Basingstoke

newbie fic authors, shooting themselves in the foot: This fic is bad haha I suck at writing lol I am being mean to myself in the hopes that you will be nice to me but actually am dissuading anyone from even clicking on my fic because all I have done to advertise it is tell you why you shouldn't read it

me: I am King Big Dick of Fanfic Mountain and I have arrived in your fandom with the Express Intention of writing my Very Favorite Fics, which I will generously allow you to read. You're welcome.

If you tell me it sucks, I'm going to believe you. I generally do believe people when they tell me things, unless I have a reason not to.

Faking confidence is actually a pretty good way to become confident.

The thing is that the portrayal of Neanderthals as having been inherently grotesque and alien to H. sapiens is something we will never have proof of. But we do have proof that, in different locations and in different populations across time, we all found eachother desirable. We saw eachother and wanted to touch. And the offspring were held by their mothers and raised and had their own offspring in turn.

When you look for the first proof that H. sapiens found Neanderthals repulsive, you have to wait until the Victorian era, when the white masters of empires were busy portraying Neanderthals as stupid, brutish, and (of course) dark-skinned.

In more modern times, we’ve had people arguing that instead of seeing Neanderthals as Benighted Savages, they should instead be seen as Noble Savages, (allegedly) cruelly destroyed and driven from their lands by H. sapiens. Which one of their two you believe says more about your modern political views than it does about ancient H. sapiens.

And, whether we construct Neanderthals as Savage or Noble Savage, the fundamental assumption we project into the unfathomably distant past is still that H. sapiens saw Neanderthals as an Other, with the language we use being almost explicitly that of modern racial dynamics.

But we have no proof of any of that. We have no proof of hostilities. We know we co-existed and we had sex. That’s it.

Humans obviously have sex with some humans and kill others. We also know that, when small groups of humans occupy vast spaces with infrequent contact with others, unique cultures will always form, some more hospitable, some more neophobic/xenophobic. But many cultures of small settlements placed among huge unpeopled landscapes place supreme emphasis on hospitality to strangers. Plus, we fucking love other social animals, as evidenced by how we befriended wolves.

I’m a humourless weirdo and a wet blanket about popular constructions of Neanderthals as “monstrous”, and I freely admit it. But that’s because it’s tied up in legacies of imperialism. Not only that, but it also privileges one culture (yours, mine, modernity’s) as being most human by implicitly assuming we can project it onto people in the past. Since you don’t pretend that all global cultures share exact same values as you do, it doesn’t take more than a few moments’ reflection to realise you can’t do that to the past.

We also have more and more proof of how inventive, social and caring the Neanderthals were. So I really don't believe that the Homo sapiens would have found them particularly weird and unlikeable or hard to get along with.

Homo sapiens on twitter, 90,000BC:

Can I say something? 🥴😳

sometimes I think about the fact they probably wouldn't have known neanderthals were particularly different from them

Like, idk, we have a wide phenotype variation, idk why someone back then wouldn't have just been like Those Guys Have A Slightly Different Shaped Head.

Yeah if anything, rather than being “monsters”, they were the original Short Kings.

Compare the two Neanderthals examples on the left with the H. sapiens skeleton on the right:

rebloging but not letting this be ommited

I knew this website wouldn’t let me down

When a commenter, in all sincerity and warmth, asks you for a sequel to a story you wrote a literal generation ago?

Yes, it's bemusing. Absolutely, it's tempting to gently guide them toward things written oh, say, *after* you stopped dating objectively abusive people and vomiting the results onto the page. But what it *truly* is?

Friends, we have undeniable proof, right there in our comment sections, that fancreatures are the most purely hopeful beings on this earth.

May we ever bless our communities with our eternally suspended disbelief.

Amazing, isn’t it?

