#big file transfer sites

[dancingtotuyo]

Part II

High Infidelity | Joel Miller X Female Reader

Rating: Mature/Explicit

Summary: The weight of your husband being in jail starts to take its toll.

Tags: Tommy x Reader, Joel x Reader, Tommy's Wife Reader, infidelity, emotional affair, slow burn (as much as you can get for 5 chapters), Tommy goes to jail, Reader has had a child

Warnings: prison, visitation, family stress, lots of tears

Notes: Shout out to @janaispunk and @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin for beta reading this and helping out with the details! Also shoutout to @saradika-graphics for the dividers!

Words: 3310

Series Masterlist | Author Masterlist | Daily Clicks for Palestine & Other resources

You inhale deeply as you sit at the metal picnic table. Nathaniel bounces contently on your lap, taking in his surroundings. Families gather at each table, a low rumble filling the room. You glance down at your watch. The inmates are due any second, and Joel is supposed to be here too. Your eyes dart around the room at the families in the same boat as you. They all look a little different, consisting of different family components, but the same thing brought you all here. 

Joel rushes in, the summer heat and job site filth evident on his skin and clothes. You wave him over to your corner table, feeling more relaxed to have him here. You’ve been able to talk to Tommy for an hour every week, but this is the first time you’ve gotten to see him since his sentencing.

“Hey,” Joel says, breathless as he slides in next to you. Nathaniel lets out an exuberant greeting, hands banging against the table. Joel chuckles. “Hello to you too, bud.” 

“I thought you might not make it.”

“Cement guys were late.” Joel sighs, trying to brush the dirt from his shirt.

“Typical.” You mummer, earning a small chuckle from Joel. 

“You good?” Joel places a hand on your shoulder. 

“Yeah, I’m excited to see him.” You smile, kissing Nathaniel’s head. 

A couple guards file in to stand watch. Then, a loud buzzing rings, and the other door opens. It feels cliche, like one of those law procedural shows on TV. The room goes silent as men in orange jumpsuits file in, hands cuffed in front of them. Their eyes scan the crowd for their loved ones. Slowly, the volume rises as families reunite. Tommy is one of the last ones through the door, but the moment your eyes land on him, you feel tension ease from your body. 

You stand, waving to him. His eyes finally land on you, lifting with a happiness you haven’t seen in a while. He has a cut over his eyebrow. It looks a couple days old by now, a faint bruise still visible around it. 

You’re allowed a brief hug. Nothing long enough to transfer forbidden items is the idea, not that you could’ve gotten anything in here with the security patting you down how they did. 

He melts into your soft touch just a little like he did when he’d come back from his second tour. “Hey, Baby.” He smiles into your cheek, his lips skim your cheek as you pull away to avoid being yelled out. 

Joel hugs him next with a big pat on the back. You can hardly keep your eyes off him, your hand drifting absentmindedly to Nathaniel’s shoulders. Your two-year-old stares at his father with a sense of familiarity. He looks up at you and then back to Tommy. “Daddy!”

Tommy’s head snaps over, smile instantly falling from his face. “What’s he doing here?”

“Tommy…”

“I told you not to bring him.” He snaps.

“He’s your son.”

“This ain’t no place for a child!” Tommy says. “You don’t see Joel bringing Sarah for a visit, now do you?”

“Sarah,” you say, pulling at all your self-restraint. “Had soccer camp today but she said to tell you hi. She was sad she couldn’t come.”

“I want you to get him out of here. Now.” Tommy insists, not backing down. 

“Tommy-“ Joel tries to quell his brother’s rising temper.

“Is this really how you want to spend visitation? Fussing at me for bringing our son to see his father?”

“Get. Him. Out!” Tommy says, smoke blowing from his ears. One of the prison guards starts toward your group. 

Tommy holds up his cuffed hands in silent surrender. The guard backs up with a warning glare. 

“I don’t want him here,” Tommy says. “I made that clear.”

Confusion skirts your brow. Your Tommy, the one you know and love seems to be at war with the person he’s become during his short time behind bars. 

“I’ll take him out,” Joel says, reaching out for Nathaniel. He accepts, sitting comfortably on his uncle’s hip. Joel pauses, giving Tommy a chance to change his mind, but he looks away. 

You bite your lip. Joel sighs. “I parked next to you.”

You nod as he walks out with your son. Tommy sits down at the table. You sit across from him, mouth drawn in a tight line. 

“What the fuck is going on with you?”

“He shouldn’t see me like this. You shouldn’t see me like this.”

“You fucked up, Tommy, but we’re still here. You really want to go two years without seeing your kid?”

“It’s not like he’ll remember,” Tommy says. You sigh in exasperation. A faint smile finds its way onto his lips. “It’s almost like old times. You upset with me.”

You choke out a humorless laugh. “This is nothing like old times.”

“No… I guess it’s not.” He sobers up. 

You sigh, rubbing your temple. “Do you really not want him to come see you?”

Tommy nods, stuck in his resolve. “Don’t really want you here either.” A sly smile crosses Tommy’s face as he runs a finger over your knuckle without being caught. “Don’t like these other guys checking out my woman.”

You roll your eyes, helplessly falling for his flirting. “How progressive of you.”

You step into the Texas sun twenty minutes later, slipping your sunglasses over your eyes. You walk across the parking lot, following Nathaniel’s empty chatter to Joel’s pickup. Nathaniel busies himself in the back while Joel rests his forearms on the edge. You come up beside him, copying his stance. Nathaniel doesn’t notice you, too engrossed by the plethora of less-than-safe tools and scraps in the back of Uncle Joel’s truck. Your elbow touches Joel’s, the metal hot under your arms.

“Thanks for taking him.”

Joel nods. “Tommy really doesn’t want him to visit?”

“Nope.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“He’s your brother.”

“You married him.” 

You let out a little huff of laughter, a half smile gracing your face, spreading to Joel’s. His deep laughter fills your body. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Any regrets?” Joel kids, turning his head to you. 

You laugh. “Never. I don’t live with regrets, Miller.” You nudge him with your shoulder, tapping the side of the truck. “Nate, it’s time to go. We have Sarah’s exhibition game.”

Your toddler turns around, hammer clutched in his hands. “Play!”

“Come on, kiddo. You can play with my tools another day. I got a whole garage full of ‘em,” Joel chuckles.  

Nathaniel seems to contemplate the words for a minute before letting the hammer clatter to the bed of the truck. You cringe at the sound before your son reaches for you. Joel chuckles, making sure his items are secure as you pull Nathaniel into your arms. 

“You don’t have to go, you know. Today has been a lot.”

“Of course, I’m gonna go, Joel. It’s Sarah.”

He smiles, knowing your role in her life goes above and beyond the duties of an aunt, but not knowing how to communicate his gratitude for it. “Save me a spot? I have to run back by the job site. I should make it for the second half.” 

You can see him cringe as he says the words. You know he feels guilty about it. Sarah’s been talking about this since the start of soccer camp. “Of course.”

