claudeng80

[claudeng80]

You see I too often sat in school classes and thought “when am I ever going to need this, I’m never going to be an engineer, I’m never gonna be a scientist, I’m never gonna be a linguist” and then I grew up and it turns out a lot of bigots and cults and scams and grifts hinge their entire business model on you just. Not knowing what a protein is or some shit

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Reblog and put in the tags what the first fandom you ever read fanfic for was

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I saw some folks nervous about contacting authors on ao3 vs other platforms to ask them about creating art, bound books, podfic, etc. inspired by an authors work. Got me thinking.

One thing I will say is enjoying an author and wanting to talk to them isn't parasocial, it's social! We're in the fandom together!

Please share nuance, I am so curious.

[claudeng80]

One of the coolest parts about being a fan of fanfic is you can actually contact the author. And they will respond. And then you can message them nonstop until they allow you into their lives and then you’re becoming their beta reader and suddenly you know multiple authors of all types of fiction books and fanfic authors who will drag out their deleted fics for you to read at a moments notice.

Anyway. Comment on fics and message authors. It’s absolutely worth it.

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hamlet / bill and ted’s excellent adventure

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Pete Seeger.

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Sometimes it’s hard to read fanfic when you’re studying herbalism.. when they have the character preparing a tincture to use that same DAY!!?

Baby those dried herbs need to sit in that jar with high proof alcohol for at LEAST a month!

That’s why before the use of calendars ppl use to prepare their tinctures either on the new moon or full moon. A a full moon cycle is usually 28 days or so. And they would give the moon names so it’s easier to remember when/what month said tincture was bottled.

This is also why herbal medicine is prepare in small batches. You have to take your time preparing your bottles. Making sure everything is clean so you don’t end up with mold. Diluting your grain alcohol. Heckkk knowing when to pick your herbs for max potency! Drying your herbs! That takes a lot of time too!

I didn’t mean to rant lol

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So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

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Bad End

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Recursive Error (Murderbot AU)

You would think, by this point, I would be used to being a disappointment. A rogue SecUnit is a disappointment by its very nature, the entire point of our existence to be reliable and predictably capable, but I’ve certainly fucked up enough situations on my own to earn the title fair and square. What’s one more?

And yet clearly I am not immune to the emotion because, somehow, the look in Zen’s eyes when he rounds the corner and I just wave hello like a moron makes me want to turn right around and jump out the airlock.

Kiki and Mitsuhide keep their distance, but they’ve cut off all the routes deeper into the ship. Shirayuki’s not talking, but she’s watching and radiating disapproval in the feed. She may be running a ship these days, but she's made for terraforming, not combat. She doesn’t really understand what I do, and whenever she can’t ignore the evidence you could just about cut the unhappiness with a knife.

“Obi, you’re bleeding,” Zen hisses and grabs for my arm. I clamp down on the reflex to either evade it or, worse, put him on the ground, and let him drag me.

“It’s not that bad,” I say. I barely even had to turn down my pain receptors, and I’m at 86% operational reliability and holding. “Just a scratch.” This is not the right thing to say.

“A scratch?” Zen’s voice cracks, and the feed buzzes with Shirayuki’s still-silent restraint. “You went out without telling anyone. Again. You hid your tracks, and you got hurt where we couldn’t be there to help you. We worry, when you're not where you're supposed to be.”

Saying that they couldn’t have helped me anyway would also not be the right thing to say. I don’t even know why I helped Torou in the first place, if it was habit or pity or some kind of perceived debt I haven’t even articulated to myself. I worked hard enough to get free of those ties to jump right back into them-

Zen stops in the middle of the hallway. His hand is still locked on my upper arm, but he doesn’t look at me. “Next time we won't come after you.”

He doesn’t wait for me to respond before tugging me into motion again, marching toward Medical and my imminent scolding, which gives me enough time to split my attention and replay that sentence a few more times. There’s a subtle difference there in the tone, not just a statement of what Zen wants, not even a threat, just an statement of fact. If I run off again, I don’t get to come back.

That would have been a perk, on most of my jobs. To be able to walk away and not get hunted down? Unbelievable good luck. But the thought of walking away from Wistal, to never have Shirayuki watching over my shoulder or hear Zen call me the name I chose for myself-

I don’t like it. At all.

The door slams open with more force than usual, a clear statement that I have, as anticipated, earned Shirayuki’s disapproval as well. Zen points to the examination table and I sit. The disappointment will be doing exactly what the disappointment is told for the foreseeable future, apparently. “I’m going to go talk to Mitsuhide,” Zen snaps, and stomps out of the room.

The articulated arms of the MedSystem don’t twitch. It’s far too quiet in here even for me. “You’re mad,” I say, and strip off what’s left of my shredded shirt.

Just relieved, Shirayuki says in the feed. Still, nothing moves.

I may be just a SecUnit, and she may be a bot, but I know mad when I hear it. “You’re mad,” I repeat. You’re upset I ran off without telling anyone.