I have received sequel inquiries about stories I wrote in the previous century.

bro yes he did lol says it in my bible 649 times

transman christian/catholic here, firstly, thanks for sticking up for our rights even if you're not trans yourself, i appreciate you doing that and it means a lot to me, if not a lot of others.

i'd like to raise a counterpoint however, and obviously feel free to dispute me on this, but considering jesus asked his disciples to partake in consuming his flesh, would that not imply jesus bottoms?

incredibly important question, lets ask the internet

my favourite contributions so far to this discussion

I’m gonna ask my very catholic but very open minded cousin

the greatest plot point in Teen Wolf is still, without question, the fact that sometimes turning into a werewolf goes wrong and you turn into a lizard instead

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/12/29/the-japanese-micro-forest-method-is-transforming-cities

The Japanese ‘micro-forest’ method is transforming cities

"More than 420 million hectares of forest have been lost to other uses since 1990, according to the UN’s 2020 State of the World’s Forests Report.

With more than 85 per cent of the global population living in urban areas, micro-forests in cities offer an essential opportunity to combat deforestation. 

The Miyawaki Forest Technique, invented by Japanese botanist and plant ecology expert Professor Akira Miyawaki in the 1970s, is the inspiration for micro-forests worldwide. 

These diverse, organic small forests can be created on sites as small as nine square metres, and only use native species that would otherwise grow naturally in the planting area. They grow up to 10 times faster than monoculture forests, in just two to three decades. 

Since Miyawaki’s work began, more than 280 micro-forests have been planted."

...

"In polluted urban areas, micro-forests can help to restore soil, water and air quality, according to the Woodland Trust. 

Their small size allows plantation in relatively limited urban space, often taking advantage of unused spaces such as school playgrounds, cemeteries, and near metro stations. They can also help to reduce the impact of heavy rainfall, and to keep towns and cities cooler. 

Micro-forests can create more habitats for wildlife in cities, such as blackbirds or hedgehogs.  When planted in distinct layers, they can also develop plant communities of smaller shrubs and herbs, which allow the micro-forests to become self-sustaining after just three to five years of growth. 

“Our pocket forests offer a myriad of benefits” says Elise Van Middelem, Founder and CEO of SUGi.

“Perhaps most importantly, they can support the positive well-being of communities. From a psychological perspective, interacting with nature reduces physical stress and can improve symptoms of mental ill health, including anxiety or depression.”

The link provided doesn't really go over the method, so I looked into it a bit more. The key is planting a bunch of native trees close together. Like, 2ft tall trees, 2 ft apart. The overall garden can be just 3ftx3ft, any is fine really. By planting the trees close together, they grow upwards faster (rather than out sideways). Additionally, they make sure to prepare/improve the soil in advance to hold lots of water, and to apply lots of mulch over the top. You water it tons and weed it in the first two years or so, then it goes on by itself without maintenance.

The more diversity in native trees you can plant, the better. I think this @jstor blog post on the jstor website has a nice overview and some info on how the technique is being utilized around the world: https://daily.jstor.org/the-miyawaki-method-a-better-way-to-build-forests/

really good tiktok

Transcript:

Girl, just do it fat. Don’t wait until you’ve lost enough weight. You’re worthy of taking up the space that you fill. Live your life now. Don’t wait for some future version of yourself that you think will be more deserving. You have every right to pursue your passions and dreams just as you are today. Your worth isn’t tied to a number on a scale or the size of your clothes; it is inherent in who you are. You’re allowed to be seen, heard, and celebrated in whatever body you inhabit right now. Don’t let anyone or anything convince you for too long. So go out. Do it fat! Wear the clothes you love, pursue the opportunities that excite you, and live unapologetically. There’s no reason to put off living the life that you want, waiting for a moment that you’re not even sure will come. You deserve to be happy and fulfilled just as you are, and the world needs you exactly as you are today. Everything good that has ever happened to you, happened in this body. Girl, just do it fat.

guys check ao3 for interview with the vampire fics bc apparently there’s 65 pgs worth of it now, being dated back to 1995.

I’m just hoping her estate doesn’t follow in her wishes. Maybe I’m just negative but I wouldn’t trust it until we find out what her heirs have planned.

There’s nothing they can do, if the fics are posted to AO3 and aren’t being posted for any kind of monetary gain (which they shouldn’t be because AO3 doesn’t allow that for exactly this reason).

Because here’s the first thing: fanfiction falls under fair use, for reasons, which is why so much of it exists and you don’t hear many stories about people being sued for it or creators coming after fans anymore. You’ve technically been able to post fanfic of Anne Rice stuff, but here’s the second thing: although plenty of people did post anyway, people often didn’t out of either respect for her wishes (because she was expressly against fanfic authors writing about her characters, a stance I’m given to understand she reversed in her later years) or the fandom genetic-memory fear that she would personally try to come for them.