Sarah clocks Joel the moment he walks into the building, her attention is no longer on the coach who’s giving a mid-game pep talk, but on her father across the field. Joel shoots her two thumbs up and a massive grin before directing her attention back to her coach. 

Joel slides onto the cool metal bleacher beside you, letting out a sigh of relief. “Thank god this thing is indoors this year.”

You nod remembering the blaring sun and burning metal bleachers from last year’s camp exhibition game. Your eyes narrow over Joel’s appearance. He seems even dirtier than he did an hour ago. “You take a dirt bath at the job site or something?” You reach over, patting some of the dirt from his shoulder. 

“Something like that.” Joel chuckles. 

Your thumb swipes away a smudge along his jaw. His jaw twitches under your touch. He playfully swats away your hand, capturing it with his own. “That tickles.”

“You’re filthy.” 

“I didn’t really have time to shower on my way here.” He bumps against you lightly. 

“Hence the dirt bath?” You grin, returning the bump, but this time your shoulder and thighs remain pressed against the other’s. His hand falls to your bare knee, hanging off of it. As the second half starts, Nathaniel climbs into your lap, eyes fluttering toward sleep.

For all the cheering you can’t do, Joel makes up for it, spending much of the game on his feet. It might only be an exhibition game and there might not be an official score, but it’s glaringly obvious that Sarah’s team is dominating with Sarah scoring two goals of her own. Joel is beaming. 

“She looks amazing out there.” He says.

“She really does.”

“And she’s having a blast. Look at that smile.” Joel’s smile is just as big as his daughter’s, big enough to push away your own struggles of the day. 

Sarah makes a break for the three of you as soon as she's dismissed. She drips with sweat, but her smile never fades as she goes on about every thought that went through her mind throughout the game and Joel hangs on every word. 

Once Nathaniel rouses from his sleepy daze, he ropes Sarah into kicking the soccer ball around. Joel joins them on the field while you watch, your body coming down from the emotions of the day. 

“Mrs. Miller?”

Your head snaps around. A woman about your age dressed in athletic wear smiles at you. You’re pretty sure she was one of the coaches. 

“Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Coach Miranda. I lead Sarah’s unit this week.” She stretches out her hand. 

You shake it, supplying your first name in return. “Nice to meet you. I know Sarah had a blast this week.” 

“I enjoyed having her,” Coach Miranda says. “She’s a talented soccer player.”

You smile, pride swelling in your chest. She’s not your kid, but that parental feeling toward her is very much there. “She learned so much. Her dad and I were talking during the game about how much she’s improved this week.”

“I’m happy to hear that.” The coach rocks on her feet, briefly considering her words. “Look, I coach one of the travel teams in the area.” She hands you a brochure. “I know she’s still a couple years away from being old enough, but we put on a few camps and clinics throughout the year for kids her age.”

You flip through the brochure of information. “These look very… fancy.”

“We offer scholarships if money is your worry.”

“No- I mean, it’s pricey but… She’s six.” You finally manage something coherent. “She just turned six. It seems early to start anything this serious.”

“Your daughter is very talented, Mrs. Miller.”

“Oh- I-” You stumble over your words.

“Is everything okay?” Joel asks, joining you with Nathaniel on his hip.

“I was just telling your wife how talented Sarah is.”

“We’re not married.” You blurt out unceremoniously, face feeling flush. There were smoother ways to navigate this and you are missing each one. 

The coach’s face flashes with confusion and embarrassment. “Oh- I’m sorry. I just assumed when I said Mrs. Miller…”

“I am,” You feel more flustered than is needed. Nathaniel reaches for you and you take him from Joel. “I’m not his Mrs. Miller. I mean-”

“She’s my sister-in-law.” Joel finishes for you and you sigh in relief. “Helps me out a lot.”

Coach Miranda nods, a slight red tinge to her cheeks from the embarrassment. “Got it,” she says, holding awkwardness in her frame.

“It’s okay,” you assure her. “I’ll let him know.” 

She nods, excusing herself quickly. 

“That was odd,” Joel says.

“Being mistaken for your wife? Or her behavior?”

“Her. The wife thing I understand.” Joel shrugs. “Guess she was embarrassed.”

 “The wife thing you understand, huh?” You cross your arms, smiling pushing on your lips. “I’m sure your brother would love to hear that.”

Joel shakes his head. “Don’t think he’s interested in anything I have to say after today.”

You roll your eyes, not wanting to relive the day's earlier events. “Here.” You hand him the brochure. “Apparently the coach thinks Sarah should sign up for more camps.”

“These are pricey for a six-year-old.”

“That’s what I said. She just kept saying how good Sarah is.”

“Course she did. She was the best one out there.” Joel smiles proudly. He tucks the brochure into his back pocket without another thought. “The princess wants pizza tonight. Your little troublemaker agreed.”

“Wow, you gonna start blaming everything on my kid now, Miller?” You laugh.

“If the shoes fits.”

“Ironic considering you called Sarah the princess.” 

Joel rolls his eyes, waving the kids over. “I’ll pick it up on our way home. Your place or mine?”

“Yours works. I’m sure Sarah needs a shower.” 

“Works for me,” Joel grins. 

Nathaniel jumps into your arms. Joel takes your purse and Sarah’s duffle and the four of you walk out hand in hand, looking very much like the family Sarah’s coach assumed you were. 

Two Years Later

You’re two years into it, obeying the strict dress code, getting pat down by security guards, and brief touches and chaste kisses with your husband. You typically go alone, leaving Nathaniel with Joel or a sitter. Joel comes sometimes. Usually, he visits Tommy on his own time. 

The visits have gotten shorter, more curt. Tommy has been more irritable. You chalk it up to being stuck in prison, but this most recent visit leaves your emotions fried. Tommy barely looked at you, hardly strung together more than a sentence or single-word response. He didn’t flirt with you, his signature grin nowhere to be seen.

You press your back to the back door as it shuts behind you. Squeezing your eyes tight, you do your best to will away the tears you shed on the drive home. 

“That you, Darlin?” Joel calls, rattling around in your kitchen. “I was just about to put the steaks on the grill.” 

You hear Nathaniel playing in the living room. You catch a sliver of Sarah’s ponytail, back hunched over the table presumably doing homework. You take a steadying breath, but your diaphragm shakes. 

When you don’t respond, Joel peaks around the corner. His brow furrows as he takes in your defeated frame. 

“Sarah,” he calls out. Your eyes open at his strong voice, locking eyes with him. “Keep an eye on Nathaniel for me. I need to go out to the garage for a couple minutes.”

“Okay.” She says, none the wiser to your appearance.

Joel takes your hand, tugging you forward just enough to get the door open before he propels you back into the garage. Your body feels like a limp noodle, helpless to do anything but let him lead you. 

The door clicks shut. He cups your cheeks. His soft brown eyes laced with concern meet yours. 

Your body eases into him, desperate and touch starved as you grab ahold of his soft shirt. Shaking your head, your whole body begins to tremble. Tears fall down your cheeks. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” It’s a stupid thing to say and he knows it. 

“No it’s not!” You shout. “My life’s a mess! It’s all a mess.” You devolve into a puddle of indistinguishable words and sounds. 

