#sometimes peoples stories will have you in it for a page

[thefatedthoughtofyou]

Was having some thoughts about Steve joining Hellfire. They are as follows.

I'm thinking maybe they start him off with smaller weekly oneshots. Unbeknownst to Steve they are also still meeting for their regular other campaign, he figures that out later. That Eddie's been writing one shots for him on top of his other bonkers story he's got going and Steve is like "oh 🥺".

BUTTT! during the one shots, all the kids have their moments of being RUDE to Steve. Mike is the worst (cuz I dislike him and his fucking attitude). But everytime one of them is rude to Steve, and it's like legit mean stuff, like them calling him stupid. Things like that. Steve usually kinda gets quiet. And then, whenever the kids do that, Eddie starts making notes in his notebook. Then whoever said the mean thing, their characters die.

Like, Mike gets the worst of it cuz he's just such an ass. But Eddie's got a SYSTEM in these notes okay!!! There are straight tallys, for actually hurtful mean things, there are wiggly tallys for things he can tell are meant to be teasing but that he can tell definitely still kinda hurt Steve a bit. And then there are stars. People get stars for helping Steve along the way.

Be that helping his characters, or just helping him with his math or helping him understand something about the game when Eddie is busy or "distracted". Cuz he legit always notices when people help Steve. Most of the time it's cuz he hears Steve's genuine thank yous. Lucas, and surprisingly Erica, have the most stars, aside from El. Max gets stars sometimes just for back talking Mike's rudes comments with shit like,

"mike what does it matter? we're all about to die anyway. That sphinx is gonna fucking eat us. Who cares. Leave him alone."

Because her and El have of course been invited too. But they've been playing just a LITTLE bit longer so they know a small amount more. El only has stars because she is legit always helpful. Steve has taken to sitting between El and Erica because they're the nicest to him. Lucas usually sits across from him.

Dustin has lots of wiggly tallys cuz he just can't control his mouth sometimes. But one day Mike gets brutally killed again and starts whining about it and Steve has noticed Eddie making little notes. Has no idea what they are. Cuz he doesn't look through other people's notebooks. Thats rude.

Everyone has noticed the notes. No one has asked. They all have theories. And when Eddie is like,

"I'm trying to teach you a lesson. Not my fault you aren't smart enough to figure out what it is." And his voice has such a BITCHY tone when he says it. Because Mike had JUST been hounding Steve for missing "obvious" clues and not being smart enough to figure it out and walking into a trap.

And steve had gone red from his ears all the way down his neck, he also felt bad cuz he'd gotten El's character hurt. And then Mike had been an ass. Steve was upset. So Eddie killed Mike. And then he's whining and Eddie's about to say something else when El speaks up, looks across the table with a scowl and says,

"just be nicer! It's not hard to be nice. Steve is our friend. Be nice to him." And she rolls her eyes at Mike, puts her hand on Steve's arm and is like,

"I will be fine. Will can heal me." And Will pipes up and is like,

"yeah. I can heal her no problem." But it's El's outburst that makes Steve kind of wonder more about the notes Eddie takes.

He'd never ask, and never look. But he stays behind one day to help Eddie clean up, they have weekly games at the community center.

So Steve's staying after and helping with chairs and tables and getting books and dice and things stored away and Eddie's notebook is RIGHT THERE. Open to the page he's always scribbling on. And Steve just sort of... stops. And looks at it. And it's everyone's names with tallys and marks and stars. Erica has wiggly marks AND stars. But mostly stars. Because she helps him with his math almost every game.

Also she "accidentally" let mike get hit with an attack in the game cuz he was being rude. El's is all stars and scrawled under them in Eddie's chicken scratch is,

"She's a literal angel oh my god."

So Steve's eyes are just wandering over this page and his brow is all creased and he doesn't hear Eddie come back until he says,

"figured out what's missing yet?" In that teasing sweet little voice he uses on Steve that makes him feel a little dizzy sometimes, give him butterflies in his stomach, and his whole body jerks and he looks up and Eddie's leaning casually against the wall near the door. And Steve immediately apologizes and Eddie laughs, shakes his head, walks closer. And is like,

"It's okay Steve. But you didn't answer my question." He licks his lips, steps closer. Steve looks back to the notebook for a second and then back to Eddie.

"My names not on there?" He asks, worrying his finger into the table top next to the notebook. And Eddie is nodding.

"Yup." And Steve's like,

"The tallys are about... me?" And he's frowning. But Eddie steps a bit closer, standing next to the table now. And he smiles, all shy and soft and is like,

"yeah Steve. They're about you. Got kinda tired of all the kids talking shit about you. And to you. So I came up with a system. Anyone says anything about you being stupid, I kill them." He grins, wide like the Cheshire cat and Steve feels kinda pinned down by it. Feels kinda hot all over.

"You didn't- have to do that. It's fine. It doesn't bother me. I mean I know I'm not smart." And he just shakes his head and looks at the ground and Eddie kinda slams his hand down on the table, startling him. He looks up and Eddie looks mad. Not at him. Just, mad.

"You're not though. Is the thing. I mean... you're incredibly good at strategy. I know you don't know enough about dnd yet to know this, but you've been a crucial part in winning like, the last three games." Eddie steps closer, his fingertips brushing the back of Steve's hand.

"You're not stupid. You're just smart in different ways." Eddie shrugs. Gives Steve a little lopsided smile.

"You think I'm smart?" He asks, biting his lip to stop the giddy smile that's threatening to spread. Eddie doesn't stop his smile, just lets it go, lets it dimple his cheeks and make Steve's knees weak. And he's like,

"yeah man. Just cuz some jumped up little tweens can't see it doesn't mean I can't. You're kinda hard to miss." He does bite his lip then, fingers playing with his hair, Steve knows he's trying not to hide behind it.

"I just uh-" Eddie clears his throat,

"I'm really petty. And protective. And it's ridiculous cuz you're not even mine but- I just- felt like I had to protect you. Or stick up for you. Or something? I dunno. Feels stupid now that I'm saying it out- oof!" Eddie huffs when Steve slams into him. Arms wrapped around his neck. He may or may not be crying into Eddie's hellfire shirt. But he gives Eddie a squeeze and then pulls back, looks at him, smiles and says,

"I am though." With a little shrug. And Eddie's like,

"you... are?" Confused. And Steve laughs, light and sweet and says,

"Yours. I am yours. If you'll have me. Or want me. Or- mmfph!" Steve's words end in a high pitched hum as Eddie's lips hit his. Just a firm press. His hand on Steve's cheek. He pulls back fast, pink in the cheeks.

