ivyblossom

[ivyblossom]

someone teach me how to draw bears

[ivyblossom]

Kind characters are not boring; in fact, due to the vast amount of people who hold that opinion, kind characters are as edgy as it gets. In this essay I will

[ivyblossom]

Peter Morwood

I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.

I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.

Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses". ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.

My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.

Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.

But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.

Thanks, friends.

--DD

[ivyblossom]

Friends: your bread will dry out in the fridge. For the love of bread, if you need to prolong its life, put it in the freezer.

please….. please everyone im losing my fucking shit

reblogs for reach are so so so appreciated i want this to get to as many people as possible im trying to gather data

[ivyblossom]

Yeah, I don't understand this.

What genAI does is the only part of the fanfiction-writing experience you can claim as your own. If your fic was created via genAI, it's not your work.

A fic generated by AI as much yours as a fic generated by a prompt you came up with is yours: zero percent. We don't own ideas. We only own the manifestation of the ones we create, and if you aren't the one creating it, you're not the author. That's just what it is.

If you edit what genAI creates, congratulations, you're genAI's beta reader. You're still not the author. I don't get it. Why would you want to outsource the fun part?

And this is the point where I realize that people must be in it for different reasons than I am.

I'm excited if a story like the one I want to write doesn't exist, because I want to write it. I want to write all of it, every word of it, I want to make every decision. I don't just want it to exist. Are people generating fanfiction using genAI because they just want the story to have been written?

Are these people who don't want to write or be known as fan writers, they just want specific stories available, is that it? Is genAI standing in for a fanfiction writer who will produce instantly on command? So the "creators" of genAI fics on AO3 aren't writers and don't want to be writers, they're readers who want to read fics based on specific prompts?

If all you wanted was to read a specific thing, you got genAI to produce it, you have it now, you can read it. Why publish it? In case someone else has the same itch? But why publish it as yours? You didn't write it.

Are they showing off their great idea? Is there a sense that the work of constructing a story is just putting a puzzle together, and the idea is the main thing, so if it's your idea it's no big deal to outsource the construction of the story? Because that's a profound misunderstanding of how stories work.

Are these people who want fannish cred as a fanfiction writer (for whatever that's worth) without doing the work of writing any fanfics? I've known people who wrote fanfiction because they thought you had to create something in order to be a legit member a fandom community, and I'm sure they would have used genAI for it if they could, because they didn't actually care about the creation part. But if it's for cred and getting your name out there, why tag it as AI?

Maybe it circles back to people who don't write thinking that putting the words together is just the tedious grunt work once you have an idea. But that's not how it works. Every sentence contains imagination and decisions. Not just the prompt. If you aren't making the line-level decisions, those aren't yours.

Should those fics all be assigned to the AI model that created it as the author? That would be more accurate, right?

Write it shitty, write it scared, write it without a clue but don't you be so spineless and have an AI write fanfic for you.

[ivyblossom]

I have picked up what appears to be a flu, and I feel immensely guilty about it, because it feels like I did it to take time off work. Maybe I should be side-eyed for this. Maybe I'm lying and I don't have the flu, I'm just extremely lazy and don't want to stand up.

I just fell down in the hallway trying to get back into my apartment after taking out the garbage I should have taken out 3 days ago.

Maybe I should feel less guilty.

[ivyblossom]

This popped back up after years and years and I reread it and was once again a) clutching my pearls over the TEMERITY of anyone speaking ill of Yorkshire tea, a b) immediately desperate to correct the misunderstanding about what "orange pekoe" is. But I see I already pre-vented my spleen on both issues. Good.

I still have a temperature-variable kettle, though my original one broke in one of my moves. I replaced it with an exact replica. It was more expensive that I'd like to admit.

I still drink Yorkshire tea and have converted my family to it, but I also enjoy looseleaf breakfast teas from Granville Island Tea now that I live on the west Coast.

Tea: it's a serious issue.

How to make tea like a Brit

Every time someone in fic makes tea straight in the mug, I cringe. I think, perhaps, fandom has conflated how the boys make tea on tour with how they would make it at home. When you’re on the road, especially in the United States, you can usually get a kettle, but you can’t always depend on a teapot. Therefore, you make a cup of tea in a mug, like an animal.