Joel pulls you into his chest, supporting your weight as your knees threaten to crumble beneath you. “Shhh, I’ve got you.”

If he’s being honest, Joel isn’t surprised by the breakdown. He constantly watches as you try to hold it all together. He’s visited Tommy too. He’s seen the impact of prison and self-loathing on his younger brother. 

His hand slides behind your neck, cool against your overheating flesh. His fingers play at the nape of your neck, soothing you as you soak his shirt. It’s an event the two of you have become overly familiar with. Joel’s arms represent stability in your unstable world.

Slowly, the tears dry and your chest stops shaking. Joel presses a long, firm kiss on your forehead. With one final deep breath, your heart rate returns to normal and you’re able to slowly pull yourself away from your brother-in-law. 

He gives you a smile, brushing away your tears. Wiping your nose on the back of your sleeve, you manage a weak laugh. “I’ve been kind of a mess lately.”

“You?” Joel quirks a smile. “I haven’t noticed.”

A laugh clears your throat. “Thank you for everything.”

Joel shrugs. “It’s what you do for family, and ours is going through a lot right now.”

You nod, smiling through bloodshot eyes. “I really do appreciate you, Joel. I don’t think I could do this without you.”

Joel reaches out, fixing the sleeve on your shoulder. His fingers drift over your soft collar bone not enough for you to notice, but long enough for him to memorize the feel of it. 

“Don’t think I could either, Darlin.” Joel forces a smile, masking his true feelings. 

He doesn’t say how mad it makes him that Tommy has put you through this, or that you deserve better, or even hint that he would support you leaving his little brother even though he knows Tommy would be heartbroken. He can’t say any of it because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Joel isn’t sure what those feelings are yet, but he knows it’s so much more than one should feel for their sister-in-law. 

“That’s not true.” You shake your head. “You did this long before I came along.”

“Maybe, but I think we make a pretty good team.” His chest tightens. That word doesn’t seem to encapsulate what you are to him. The words that do are inappropriate to use. You’re just two people brought together by their love of another person. Joel has repeated that sentence to himself more times than he cares to admit. 

“Yeah. I suppose we do.” A smile finds its way to your face and you clear the last tears from your face. “How do I look?”

“Like you’ve been crying for an hour.” Joel chuckles, letting his finger run the length of your jaw. He’s pushing a line. He knows, but he can’t help it. These stolen moments are all he gets. “But amazing as always.”

“I swear you and your brother couldn’t tell a woman she looked bad if there was a gun to your head.”

Joel shrugs, putting his hands in his pocket to avoid doing something he may regret. “We were raised right.”

“Mhmm, that’s why my husband is in jail right now.”

Later that evening, you’re cleaning up from dinner, a drink within reach when Joel speaks up. “I think we should go on vacation.”

“We?”

“The four of us.”

You turn the idea around in your head. It would be nice. You can’t remember the last time you had a real vacation, probably before Nathaniel was born. “What were you thinking?”

Joel shrugs. “Just the beach. There’s this place we used to go when we were kids. I’ve been wanting to take Sarah.”

“You sure you’d want us to tag along?”

“Did we not just talk about this?” He steals a dish from your hand, placing it in the dishwasher. “We’re a team, and we could all use the break.” 

“Yeah, It’s been a year… or two.”

“Try five.” Joel offers a weak smile. You return it. “I’ll call tomorrow. See what’s available.” 

“Thank you.”

taglist: @pamasaur @alltheotps @rizzraa @moel-jiller @misstokyo7love @justagalwhowrites @pedritosgfreal @mellymbee @sarahhxx03 @lizzie-cakes @sixhours @duckybird101 @anoverwhelmingdin @nervoushottee

[meruz]

i hope this hasn't been asked before. what size do you make your canvas? and do you crop it to fit other socials (like Instagram for example)? i hear that 300 dpi is standard. i never know if it's good to make my canvas big or not.

hi i think this ask is like at least 4 months old but i was scanning my sketchbooks from last year and i abruptly remembered i had gotten this ask because i had made a little chart in my sketchbook trying to figure out how to answer it

anyways theres pros and cons. and the size of your canvas is really going to depend on personal needs + preference. how good ur computer is, how complicated ur art style, how comfortable drawing feels, how much disk space you have to spare, what youre gonna end up using the art for in the end...300dpi is standard for PRINTING specifically, if you only plan to ever post things online then 72dpi works great and will save you space (fun fact a lot of professional animation files i deal with are 72dpi. and those eventually go on your tv screen). but personally i make everything i draw 300dpi because i am always printing stuff for cons, zines, etc and its nice to have the option even if i dont end up printing.

when I was a teen I used to draw on a rly shitty laptop and i made everything 800x800px 300dpi because big canvases would cause a lot of lag and also the resolution on this laptop was pretty small so 800px was a lot of the screen already. now i have a slightly better laptop with a bigger resolution and i sketch on giant 10000px-40000px canvases with the hard round brush and no shape dynamics or transfer whatsoever to minimize lag. when it comes to making a final illustration when i know ill be using a bunch of layer effects/blending modes/colors/mixing brushes etc etc ill generally crop the canvas down to the 6000px range. most illustrations i try to make sure are comfortably printable on tabloid size paper so thats pretty much anything hovering around or above 3000x5000px w 300dpi (so 11x17in). HOPE THIS HELPS?

EDIT: OH ALSO re: socials. i always ALWAYS size down my art to post on the internet. i think its crazy when other artists dont. because why would i ever let the internet have my hi-res file for free. also in general i think it looks better if you do the resizing yourself because if you don't then many social media sites will compress your file for you! a lot of people will post a hi-res file to twitter and then go "Wow twitter killed the quality of this img!!!" UH YEAH because they have an automatic image compressor. because they need to save space too lol and they dont want your image to take 248263895 years to load. same with instagram and to a lesser extent tumblr. when i post anything on social media i resize it down to 1200px-1600px on the longest side... its a little arbitrary but im kind of basing it on the smallest resolution of widely available screens. mostly because i think it looks stupid when u open up an image file fullsize and u have to scroll to see the whole thing... also iirc instagram only takes images up to 1080px before it resizes them? granted if you upload something smaller than that itll also resize it up which will look worse so I think bumping the numbers just over 1080px is pretty safe.

I should really be bringing the dpi down to 72 too when i post online but often im too lazy to do that. but it will technically help ur image load faster and stuff. and make it less likely for people to yoink it off the web and print it themselves.