"Sorry I just- if you let me have you, Steve. I may never let you go." He chuckles, giddy. Steve snorts, his head falling to Eddie's shoulder for a second before he looks at Eddie, cups his cheek genlty.

"Who says I want you to?" His brows jump, challenging. Eddie goes redder, down to his neck.

"Wanna try that kiss again?" Steve asks.

"God was is bad? I've never- I'm not... good. At that stuff." Eddie cringes. Steve cups both his cheeks until Eddie's wide eyes are staring at him, his cheeks a little squished.

"It wasn't bad. It was kind of perfectly you. But we can get you good at that stuff. You're a fast learner right?" Steve smirks, Eddie's eyes go impossibly wider as he nods aggressively, cheeks squishing even more.

"Yes, sir." Eddie mumbles between his squished lips. Steve nods, once and then moves forward, slowly, determined to show Eddie just how thankful he is for him. How thankful he is that Eddie sees him.

Petty.

And protective.

And Steve's.

[9w1ft]

i wanna be LSK but… //

I’m so sorry anon, but I personally find it really funny when people hear the songs where taylor is working through her feelings of being betrayed by Scott B and attribute them to karlie instead.

It’s like finding a man holding a gun standing over a dead body and saying, hang on a minute… what if the real murderer is the victim’s gf… because two of her friends liked a gossipy tweet written by a known shit-stirrer!

that is to say, we know for a fact that taylor felt deeply betrayed by scott b, seeing as he’s verifiably the actual person who sold her masters to scooter, after treating taylor like family since she was very young. it’s pretty self-evident he deserves the level of vitriol in the smallest man who ever lived (besides the other descriptive details that link him to tsmwel, mtr etc).

as for taylor and karlie suddenly never being seen together again (seemingly drifting apart a whole year before the heist even happened, remember?), well she hasn’t spoken on that, so naturally we read between the lines in the songs to find out. some people have taken the masters heist songs to be about karlie, and ran with that. but others see karlie and taylor’s retreat into privacy reflected in songs under the ‘love blackout’ theme (especially around here, you’re on a longtime kaylor blog 🙈)

love blackout = the hints taylor has put out again and again that she intentionally distanced her public image from karlie’s because it was too dangerous to carry on as openly as they had at first. 2016 election sadness themes, secret love themes, all consistent over the years. all while writing new love songs that use callbacks to the rep muse, to yail even 🥺. as if taylor’s been using all the confusion and her masterful quill of misdirection to achieve her priority of protecting karlie. not protecting karlie’s public image and clout with swifties, which she doesn’t need to maintain her success because she was always successful in her own right! no, it’s all for Karlie The Person in their secret bubble of reality. all this showmanship, you know. the great war, hello!!!! too many songs to name where the kaylor chandelier is safely out of sight, but you can still see flickers through the boarded up windows ❣️

so forgive me for having a chuckle. to any anons who sincerely🛸want to believe, I’m just throwing it out there that there are plenty of us that never found the karlie-betrayer theory convincing at all. if you take a closer look at everything, the timeline of events and all the songs since, does it really make sense? (especially when there are so many shitty men in the mix who are more obviously to blame lol)

~ if you post, thank you for facilitating this rant 9wing, I’ll get off my soapbox now xxx

yup yup

i think a lot of people are predisposed to blaming karlie and so everything becomes a sort of confirmation bias.. which partially, i would argue, was by design.. so in a sense i do not fault gaylors or others for falling into this hole. but i do sometimes feel like faulting them a tiny bit for those who never climb out of it. there’s plenty of information and clues needed to figure it out and climb out of it.

one thing i don’t like about the whole “let’s not talk about muses” discourse is while the spirit of it is supposed to be “let’s study why these songs sound gay instead of commenting taylor lyrics on these people’s instagram pages,” in practice the phrasing almost is like giving yourself permission to pass judgement on the people in taylor’s story and then never reevaluate them. people often say ~lets not talk muses that’s invasive and gross~ and conveniently refuse to adjust their perception of karlie (for example) based on what taylor is putting out there, while making convenient exceptions for any interpretation they find that works to reinforce their already negative perception of her. and then after bitching about her they’ll cover their timeline in lisa frank dolphins because apparently that’s what paradise is. i dunno. it all feels dystopian to me atp 😆

[kamyru]

Them posting Candy on social media after they start dating (MCL: NG x Candy) (Headcanons)

Roy Aquino

Roy started posting Candy on social media before they even started dating.

He had some followers who were sure they were together before they officially were.

After that, there's nothing that can stop him.

He won't make embarrassing posts with Candy. However, it doesn't mean he won't make close friends stories with some funny candids of her, like barely awake or laughing till crying.

This meany also posts Candy being breathless after an intense gym "date".

Amanda de Lavienne

Amanda's first post with Candy will probably be about their engagement or something.

The people who are not close to her won't even know that she has someone.

Except for those who are attentive enough to see that she likes romantic and cheesy posts from time to time.

Candy also won't post Amanda because she asked her not to.

However, if they ever have a wedding, both will have matching profile pictures from their wedding for a while, maybe even a few years.

Then, Amanda will allow Candy to post cute videos from the special day, but who knows?

Jason Mendal

Jason is struggling between wanting to tease the hell out of Candy and wanting to show a perfect life.

If we imagine he has friends, he probably does the same thing as Roy and posts embarrassing photos of Candy only on close friends.

But as posts, there are only photos in which both look 120%.

He has the type of social media you will want to show your parents, with photos from all the celebrations with him and Candy standing properly and stiff but with smiles worth some toothpaste commercials.

However, he lets Candy tag him in her posts, and in them, everything is way, way more natural and cute. Jason smiles genuinely and has a lovestruck face while looking at Candy.

Roy probably did a fake account to like them because he couldn't let himself like them from the main one. 