It’s not like I’m any better, she responds, and perhaps there’s some justice to that but I’m sure not about to be the one to bring it up. I can’t say I’m not curious, but anything that has led to her current circumstances is none of my business. She does sound a little less mad, now, at which my operational reliability ticks up one relieved percentage point. Sometimes just identifying an emotion makes it easier to deal with, a piece of wisdom Torou can never know I even remember. The slice across my arm where the alien biologic tried to lasso me finally quits leaking as the MedSystem squeaks into motion and plasters a delicate line of sealant across the objectively minor wound. 

The sense of Shirayuki in the feed draws close again, no longer buzzing with anger but a far more familiar curiosity. It’s one of her best features, when it’s turned on the wonders of the universe or some problem in Zen’s way. It’s an entirely different feeling, turned on me. That scar, she says, and hesitates. I can’t imagine how many possibilities she must be imagining for it to make that long of a pause. She can model the hydrologic and weather cycles of an entire planet simultaneously. How can a simple SecUnit absorb even a fraction of that? I resist the urge to cover my chest with my hands. Was it serious?

The cubicles and my own regenerative processes aren’t supposed to leave scars, but I’m not ready to share my own theories about that. The memory is gone, purged probably a few times over at this point, but the organic brain doesn’t let go of pain so easily. “It was a long time ago,” I say out loud because it’s easier to stick to a fraction of the truth that way.

Curiosity in the feed intensifies, and I don’t have to be told that somewhere in the background she’s searching through her records for some relevant clue that will explain me. I don’t know whether to cheer her on or beg her to stop. I won’t run off again, I promise, but you don’t have to look too closely. You could get burned prying into security corporation records.

I have procedures for that, she says. I don’t know how she can do it, forgiving me so quickly, but once again she does, surrounding me in the feed with playful images of seedlings sprouting after wildfires and volcanoes. I’m glad you’re back, Obi.

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Step Forward 4 (Dune AU)

Shirayuki isn’t there for the worst of it. Obi’s long hours and months of work have left her competent to carry a crysknife, but nothing will ever make her a warrior.

When Raj’s head was raised on a pike at the hands of those he’d wronged, Shirayuki was sewing stab-wounds shut in a medical tent sealed against the worst of the impinging sands.

When two armies bent the knee to Izana, one in joy and one despairing, she was in an ornithopter skirting the still-glowing ruins of the shieldwall mountains.

When the fight for Arrakis is finally over for good, she’s already back in her apothecary shop in Arrakeen. Her stocks are largely either stolen or worthless, after so long, and the neighbors who’ve known her since she trailed at her grandparents’ heels watch the blue glow in her eyes and the water-counters braided in her hair with suspicion. The neighborhood as a whole cheers the return of their healer, but she's not one of them anymore.

Read the rest on AO3

[claudeng80]

Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97

this should be a working gift link

Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.

"When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. But don't you worry. No more ashes, no more sackcloth, And an armband made of black cloth Will some day never more adorn a sleeve: For if the bomb that drops on you Gets your friends and neighbors too, There'll be nobody left behind to grieve."

from We Will All Go Together When We Go

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Reblog to give prev the power to write their fanfiction

[claudeng80]

Obiyuki AU Bingo, July: Week 3 Round Up

Fanfiction

Pennies From Heaven by @sabraeal

Fan Art

Fresh Canvas by @aerie-skysinger Not a Day Has Gone By by @aerie-skysinger Sage & Her Shadow by @aerie-skysinger Active Temptation by @h0rizn

[claudeng80]

Look I'm sorry to anyone who thought the Saja Boys were a real band, but it was obviously fake from the beginning.

Huntr/x has been doing this gimmick for years where they'll put on a performance and some actors dressed up like demons will "interrupt" it or get into some choreo fights on stage and stuff. If you're a fan you know, the demons usually symbolize things like industry corruption, Mira's struggle with her family, Rumi being in the closet, etc, and there's lots of hints and secret messages to the fans in what they're wearing or how they show up. Check out huntresx5evah on blsky they've got an extensive examination of the "demons" over the years and what the messages to the fans are.

In the concert before Golden was released, the demons were dressed like flight attendants. That was the indication that something new was about to take off. @/queenhuntrixdontmiss and I speculated that it was going to be a new single and low and behold, it was.

But then the live performance got cancelled. It's an open secret that Rumi was having vocal issues, so that was probably not planned. They needed to buy time for her to recover, so, enter the Saja Boys -- a fake band of guys really clearly pretending to be demons, they release ONE single, do a bunch of b-tier variety shows for a week, nearly all of their public appearances have Huntr/x right there, keeping the hype and energy up until Rumi can get her throat polyps removed and furthering the routine where Huntr/x are supposed to be secret demon hunters and the Saja Boys are supposed to be secret demons.

Then the whole thing culminates in the Golden live performance at the idol awards, the big act with Huntr/x fake "break up" and the subsequent theatrics to make it up to fans for failing the first Golden performance. Huntr/x takes their obligation to fans very seriously, I've no doubt that they all felt terrible about having to cancel, so a free show was the obvious recourse to try and make it up to people. And they pulled out all the stops!

But the Saja Boys were never real. I mean they got real guys to pretend to be a boy band and do the dancing and lip syncing obviously, but come on, most of them didn't even have names.