[beautifulhigh]

[load day: character, Jen]

wake up tired having had weird and unsettling dreams

still have a weird ache in your hip that is more uncomfortable than painful

fall back asleep

wake up 30 minutes before you have to log into work

force yourself up and go through your morning routine

log in on time

start working through your colleague's files as she will be back on Monday and so everything needs to be ready for her to pick up

start working through another colleague's files (we shall call her A) because she is now off for two weeks

realise A's files are a mess

have long conversation with team leader about this because A has had a lot of support and these issues are not new

discuss plan for dealing with A's caseload which will involve the TL checking everything and kicking cases to you to be picked up/worked

see your caseload explode by six transfers before lunch

realise it's going to be a long day so decide that you will order in

place order for a hot sandwich and chicken dippers, plus a sweet treat from Greggs

Have a colleague call you to ask about another colleague (B) as they are worried about them

identify multiple issues that need addressing with B, but express concern about raising them (last time you tried to help B they lied about you to the point where you could have gotten in serious trouble)

make the call your colleague (C) booked in for 'someone' to take. After you had to rebook it to suit your diary because C just booked the slot and asked someone to take it, instead of asking who could do it and when would be best for them

Realise B's notes are not what they should be and spend time adding in what is missing

lunch arrives, open the (single) bag to realise there's no hot food in here and the delivery person has left and there is clearly "1/2" written on the bag

realise this means you have no lunch

try to report this to Just Eat (at time of the list, you have no response)

"log off" for lunch but work through because you have way too much to do

sit through team meeting in which a colleague (D) talks about an issue they have experienced. Point out this is not a new thing because of These Reasons. Be told by D that's not true. Reply saying the only reason Issue can happen is if Other People do things for These Reasons. D accepts this but continues to tell you that you're wrong

after the meeting ends, talk to someone working alongside your department who is going to go out of their way to help you out. Realise that this is probably the first good thing to happen in your day

Work on your own case! Huzzah! Ask a whole bunch of complicated questions that they don't know the answer to and pretend it's not a big deal when they don't know what would be the equivalent of someone not knowing their Tumblr blog username

Go back to A's cases and manage to pick your way through one of them enough to be able to do the case write up. This is made all the more challenging as the evidence file is not what it should be

log off work at 1645 because you cannot still be logged in at 1700 due to working hour guidelines on start and end times for the day. Realise you have added over two hours to your already significant flexi credit

Know your To Do list for Monday is already too long for a single day, and you still have to sort out the details for the site visit on Wednesday

you still haven't had anything decent to eat

and you need to get your steps in for the day

make a plea on Tumblr for cat pictures because you miss your girl a lot today. Have many pictures added in a reblog chain and sent privately to you

marvel a little that you made it to the end of the day without crying but hey, there's a couple of hours left

[not-poignant]

Ooh, cool! Thank you so much for the long reply! A lot of this was genuinely completely new to me -- I'd never known there were ongoing discussions that early, but of course it makes complete sense there were, both on LJ and predating it. I think it also goes to show how well we could self-segregate on LJ, I think moreso than we can now.

I think, in retrospect, that a lot of my experiences with 2000s fandom can be summed up with, 'I was a teenager' and thus wanted to be 'cool'. There was a lot of 'not like other girls'-ism going on in those sporking and Mary Sue comms, and I always just assumed we were all teenagers -- it certainly felt that way. The few people I've kept in touch with from those days have largely grown out of it, though it doesn't surprise to hear there were (and probably still are) grown adults who shit on others' fanfics.

(As an addendum, I could add that slashfic and that sort of 'canon non-compliance' was completely okay in the fandom spaces I ran in back then, but people would get very upset about extremely arbitrary things-- 'transfer students' in HP, changing characters' ages, making up a minor oc side character for plot purposes because all ocs were apparently bad (and especially if female), etc. It was strange which hairs people decided to split.)

Anyway! Thank you VERY much for such a long and in-depth reply! It's cool to see how these things have changed and developed, and I'm glad to see my experience wasn't emblematic of fandom as a whole.

Thanks for such a thought-provoking question! It really got me thinking about how Livejournal was really excellent at creating different sort of pockets of experiences, and in a while is really reflective as proto-social media of like, the big echo chambers we have happening now all across social media! That's really interesting to think about.

For me, it's funny, most of the fandom folks I knew were all older than me, many were in their 40s and 50s while I was in my 20s. Very few teens comparatively were attracted to certain fandoms like The X-Files and NCIS some of the other spaces I was in, so while there were definitely teens, it was like... a different feeling. Like, even these days I find it fascinating how there are 'younger' fandoms (in terms of how many younger folk are in it) and 'older' fandoms.

And yeah you're so right about people getting upset about arbitrary things! And also that um, 'not like other girls' which now itself is kind of mocked by fandom, so things really did come full circle on that front where now it's not cool to be one of the people who says that x.x

Honestly it's hard to be a teenager on the internet! All the things that play out like... all the dynamics, a lot just play out online instead, and they still exist. A person still wants to be cool and accepted and liked (and that's not age specific, like, most of us want a degree of at least some of these lol), and cliques can form very quickly. I remember how bad it felt back then even in my 20s when I got unfriended by a mutual who I thought was a really good friend, that stuff was devastating!

"making up a minor oc side character for plot purposes because all ocs were apparently bad"

Ahaha this is one of the reasons I still sometimes have like apologetic tones in some of my comments about the amount of OCs I add, because yeah that was really disapproved of! I remember that and I still have like... shades of that at times. I'm mostly over it now, but oof I remember the first time I did it and I was like 'is this okay *chews on fingernails* I bet people will hate this because of it.' (And then that turned into Fae Tales so).

The Mary Sue stuff was really aggressively unpacked, like in very popular kind of fandom-friendly journalism spaces at the time, I mean that's how we ended up with the journalism site 'The Mary Sue' in the first place. People really took a stand on that one. In a way, we were all kind of looking at our own attitudes, like, *why* is it bad to do this, or *what* does it mean that a girl feels like they can't be like other girls - is that internalised misogyny (and sometimes it was), and I miss that kind of meta discussion because I do feel it happens a little less now.

There was a time when I didn't like Mary Sues, no one did, though I think that was before I found my first meta community where it was like 'oh people are talking about EVERYTHING I thought was like universally accepted in fandom.' Though we never got that far on how racist fandom could be, which is still an issue, but one that does get talked about (it would just be nice if AO3 talked about it too).

I sadly think a lot of people in their 40s and 50s can act a lot like teenagers in fandom spaces sometimes, some of the antis in like teenage spaces today are like 40s kind of 'guiding them along' this path of moral puritanical righteousness and almost role-modelling how to bully others. And some of the folks running public Sporking blogs were like... older folks who fostered connections to younger folk.

LJ was wild tbh :D

Anyway, it's so interesting to think of all the different pockets we ended up in. I'm sure there's like countless more that we both have no experience of, where someone else would be like 'oh I was in LJ fandom what's a Mary Sue?' and that would be entirely legitimate too. Sometimes it's easy (I fall into this trap) to think of historical fandom as being one thing instead of like a thousand things. So yeah, this was cool! Thank you :D

[sparky-is-spiders]

If I may be weird and petty for a moment, I don't get AUs where Martin is the Archivist when Melanie and Sasha are right there?? I mean I get why: roleswaps are popular AUs and martin is a popular character. And maybe its just my specific headcanons re: archivist requirements but I feel like the other two would be so much better?

Yes, Martin reads statements and yes, he gets marked, but I really don't think those are the Only Requirements to do the big ritual? Cause at that point Elias could've chosen any web-marked dude off the street, especially if they have the mark of another entity as well already.