But here’s the third thing: the estate can’t come for you directly unless you list direct contact info on AO3. Because what are they going to do? Leave a comment with a takedown notice, with no way to know if you have notifications turned on? No! AO3 has no native way to directly contact any of the authors archiving their work there. If they want to get to you, they have to go through AO3, and as long as you’re following AO3’s rules (which again are literally in place to protect you against exactly this kind of thing and specifically protect you from this actual person/estate, as her history is part of the reason AO3 exists) AO3 is going to tell them they have no ability to make you take it down. You actually won’t hear from the estate for posting on AO3, because AO3 would be the ones dealing with it for you.

So like. Take a moment and appreciate the folks who are posting freshly because they feel safer with her gone, sure. But also take a moment to appreciate that AO3 exists and protects us, and has been protecting us from their first day.

& then maybe go drop them a couple bucks to help keep the lights on so they can keep doing so.

they absolutely could sue if they pursue through whoever owns copyright ownership now and AO3 decides not to react to initial requests or dmca (i don’t know why they would invite that upon themselves)

whether you make money from it or not doesn’t change a thing and i don’t know AO3 but unless they specifically have some kind of litigation fund, precisely for this, i don’t know why they would be uniquely nonresponsive to dmca

the only reason why fanfiction doesn’t get sued into nonexistance is because ip owners choose not to pursue most of the time. probably because there’s no profit potential in doing so, like there is in other forms of content creation

“I don’t know AO3” is the most accurate thing you just said. They do, in fact have a legal team specifically for dealing with exactly this.

Additionally, when I said fanfiction falls under “fair use” I wasn’t just saying it was fair game. The USA (which is where this matters because that’s where Anne was and where I’m pretty sure AO3 is) has a doctrine within copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without having to acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair Use is used as a defense to copyright infringement claims on some things that might otherwise be considered infringement- like fanfiction.

And it’s even ABLE to be used as a defense wrt fanfiction because one of the things used to defend fanfiction is that it is transformative/derivative.

Which is why being not-for-profit isn’t, as you seem to think, not important. It’s actually quite literally one of the backbones of why fanfiction is typically considered fair use and able to be produced and shared publicly without actually breaking copyright laws.

As for the AO3 stuff, there’s an entire article on Wikipedia with more and more accurate explanations about what happened and why, but here’s an important excerpt of it, with bold added by me for the deeply relevant bits:

It’s not that AO3 is “unresponsive” to DMCA/copyright notifications. What I meant was that the org that runs AO3, the OTW, is willing and ready, legally, to go to bat for fandom and for the rights of fanfiction authors to produce and publicly share fanfiction without profit (and are actually even working to change copyright laws to specifically protect fanfiction authors). If you’re following the rules AO3 set forth and someone wants to come for something you posted on AO3, they will almost certainly have to go through AO3’s legal dept, and AO3 is ready for them. Because the OTW knows that when someone comes for one of us, they come for all of us.

So… as long as we sticking to the rules of fair use, CAN someone try to come for us on AO3? Enngh. Well, maybe you’re right, they can try, I suppose- if they want an expensive headache that is very likely to go nowhere… but I don’t think even the rat has crossed that boundary.

And as a last point, I just want to reiterate: the majority of people that have waited to post, waited out of respect for Anne’s historical stance or out of a valid historical fear that has not applied in a while anyway. Anne actually reversed her stance from trying to disallow fanfiction to saying what amounts to “I was afraid of it a long time ago, and I still don’t understand it now, but you do you.” So like, just on that alone, I doubt the estate would do anything in the first place.

They have a litigation TEAM precisely for this.

They are indeed willing to be nonresponsive to a DMCA notice that comes down to “this is fanfic of my work and I believe that infringes my copyright.” (They will respond to a DMCA notice that’s “this is my work, which I wrote, and someone else has posted it here without my consent.”)

And note that: in 13+ years of activity, they have faced ZERO lawsuits.

Not a single fanatic author, not a single media corporation, not a single band or recording company, has filed a copyright infringement suit aimed at AO3.