That isn’t how I make tea at home. I’m a Canadian with an English dad and gran, and, yes, everyone is different. But I offer my experience as a guide. My parents drink coffee in the morning and tea in the evening. My granny likes tea always. I drink it at least once a day.

EQUIPMENT

Tea requires a kettle, a teapot, a tea cosy, a mug, and maybe a spoon.

Your kettle can be electric; I like a stovetop whistling kettle. Pour any leftover water out every time you fill it. Boil as much water as the kettle holds. You’re going to want it.

Every British household has a bulk standard LARGE teapot, then maybe a few fun and fancy ones. You need a workhorse, but you also need something to show off for company. A big brown betty is nice, enough to hold more than a couple of cups of tea.

You must have a tea cosy or else your tea will go cold. A tea cosy is a quilted or knitted cover that goes over top of your pot. If you don’t have a grandmother who makes them, buy one at a craft fair from someone else’s grandmother.

Pour your tea into whatever mug you like. I only use cups with saucers at my granny’s house, and even then that’s only if she’s serving biscuits.

If you like your tea with sugar, you’re going to want a spoon to stir it. A saucer comes in handy here because then you have somewhere to put your dirty spoon.

When I’m making tea for me, I pour the milk directly from the carton in the fridge. But if I’m serving tea for company in the living room, then I’ll put the milk in a little jug. Always milk; never cream.

TEA

Just like Canadians always mean “ice hockey” when we say hockey, Brits always mean “black tea” when we say tea. We never mean green. We never mean peppermint.

Most often, we mean Tetley. Tetley has been my family’s brand of choice my entire life. We collected and sent away boxtops to collect tiny ceramic animal figures that I played with as a child. Tetley tea is sweet, but not sugary. It brews orangey brown

We all know that Louis’s favourite brand is Yorkshire. This is basically the same kind of tea. It’s a black tea, but a little darker, a bit more musty. Not, I must admit, my favourite. Feel free to write the boys teasing him for his sub-standard taste.

Tea comes in boxes of bags, no strings or tags attached. Keep your tea in an airtight and solid container. Glass is no good because the light gets through.

It’s basically impossible to get regular black tea in the United States. I have relatives who travel with tea bags. I usually drink Earl Grey or green when I’m in the States. But you have to know that it’s not the same thing. Most Brits see that as unnecessary fanciness when we just want a cup of tea.

Yes, I drink other kinds of tea. In my cupboard right now, I have some fruit teas I like to drink iced, I have a loose tea blend that’s a little caramel-y, I have some sencha, some jasmine, and a box of Earl Grey. Sometimes I make a cup with loose tea in a tea ball hanging in a mug. But when I want tea, just a cup of tea, I make a pot of Tetley.

[Photos from Wikipedia.]

HOW TO

Wikipedia has a really good step-by-step description. This is pretty much how I do it. My granny is a stickler for warming the pot before you drop in the tea bag, but I learned from my Canadian mom, who never bothered. I do like to rinse my pot, though, because there’s almost always tea in there from the night before, so you might as well use hot tap water.

(A quick note here: don’t wash your teapot. Just rinse it whenever you use it, and you’ll be fine. You want a teapot to be seasoned like a good cast iron pan. Granted, I do wipe down the outside occasionally.)

1. Boil the water. No need for a thermometer here. Just get it to a rolling boil.

2. (optional) Swirl a bit of water in the empty pot to warm it.

3. Toss in 1 or 2 tea bags, depending on the size of your pot. If you plan to drink more than one cup, go with two.

4. Fill the teapot with water. Put the lid on. Put the tea cosy on top.

5. Let it steep at least a minute. I like to pull the tea bags out before five minutes. Some people leave them in to the bitter end.

6. Pour a bit of milk in your mug. Then pour the tea. Some people prefer tea first, then milk, to better judge the amount of milk required. I recognise this as a valid preference. But I’m a milk first person.

7. (optional) Add sugar and stir to dissolve. I like milk first because you don’t have to stir if you don’t take sugar. Fewer dishes.