Melanie and Sasha shared several important traits with Jon, most notably a burning curiosity, a willingness to put themselves in trouble for information, and (in Melanie's case (and Sasha's too, arguably) an ability to antagonize extremely dangerous fear avatars. Sasha's whole statement is her putting herself in a dangerous situation without telling anyone or acquiring any help (remind you of any main characters?) and running face first into supernatural dangers (sometimes to protect her friends, sometimes out of curiosity). Useful for collecting marks, but also useful for collecting information and developing her own powers as the Archivist. Considering her seemingly unrepentant willingness to look through her friends' and coworkers' personal files via accessing their accounts, I'd argue that her curiosity and boundary crossing could easily get stronger when investigating supernatural entities. Obviously, this never happened because of how early on she died, but I think you could make a strong case for Sasha's strong curiosity making some avatars incredibly mad. Not to mention how incredibly Beholding it is of her. None of this is criticism btw, I think Sasha should have access to whatever personal info she wants and I love it when characters are so obviously Eye-aligned. I know "Sasha wasn't promoted because she'd solve all the problems and find a way to kill Jonah" is also a popular headcanon but please think for a MOMENT about her appearances in podcast. There weren't many, but there's a very obvious through-line in almost all of them. She's curious, she takes risks in the face of the supernatural, she wants to Know. It's literally what caused the circumstances of her statement. Those traits are arguably the ones that got her KILLED. I'm sorry this went off on a tangent. I just love Sasha very much and I'm constantly filled with Thoughts of Sasha.

Melanie also has curiosity about the supernatural AND a much more obviously antagonistic personality!! Her first appearance is being a total asshole to Jon, mocking him, the place he works at, the equipment they use, and what they do. But she also dedicated basically her entire career into uncovering the supernatural? She ran a Youtube channel about it, and when she discovered that everyone was sticking to the same "safe" sites, she started looking off the beaten path for the real stuff. And she found it! She went looking for ghosts of war and violence and even without access to statements, probably working alone and sifting through bunk on the internet, she found them! She got stabbed by a ghost and instead of trying to avoid ghosts in the future, she decided to look for more violent ghosts. The slaughter tendencies might be a drawback for her becoming the Archivist, yes, but by that point Jon had already survived multiple marks and was developing his powers. If he failed by that point, Elias might've wanted an Archivist who'd be better able to defend themselves. By S4 Melanie was probably far enough gone to the Slaughter (and hated the Eye enough) that she was probably off the table as a candidate. By that point, however, Jon was expected to fully Become and only needed a few more marks.

I understand that Sasha was approved for a transfer to the Archives because Elias let Jon choose who take with him and Jon chose Sasha. And Melanie was almost certainly chosen to keep Jon in close proximity of a Slaughter-aligned person who'd be likely to mark him but unlikely to kill him. But I think that they served a secondary purpose of being backup Archivists in case something happened to Jon.

Obviously this is more headcanon than theory (not to mention it relies on other headcanons to fully stand) but I'm very fond of it. I guess I think that, even if Elias wasn't really looking for another Archivist when Jon seems like the perfect candidate in every way (and I'm not saying this JUST because I love him), I think that if something did happen to Jon, they'd be Elias' next candidates.

[ethereal---spirits]

Just a little review of the new Moi-même-Moitié 25th Anniversary Mana-sama Illustration T-shirt. I purchased an XL which was a generous size, but not as big as the XXL Moi dix Mois 20th Anniversary Shirt. The fabric is thick and the graphics are very nice. The third photo is of the back of my shirt.

I wanted to mention the washing instructions that come with the shirt. Since they are in Japanese, a translation from Wunderwelt's site is here:

※ Please do not iron the print. ※ Due to the material of the dye, there may be color transfer if rubbed, sweated, or left wet. ※ When washing, please turn the printed side inside out and place the t-shirt in a laundry net. ※ When washing, there may be color transfer, please wash it with similar colors and dry it inside out in the shade. ※ Please do not dry clean, use bleach or a dryer.

I am sure the shirt can be hand washed but just make sure to have it in a container that is safe from staining if dye runs from the shirt.

The plastic file that came with it is lovely.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Palantir will steal the NHS

Britons are divided on many matters, but one uniting force that cuts across regional, party and class lines is jealous pride for the NHS and fierce resistance to its privatisation and the importation of America’s grisly omnishambolic health care “system.”

But while the British people oppose privatisation, the British investor class are slavering for it. Oligarchs love to loot public services, which is why the IMF is so adamant that the countries it “helps” sell off their public water, housing, even their roads and schools and museums.

Normally, the corrupting, immiserating effects of privatisation happen so slowly that they can feel like a natural phenomenon, a gradual change in the weather that makes everyone a little colder, a little more uncomfortable every day, until one day, the situation is unbearable.

But there have been moments of “big bang” privatisation where governments and oligarchs speed-ran the process of looting the public coffers and transferring them to private hands — think of the sell-off of ex-Soviet state industries to connected insiders.

Or think of Thatcher’s sell-off of council homes, an airdrop that converted shelter from a human right to an asset, in which “market forces” were allowed to “optimise” the housing system, with the result that everyday people can’t afford a home, while wealthy speculators trousered billions.

Thatcher had a supermajority, and she understood how to play different economic blocs against each other, resulting in the “shock therapy” of the 1980s. Her successors — both Tories and New Labour — had to move more slowly:

https://jacobin.com/2022/10/liz-truss-mini-budget-imf-boe-government-debt-brexit

Back to the NHS. It has been subject to the death of a thousand literal cuts, as Tories and Labour alike have starved it of resources. More importantly, both parties have turned ever-larger chunks of the NHS over to private-sector looters who have taken over hospitals, services, record-keeping and more.

These “public-private partnerships” were billed as a “third way,” combining the strengths of both the public and private sectors. In reality, they were a way to transfer a ever-larger sums from the public purse to private investors.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose proposition. When a private sector manager takes over a public service and extracts so much profit from the system that it risks collapse, the public sector is blamed for undersubsidising the service, and the looter can demand more money.

Lather, rinse, repeat. After decades of this, everyone understands how PPPs can be used to siphon endless sums out of the public coffers. But there’s a more sinister aspect to PPPs that is only just coming to light, exemplified by Palantir’s leaked plans to take over the NHS.

Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417725865#articleCitationDownloadContainer

Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing:

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/26/facebook-data-ice-immigration/

Palantir also sells to the CIA:

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/

One of Palantir’s best markets is the UK, where it has insinuated itself into numerous public services:

https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/All%20roads%20lead%20to%20Palantir%20with%20Palantir%20response%20v3.pdf That includes the NHS, where Palantir has been jockeying for an ever-larger slice of the health service’s private procurements. But the company’s reputation has preceded it, and even NHS commissioners understand that they risk public outrage if they sign over the NHS to a notorious private-sector surveillance company.

Palantir has a solution. The company has effectively unlimited access to the capital markets, as well as to its deep-pocketed founder Peter Thiel, a cartoon villain who’s written that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and that democracy and freedom are incompatible.

