#unforth rambles

[unforth]

In case anyone was wondering, it took less than 15 minutes for this poll to get a comment from the exact kind of MXTX reader I do judge. They subsequently deleted but. I'd already screen capped it. Because really? Really.

😑

My answer to this is still visible in the comments. (No I didn't keep their name nor would I share it if I had.)

Also lest my commentary give the wrong idea with my snark and comment replies, TGCF is pretty much my favorite book of all time. I really really like MXTX's books! But I do get frustrated sometimes with how dominant her fandoms and fans can be on this platform.

I'm super out of it but hopefully I can word this well...

Idk I just feel like tumblr danmei is heavily dominated by mxtx readers who haven't read much else (I'm not judging, you do you) and I got curious if that was true.

[mikhael-lavyas17]

Standing before ancient wonders in Egypt. History never looked so magical

[mdzsartreblogs]

I know I'm easily 6 months behind on my tag audits (I just haven't had the time) but I did want to take a moment and celebrate:

This blog just hit 2,500 followers!

and it's 100 posts shy of 35,000 posts. Thirty five THOUSAND pieces of MDZS artwork. God, we're so well fed guys.

THANK YOU ARTISTS!!

[svsssartreblogs]

sorry, but i have to agree with the prev anon who mentioned that tagging art of a character who has prosthetics as body horror is ableist. i already knew about the au from the op and when i saw that tag on your post my feelings were hurt. even though the character lost their limbs in a violent way i don't think that necessitates tagging their body afterwards as body horror when the body horror itself is not being depicted. i really respect what you do to help share fanart but your overly aggressive response to that person feels off the cuff this time. you don't have to publish this btw, you can do whatever you want on your blog as our opinions don't control you et cetera but i wish you'd take a step back and re-examine your initial defensive response and maybe consider changing your mind some day

Prosthetics aren't body horror and aren't why I used the tag. I tagged body horror because Shen Jiu's arms were violently ripped off and that was explicitly mentioned in the text of that post. If someone posted art of someone with prosthetics with a sword through their chest, I'd tag that body horror too, cause I always tag artwork with "weapons actively inserted in someone's body" as body horror, just as I've always tagged "canon Shen Jiu dismemberment" as body horror, in a standard I've used for three years running this blog so that people can avoid content referencing dismemberment, a pretty major trigger.

I can, and do, apologize that my decision hurt feelings.

But I will not remove a tag for body horror from a post that shows a character emaciated from starvation and explicitly says their limbs were torn off. That's. That's body horror.

You want to know what I did that was ableist? I wrote that whole other post, and after I hit "post" I read it again and I'd said something like "when Shen Jiu got his body back but scars show where the damage was..." and I was like wow. Fuck, me. That's some bullshit way to phrase that, losing his limbs doesn't mean he lost his body. So I immediately edited the post. Because ew. I hate that I wrote that, that I thought that, before I checked myself. I can be ableist, as can anyone, and I can admit that I've said and done ableist things, and correct myself when I'm wrong, and I do and will continue to do my best.

But I can't do anything about people interpreting my behavior, actions, and explanations in bad faith. There was body horror in that picture with the depiction of starvation and in the post text where Shen Jiu having his limbs ripped off was mentioned. There's not in this gorgeous art of the same au, and so I didn't use the tag. Nor did I tag this other lovely art of prosthetics on Shen Jiu by a different artist as body horror, because it didn't directly reference the act that led to the loss of limbs. Because, as I said, prosthetics aren't body horror and aren't why I used the tag.

I really can't help what assumptions others make about me, and I especially can't help you persisting in that assumption in the face of my explanation. The moment you and the other anon came at me with "you did this because..." instead of "why did you do this...?" I was put in an impossible situation. I can't dispell your views of me without sounding defensive, even tho you've both ascribed motives/explanations to my behavior that are demonstratively false.

Yeah. Idk really know what else I can say. Alluding to having someone's limbs ripped off is body horror.

[destielficarchive]

Just a note that, now that I know what the drama referred to in the last reblog is:

I never knowingly reblog fandom events that claim to be "general" events (i.e. any bingo, bang, fundraiser, etc.) that claims "all are welcome" and then turns around and says "oh, except you."

If that's a problem for you, this is probably the wrong blog for you anyway, cause like. I write incest. (I don't write rpf, tbh it squicks me, but rpf authors, I support you.)

Hot tip in general? Don't make an event and say "welcome all!" And then be like "oh, except you." That's uh. Yeah, fuck that.

(To be clear: anyone who runs an event is allowed to name restrictions for their own comfort. But then don't advertise the event as open to all! Don't run an event as supposedly "general" Supernatural and then ban the second most popular ship in the fandom!)

[cnovelartreblogs]

hi, just so you know, the english translation link on the qianqiu masterpost appears to be broken. might just be an error on my end but i thought i'd let you know just in case.

I haven't had the time to update those posts in like a year, maybe longer, and unfortunately doing so is just really outside the scope of what I'm able to do for these blogs now. My life has gotten a LOT busier than it was when I first launched these, and I just can't implement them quite the way I'd originally hoped.

That post was made before Thousand Autumns was officially licensed in English. There are, as far as I know, now no fan translations still up, as they're now illegal. If you'd like to read Thousand Autumns, you should buy the official translations from Seven Seas. You can learn all about it here. Vol. 3 just came out a few weeks ago, and it'll be five volumes total.

(I'll update the post - thanks for letting me know!)

-unforth

[unforth]

Literally what I said on Bsky yesterday when I heard this fuckery.

