undyingembers - Tumblr blog

[undyingembers]

i feel like a lot of people need to hear this lately but. you gotta stop taking numbers so seriously on the internet

take it from someone who went through that shit first hand. when i was on twitter, the numbers culture there utterly consumed me. it came to a point where no matter what kind of attention i got, it was never enough—because it never compared to “that one time.” i became an asshole who was constantly asking people to retweet, to share, to comment, because i was always chasing the same high from times where my work “blew up.”

it genuinely makes me sad to see so many people falling into the same trap i did. it’s okay to enjoy feedback on something you worked hard on—i’m not saying it isn’t. what you have to be careful of, though, is perceiving low numbers as failure.

just because a piece gets low notes, doesn’t mean your work is bad. it also doesn’t mean people don’t care, or that they aren’t doing enough to help you share your work around. sometimes the algorithm just fucks you over. sometimes the time of day is wrong. sometimes the subject matter is just too niche to catch people’s attention.

i guess what i’m trying to say is give yourself some grace. try and pull yourself free of the mentality of always needing more than you have. your worth is not in the numbers you get, nor are your abilities. this kind of mindset fucked me up for years, and i just hope that some of what i’m saying helps people

[undyingembers]

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

[undyingembers]

when is comes to asexuality and aromanticism you have to be okay with contradiction. one ace person will say asexuality is about not experiencing attraction, another will say it’s about not caring to act on attraction, another will say it’s not experiencing arousal. one aromantic will consider themself queer, one won’t. two people with seemingly identical experiences will use two different labels. aro people will be in romantic relationships, ace people will have sex. you get it.

[undyingembers]

Finished handwriting the next chapter of Iron Maidens. Now to type it out!

[undyingembers]

which is definitely not an omen

[undyingembers]

[undyingembers]

There’s still debate about split attraction on my dash why do you people even care

[undyingembers]

*Actually overwhelmed and tried to cover it up

兄弟，笑不出来，我笑不出来了啊

[undyingembers]

i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

[undyingembers]

WIP Wednesday

[undyingembers]

Thankfully, Lenarius/Leonosa would be very busy studying any scroll or magic item picked up on the adventure and/or doing research on their location/situation. At camp, s/he can be asked for information regarding terrain and enemy weaknesses.

I say "thankfully" because if s/he wasn't busy doing that, s/he'd be fussing and cleaning non-stop and looking over other people's shoulders.

ok i mentioned this in discord too but PLEASE tell me what your kc's #1 camp activity would be if they were a companion

agria makes actually good magical items if the player gives her the materials and coins that sprout legs and try to run away from you when you're not looking if you don't

[undyingembers]

Beautiful and dangerous shiny snake😋

[undyingembers]

just a reminder to COMPLETELY boycott Eurovision this year; Azerbaijan and Israel, despite committing genocide, are STILL allowed to compete & have NOT been banned. by refusing to ban both countries, Eurovision is profiting off of the genocide of Palestinians and Armenians.

do not listen to the artists. do not pirate or stream the artists' music, and this applies to ALL the artists who are competing and performing this year. do not listen to the songs on ANY platform, do not give them ANY attention.

write to your broadcasters and tell them you REFUSE to watch the channels until they recognise the Armenian and Palestinian genocides & that you find it disgusting how they are allowing Eurovision despite Azerbaijan and Israel's entries.

do NOT give eurovision OR the competing artists ANYTHING but silence.

boycott ALL of eurovision.

[undyingembers]

forget-me-not: an old word plant with small blue flowers, representing remembrance, devotion, and true love

absolutely lovely commission of Piper and Arueshalae by @big-cheesy-productions! thank you again, this turned out wonderfully, i love these two so much!

[undyingembers]

[undyingembers]

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.