All that liquid capital means that Palantir doesn’t have to win NHS contracts — it can simply buy up other companies that have won them. Palantir’s strategy leaked to Bloomberg, and Olivia Solon lays it out:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-30/palantir-had-plan-to-crack-uk-health-system-buying-our-way-in

In a Sept 2021 email with the subject line “Buying our way in…!” Palantir regional boss Louis Mosley describes a plan to go around “hoovering up” NHS contractors, to “take a lot of ground and take down a lot of political resistance.”

(A Palantir spokesman said the email was “regrettable” and “not an accurate characterization of our relationship with the NHS”)

Palantir’s Mosley said he’d target NHS software suppliers with “credible leadership” and revenue between £5–50m, offering their founders “v. generous buyout schedule (say 10x, especially if all stock),” adding “(we might even be their only real exit option).”

Palantir also urged the lobbying group TechUK to pressurise the NHS and other government departments to buy commercial, proprietary systems rather than building their own.

Palantir ran their own separate lobbying as well, hiring Indra Joshi and Harjeet Dhaliwal away from the NHS to push their agenda in Westminster:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-21/palantir-hires-ai-chief-from-nhs-in-u-k-as-it-bids-to-expand

For backup, they retained Global Counsel, a lobbying firm run by the Blairite archvillain Peter Mandelson, to push Palantir to the UK government. Mandelson is one of the great monsters of New Labour, masterminding a plan to permanenly disconnect British households from the internet if any member of the family was accused — without proof — of illegaly downloading music:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/19/breaking-leaked-uk-government-plan-to-create-pirate-finder-general-with-power-to-appoint-militias-create-laws/

Palantir’s plans are bearing fruit. In Dec 2020, the company won a £23.5 no-bid contract to manage NHS patient data:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-02-24/revealed-data-giant-given-emergency-covid-contract-had-been-wooing-nhs-for-months

The deal was successfully challenged by Foxglove, who represented Opendemocracy in a suit to force the government to make future Palantir deals subject to public tender:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/weve-won-our-lawsuit-over-matt-hancocks-23m-nhs-data-deal-with-palantir/

The real prize isn’t a mere £23.5 contract, though: the NHS is about to open to bids for a massive, £360m IT project. That’s where Palantir’s plan to buy out its rivals for the deal could bear real fruit.

That’s not a bug in PPP, it’s a feature. The point of PPP is to apply market dynamics to public service provision. Foremost among these market dynamics is the right of company owners to sell their businesses to other companies.

The UK — along with the rest of the west — has spent 40 years waving through anticompetitive mergers, under a doctrine that holds that monopolies are “efficient” (Thiel agrees: according to him, “competition is for losers”).

The combination of lax merger scrutiny and PPP inevitably leads to this kind of play: one deep-pocketed company can “hoover up” all the contractors to the NHS and form a single entity that can hold the NHS to ransom.

Palantir’s commitment to proprietary, secretive software development methodologies makes it utterly unsuitable for NHS service provision. Compare the NHS to Ben Goldacre’s landmark “Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis”:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis

Goldacre argues that the only way to unlock the medical insights in aggregate NHS patient data is with public software: an open and free “trusted research platform” that anyone can audit and verify.

While the code for this platform would be public, NHS patient data would never leave it. Instead, researchers who wanted to investigate hypotheses about the effectiveness of different interventions would send queries to the platform and get results back — without ever touching the data.

This is a system that only works if it’s hosted by democratically accountable public services — not by private actors accountable to their shareholders, and certainly not secretive companies whose primary expertise is in helping spy agencies conduct mass surveillance.

Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Thiel_(51876933345).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A haunted, ruined hospital building. A sign hangs askew over the entrance with the NHS logo over the Palantir logo. Beneath it, a cutaway silhouette reveals a blood-spattered, scalpel-wielding surgeon with a Palantir logo over his breast, about to slice into a frightened patient with an NHS logo over his breast. Looming over the scene are the eyes of Peter Thiel, bloodshot and sinister.]

[polarfarina]

I guess I'm just confused that fans of watcher are willing to pay sometimes $100 or more in ticket prices to see the live shows with Shane and Ryan but then $6 is really offensive and a betrayal of an ask... like one mystery files hoodie costs more than a year of their (currently announced price of the) site subscription. Don't get me wrong because I do NOT think the paywall was the right decision or announced the right way, I don't think it's going to work. But. I have seen and heard several people say they buy tickets and merch, why can't that be enough? $6 is too expensive! But I'm sitting here confused because. The tickets and merch are way more than six dollars..???? I'm really really confused about that point. It's not that I don't understand that $6 can be unaffordable, it's just... so many people say they can't spend $6 while in the same breath have been boasting about how so far they've been able to spend money on concerts and patreon and buying shirts and blind boxes and the premium YouTube subscription because creators get a bigger chunk of the money that way (watcher should be GLAD they supported them btw!); but SIX DOLLARS? They can't pay that! It's odd. Is all I'm saying.

On the flip side, I saw people saying that because they live outside of the us they would get charged a double tax that they couldn't afford due to having to transfer money overseas; I feel like that's a really good point. Once this goes behind a paywall, international audiences will have a much harder time accessing content moving forward, if they can at all (not every country plays nice with PayPal). Even if they can afford the $6, there will be a heap of fees on top of it - or there won't even be a way to get the money to the service in the first place.

Absolutely the fact that Watchers' content is suddenly becoming paywalled seemingly immediately moving forward with little warning is a big shock and at first when watching the video, I didn't think they were serious. Having witnessed a successful launch of a YouTube channel into a paid subscription site with the exact price that watcher is asking for... they are not doing it right. Not for their audience. But people are so so focused on how expensive six dollars is and not on the other implications of this decision, which just... am I in the wrong here?? There's a bigger conversation i feel could be had but everyone is really really focusing on the BETRAYAL of six dollars... and I feel like I'm going crazy because that wasn't even in my first handful of thoughts about why this was a bad idea

[lepartidelamort]

Italy: Catholic Journalist Criminally Charged by Vatican for “Defaming” Pope Anus

By Snake Baker

Pope Anus (left), Marco Felipe Perfetti (right)

The Poop is bringing down the pain on people who question his anal agenda.

The Poop wants climate justice. He wants refugee justice. He wants big league rimming.

No one can question his morality.