Devon Okere

Devon is the most chill about it. He will sometimes post cute photos or allow Candy to do it if she wants to.

He won't bother to post candids only for close friends. If they are cute and not embarrassing, he will post them for everyone to see.

However, he has Roy to post strange photos of him and Candy, and tag them with some cheesy comment underneath. Devon made sure that Candy didn't mind and just moved on.

Some of his business partners ask him about Candy from time to time because they saw her on his page and are surprised to see her working at Devenementiel too.

If Candy tried hard enough, she may even convince Devon to match profile photos with her, but soon, he will change it to a more professional one.

Thomas Rheault

Thomas is aware of how easily you can find someone's personal information from their social media.

So, don't expect this man to be very active. His main "social media" is probably Linkedin.

Jokes aside, people will probably find out he has someone only after talking with him in person.

He's that person who dated for like 10 years, got married 3 years ago, and some of his friends still think he is single.

However, from time to time, he gets into photos of his friends or from Devenementiel's page, and everyone who has access to the photos can see how he softly looks at Candy and understands that there has to be something between them.

[bees-smile-at-flowers]

It's been such a long time since I was last on here! Just an update; mental mindsets and life has wildly improved. I'm slowly becoming the person/friends others deserve to have. Being on here still reminds me of the toxic person I was when it was made and frankly, I would like to deeply apologize for it. The damage that has been done is sadly irreversible, but I can only hope that those who I've hurt have grown to have much happier lives since that time.

I've learned growth is about being able to admit the wrongs and apologizing. I've reconnected with friends I've known for over a decade, made new friends and have held them very close and dear, and stopped running from people-- I refuse to allow myself to be temporary because I don't deserve that and neither do my friends.

Thank you for being patient while I meet myself for the first time all over again 💖

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Why Jason Grace is The Most Tragic Character in the Riordanverse

*in no way is this trying to dial down Nico's own suffering, I'm just stating my case for Jason because godsdamn SOMEBODY needs to say it!*

@most-tragic-character-tournament here's propoganda i came out guns ablazing

List of why fans are saying Nico:

Lost his mother

lost years of his life

found out he was a demigod at age 10

lost sister at 10

rough relationship with his dad

closeted gay

crush is madly in love with somebody else

forced to come out

List of why Jason is more tragic:

Lost his mom to alcoholism/mental decline

Lost his ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD because Said Mom gave him up to Juno to be raised by a PACK OF WOLVES who would've EATEN HIM if he was WEAK FOR EVEN A SECOND - AS A FUCKING TWO YEAR OLD

Was a trained demigod FROM THE GET-GO (again, TWO YEARS OLD)

Because of previously stated separation, was TAKEN FROM HIS SISTER WHO LOVED HIM SO MUCH SHE RAN AWAY BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T TAKE THE GUILT AND FEAR AND RAGE THAT FILLED HER AT HIS ABSENCE

Was set up into a "perfect" relationship by Juno/Hera WHILE HAVING HIS MEMORIES TAKEN

Jason may not have had the awful forced outting Nico had to go through, but...that's not really his fault? Nobody has any control over their sexual identity, and Jason? Well. He never really got to explore it. Because that was taken from him too.

Thinks he LOST LEO VALDEZ, ONE OF HIS ACTUAL FIRST FRIENDS, WHO LIKED HIM FOR HIM AND NOT BECAUSE OF HIS STATUS

FORCED TO COMPLY TO A DEMANDING SOCIETY THAT EXALTED HIM FROM DAY 1 BECAUSE HIS DAD IS THE OH-SO-IMPORTANT JUPITER (*cough victim of nepotism cough*)

AND WHEN HE TRIES TO COMBAT THAT NEPOTISM HE KEEPS GETTING PUSHBACK UNTIL HE FALTERS

then. then his girlfriend breaks up with him - not because of any drama, or even a disagreement, but over a very valid point

their relationship didn't exactly start out very...honestly. Jason had been mind-wiped of all memories and Piper had fake ones implanted into her to make her think she liked Jason as more than a friend. sure. they had a pretty nice relationship, but when everything slowed down and they took a look at their lives?

Piper's the one who sees it first, and makes the decision. Jason is heartbroken, but understands - he even, dare I say, agrees that they should end the relationship. it was built on fake memories - you could say it was built on lies.

and now Jason has this opportunity to step back and analyze who he is and what he wants.

what he finds is depressing. everything he's had, everything's he's been up till now...

it's not him.

he never wanted to be raised by Lupa and her wolves.

he never wanted to be Jupiter's son

he never wanted to be the exalted leader Camp Jupiter praised him for

From day 1 his life was somebody else's. his first steps were under the tutelage of a wolf, not of the loving eyes of his sister

Camp Jupiter only ever saw him as the demigod to be praised and turn to above all others, even before he became praetor.

Jason's life...was never his own.

and now that he's away from all that pressure and expectation...he doesn't know who he is.

Son of Jupiter?

Champion of Juno?

Praetor of the Twelfth Legion?

Member of the Prophesized Seven?

Hero of Olympus?

no. he was never himself under these names.

he was never...Jason.

but maybe now he could start navigating his own life. without some god intervening for once. this would be good for him, and for Piper, to find their own way.

but then. then they talk to Herophile...and find out one of them will die. And Jason? Well, he's not going to let Piper be taken from the life she deserves. he may not be her boyfriend, her knight in shining armor, but he sure as HELL loves her - especially as a friend. And if there's one thing you should know about Jason? It's that he loves his friends.

so what does he do? He sacrifices himself. He duels Caligula himself, and urges Piper, Meg, and Apollo to Go, save yourselves! and -

he's stabbed. through the chest. the only thing he can do? Look to Apollo, to the blue gaze so much like his own drenched in horror, and ask; Remember. because he didn't get to live the life he wished, but maybe Apollo could - no, Apollo can, he can make the difference Jason wanted. Because he trusts Apollo.

Jason doesn't regret his sacrifice. he saved Piper from the prophecy, after all. He saved Apollo & Meg's lives too.

in fact, Jason didn't really mind dying. Because he didn't have much of a life either. And a life like that? shrug It's worth sacrificing for those who deserve theirs.

and as icing on the cake, remember who Jason's father is? The almighty, all-powerful Jupiter himself, King of the Gods?

he doesn't do a damn thing to help Jason. Not a single. Thing.

because Jupiter/Zeus doesn't care about his children. Especially his sons.

