Reblogged niennathevalar
"if tumblr dies you can find me on bluesky" "if tumblr dies you can find me on Instagram" if tumblr dies you cannot find me. It's over. I'm free.
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
Anonymous asked:
Do you think authors sometimes don't realize how their, uh, interests creep into their writing? I'm talking about stuff like Robert Jordan's obvious femdom kink, or Anne Rice's preoccupation with inc*st and p*dophilia. Did their editors ever gently ask them if they've ever actually read what they've written?
Firstly, a reminder: This is not tiktok and we just say the words incest and pedophilia here.
Secondly, I don't know if I would call them 'interests' so much as fixations or even concerns. There are monstrous things that people think about, and I think writing is a place to engage with those monstrous things. It doesn't bother me that people engage with those things. I exist somewhere within the whump scale, and I would hope no one would think less of me just because sooner or later I like to rough a good character up a bit, you know? It's fun to torture characters, as a treat!
But, anyway, assuming this question isn't, "Do writers know they're gross when I think they are gross" which I'm going to take the kind road and assume it isn't, but is instead, "Do you think authors are aware of the things they constantly come back to?"
Sometimes. It can be jarring to read your own writing and realize that there are things you CLEARLY are preoccupied with. (mm, I like that word more than concerns). There are things you think about over and over, your run your mind over them and they keep working their way back in. I think this is true of most authors, when you read enough of them. Where you almost want to ask, "So...what's up with that?" or sometimes I read enough of someone's work that I have a PRETTY good idea what's up with that.
I've never read Robert Jordan and I don't intend to start (I think it would bore me this is not a moral stance) and I've really never read Rice's erotica. In erotica especially I think you have all the right in the world to get fucking weird about it! But so, when I was young I read the whole Vampire Chronicles series. I don't remember it perfectly, but there's plenty in it to reveal VERY plainly that Anne Rice has issues with God but deeply believes in God, and Anne Rice has a preoccupation with the idea of what should stay dead, and what it means to become. So, when i found out her daughter died at the age of six, before Rice wrote all of this, and she grew up very very Catholic' I said, 'yeah, that fucking checks out'.
Was Rice herself aware of how those things formed her writing? I think at a certain point probably yes. The character of Claudia is in every way too on the nose for her not to have SOME idea unless she was REAL REAL dense about her own inner workings. But, sometimes I know where something I write about comes from, that doesn't mean I'm interested in sharing it with the class. I would never ever fucking say, 'The reasons I seem to write so much of x as y is that z happened to me years ago' ahaha FUCK THAT NOISE. NYET. RIDE ON, COWBOY.
But I've known some people in fandom works who clearly have something going on and don't seem to realize it. Or they're very good at hiding it. Based on the people I'm talking about I would say it's more a lack of self-knowledge, and I don't even mean that unkindly. I have, in many ways, taken myself down to the studs and rebuilt it all, so I unfortunately am very aware of why I do and write the things I do most of the time. It's extremely annoying not to be able to blame something. I imagine it must be very freeing. But it ain't me, babe.
Anyway, a lot of words to say: Maybe! But that might not stop them from writing it, it might be a useful thing for them to engage with, and you can always just not read it.
Also, we don't censor words here.
Props to OP for answering so gracefully, but I'm not going to answer gracefully. It is more important than ever to call out fascism whenever you see it -- especially the quiet, soft, poisonously insidious kind that Anon is practicing here.
Anon ostensibly wants to know: "Do authors realize that they're writing about things that some people might find disturbing, horrific, upsetting, repulsive, or simply just TMI?" (Yes, obviously they know. Authors are not stupid; that's usually a requirement of the job (not always. But usually).)
But what Anon is actually asking is, "Why don't authors stop themselves from doing a Bad Thing? Why doesn't anyone else stop them?" The assumption underlying that question is: "Surely if they realized that they were doing something disgusting, they would stop immediately." Even more covertly implied: "I think writing about certain things automatically taints you with moral degeneracy--that is, it marks you as a possible or potential criminal."
To that I say: My friend, writing is just thoughts copied onto paper, and thinking is not a crime. Only actual actions can be crimes. What does it matter what other people think about? Literally so what? Why do you want people to be stopped from thinking about those things ("did their editors ever gently ask them...")? Why do you care? Do you feel that an author should provide a list of justifications and excuses before it's permissible for them to write about something? Why? And who do you think should be in charge of that? The government???? YOU???????