Breitbart:

Vatican prosecutor has filed charges against an Italian Catholic journalist, accusing him of “defamation” of Pope Francis as well as divulging confidential documents. Marco Felipe Perfetti, a conservative Catholic who writes the blog Silere Non Possum (“I cannot be silent”), has called the charges against him an attempt at “intimidation.” “It is no secret that within the Vatican City State there is no protection of freedom of the press and the activity of Silere non possum has annoyed and continues to annoy those who have always acted to the detriment of this State and for their own personal interests,” the editors of the site wrote this week. The site of the news outlet alleges that the Vatican initiated criminal proceedings against Marco Felipe Perfetti by communicating the charges to the press rather than to the interested party. Perfetti has also noted that Silere non possum is managed by an Italian citizen and resident in the Italian Republic, and thus, the jurisdiction over him should fall to his place of residence rather than to the Vatican City State. … Perfetti himself is a Roman lawyer with “many connections” within Vatican walls, the article stated, yet he has not yet received any official notification of the judicial process against him even though the hearing was to begin this week. According to the popular U.S.-based Catholic news outlet The Pillar Catholic, in essence, “The man behind a well-known, well-read, and well-informed Church news website” has been charged with “doing journalism.” … This is not the first time the Vatican has threatened legal proceedings against what it sees as hostile journalists. In 2018, the Vatican hired international law firm Baker McKenzie to force a small Spanish website called InfoVaticana.com to close its doors, allegedly for its occasional critical tone toward aspects of the Francis papacy. The firm threatened a lawsuit if Infovaticana was not shut down and “its internet domain transferred to the Vatican.”

Yeah, they don’t just shut down your website, they steal your domain.

This is anal supremacy in action.

Those who still believe a penis belongs in a vagina better wise up, because before long, someone from the Vatican is going to be climbing up on their back and giving them a nasty surprise.

[wakatoshitiddies]

#UshiOiWeek2023 #ushioi | Day 2: Office Workers

Tooru sighed and stared blankly at the monitor screen.

A big project was assigned to their team, and his days have consisted of calls, meetings, emails, papers, and overtime.

Today's the last day they have for preparation, and he's struggling to make his last working braincell function.

He took a large gulp of coffee, which is now cold, hoping that the caffeine would help him power through as it had the past few days.

"Your secret admirer should leave two coffees at least; I need one too."

Kuroo teased him, slouching on the swivel chair beside him, looking as tired as he is.

Tooru knew that the coffee on his desk each morning wasn't a coincidence, but he had no idea who was leaving it.

The coffee itself was not what he would usually get; it has a chocolaty aroma, but it soon grew on him.

It's from a famous coffee shop down the street. He had always wanted to try their coffee, but there was always a line, even in the early morning, so he never got to.

That is, until it began to "magically" appear on his desk.

He already gave up attempting to find out who this mystery person was; he asked almost the entire office, but no one admitted it was them or knew who it was, so he opted to leave a sticky note with the words "thank you" written on it before he clocks out so that whoever is leaving him coffee knows he appreciates it.

"Oikawa-san, it's time to go," a voice behind him said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

He didn't need to look behind him to know that a tall, olive-eyed man was standing there.

He couldn't help but feel a little spark in the pit of his stomach every time he was near him or heard his voice.

Ushijima Wakatoshi was their new department manager.

He was transferred to their site a few months ago. He was a quiet man; other than for work, he doesn't interact much with everyone, and yet women swoon over him and men want to be like him.

He wouldn't blame them; aside from being good-looking, he has proven many times that he's intelligent and has good work ethics.

He just couldn't help but be drawn to him. He often found himself watching him from across the office, admiring his confident stance and sharp attire.

He had to admit, he has a crush on him.

He completely forgot that they had to meet the clients today just in case any changes needed to be made before the launch, so he immediately grabbed his things and his unfinished coffee.

The ride on the elevator wasn't eventful; both of them were silent, just waiting to reach the parking area, except that Wakatoshi would occasionally glance at the coffee in his hand.

Maybe the guy is afraid that he'll spill it on his car, so he made a mental note to throw the coffee in the trash bin as soon as the elevator door opens.

A ding was heard, and the elevator door opened. They both stepped out, but they hadn't even taken thirty steps away when Wakatoshi's phone rang.

He excused himself to answer the call, which only lasted about a minute.

"I need to go back up," Wakatoshi said after ending the call.

"They wanted to see the other proposal that we considered."

"I'll go," Tooru volunteered.

"Are you sure?"

He just nodded and made his way back to the elevator.

Arriving on their floor, he made his way to his manager's workstation, and that's when he realized he forgot to ask where the files were located.

Luckily, his desk was pretty organized, so it would be easy to find, right?

He opened one of the drawers to check, and what he saw made his face turn red.

The thank-you notes he has been leaving on his desk were there, all neatly kept. He had never suspected it was him.

Tooru slowly closed the drawer.

He felt himself flush more with embarrassment as he realized that Wakatoshi had noticed him too.

He proceeded to look for the files they needed. He quickly grabbed them when he found them and rushed back to the elevator.

And lo and behold, Wakatoshi was in there.

The latter saw his expression and quickly averted his gaze. He looked nervous and embarrassed.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to the parking lot.

As soon as the door closed, he whispered, but enough for the man beside him to hear:

"Thank you"

Their meeting with the clients ended early that day. They were concerned when they saw Wakatoshi's very red face.

[trademarkblue]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Thank you @be11atrixthestrange for the tag! ♥️

How many works do you have on AO3?

19 so far

What’s your total AO3 word count?

About 236,000 currently, but a lot of my HP fic was never transferred over from Fanfiction.net. I’ve definitely posted over a million words.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Technically 3 because I wrote 1 Syd/David fic for Legion (FX).

My other 2 are my main obsessions - Harry Potter (Ron/Hermione) and The Handmaid’s Tale (June/Nick).

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

DRIVE, Mysterious Bruises, HOME, HAUNTED, Sixteen

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes, I try to reply to every one. I sometimes miss things for months (or years, yikes) at a time, but I’ll try to circle back eventually because I’m a little neurotic about it tbh.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

The Last Thing - this was my first June/Nick fic, and it is very short but ends bleak.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Pretty much every fic I write ends happy (The Last Thing is an exception).

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I started a Harry Potter / X-Files crossover where Mulder and Scully end up stranded in Scotland and stumble upon Hogwarts. They then enlist Harry, Ron and Hermione to help with an impending alien invasion, of course… but it quickly became way too complicated (obviously), and I never posted anything from it.

I also would maybe kinda count doing major references to other fandoms or fics as secret crossovers?

I’m working on one for Osblaine that’s a direct reference to my favorite fic of all time, The Furious Winter by CazQ, which is an X-Files fic originally.

And I have another in (very slow) progress for Osblaine called STAY that’s a big ol’ (smuttier) reference to Not As a Last Resort by Arabella, which is an incredible bed sharing fic for Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter... And I’ve just now discovered the fic is not on the original site because the whole site is no longer there. Just go ahead and kill me now...

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Oh yes indeed - some pretty nasty comments in Harry Potter fandom.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Certainly. Pick a flavor, and I’ll probably try it with Nick and June. 😂

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, so cool! A couple Potter fics of mine were translated on FF.net.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Fuck. I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, but it has officially happened, and they win. The rest was a runway to this…

Nick Blaine and June Osborne from The Handmaid’s Tale.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Anything from Harry Potter tbh. I hate the wasteland I left, but I had to let it go. Still trying to get over that guilt.

What are your writing strengths?

Speed, but only when I’m on a high about an idea.

What are your writing weaknesses?