If we manage to overthrow this bullshit government and jail the leaders of this coups please let's make it legal for Zelenskyy to come back to the US solely to punch Trump's and Vance's smug stupid faces. It's not assault when they deserve it, right? We all saw that they deserve it.

president zelenskyy is a stronger man than me because if two ignorant and deluded men like trump and vance started demanding i say please and thank you and calling me disrespectful like im a naughty child instead of a very traumatised and frustrated man trying to save his country from putin id have put them both in the ground with a single fucking punch

[unforth]

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

[duckprintspress]

How to Delete your NaNoWriMo Account

NaNo has done dubious things over the years that prompted me to stop using it, but this most recent dubious thing has tilted me from "not using it" to "deleting it." If you're like me, here's what to do:

Log in to your NaNo account

Go to settings

Select "delete account"

Go to the e-mail account associated with your NaNo account, find the e-mail they've sent, and click the "delete account" button in that e-mail

You're done

It's incredibly easy, and I'm hoping that if a lot of us delete - especially people like me, with long-time accounts who have won NaNo repeatedly, who have also supported them monetarily in the past - then perhaps they'll get some kind of message about what a shit idea this LLM stuff is.

They probably won't. But. I'm an optimist.

[unforth]

Everything feels awful right now but it isn't really. We still don't officially have a winner, but regardless of how the presidential election ends up, I wanted to take a minute and find what lights I can in the 3 a.m. darkness. Here's what I know:

* Kentucky overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to undermine the public education system by offering private school vouchers:

* Delaware has elected a transgender woman to the House of Representatives, the first out trans person of any gender ever elected to congress:

* For the first time in history, two Black women will be serving in the senate at the same time, and they are only the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected to the senate:

* New York State has passed a constitutional amendment enshrining the rights of pregnant people (including the right to an abortion), LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, immigrants regardless of legal status, and other at-risk groups:

* Democrat Josh Stein has beaten self-avowed Nazi Mark Robinson to become governor of North Carolina:

That's everything I know off the top of my head. It's not many bright spots, but it's not zero. I'm going to try to find more and I'll add them to the post. It's the only thing I can think of to do that isn't sobbing and throwing up or looking up Canadian immigration rules.

If you know more good news, I encourage you to add it in reblogs.

[unforth]

As someone else with depression... I love this.

See, during my worse depressive episode, I couldn't really feel anything and things that usually gave me joy just left me feeling dead inside and if I was actually dead inside and not ever gonna NOT be dead inside what was even the point?

Then one night, I was taking my dog out for her nightly walk and I spotted a firefly in the hall of my building. It would die if it was trapped inside. So, juggling Jonie's leash, I stewarded this dumb firefly back out the through the door, and smiled as I watched it fly away, twinkling and blinking in the night.

I finished Jonie's walk.

I got back to my apartment.

I broke down and sobbed.

Because I could still care about a firefly. It still mattered to me that it get back outside, and I could still smile when I knew it was safe.

For the first time in months I felt a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I'd get through this and still be myself on the other side.

Anyway that was over a decade ago and I'm medicated now and doing okay. But I always remember that firefly, and your alligator story really reminded me. I wish my therapist had understood me as well as yours understands you. Get your alligators and find joy - or the need for a med tweak, THEN joy. 💛

Today I was talking with my mom about why seeing an alligator is fundamental to my mental health. At first she laughed but I got her to listen and she gets it now. My psychiatrist and I call this the alligator litmus test, and it works really well for making decisions about my treatment. I bring this up because perhaps there is something in your life that you can use in a similar fashion.

I have severe major depressive disorder, and I treat this depression with medication. I've been on meds for about... seven years now, and sometimes we have to mess with them. But sometimes the emotional part of the depression is just super bad and there's something underneath that needs to be addressed. When we are figuring this out, my psychiatrist says to take one alligator and call her in the morning.

See, no matter how bad I'm feeling, seeing an alligator almost always cheers me up in the moment. (This works with other large crocodilians, too- they gotta be big, it doesn't work with caimans. I don't know why.) I can't look at their goofy toofers and beautiful eyes and bumpy hides and not be a little wowed by them. Millions of years of evolution have led to this amazing creature and they are completely unbothered by me. Almost all of the time, they make me feel happy. Or maybe I'll feel sad for some unspecified reason. Maybe I'll get worried about the ecosystem or something- but invariably, I will FEEL.

Unless, of course, it's my brain chemistry. If I can experience an alligator and not feel anything- not happy, not sad, just numb- there's something wrong and we should talk about adjusting my meds. Usually with a little tweaking I'm back to my very functional medicated baseline in quick order- instead of wasting time with coping skills and such alone when what I really need is brain chemicals, it's a much quicker way to communicate what's going on with me. At the same time, it also helps me know when the coping skills ARE likely to work without changing up my meds, or when there's something I need to work through with some help.

It's a pretty solid test. Might not work for anyone else on the planet, but it works great for me!

[duckprintspress]

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.

The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.

Either way, we are fucked.

Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.

Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.

SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)

[unforth]

Has this been done yet?

[duckprintspress]

I just really really wanted to make my own one of these. My list is pretty weird. I'm curious how people will compare.

[unforth]

Tbh the amount of time I've spent the last few days imagining their angry post-election phone calls is. Probably not a reasonable amount of time for me to spend imagining political platonic rpf. But man. I wish I could have heard it. How many times y'all thing they each said "fuck"?

this looks like one of those pictures you're supposed to see at least 10 years later

[theshenanijiang]

One of the best things, in my opinion, is being introduced to music I have never heard before because someone paired it with my current obsession. I go absolutely feral when authors post their playlists for stories, I love AMV/FMV, I even love artists saying, I listened to this when I was drawing. It's like connecting it to my current obsession just makes music I haven't heard that much more sparkly.