you relate to the most?

Evan, definitely. I was definitely the awkward, anxious kid in high school. I don’t think I would’ve ended up in the mess he did though...

Do you relate to any of your OCs?

Aunt Jamie is sort of like me, but I wouldn’t say she’s an author insert. I’m the youngest aunt in my family. (I don’t think any of my nieces/nephews think I’m particularly cool though.) I don’t like to be touched/hugged and usually pat people on the arm as a way of saying ‘hey I like you, you’re okay.’

The story about her suicide attempt in Sincerely, E is definitely not my story. I’m lucky enough to be able to say that I’ve never actually tried to kill myself.

Her story about being unpopular/having people make fun of her weight was sort of an exaggeration of mine. Again, I was lucky enough not to have it nearly as bad as she did.

What do you like about Evan/Connor?

I like putting them together because they’re both characters who desperately need someone who understands them. They’re alike in a lot of ways, but different in ways that make them fun to write. I like their relationship dynamic and the ways I make them interact.

Why do you keep writing Zoe/Jared?

I’ve come to see Zoe/Jared as my bastard ship. They’re the ship that I never plan to write, but somehow keep writing.

With Evan and Connor, I always think about how they’re going to get together this time, which tropes I plan to include, etc., etc.

With Zoe and Jared, I literally reach a point in the story where I blink at the screen and go ‘okay, so this is happening again...’

That said, I have come to like my bastard ship. They’re also fun to write.

Are they going to get together in BNK?

I don’t have any current plans to put them together. Which means probably.

Do you hate Zoe/Alana?

Not at all. I have no problem with the idea of them. I have no problem with giving Zoe a girlfriend or Jared a boyfriend. I also have no problem with letting characters stay single (which, to me, is a much more realistic portrayal of the high school experience).

Part of the problem with doing my weird blinders on, tunnel vision writing thing is that I haven’t really read other DEH stories. I didn’t realize Zoe/Alana was a thing until I started looking at summaries of other fics after I finished Sincerely, E.

I’ve briefly considered putting them together each time I start a new story, but now there’s the Tracy situation. And I do like Alana/Tracy. And somehow Zoe/Jared sneaks up on me every time.

So, you really don’t read other DEH stories?

I’ve tried to a couple times. I’ve even downloaded some of the completed ones to my Kindle in case I ever feel the need to read them when I’m out somewhere.

It just becomes a case of character overload for me if I try to read other people’s interpretations of the characters while I’m writing mine.

This particular writing quirk of mine actually used to cause problems for me with my RL friends when I wasn’t the only one writing fics. They’d get mad at me when I’d say I couldn’t read their stories because they were writing for the same fandom that I was writing for.

They’d also get mad when I’d say I hadn’t read their comments. The comment thing is another writing quirk of mine. I try to avoid them until I’m totally finished with a story or, at the very least, close enough to being finished that the thought of looking at the comments doesn’t weird me out.

I’m not always totally successful at that because I also have a weird thing about notifications. Meaning that I can’t stand them. So, if I see there’s a comment, I’ll literally hold my hand up to try to block the screen while I mark it as read. Which doesn’t always work as well as I’d like.

I did try once again to read the comments before starting BNK. I think I even said in the author’s note at the beginning of the story that I’d been binge-reading them. Which ended up meaning that I sort of clicked through my inbox and read about five random comments... Someday, I really will look at them all...

All of that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate comments/kudos though. It’s always amazing to see that people are reading and reacting to the things I write. I do check the stats page to see if the numbers are going up. If it ever became clear to me that absolutely no one was reading my stories anymore, then I’d stop posting them because I’d feel really awkward and wonder what’s the point of posting something that no one’s even bothering to open.

Are you going to keep writing DEH stories when you finish BNK?

Maybe? I don’t know at this point. I’m not even sure how much longer BNK will be. Judging from the length of my other stories, I’m probably around the halfway point and that currently sounds about right, given what I have planned.

I’ll keep writing about these characters as long as I have ideas for them and am having fun writing the stories. If I run out of ideas or writing these fics stops being fun and starts being a source of stress in my life, then I’ll stop.