Huh. Lookit that. As soon as a fic archive was willing to say “um, no, I don’t think that’s illegal; if you think it is, meet me in court” - they all backed down.

(The previous issue wasn’t “Rice sued fans.” It was “Rice threatened fans - and sent notices to archive sites like ff.net.” And those sites removed or banned stories based on her works, without looking into the actual legalities.)

So here’s a fun fact most of my followers probably don’t know about me:

The lawyers who defended fanvids at that hearing are on the OTW’s legal team, and in fact helped found the OTW/AO3.

One of my old fanvids [x] is directly cited in the Library of Congress’ official recommendation [x] (page 60 footnote 213) dictating how fair use laws should be applied in their 2010 ruling [x]:

You can find the documents linked above on the US Copyright Office’s official website under section 1201 of Title 17 of the United States Code: https://www.copyright.gov/1201/

“In 1934, photographer A. L. “Whitey” Schafer staged this photo to violate the Hays Code's censorship decrees in as many ways as possible in a single picture.” (X)

there’s nothing wrong with overly self-indulgent shit like honestly

make that fuckin beauty and the beast au with your otp

draw your favorite character broken and bloody for no reason

make a self-insert that’s super important and powerful

write porn of that obscure ship centered entirely around your personal kinks

headcanon your faves as your sexuality, gender, etc

have fun man

i mean in the past i’ve made fun of all these things but i’ve grown up and chilled out and honestly? fiction is your platform to go nuts. have a great time. do what you want to

just respect other people’s boundaries and don’t go forcing your headcanons down other people’s throats, because they deserve to have a good time too

enjoy fiction however you want to and don’t let other people tell you how it’s supposed to be enjoyed

to all the people reblogging this and saying “except for this type of ship i don’t like”: get bent

me in a silly hat, completely wasted: boy would i!

I genuinely, 100% cannot tell if this is a legit advertisement or a Cask of Amontillado joke. 

One of JRR Tolkien’s ideas for Aragorn’s backstory in The Lord of the Rings was that he was actually just three or four generations removed from Isildur himself.

Then how did he survive for the thousands of years between the Second and Third Ages?

The story goes something like this:

Many hundreds of years ago, young Aragorn fell in love with an Elven woman, who exactly resembled Lúthien Tinúviel in shape and outward form.

She called herself Arwen Undómiel, the Evenstar.

He fell for her, and romanced her, and gave himself to her; together they lived in her kingdom, where her magic and her power slowed Time to a crawl for them, while hundreds and hundreds of years passed in the world outside.

At first, the Elven-maid seemed every inch a queen: beautiful, graceful, soft-spoken, meek, and with the manners befitting an upbringing in Valimar long ago.

But over time, Aragorn came to realize that his beloved had a hard, greedy, grasping side, even a cruel streak, which more and more showed itself in unexpected flashes.

Worse, she was not who she seemed to be.

Eventually Aragorn pieced together the secret.

His bride was Sauron, divested of her usual male disguise.

Greatly weakened by the loss of the Ring, Sauron yet maintained strength enough to craft a prison for the heir of Isildur: a false realm of hollow bliss and sterile delights, where the one she thought was the greatest threat to her power could languish in eternity.

A part of herself, wearing a female aspect – the gender she had hidden long ago in the deeps of time, to gain entrance as an apprentice to the smithies of Aule – remained in this pocket world, as Aragorn’s bride: a plaything to keep his attention from the bars of his gilded cage. 

But eventually, Aragorn figured it out.

Eventually, Aragorn escaped.

Thousands of years had gone by in the world outside since Aragorn had been ensnared by Sauron.

Now, emerging from long captivity in a magical sub-realm, he studied the world around him, and learned what had changed and what had endured.

He met Gandalf, and learned much from the Grey Pilgrim, and taught him some things of his own; and, in search of information, he pursued and captured Gollum, who had possessed, and been possessed by, the One Ring for so many centuries.

And, shortly before his ascent to the throne of the reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, he met his future bride: Eowyn Elfsheen, sister-daughter of Théoden, King of Rohan.

(PS: Christopher Tolkien or another amanuensis may have written this story down as part of the Secret Library Archive Project.)