Zeus saved Thalia. But he didn't even try to save Jason.

Trying would have at least lessened the pain...

People like to claim Jason is a bland, boring character who's never suffered a minute in his life. That he's a golden retriever with no flaws.

Well.

Take a look up there and ask yourself - it that the life of a boy who knows no suffering?

Because it sure as hell don't look that way to me.

To me, it looks like Jason was a used, depressed young man who never got to choose his own path. Who's father abandoned him first to his wife's mercy, then to a cruel emperor's.

Jason Grace suffered.

and he never got to live that happy life he saw within the Fates.

Never got to get that family, those grandchildren he saw himself telling the story of the Argo II to.

Because The Fall of Jason Grace is a true, utter tragedy.

[crown-ov-horns]

Right, then. The sick part of my brain is terrorizing me once more, and taking an idea from it is like taking a bone from an angry rottweiler.

Who wants a fucked up Michael Langdon x Reader oneshot?.. I really do not feel like making a yet another OC, and adding a yet enother epic to my endless list.

[watercolor-hearts]

.

[nicosraf]

I have to ask how you came up on the idea to write ABM? I just wanna know your thought process because I'm wildly intrigued. I'd love to know how you'd feel about a lesbian story between Lilith (Adam's first wife) and Eve which is what my story is about.

Hello! So usually I'm pretty secretive about all the stuff behind Angels Before Man and why it's like That, but I recently saw a tweet that wrongly assumed the motivations behind the book, and it upset me a bit, so I should probably finally go into detail about ABM's deal. Sorry if this answer is way too long.

1. Personal reasons: in 2016, I came out to my parents during a very rough period for my mental illness. It went very bad, and I ended up going to a therapist for a few month for, well, conversion therapy. This involved using a lot of Christian manipulation tactics ("God would not make you this way") and EMDR techniques that have done quite a bit of psychological damage to me. In 2021, while working with a new therapist, I had a "died and met God" nightmare, then developed an unhealthy obsession with the Bible as I processed what happened during conversion therapy. Another thing I need to mention is that my family are immigrants from an epicenter of the Mexican drug war, which exposed me to a lot of violence very young, and traumatized me in its own right; how I think about the violence we perpetuate on the people we love is something I just really wanted to write about, also. All this to say that ABM is just a convoluted allegory for trauma.

2. Theological reasons: during my obsession, I read the Bible in its entirety a couple times, and I developed a lot of questions about it, especially regarding angels and this Lucifer guy:

Why did Lucifer/Satan become evil? Ezekiel 28 is usually the passage people refer to that explains it (others argue this section isn't about Lucifer/Satan but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is). What's interesting about this section is the emphasis on the cherub's "blamelessness" (innocence! Lucifer's young innocence isn't talked about enough!!) and his beauty. I'm fact, his corruption is entirely linked to his beauty.

But what does beauty mean? To God? What is beauty before humanity? What is the purpose of it? How can you become corrupted by beauty? (For this, I looked at Ezekiel 16, where Jerusalem is corrupted by her beauty; this inspired quite a bit of the story of ABM as a whole, particularly regarding God's wrath)

What are angels for? What do they do? I asked a couple friends this and usually they answered that it was fighting demons and protecting humans, but there was a time before demons and before humans. (There was an "angels before man" if you will haha). This seemed to stump everyone I asked. Did they just worship? All the time???

Why does the Bible compare angels' submission to God to a wife's submission to her husband? (Well, that's a least an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:10). This is related to Jesus explicitly stating later that angels can't marry. Why not? It's especially weird, at this point, given the matrimonial relationship between Jesus and the Church, and God's own somewhat matrimonial relationship with Mary. So everyone can have a romantic/sexual/spousal union except the angels? Why can't angels love?

This isn't a question but it really strikes me that Michael's only line of dialogue in the entire Bible is in the book of Jude and just as a reference to a time when he allegedly argued with Satan and said "Lord rebuke you." Ah. Michael. That brings me to the last major question I'll mention.

What was Michael and Lucifer's relationship? Something really cute is that everyone I harassed with my questions seemed to have this idea that they were best friends, that they really loved each other once. There's no scriptural evidence for it, and we only ever see them fighting, but it just seems like it makes sense, doesn't it? Strong, golden-hearted Michael and the beautiful, doomed Lucifer...

And of course the duality of God as both jealous and loving fascinates me. Even more so I'm fascinated by the concept of a lonely God. Jealousy, to me, only makes sense when you're insecure about love. How could an all-knowing God be insecure about love then? Maybe because he loves different than you, and he'll never have anyone who can love him the way he understands love (no matter how much he wishes, because he's a lone god)

Somehow all these questions came together and formed a story while I was outlining.

3. Technical reasons: I've been wanting to write a full novel that didn't follow the 5-act structure for a while. I wanted to write a novel that had no source of tension for a majority of the narrative (the source of tension early in ABM is just from the reader; you know what's gonna happen, but the book doesn't allude to it until about Chapter 11, and even then it's vague). I wanted to write a book that's radically differently paced in the second half. And I wanted to be a bit experimental stylistically (inspired by the Latin American Boom authors). Angels Before Man gave me all the opportunities to do this, I'm afraid.

Ultimately, Angels Before Man is really weird!! I'm both very happy and very shocked that people have enjoyed and understood it. I'm incredibly grateful when someone lets me know that my little self-published gay Satan book has been healing or cathartic to them. That's all I can really ask for tbh! Again, sorry for such a long answer, but I'm riled up about my intentions being misrepresented.

And finally, Lilith x Eve sounds really interesting!!! I have a lot of thoughts on the double creation of the sexes in Genesis (so, so, so many). I'd be ecstatic to see your take on it <3333 :)

[strohller27]

.