Do you have any writing suggestions? How do you deal with writer’s block?

The best writing advice I can give is just to write. Write and then keep writing and then don’t stop writing.

I’ve often described myself over the years as a writer who doesn’t write. And that’s been the case many times for me.

I’ve been writing a ton this past year because the DEH characters have stuck with me and I keep coming up with weird ideas for them. Before that though, I’d gone at least a year without writing much of anything.

I write because I like writing and because it’s a major stress/anxiety reliever for me. I write because it entertains me and gives me something to focus on when I can’t sleep, which is pretty much every night. I often say that I feel like I get more done between 12 AM and 2 AM than some people do all day.

That said, I definitely struggle with writer’s block sometimes. The only thing that ever helps me with that is to walk away. Literally. I close my laptop and walk away from it. I make myself do something else. And then I keep making myself do other things until I’m either ready for bed or a solution to the problem I was struggling with pops into my head.

Almost every story-related idea that I’ve had has occurred to me while I’m doing something totally unrelated to my writing. While I’m not even thinking about it.

It’s really fun when that happens at work. I’ve had times where I’m on the phone, using my cheery customer service voice and being yelled at, and have suddenly come up with what I want Connor to say in the conversation that I was struggling with the night before. At least, I haven’t blurted out any random bits of dialogue yet...

Last question, since no online survey would be complete without this – dogs or cats? 

Guinea pigs. Though, personality-wise, I really would be such a crazy cat lady if I weren’t horribly allergic to them.

[freedomfaucet-blog]

Not Too Big to Fail: Why Facebook's Long Reign May Be Coming to an End Sears and Blockbuster fell because neither was able to adapt and grow with its consumer base. Is Facebook making the same mistakes?    Over the last several years, Facebook has gone from facilitating the...

http://markethive.tv/blog/archives/496

Not Too Big to Fail: Why Facebook's Long Reign May Be Coming to an End

Not Too Big to Fail: Why Facebook's Long Reign May Be Coming to an End

Sears and Blockbuster fell because neither was able to adapt and grow with its consumer base. Is Facebook making the same mistakes?

   Over the last several years, Facebook has gone from facilitating the free flow of information

to inhibiting it through incremental censorship and account purges. What began with the ban of Alex Jones last summer has since escalated to include the expulsion of hundreds of additional pages, each political in nature. And as more people become wary of the social media platform’s motives, one thing is absolutely certain: we need more market competition in the realm of social media.

Facebook might seem too big to fail, but rest assured it is not. Unless it is protected by a government monopoly, every single product and service is vulnerable to market forces, even those considered too powerful. Just a few weeks ago, the once-mighty Sears announced its plans to file for bankruptcy and close 142 of its department store locations. It also wasn't so long ago when Blockbuster Video, a staple of weekend fun in the 90s, announced its closure, as well. These institutions were at the top of their games at one point but were each unable to satisfy their customers as they once did. And both were inevitably replaced by better services like Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Facebook might seem different from other traditional market entities since it technically doesn’t sell anything to the bulk of its users. But just like Sears and Blockbuster, its success relies on its ability to attract and maintain its customers. And in the wake of the recent purges—and its recent security breaches—it is quite possible that, like Myspace and Friendster, Facebook is not long for this world.

The Situation

When it was announced that Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and eventually Twitter had banned the accounts associated with Alex Jones, it elicited mixed reactions from the public. On one hand, Alex Jones is infamously known for building his career on being an instigator and a “troll,” rendering him an unsympathetic character to most of the American public. On the other hand, the sweeping ban of Jones was concerning as it threatened the future of independent media. After all, if this could happen to Jones, who would be next? To be sure, Facebook is privately owned and is allowed to curate its own content as it sees fit. However, just because someone can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that they should.

To be sure, Facebook is privately owned and is allowed to curate its own content as it sees fit. However, just because someone can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that they should. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that, as users of this platform, we should not voice our concerns. As the summer droned on, independent media held its breath waiting to see how the “Jones” decision would impact their own accounts.  A few weeks ago, the situation escalated when Facebook went one step further and announced it would be deleting nearly 800 pages it said violated its terms of service. Specifically, these pages were accused of “spamming” users, though Facebook’s use of the word was not clearly defined.