I ship this now.

My reaction:

“Aragorn’s backstory“ Oh, ok, is this gonna be what the whole Amazon thing is going to be about?

“He meets Arwen“ Yeah ok

“She seemed evil” um, ok…that’s new.

“She was Sauron“

so you’re telling me Sauron was getting ploughed by Aragorn for thousands of years “as part of a fiendish plan to waylay the heir of Isildur”, no other reason, Sauron just lying back and thinking of Mordor, hating every second of it, is that what you’re telling me

oh i'm going to misusle and straight up fuckle this knowledge so badly

The pastoralist fantasy of "modern life is too stressful so I should move to a remote area and do hard labor" is so funny

I have a theory about that.

I think that what people want, when they talk about a pastoralist fantasy is actually an anti-capitalistic fantasy: i noticed, even from my experience, that most people don't mind phisical labour if it gives them results: actual, tangible, results.

Once my boss asked me to copy every article from a website and paste them in the new one. It took me roughly four hours for three days to do and my soul was slowly leaving my body. It was easy work, i mean who wouldnt want to earn money to just click here and click there, rinse and repeat? But it was boring, ripetitive and basically useless.

But when I take some time and clean my house, i sweat, i am tired but... satisfied. I see in front of me the result of my hard labour and I am happy, or at least i don't think i wasted my time.

So the fantasy of working hard but at least getting something out of it is appealing: why do people work in kitchens? Or bakeries and wake up at dawn to make bread? Or any hard job like that? I knew a guy that had the possibility of having every job he wanted, but he opened a bar and couldnt be happier.

This is my idea, i'm not a student in sociology or anything but I hope i made a point.

I have two degrees, and my previous job was the marketing department head for an international biotech company. I was well-paid, but dreaded work every morning. The endless cycle of low-grade manipulation and feeling like “making money for someone else to pocket, HELPING no one else” felt miserable.

I left and now work at a garden center. I haul around plants and educate people about them, so they can make informed choices. I help people, and seeing the plants grow under my care is wonderful. My soul is flourishing, my heart is at peace. My coworkers are all honest (as far as I can tell), and there’s no push for upselling or pushing people to buy stuff if it’s not very suited for their landscape.

Even if my wallet is a lot lighter these days, so too are my worries!

I worked IT in a city and fuck. People try to controll your every second. Faster! More efficient! You took a second too long to type that. You drove 56 kmh but could have gone 58 without getting caught. I messaged you a minute ago but you didn't reply so I walked to your cubicle to ask you. Also let's have an efficiency meeting. You are too slow. That's your feedback. How long will that task take? Can we somehow shorten that?

And all for what? To manipulate the user to buy product. Not to improve the website mind you. Whenever I suggested: hey, our website is not useable for the visually impaired/people with motor problems. I got back an: we don't care they're too small of a market value

So can you really blame me for fantasizing about a life where I can just plant flowers and vegetables and walk everywhere without the need of manipulating people and mikromanage my every second

my current job is managing a plasma cutting machine, so i have to spend a lot of time dragging big chunks of iron on and off conveyor belts and i end up sore and filthy at the end of every shift, and usually a bit scratched up.

but it’s third shift and there’s no supervision whatsoever, so while the machine is running, i can type on my phone. i’ve written most of a novel so far with my thumbs, covered in grease and iron dust. and i also produced a lot of construction materials for bridges, dams, warehouses, and skyscrapers.

i really like my job.

This is Marx's theory of alienation.

When people are removed from the tangible results of their labor, they become distressed and dissatisfied - and this is the result of capitalist profit-focused processes.

huh. I think part of the reason I like my job is because I do have semi-tangible results. I take a messy doc and fix it; I create a table of contents; I do a thing and it is done. It’s not one big endless grinding process.

love when nonfiction books have a few pages of pictures in the middle. that kicks ass, every book should have a halftime show

"what if a dangerous man pretends to be trans to-" what if we actually dealt with the underlying causes of dangerous men. what if predators faced real consequences more often. what if you stopped using trans women as a proxy for your grievances with liberal feminism's individualist denial of the need to fight systemic issues.

what if you stopped assigning blame for patriarchy's evils to one of its more vulnerable victim groups.