[kingcriccket]

Final thoughts on iron widow are that it is very fun to watch someone break stuff for a couple hundred pages but that it was pretty overhyped as anything beyond that. If it wasn't marketed as this groundbreaking feminist ThingTM I would have liked it more I think bcos politically it's a bit incoherent besides being very firm that girl power Is Good and sacrificing girls to be car batteries for mechs is Bad. Boo the patriarchy. Did Wu Zetian effectively utilize girl power when she slaughtered innocent people in her big dragon suit? etc

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

for whom good omens is being written

Hey maggots and the rest of the fandom, it's the Good Omens Mascot here. Today I read a post about this tweet:

The accompanying video genuinely made me cry. And I've been thinking about this for a long while, as far back as February, when I saw a lot of conflicting opinions on what people wanted from the third season. It really is true that no matter what you do, some people will be dissatisfied. But what matters is that Neil is writing this for Terry.

And I was reminded of some paragraphs from the Good Omens TV Companion, which I'd read in Amazon's sample excerpt of the book. I know this is a long post, but I really truly do think you all need to read these, I've done my best to select only the most important parts. Here you go:

'His Alzheimer's started progressing harder and faster than either of us had expected,' says Neil, referring to a period in which Terry recognized that despite everything he could no longer write. 'We had been friends for over thirty years, and during that time he had never asked me for anything. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from him with a special request. It read: “Listen, I know how busy you are. I know you don't have time to do this, but I want you to write the script for Good Omens. You are the only human being on this planet who has the passion, love and understanding for the old girl that I do. You have to do this for me so that I can see it." And I thought, “OK, if you put it like that then I'll do it."

'I had adapted my own work in the past, writing scripts for Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman, but not a lot else was seen. I'd also written two episodes of Doctor Who, and so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Usually, having written something once I'd rather start something new, but having a very sick co-author saying I had to do this?' Neil spreads his hands as if the answer is clear to see. 'I had to step up to the plate.' A pause, then: 'All this took place in autumn 2014, around the time that the BBC radio adaptation of Good Omens was happening,' he continues, referring to the production scripted and co-directed by Dirk Maggs and starring Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap. ‘Terry had talked me into writing the TV adaptation, and I thought OK, I have a few years. Only I didn't have a few years,' he says. 'Terry was unconscious by December and dead by March.'

He pauses again. 'His passing took all of us by surprise,' Neil remembers. 'About a week later, I started writing, and it was very sad. The moments Terry felt closest to me were the moments I would get stuck during the writing process. In the old days, when we wrote the novel, I would send him what I'd done or phone him up. And he would say, "Aahh, the problem, Grasshopper, is in the way you phrase the question," and I would reply, "Just tell me what to do!" which somehow always started a conversation. 'In writing the script, there were times I'd really want to talk to Terry, and also places where I'd figure something out and do something really clever, and I would want to share it with him. So, instead, I would text Terry's former personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, now his representative on Earth. It was the nearest thing I had.'

(...) As Neil himself recognizes, this is an adaptation built upon the confidence that comes from three decades of writing for page and screen. But for all the wisdom of experience, he found that above all one factor guided him throughout the process. 'Terry isn't here, which leaves me as the guardian of the soul of the story,' he explains. 'It's funny because sometimes I found myself defending Terry's bits harder or more passionately than I would defend my own bits. Take Agnes Nutter,' he says, referring to what has become a key scene in the adaptation in which the seventeenth-century author of the book of prophecies foretelling the coming of the Antichrist is burned at the stake. ‘It was a huge, complicated and incredibly expensive shoot, with bonfires built and primed to explode as well as huge crowds in costume. It had to feel just like an English village in the 1640s, and of course everyone asked if there was a cheap way of doing it. 'One suggestion was that we could tell the story using old-fashioned woodcuts and have the narrator take us through what happened, but I just thought, “No”. Because I had brought aspects of the story like Crowley and the baby swap along to the mix, and Terry created Agnes Nutter. So, if I had cut out Agnes then I wouldn't be doing right by the person who gave me this job. Terry would've rolled over in his grave.'

And, finally, this paragraph:

"Once again, Neil cites the absence of his co-writer as his drive to ensure that Good Omens translated to the screen and remained true to the original vision. 'Terry's last request to me was to make this something he would be proud of. And so that has been my job.'"

I think that's so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and so I wanted you all to read this, too, just in case you (like me) don't have the Good Omens TV Companion. It adds another layer of depth and emotion to this already complex and amazing story that we all know and love.

Share this post, if you can, please, so that more people can read these excerpts :")

Tagging @neil-gaiman, @fuckyeahgoodomens and @orpiknight, even if you've definitely read these before :)

[webfactor]

Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes

Article Text As Follows:

Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes

By Sherry Robinson

Special to The Independent

ALBUQUERQUE — When Lily Gladstone won a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the public recognized a Native American actress. But to Wikipedia readers, she is an American actress whose father was Blackfeet and Nez Perce and whose mother was white.

Three long-time editors at the online encyclopedia argued that even though Gladstone grew up on the Blackfeet reservation, she couldn’t be called Native American unless she was an enrolled member of the tribe. When Gladstone’s uncle weighed in to say she was enrolled, they dismissed his comments. She is still, in Wikipedia’s view, “an American actress.”

In recent years, outside of a national debate in Indian Country over fake tribes, a handful of Wikipedia editors have been deciding who is Native American and who isn’t.

Look behind the curtain of the sprawling site and you will find a network of 265,000 volunteer editors writing and editing within a Wiki universe that has its own rules, language, police and courts but no traditional hierarchy.

Wikipedia’s structure allows likeminded editors to work together, but it also permits editors with a bias to advance their agenda. The site has drawn criticism from media and academics for slanted articles on Blacks and Jews. Wikipedia documents its own systemic bias in an article by that name and attributes the problem to too few minority editors. The typical editor, it says, is a white male.

By Wikipedia's definition, the only real tribes are federally recognized; editors of Native American material denigrate state-recognized and unrecognized tribes and seem preoccupied with revealing fake Indians.

The fakes are out there, and they’re a problem. But there’s a big difference between people who invented a Native ancestry and people who have a long, documented heritage.

For this story, aggrieved tribal members didn’t identify themselves because they fear the site’s size and power – it reaches 1.8 billion devices a month – and some editors’ vindictiveness.

Behind the curtain

Wikipedia is transparent about its process. Click on “talk” at the top of each article and you find the (sometimes endless) debates among editors about an article and see the site’s rules in action.