However, the fact remains that many of the deleted pages were right-leaning and libertarian, leading many to assume that these purges were politically motivated. And given the prior accusations made against Facebook in regards to suppressing conservative-leaning links and news stories, these assumptions did not seem off-base even if Zuckerberg claimed that content was not a contributing factor.

Carey Wedler, editor-in-chief of Anti-Media, an independent news platform that just had its page deleted by Facebook, told FEE:

According to Facebook, we were not suspended for our content but for “spamming” and using “misleading” practices, but these are tactics we have never employed, and other large pages that employ posting strategies like ours, such as Occupy Democrats (also known to share fake news), were not removed. Curiously, in July, Facebook assigned us a representative to help us manage our page. They also gave us $500 in free advertising to boost our content in September, and these actions seem to imply they had no issues with either our content or our practices.

Even though the purge’s proximity to the approaching midterm elections appears suspect, Facebook maintains that its decision to delete these accounts was purely the result of spam violations and not because of the actual page content. This allowed Zuckerberg to hold firm to his claims that Facebook was not practicing censorship but was instead just enforcing policies that already existed in the user terms of service. However, last week the popular libertarian Facebook account “Liberty Memes” had its page deleted, adding more fuel to the fire. Unlike the previous purge, Liberty Memes was not deleted under the guise of spamming its users like the others. Instead, Facebook openly admitted that the page was being deleted directly because of its content.

In the digital age, it is highly probable that at some point you will come into contact with content you find offensive or untrue. While offensive content can simply be ignored and dismissed, ideally, each individual should be responsible for determining whether or not the information they are exposed to is credible. But with the “fake news” hysteria we are currently experiencing, Facebook has taken it upon itself to protect its users from potentially misleading or even offensive content. And even if these decisions were made in an attempt to appease the many users who would like to see all opposing thought suppressed, this may inevitably come back to haunt the company.

Facebook has not had a great couple of years. In addition to being blamed for both the suppression of conservative links and Trump being elected to office, the popular social media site was also found to have compromised its users’ data on more than one occasion. And while the decision was voluntary, Zuckerberg also found himself testifying in front of Congress just a few months ago. And on the business side of things, market shares have slumped 7.5 percent over the year. In fact, over the past year, Facebook use has also been dwindling, and over 44 percent of young users have admitted to deleting the app off of their phones entirely. In droves, young people are flocking to sites like Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, instead. And without this younger crowd, Facebook could soon find itself desperate for users.

As written in INC:

Recent findings make it clear that a large number of users have changed their relationship with Facebook over the past year following the company's privacy and security scandals. With ripple effects still being felt over six months after Cambridge Analytica, it's unlikely migration from the app will slow down any time soon.

So, what does this mean for those of us who are dissatisfied with the behavior of Zuckerberg and Facebook? It means the situation is ripe for new platforms to rise up and take its place. And we should be diligently searching for its replacement or replacements.

Voice and Exit

Voting with our dollars is one of the most powerful actions we can take as consumers. While we might not be paying for Facebook memberships, each time we log-on to the site and actively engage with other users, we are voting in favor of the social media company. And for many of us, we feel as though we have no other choice. As a writer, I will be the first to admit that I personally rely on Facebook as a means of sharing my work with others. In fact, the thought of deleting my account fills me with unease and isolation. After all, if I am not on Facebook, how can I stay connected to all my contacts around the globe? And since many of us are so hesitant to leave, Facebook has maintained its power in the social media space. But this can easily change.

In order for the market to work, consumers must diligently vote with their feet and their money in order to prop up the brands and products they prefer. There is a grave misconception that the market process is passive when quite the opposite is true. In order for the market to work, consumers must diligently vote with their feet and their money in order to prop up the brands and products they prefer. If a company does something a consumer is opposed to, the consumer can decide to take their business elsewhere or, in extreme conditions, turn to protests and boycotts as we have seen recently with brands like Nike. Consumers have substantial potential to cause financial harm to these companies, they just have to choose to use this power.