To any person reading this post: If the above questions are personally upsetting to you, if you find yourself huffily thinking something like, "Well, I care because it could normalize--", NOPE, STOP RIGHT THERE. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 This is a big red flag: You (much like the Anon) are exhibiting some early warning signs of Fascism, and that is not something to take lightly in the current political climate. There are some drugs you shouldn't experiment with even once, and fascism is one of them. Repeat as often as needed: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THOUGHTCRIME. WE DO NOT LIVE IN GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984.
But we already talk about thoughtcrimes now and then, don't we? I can't remember seeing someone talking about crimestop (also from Orwell's 1984):
In the Newspeak vocabulary, the word crimestop denotes the citizen's instinctive desire to rid himself of unwanted, incorrect thoughts (personal and political), the discovery of which, by the Thinkpol [Thought Police], would lead to detection and arrest, transport to and interrogation at Miniluv (Ministry of Love). The protagonist, Winston Smith, describes crimestop as a conscious process of self-imposed cognitive dissonance: The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. . . . He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions—'the Party says the Earth is flat', 'the Party says that ice is heavier than water'—and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. Moreover, from the perspective of Oceania's principal enemy of the state, in the history book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Emmanuel Goldstein said that: Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.
Read that twice, and then reread the Anon's question. Translate it through that lens: "Why," says the Anon, delicately disgusted, "are these authors not practicing better crimestop? I practice it all the time. Why aren't they?"
Great question, Anon. Why AREN'T they? Turn off your crimestop and give it some real thought.
(Hint: If the answer you come up with is "Because they are moral degenerates" or anything in that neighborhood, you are unfortunately still doing fascism. Try again. If you have tried several times and the only answer you can manage to come up with is a still a synonym of "moral degeneracy" then this is above my paygrade and I would recommend talking to a trusted grownup, a therapist, a spiritual leader, or possibly your least-online friend.)
I also think it's somewhat reductive to be like "X keeps showing up in a writer's work, therefore they must be obsessed with X". Maybe they are, especially if they keep shoehorning in something really specific, but often it's also just... the simplest and most direct way that they know of to explore something. Fantasy is saturated with depictions of killing and violence; is every fantasy writer obsessed with killing? No. Violence is a very direct and simple way to include conflict with high stakes that you can fill with tension and excitement. Fantasy is also chock full of slavery. Are fantasy writers super into slavery? No. Stories are about power and power differences. Putting a protagonist in chains or giving them an enslaved bodyguard or tangling them up in a slave revolution is a very direct and simple way to explore that dynamic. Authors will usually repeat the tricks that they're used to, and that work. So fucking many of my stories hook the reader with a random inexplicable corpse. So many of my climaxes are like "actually that super special power/big conspiracy/grand prophecy that this entire quest has been about? Fake. Whole thing was a lie this entire time and what's actually going on is something completely different. You've got half a chapter to adjust."
Maybe a writer keeps writing about incest because he actually likes to explore romantic relationships between close family members. Or maybe he keeps writing about incest because he wants to frame the situation as disgusting, and he knows that incest disgusted most of his audience the last three times he wrote it.
hey jason isaacs what the fuck
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Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada.
Generations of damage. For Putin.
Seriously, I’ve been trying to figure out how long it will take America to recover from this, and the brain drain that’s going to result from them firing so many scientists and going after so many international students, and the damage is going to be incalculable.
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.
A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.
I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.
Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)
Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.
SUPPORT BELOW 50% OF THE THRESHOLD IN THESE COUNTRIES:
Bulgaria - 35% Croatia - 45% Cyprus - 12% (!!!!) Czechia - 47% Greece - 27% Italy - 41% Latvia - 43% Luxembourg - 20% Malta - 11% (!!!!) Romania - 48% Slovakia - 47% Slovenia - 38%
SEVEN countries out of 27 have met the threshold so far. Deadline is 31st July, 2025.
This should absolutely be the law <3
It very much should. Here's an update on the numbers as of April 2025.
COUNTRIES BELOW 50% OF THRESHOLD:
Bulgaria - 36.8% Croatia - 47% Cyprus - 12.8% Czechia - 48.8% Greece - 31.7% (some progress!) Italy - 44.8% (a bit more progress!) Latvia - 44.6% Luxembourg - 21% Malta - 12% Romania - 50% (YAY) Slovakia - 48.8% Slovenia - 42.4% (there too!)
As you can see, it's slow going. Many more countries haven't reached the threshold yet, and remember, the deadline is 31/07/2025. We need them all up by then!
OTHER COUNTRIES IN NEED OF MORE SIGNATURES:
Austria (72.7%), Belgium (90.1% presque !!), Estonia (56.5%), Hungary (62.9%), Lithuania (61.1%), Portugal (53.6%), Spain (84.6), and France (81.8% allez les gars quoi votez sur ma vie).