Editors are anonymous because the Wikipedia Foundation has a strong commitment to privacy, says a spokesperson. However, readers don’t know what expertise editors have or whether they’re Native American.

Editors select their subject matter. With experience they can rise in the pecking order until they gain authority to reverse or eliminate the edits of others. They quote the site’s often arcane rules in Wiki-Speak to anyone who disagrees. While Wikipedia espouses objectivity, neutrality and civility, discussions can take the low road.

On Lily Gladstone’s talk page, a newish editor, user name Tsideh (Apache for bird), asked, “What are your sources supporting the idea that Native Americans are only those who are enrolled in a US recognized tribe?”

A Wiki editor, user name ARoseWolf, answered: “A notable subject can make a claim… but you must have that respective tribal nation’s acceptance as verification through enrollment."

Gladstone’s uncle wrote: “I’m a primary source for Ms. Gladstone’s tribal heritage. Her father is my brother. Through our father, we are both enrolled in the Blackfeet Tribe in the USA,” he wrote. “Our mother is enrolled Nez Perce. So Ms. Gladstone is a direct descendant of both Blackfeet and Nez Perce.”

ARoseWolf shot him down. “We can not use primary sources to verify such information and, you, as a claimed family member have a WP:COI which means we need an independent source.”

WP:COI is the Wikipedia rule on confl ict of interest. Wikipedia forbids primary sources, and yet they’re the gold standard for journalists and academics.

Tsideh challenged the position that only enrollment in a recognized tribe “entitles somebody to claim to be a Native American” as an unfounded, minority point of view that Wiki editors didn’t support with a citation or explanation.

ARoseWolf and others chastised Tsideh for violating Wiki rules on bullying, false accusations and arguing Wiki policy. Tsideh countered that Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t have to prove he was an Italian American, but Lily Gladstone had to prove she was a Native American.

As the back and forth continued, ARoseWolf slammed a new editor who "just happened to find this discussion,” a dig that implies one party enlisted another to join the debate. That too is a Wiki violation.

Bohemian Baltimore, another regular, insisted, “If she’s not enrolled, she may be a descendant, but she’s not a Native American.”

Who is Native American?

Terry Campbell, a Navajo born in Tuba City, Arizona, who lives out of state, has been studying Wikipedia for five months, after friends complained about poor treatment in trying to edit Wiki pages.

One friend wanted to add some facts to an article about a tribe. “These changes were rejected by a handful of editors who cited other Wikipedia pages as sources,” he said, “and I thought that was very, very odd.”

A friend citing sources that prove her tribe survived the Indian wars and received state recognition ran up against Wikipedia guidelines on determining Native American identities that were largely crafted by two editors, user names CorbieVreccan and Yuchitown. Wiki editors used the guidelines to reclassify dozens of state-recognized tribes as “heritage organizations” and removed “Native American” from biographies of prominent tribal members or, worse, called them a "self-identified Native American.”

The implication, Campbell explained, is that the tribe no longer exists and that its members are suspect or even “Pretendians.” Wikipedia has a page for that too.

The same group has shaped many articles on Native subjects. Campbell said he combed through references and found they were misrepresented, taken out of context, sourced from far-right academics, or unreliable.

“The scope of this issue is huge,” Campbell said. “It permeates all the Native articles I checked.”

Campbell recognized talking points from what he called a far-right movement in Indian Country intent on erasing state-recognized and unrecognized tribes. (New Mexico has no state-recognized tribes and six unrecognized groups or tribes.)

Some Native Americans and Anglos, he said, believe that Indigenous people outside the circle of federal recognition should be considered non-Native. They also want to prevent members of the disenfranchised groups from selling their art, receiving ancestral remains, accessing disaster relief or re-establishing their homeland.

Outside Indian Country, it’s not generally known that U.S. Indigenous groups live within a caste system based on government recognition, with 574 federally recognized tribes on top, dozens of state-recognized tribes second, and several hundred unrecognized tribes last.

In 2021, Yuchitown wrote, “The overwhelming majority of ‘List of unrecognized tribes in the United States’ are completely illegitimate.”

There are many reasons why groups aren’t recognized. Some avoided the reservation. Some lost their recognition during the termination era. Some were broken up and scattered during the Indian Wars. Some went underground, practicing their culture secretly while passing as Hispanic. Many simply stayed put.

When Wikipedia editors claim that “Native American” is a political status conferred by the U.S. government, that an individual can only be called a “descendent” until their tribe is recognized, they push this narrative, Campbell said. It’s a contradiction of federal Indian law and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “As a general principle, an Indian is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person’s identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine eligibility for programs and services. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership.”

Extreme points of view

Campbell has contributed to a lengthy report, as yet unpublished, that identifies biased editors. They include Yuchitown, CorbieVreccan, ARoseWolf, Indigenous girl and Bohemian Baltimore.

“It was like a tree with many interconnecting branches that had been created over time by the same small group of people pushing extreme points of view,” Campbell said.

Initially the group made changes slowly, he said, “but they started pursuing their agenda aggressively after November, when state-recognized tribes retained their voting rights in the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Essentially, after the movement to delegitimize state-recognized tribes failed officially, the key players doubled down on altering and controlling the flow of information about Native Americans through Wikipedia.”

Campbell observed widespread violations of Wikipedia standards: “I found evidence that they blatantly misquoted and misrepresented sources to push extremist political beliefs; teamed up to manipulate the consensus system by voting in blocks; exploited Wikipedia rules, such as conflict of interest, to block outside editors from making changes to Native-related pages; excessively cited opinion pieces from fringe political figures, including those accused of racism and anti-semitism; blocked the use of legitimate primary and secondary sources that contradict their extremists beliefs, which violates Wikipedia’s rule against information suppression; posted originally researched, politically motivated essays instead of well-sourced articles; and harassed and defamed Native American tribes and living Native American people.”

Reacting in February to an early draft of the report posted on Google, the editors were incensed that anybody would voice complaints “off-Wiki.” ARoseWolf wrote that “we have been attacked, threatened with legal action and had misinformation/ false claims spread against us.” She and Yuchitown denied being part of a conspiracy against tribes or organizations and said they were just following Wiki rules. Yuchitown accused critics of being “meat puppets” of a person who objected to some Native content and enlisted others to back them up. In WikiSpeak this is meat puppetry.