We are living in an era of disruption. Just a few years ago, the potential for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to compete with global currencies seemed unfathomable. And while we are still years away from a full-fledged monetary revolution, crypto has proved itself to be a force to be reckoned with in the finance world. If anyone has any doubt of this, just look at how many governments and Keynesian economists fear its widespread adoption.

In the earlier days of Bitcoin, users were small in number as the network was still in its infancy and needed to grow. But over the last couple of years, more and more users have been flocking to cryptocurrencies after becoming disenchanted with centralized financial institutions. The very same thing could happen to Facebook. And speaking of the world of cryptocurrencies, many of the platform alternatives to Facebook that are popping up are utilizing blockchain technology.

Minds, Telegram, Steemit, Mastadon, and other burgeoning social media companies are looking to blockchain to not only keep private user data safe but also to keep the networks decentralized and safeguarded against the same type of censorship we have seen coming from the authority figures in charge of Facebook. But in order for any of these platforms to take off, they will need early adopters and users willing to build a modern social network that has learned from the errors of its predecessors. Sears and Blockbuster fell because neither was able to adapt and grow with its consumer base. Facebook has routinely gone against the wishes and needs of its users and is just now starting to face the consequences.

As Wedler says:

Just as people across the political spectrum are fed up with the current system, so, too, are social media users frustrated with the major platforms currently dominating the market. In both cases, it seems not only obvious but also vital that instead of simply tolerating the current paradigms, individuals must take tangible action to make their preferences known. With respect to social media, if enough people walk their increasingly dissatisfied talk, there is huge potential to spark an exodus towards platforms that better meet their demands and expectations.

Article Produced By

Brittany Hunter

Brittany is a writer and editor for the Foundation for Economic Education. Additionally, she is a co-host of Beltway Banthas, a podcast that combines Star Wars and politics. Brittany believes that the most effective way to promote individual liberty and free-market economics is by telling timely stories that highlight timeless principles.

Susan Bennett

[kyegiovannoni-blog]

Apple IOS Intelligent tracking Think piece

With apple's ios 10 update in 2017  There was a lot of controversy surrounding their new “intelligent tracking prevention” software intended for use on safari. it works by blocking advertisers from accessing and following your movements around the web using 1st party cookies. A small amount of text stored in the user's computer that is created by the websites the user visits.  However it seems that apples intentions are to reduce misuse and prevent companies from abusing this feature. While first party cookies are necessary for functionality of web browsing such as saving passwords or keeping items in your basket, Apple claim that there software is able to distinguish between helpful cookies and unnecessary cookies hence the “intelligent” traction prevention.

It seem that certain online advertising agency are concerned with the new software and the restriction it will place on them, with some agencies sending an open letter expressing their concerns.  these agencies feel this software  will disrupt the media market within the internet, And greatly harm their companies. However upon looking further into the specifics of apples new intelligent tracking software. Apple seem less concerned with blocking ads and more concerned with protecting people's privacy “automatically purging a site’s cookies entirely after 30 days if the person does not visit the site”.

Apple  do not seem to feel the same way and have made no plan to change their policy or new software. Due to the nature of the internet and its relatively new existence it is somewhat of a wild west when it comes to acceptable standards surrounding people privacy. As  for what forms of data collection are acceptable. Apple being such a big and affluent company have a  responsibility to it customers and users to try and ensure and set up sufficient protection for their valuable personal data.  In light of recent media scandals involving apple, their new update seems to restore some of my faith in the company.

As a consumer who uses the internet i am inatly wary of popup ads or advertisements that have been tailored or bluntly follow me as i browse. I think this can be attributed from the early days of the internet where the unsuspecting become targets of scams and identity theft we have been taught to be prevalent and suspicious of what we see on the internet especially when it forces its way on to your screen. As a consumer i personally feel the way tracking ads are done are for the most part poor. And perhaps with the new standard set by apple it will allow more more modest and trust worth online advertising and hopeful restore some trust between online advertisements and the consumers.

I think that overall apple have taken a step in the right direction showing their care for customers privacy and perhaps setting a up some standards for online advertising company to follow.