ADHD…

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Intrigued but have never done it. I would consult a friend who spoke the language rather than using a translator because, especially for dialogue, I feel you need to be pretty intimately familiar with casual speech patterns that would be very hard to nail without immersing in the culture.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The X-Files but under a different pen name that I shall never speak of again 🤗

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

7 Years, 6 Months, 4 Days in HP fandom and probably DRIVE in The Handmaid’s Tale fandom.

Tagging:

Anyone who wants to play!!

[windslar]

Hi! Hope you're doing well! I was wondering wcif the instagram sticker overlays that you use on some of your instagram posts? Like the countdown/questions/etc. Thanks so much!

Those stickers are from anagramdesign. Beware: it's a big file but it's because it has 15 IG mockups and the dimensions are huuuge. **I just saw there's a 2024 version on the site**

Honestly, I've gotten different stickers and overlays from different psds just by googling 'instagram sticker overlay psd'. And to be completely honest, I've just added bits and pieces that I like into a single psd so I can easily edit my posts without having multiple PS tabs open. Like, from that anagramdesign one, I've only saved 6(?) sticker layers and transferred it to my 'editing psd'; otherwise I'd be opening that giant file every time. I've also made a few minor tweaks just to keep the look somewhat consistent. I can't share that file because it would go against the creators' TOU, but it's something I recommend you do for your personal editing process.

[bigcloudy-hosting-blog]

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[good-jewish-omens]

Not to make a threat on a public official's life but whoever is responsible for making decisions around federal student loan servicers transferring loans to other servicers should have a philosophical bounty on their head.

My credit score has been top Fucking notch since sophomore year because as someone who grew up poor/lower income whatever, I was dedicated as shit to maintaining that one single chance. My credit card and my student loans are my only accounts. The credit card is maxed out as fuck rn and I'm considering my options so I went looking for some personal loans while I wait for this payment to hit my account next week. Why the fuck did my credit score come back as 425? Good question! Let's investigate!

Discover got rid of their credit monitoring last year and my life was just enough of a mess that it wasn't a priority until the student loans became an issue again. Slip #1. I checked my credit score on a different site and found that it had slipped from 768 to 648 in January. And why was that? Well, according to them, my student loans were gone. Vanished. Didn't exist. Poof.

Signed into the Great Lakes portal and low and behold my loans had been sold (or so I thought) to NelNet. Great. This is not the first time I have heard of this happening so while I'm not surprised I'm pissed off and now I have to deal with this shit. I called NelNet and thankfully the customer service person was really nice so I got down to the nitty gritty of the situation pretty fast and she was helpful too.

So basically, without notifying me or even trying to contact me, my loans were transferred to NelNet. Not sold, transferred at the demand of the Department of Education. Why? Because they have complete control over where my loans are held. True and morally reprehensible.

Let's list the ways in which this transfer has messed with my life:

As a very kind gift one of my parents made a payment on my interest before I graduated and before the moratorium went into place. NelNet does not have record of this payment. I have had to ask said parent to dig through their records and try to find it because it wasn't a regular transaction it was something specific like an education account or something.

When I changed my name, and then again when I got married, I had to submit a bunch of information to Great Lakes to get that all changed over. I never got a confirmation for either of these but they assured me it had been done. They do have record of my name change but not my marriage.

This is what could be potentially fucking over my credit score, but it is also possible that the credit bureaus can legally penalize my score for this. A big part of my score is the longevity of this account. The customer service person could not answer if this account would be considered an entirely new one or if it would carry over. If that's the case (and my loans aren't forgiven with Biden's shit), I'm legitimately going to start looking for people to file a class action lawsuit.

MY CREDIT SCORE DROPPED OVER 100 POINTS THAT'S INSANE

I didn't know about this!!! My previous servicer didn't call me they didn't try to get in contact with me!!!!!!!!! This could have completely fucked my whole life if I didn't look at loans!!! NelNet did try to contact me about this probably about two weeks ago but I disregarded it because I knew NelNet was a loan servicer and I get spam calls from people pretending to be with financial institutions all the time.

Anyways I'm gonna come after someone's pussylips for this shit and it's not gonna be pretty. I'm not a capitalist by any means and my credit score ~doesn't define me~ obviously but like hell am I gonna let the Department of fucking Education be the reaper of my immediate financial future. I'm coming for their asses.

[sojust]

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[love-fireflysong]

Okay! Final update (I swear lol) for those who are worried about/invested in my ps4 hard drive issues!

Long story short: my save data is completely unrecoverable. It's gone. I'm completely shit out of luck for recovering pretty much anything on that drive and I have no one to blame but myself.

Learn from my mistakes and take note of these two very important tips I'm about to impart on you.

If you have a ps+ substriction and you turn off the auto upload to the cloud to platinum a game in one playthrough instead of like 3 (like i did) than for the love of all that is holy turn that shit back on the second you finish. I did not do that so all my save data since I finished vampyr a year ago is kaput cause none of that uploaded.

If you start to notice that your ps4 is starting to lag a little bit when on the hud screen or when a game is booting, then that means that hard drive failure is on the horizon and back up your save data ASAP onto a USB drive. My ps4 had been letting me know for weeks now that it was about to bsod me but hindsight is 20/20 as they say 😔

(For those that want to know exactly why all my data is unrecoverable, then all the in depth techy talk about my discoveries over the past couple of days are below the cut)

So first things first: any site or article that promises a way to recover data from a ps4 hard drive is lying through their fucking teeth. Maybe the methods work on an external ps4 hard drive I don't know, but an internal hard drive is GONE baby! Due to the fact that a pc and ps4 format each of their hard drives in completely different ways, neither is readable on the other without reformatting said drive to work. Which *will* completely erase everything that once existed and leave it empty and ready for use. (Which I already knew about going in so I never did that but I figured I would mention just in case someone tries it for themselves)

That being said, lots of programs will scan your hard drive for free and it *is* possible to scan an internal ps4 hdd. It will just appear hidden as a 'lost partition' and unavailable to pick through the files because, once again, the formatting is not native to pcs. BUT, every scan I tried was only able to find *maybe* about 2gb worth of what I knew was a nearly full 500gb hdd.

And while scanning is free, recovering the said files are not. Every program will cost pretty much $100 usd for a months subscription.

And in a test of putting the old hdd into the external hard drive and hooking it up to the ps4 and seeing if i could access my data that way, the answer was also a big fat no. While I did find out that I *could* still use the hard drive as an external if I wanted hilariously enough, it would require me to, once again, reformat the thing so it would work. Also, turns out anyways that a ps4 external hdd only saves the game applications and thats it. No pictures, videos, or save game data: that is all saved to the interior hdd so that method of backing up is a no go sorry to say.

I admittedly have one last method to try, but I don't have high hopes for it though lol. When I next get paid and have money again, I'm gonna call the actual game console repair store that is located in the northern part of my city and see if they can do anything, but I doubt it. Even if they can though, if I'm correct that method will probably cost me like $400 cad to transfer the data to a new hdd that's already formatted to my ps4. Cause it turns out that you can't move hard drives from one console to another, each one is uniquely formatted so putting mine into my roomies would require reformatting the thing so it can be read and used on hers.

But it's my last shot, I just don't have high hopes of it working 😒