To Poland, who reached a stratospheric 141.4%, I never doubted you. You hold the record for most signatures in relation to population size. Mass respect. You smashed that threshold.
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
Thank you Derek, menswear guide, for reminding me why paying more to be free advertising for brands is dumb.
every time the impulse hits I am able to quash it, thank you
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
So you don’t have to watch the video every time you need one of these hacks immediately:
1. If you feel nauseated, smell rubbing alcohol.
2. If you feel like throwing up, start humming.
3. If you have a runny nose, put your tongue to the roof of your mouth and press your thumb to your forehead for about 20 seconds.
4. If you have a headache, pinch the webbing between your fingers and rub it back and forth for about 1 minute.
5. If you’re lightheaded from standing up too quickly, clench your butt cheeks.
6. If your arm’s dead/has the pins and needles feeling, rock your head back and forth.
7. If you need to pee badly, think of sex to trick your brain and relieve the pressure.
8. If you have a migraine, stick your hands in ice water.
9. If you wanna calm your racing heart, blow on your thumb.
If you're lightheaded while standing up, opening and closing your fists is also something to do. Also try stretching before getting up!
(These are vasovagal syncope tricks, to get the blood pumping where it should be)
Thanks for adding another hack!
I used the humming one when I randomly started dry heaving today, and that shit worked so fast!👌🏼
A trick I have used often when I stand up too fast/start to see my vision black out is to quickly hold my hands up over my head. A doctor taught me this, it has always helped!
Reblogged squeeingfangirl
If I tell you this is a horror dance number it still won't prepare you. That last move was so terrifying even the judge was like "Let go! Let go!" If you told me they're actually possessed I'd believe you.
The music is a remix of the song Mere Dholna from the Bollywood movie Bhool Bhulaiyya, a remake of the classic Malayalam horror-comedy Manichitrathazhu. It's about a young bride that seemingly becomes possessed of Manjulika, a dancer of the ancient royal court whose tragic death has turned her into a vengeful spirit, one who evokes the wrath of the goddess Durga Kali. In the iconic scene that is repeated across remakes, the groom and his family discover his bride dancing in the dead of night in a manic, disassociative fugue, wearing a moth-eaten dancer's costume and a face smeared in kohl, ash and vermilion. She's hallucinating that she's Manjulika dancing carefree for the court with her lover. The upbeat music is deliberately incongruous with the pathos and creepiness of the scene in reality, especially as it crescendos in the bride's head to the moment when the king decapitates Manjulika's beloved in a fit of jealous rage.
This specific number is by the all-male troupe B Unique, performed for the Indian reality talent contest Hunabaarz. It's a modern fusion based on Bharatnatyam that turns up the creep factor by 200% and is basically a showcase of contortionism and synchronicity. One of the most perfectly choreographed and executed dances I have ever seen. Truly incredible!
The group is still taking their work across the world's talent shows. And yes, that guy is hypermobile enough to do that with his neck. XD
Reblogged lauda4theback
MOOOOOOM, they’re trying to turn Tumblr into TikTok again!
Reblogged lesbian-i-ching
Ao3 does not need an algorithm, you're just lazy
Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE
Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted
Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative
Purity culture is ruining fan culture and you all are fucking annoying
#Sorta starting to think that booktok is the bane of literature and fandom tbh#it used to be 'yay more people are enjoying books!!!!'#now its fast fashioned and people want a star system to rate fics?#not even gonna mention people adding fics to goodreads to rate like minblowing#yall need to be taught manners and respect ao3 and the writers holding it together
Reblogged
I cannot believe how stupid this is. What do they learn in school? And if you don't know things, why don't you shut the fuck up?
20-25 million people from nations all over the world died fighting against the Nazis. The US didnt even show up for years after it started. They sat and watched everyone else fight and die.
Rest of conversation -
REPORTER: So, just to clarify—your position is that France owes its entire existence to the United States?
LEAVITT: Absolutely. If it weren’t for the U.S., the French would be speaking German right now. That’s just a fact.
REPORTER: Interesting. Because if it weren’t for France, we wouldn’t even have the United States. Ever heard of the American Revolution? France bankrolled it. Sent troops. Fought Britain on multiple fronts. And, oh yeah—gave us the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of freedom. Do we only acknowledge history when it’s convenient?
LEAVITT: Well, the United States has been the beacon of global freedom—
REPORTER: Right, and who gave us the actual beacon? The French. And let’s not forget, France won World War I before the U.S. even entered it. So by your logic, does that mean Americans should be thanking the French for not speaking German in 1918?