“Volunteers on Wikipedia vigilantly defend against information that does not meet the site’s requirements,” the Wikipedia spokeswoman wrote. “These volunteers regularly review a feed of real-time edits to quickly address problematic changes; bots spot and revert many common forms of negative behavior on the site; and volunteer administrators (trusted Wikipedia volunteers with advanced permissions to protect Wikipedia) further investigate and address negative behavior. When a user repeatedly violates Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia administrators can take disciplinary action and block them from further editing.”

Inaccurate and insulting

In 2006, Wikipedia established the WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America to improve its Native-related content of 14,000 articles and more than 37,000 pages.

Recently, a hot topic on the project’s talk page was a proposal to change a category name from “unrecognized tribes” to “organizations that self-identify.”

On April 15 Melissa Harding Ferretti, chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, wrote, “The proposed renaming of the category on Wikipedia is not only inaccurate… but also insulting.”

Ferretti is one of the few Natives to take on Wiki editors openly.

Herring Pond was originally listed with other Wampanoag tribes. In 2022 Yuchitown stripped “state-recognized” from the page, even though the state Commission of Indian Affairs regularly engages with them. Last year Yuchitown created a separate page for Herring Pond. Wiki editors resisted attempts to make changes or corrections.

After Wikipedia called Herring Pond a “cultural heritage group" and a nonprofi t that "claims" to descend from Wampanoags, Ferretti wrote in a Wiki discussion, “There is no claim, it’s a fact! Might I add, nonprofit status was imposed upon Tribal nations in the ‘90s because we didn’t have our federal recognition yet.”

Her tribe has a well-documented history. “We still have care and custody of our sacred places, burial grounds and our 1838 Meetinghouse, one of three built for the Tribe after the arrival of the colonizers. Our continuous presence and stewardship of these lands are recognized by historical records, deeds and treaties.”

Ferretti wrote that tribes without federal recognition already face significant hurdles to gain recognition, "and being labeled as 'self-identified' can add to these challenges by casting doubt on our legitimacy.” Mislabeling unrecognized tribes “can lead to the spread of hate, misinformation and further marginalization.”

Some Wiki editors agreed. One wrote that “there are strong negative connotations to saying someone who is Native 'self identifies,' because the inference is that they are Native in name only or falsely claiming to be Native. A change like this will impact countless articles…” Bohemian Baltimore, ARoseWolf and Yuchitown insisted there were no negative connotations. They opposed calling an unrecognized group a tribe because it legitimized groups with unverified claims. ARoseWolf said, “If they had proof of their connection to the original people they would have gotten federal recognition.”

This is a frequent refrain among the insiders, who apparently think the application process is a slam dunk instead of the long, difficult, expensive journey it is.

Yuchitown noted that “all of the editors who actively contribute to and improve Native American topics on Wikipedia have voted to support the renaming.” It’s a remarkable declaration that he and his allies act in concert.

The insiders took even stronger action against Lipan Apaches in Texas.

Late in 2022, Yuchitown changed the entry of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas to say that NCAI recognizes the tribe as state-recognized but the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) does not. In fact, NCSL took down its web page listing federal and state-recognized tribes because it couldn’t verify the accuracy.

In boilerplate that appears on all the Texas unrecognized tribes’ websites, Yuchitown said Texas has no legal mechanism to recognize tribes, citing an online article that in turn cites the discredited NCSL web page.

In 2022, a tribal member and Yuchitown fought back and forth, reversing each other’s edits. In WikiSpeak, it was edit warring. The tribal member informed Yuchitown that the NCSL page he quoted no longer existed. CorbieVreccan told the member she was up against “two experienced editors,” and Yuchitown accused her of conflict of interest and edit warring. His fellow travelers demanded to know if she had an official position with the tribe. She didn’t.

ARoseWolf wrote, “As Wikipedia is not a state or government-controlled entity it can make up its own rules for what content is allowed on its platform.”

The Wikimedia spokeswoman says that in some extreme cases the foundation relies on a trust and safety team that will investigate and may also take action.

Campbell wrote in the report that many Native American communities and people “have been targeted by the small group of propagandists in this complaint… And the thousands of people who make these communities have been slandered and assaulted on Wikipedia through the actions of these propagandists.”

Link to the original article:

[mossy-rock-in-a-field]

Several weeks ago, my retirement-age mother requested that I play Baldur’s Gate 3 for her because she has trouble with controllers/keyboards and wanted “to see what all the fuss is about with that cute wizard boy.” For context, my mother and I have done this sort of thing in the past with certain RPGs (dragon age, mass effect, etc.), but it’s been a few years since she’s personally requested a game like this. Basically, I control her Tav but let her make all the choices so she can determine how the story plays out without worrying about mechanics. She treats it like a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Anyway, here is a list of some of the things my mother has said and/or chosen to do throughout the course of BG3 in no particular order:

She is (obviously) romancing Gale. She is quite smitten with him and his passion for books and learning; she also thinks he’s polite and qualifies as “relationship material.” She also REALLY likes the things he’s said about his cat so far (my mom is a cat lady), so I know she’s gonna flip shit when we meet Tara in Act III.

She’s playing a normal druid Tav with a generally good alignment. Her favorite spell is Spike Growth because she thinks it’s hilarious whenever enemies walk into the AOE and die. I usually end up having to cast it at least once per battle per her request. Sometimes twice.

Contrary to her alignment, my mother tasks me with robbing every single chest, crate, barrel, and burlap sack we come across; this also includes people and their pockets. The party is always at max carrying capacity. ALWAYS. She doesn’t like selling things because “what if I need them.” The camp stash is in literal shambles. There is no hope of organizing it. She’s got like fifty seven sets of rags and a billion pieces of random silverware.

She MUST talk to every animal and corpse in the game. I think five hours of her total playtime so far (47ish) has been spent speaking to animals as many times as humanly possible. Like, I was thorough in my own playthroughs, but this is on a whole other level.

She did NOT get Volo’s lobotomy, but she did let Auntie Ethel take her eye in hopes of a cure for the tadpole. I did not understand the logic then. I still do not understand it now.