LEAVITT: That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying—
REPORTER: Also, if we’re going down this road—how about the Louisiana Purchase? You know, that huge chunk of land that doubled the size of America? Bought it from the French. Are we sending them a thank-you note?
LEAVITT: Look, I think we’re getting off track here. The point is—
REPORTER: The point is, we didn’t just swoop in and save the day while France sat around waiting. Nations cooperate, trade, and yes, sometimes even rescue each other.
17. März 2025
#wrote a massive rant last night on this and then deleted cause what's the point#but damn ustrumpmericans need to open a history book once in awhile#wwi you enterred only once it was won#wwii you only showed up when it was convenient for you and after the urss exhausted germany troops#yeah Fuck that#also you never deserved the hope Lafayette put in you
Fic authors deserve more credit.
Story time: I started a book about 23 hours ago and just finished it. Also in that time I slept for 10 hours, spent time with family, was at work, etc. Anyway, I enjoyed the book (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda). But it felt like it flew by, so after I finished I looked up the word count because what are pages? Pages are meaningless. I only function in word counts anymore.
The estimate I found was 58,580. My immediate reaction was “oh, that’s why. That’s nothing!” But what a shitty response. Because no. That’s not nothing. That’s a whole. Damn. Book. An entire novel! And Fic authors regularly bust out 30k, 50k, 100k, 150k words. AND THEY DO IT FOR FREE. WHILE WORKING AND LIVING THEIR LIVES.
So anyway, thank your favorite fic author today because they deserve it. Because they’re amazing. They’re the MVPs.
Some rough word count equivalencies for you, via famous novels, just to give you an idea of what OP is saying:
30k fic = Animal Farm by George Orwell
50k fic = The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
75k fic = Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
100k fic = To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
150k fic = The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
200k fic = Moby Dick by Herman Melville
250k fic = Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
300k fic = A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin
350k fic = Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
400k fic = Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I WROTE SOMETHING AS LONG AS MOBY DICK AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW
I can’t believe I’ve surpassed Animal Farm.
Holy shit.
This is awesome. With that said, huge appreciation also to fic writers who write shorter fics - 10k, 5k, 1k, 500 words. Because yeah, huge long fics get a lot of love, and a lot of labour goes into them, but the same is true for tiny fics as well. Not everyone is banging out huge great novels, but little ficlets are fantastic and still bring readers a ton of joy.
So if you’re feeling a bit downcast because you can’t write that 50 chapter epic or your latest WIP is “only” 2k and it still took you ages - that’s amazing. Seriously. Not everyone is naturally wordy or prolific. And you can say a ton with just a few hundred or thousand words.
Props to short fic creators - you guys are awesome.
The moment I realized that in the average year, I write and post enough fanfic to equal a novel that falls between To Kill A Mockingbird and The Two Towers was a HUGE moment for me. I’ve only posted one thing that passed thirty thousand words ever in my ~career~, but it all adds up.
Here is your mission.
TSLA hit its all time high of $488.50 on 15 DEC 2024. To reach of a price of $114.00 would be a 76.7% drop. That's huge, right?
Yeah well, when I checked the price just now (12 MAR 2025 @ 1:31 PM EDT), TSLA is currently trading at $250.85. That's down 48.6% from the high.
Babes, we're already nearly two-thirds of the way there.
TSLA $114.00. I believe this is where I say 'like to charge, reblog to cast.'
Reblogged lesbian-i-ching
From Substack:
"The political rhetoric in the first five weeks of the Trump regime is giving clear indications that the United States fully intends to invade and seize Canada and Greenland at President Trump’s command. The possible timeline is 6-18 months of political destabilization to weaken the Canadian economy, split political parties, and carry out secret destabilization efforts, including identifying and making contact with Canadians who would betray their country."
And from Facebook:
(X)
Reblogged lesbian-i-ching
It's worth noting that there are some extraordinary people in the world who have been quietly doing the work for decades, and they should be celebrated with all the fervor that we denounce the villains. I first read about Harrison twenty-odd years ago, when he'd already been doing this for about fifty years, and this is one of those guys whose life can, indeed, be summed up by his headline.
James Harrison saved millions of lives. Millions. Not with anything flashy or dramatic, not with profound speeches or brilliant strategy or any of the things we insist are the ways to impact the world. He simply kept himself as healthy as possible so that every few weeks he could go and sit quietly in a room and give away a fundamental part of himself — quite literally his lifeblood — to people he'd never meet, for no pay and no expectation of acknowledgement. (He was, it should be said, acknowledged quite a lot per this article, but that's beside the point.)
When we talk about the kind of people we want to elevate and celebrate in our societies, I often think of people like James Harrison. I hope we get more of him; not just for his blood, but for his heart.