She is far more interested in fashion than equipment stats. Do you have any idea how much gold I’ve had to spend on dyes just to make things match? SO much. Same vibe as that “please someone help me balance my finances my family is starving” tweet but instead of candles it’s thirty thousand fucking bottles of black and furnace red dye.

We broke the prisoners out of Moonrise, but they got on the boat too early and bugged the fight by leaving Astarion and Karlach behind. Wulbren Bongle somehow got stuck in combat mode even after engaging the cutscene on the docks below Last Light; he he kept trying to run ALL THE WAY BACK TO MOONRISE nine fucking meters at a time while I frantically tried to finish the fight with the Warden, otherwise Wulbren would have run straight into the shadow curse. (I would’ve let him go; fuck Wulbren Bongle, all my homies hate Wulbren Bongle. But my mom didn’t know that, and she wanted to keep him safe. So.)

She had me reload a save like eighteen times to save the giant eagles on top of Rosymorn Monastery. Wouldn’t even let me do non-lethal damage just to get past things. I think getting that warhammer for the dawnmaster puzzle took us like an hour and a half alone. (Yes, I know you can use any warhammer, but SHE didn’t.)

She’s started keeping an irl notebook to keep track of her quests between play sessions. She writes down ideas and strategies when she thinks of them during the week, then brings them to her next game session at my house. I think she wrote about three pages on possible approaches to the goblin fortress alone.

She insists that I pet Scratch and the owlbear cub before every single long rest, no exceptions. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times until she is absolutely sure that the animals know exactly how much she loves and cherishes them. She has also commissioned a crocheted owlbear plush from a friend of hers and is very excited.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting, but those are some fun things I thought of. She’s enjoying the game and is telling all of her retired friends to get it and play it for themselves. She asked me “what is Discord” yesterday and I think my life flashed before my eyes.

anyway shout out to my mom for being neat

Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5

[ao3commentoftheday]

Bear with me here because I might end up torturing this particular metaphor, but when it comes to trying to get the image of a scene onto the page in the form of descriptive narrative, it might be useful to approach it like a visual artist.

If you've ever watched an artist do their thing (or if you're an artist yourself), you know that they don't just start at the top left corner of the page and draw the entire scene in all its detail, all in one go. I'm going to use an example of digital drawing with the use of software like Photoshop here because I have no idea if this metaphor will work with pencil and paper.

You have an image in your head. It might be super clear. It might be more vague. When you're starting to describe it, just sketch it in. Create a layer of broad strokes information like what the location is, how many people are in it, and what activity is happening.

Then add in a layer - whichever one is easiest. Let's pretend it's the location. Read through the sketch that you currently have and see where you have opportunities to describe the location. You don't have to front load everything at the top of the chapter, for example. You can add in details about the location as the characters move through it.

Add another layer. Are the characters' appearances different from what they previous were? Are you just establishing them at the start of the story? Do they have a "uniform" that they wear in canon that you've opted not to change? You can add in whatever details here you want, and again don't feel like you have to put it all in the same place. You can talk about a ponytail falling loose partway through an action. Or wait until someone else comments on a character's new pair of shoes.

Add another layer. What are the characters doing? How are they moving? Interacting?

Another layer. What are they saying? How do they sound?

Another layer. What other sounds are in the room? What smells? Do these change? Appear or disappear?

Keep going back and forth, toggling your way through your layers, adding things in here and removing them there. Every artist knows that sometimes a line just doesn't go in the right place and you have to erase it and draw it again.

Remember that no amount of work will give your reader a perfect representation of the vision in your mind, but also please know that that's okay.

By the time you finish your scene, some of those early layers might not exist anymore, and that's okay too. They were the sketch that started your verbal drawing. The base you used to guide your inks. Your final render won't have every line or brush stroke in it, and it'll be all the better for it in the end.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How lock-in hurts design

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a host of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists love the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick – especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on – a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance – 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then Apple started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences – they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are pure moral hazard – for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths – and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions – is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want relevant ads" is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can never anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers – people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is a poor substitute asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

Image: Belem (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desire_path_%2819811581366%29.jpg

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

[inkskinned]

my father told me he read it, but he hasn't read it. that's okay. my friends keep picking the words out of my throat.

someone once told me that the more trigger warnings that go on a book, the better it is. i didn't mean to write something with so many conditional phrases - i was writing about what i felt while being a human. sometimes you are a person and sometimes you are a statistic. sometimes it is falling upwards and sometimes it's sliding back down again.

my father tells me that it will be difficult to get people to read it. i didn't like the idea of a singular genre. i'm not going to lie to you - it is actually a difficult book to get through. i change the rules in it. it's not poetry or prose explicitly. it's neither false nor reality. i give you the tools to "solve" the book, but i let you do the thinking. my father says people don't care to think. i don't know about that - i think we just, like, enjoy reading.

the thing is - i was tired of stories about survival where someone with depression goes to therapy and wakes up okay. i didn't live like that. i was tired of books about violence, where the gore of what i experience was splashed in glitter to lick off the page. like, i was a person, you know? i had a life and a job and a family. and in books, i watched my story get ripped up so people could explore the viscera of my body. so they could feel good. my brother once called it inspiration pornography. we had walked out of a suicide-prevention seminar, both of us disgusted while the increasingly-elated presenter kept listing methods-of. i remember the look on my brother's face. like i would tear that man apart given the right time and place.

my father says that kids these days. he warns me against writing about things that are too-serious. he says that they don't want it. i don't listen. he does make me take out a scene from the book where i go to church after having sex with a woman. it used to be the 7th scene in the book. i don't think he's read further than that, it rocked him too hard to continue.

it's a book about being queer. it's a book about being raised catholic. it doesn't have monsterfucking, i'm sorry. it's just about, like.

at some point you have to choose to stay here. and then you do have to stay here, which takes practice. this is about forming the habit. this is about what happens after you've already started doing the work. because, like. you keep going. you have to. and it's like. very imperfect.

i should make a post on instagram. i should make this announcement less bittersweet. but like -- i'm giving it you, specifically, because i think you know why i had to write it. you and me. this little community.

body's a bad monster. here's the link if you're interested in ordering.