8. Then drink and enjoy.

9. Want another cup? Of course you do! That’s why I always make a pot of tea, even though I’m just one person.

No matter how big your mug is, you’ll inevitably find yourself wanting more tea. Too much milk? Balance it out with a bit more tea from the pot. Gone cold? Warm it up. That’s why you have a tea cosy.

(Please don’t microwave tea. Just make another pot. It’s cheap.)

Tea isn’t coffee. It’s not the kind of thing you make in the morning just to be conscious. You don’t throw it in a mug as you’re headed out the door. It’s tradition and comfort, meant to be held in your hands for warmth. It’s why we make tea whenever something bad happens, whenever we feel sad, and even when we don’t know how to feel. A cup of tea makes us feel better.

And a person who knows the way we like it makes us feel loved.

[ivyblossom]

Okay, but...this is a little fishy.

chatGPT can't remember 300K words. It has a memory, but it's for individual details that it learns over time, not 300K words of a story.

I'm not endorsing this or saying it's fine, I'm just addressing misinformation. I'm professionally required to understand chatGPT, so I have kicked its tires and monitor its progress to see what it can and can't do. It might be trying to write new chapters of your fic, but it absolutely doesn't save a copy of your fic.

If someone wanted to do this, they'd have to keep a text file of your fic and re-upload almost constantly. But 300K is way too many words for it to handle, and it certainly wouldn't produce anything close to what you'd write, even with less text to parse.

If someone asked chatGPT to produce a new chapter, it would blithely hallucinate new characters and plot points. It would mistake the dog for the protagonist and tell you about it's "canonical" tragic backstory. It would swap your characters' names and accuse some of them of being aliens or water buffalos. Even if it could accurately keep 300K words of content in its memory, it would forget them within minutes.

It would try to write a good chapter. I'm sure people are asking it to, but dear god chatGPT is awful at writing fiction. Why would anyone want to read a terrible chapter of something they love? There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

I get why you're mad and creeped out, but you don't need to fear chatGPT keeping copies of your fics, at least. It doesn't have that kind of capacity. The reader has your fic stored locally.

Be mindful and cautious, with AI, absolutely. But misinformation isn't ever a friend.

This is the worst timeline. (x)

[ivyblossom]

Anyone willing to read a middle grade manuscript?

It's revised and line edited within an inch of its life. I think it's done, but it would be great to get someone's else opinion on that.

It's present-day science fiction that reads like low fantasy/magical realism, and it involves resurrected mammoths, sea cows, passenger pigeons, one small dinosaur, and a Neanderthal. And a mythic queer love story.

[ivyblossom]

[ivyblossom]

The Library of Congress is changing the subject heading "Gulf of Mexico" to "Gulf of America". They are also rolling back hard-won changes to Indigenous place names. Because of the nature of cataloguing consortial agreements, almost all academic libraries in North America will be expected to follow suit.

Canadians in universities: ask your librarian if this change is going to be implemented at your library.

[ivyblossom]

In honor of the Ides of March, my favorite Tiktok

[ivyblossom]

Victory

I revised. I really did it, like, I made several significant structural adjustments to a draft. I'm even ready to make more as soon as I figure out what those should be. LOOK AT ME GO!

I know this isn't a big deal really, but it's a big deal for ME. Why is this such a big deal to me? I don't know! I guess I never really understood how a story worked, so I couldn't change something big at the beginning without feeling like it just trashes the whole thing and I'm on an entirely different fork of the story now now, the rest has to be rewritten.

But I did it! More than once! I shall get cake.

[ivyblossom]

Nah

I see there's a push to be extra nice and sympathetic to people who voted for a fascist regime and end up getting hurt by it. I don't think that's a great idea.

The recommendation to hide your actual feelings and embrace these people is based on the hope that acting as if you forgive them and empathize with them will make them better, less fascist people. It's actually just a way for them to be forgiven in every meaningful way and ensure that they never feel any accountability for their actions. It's also a way to shut you up. Who does that serve? Your side? Or theirs?

I mean, for starters, it's a lie. No one actually feels any sympathy for those people. The fascists certainly don't, and the people who cried when the fascists got elected mostly don't sympathize with fascist voters getting what they voted for.

There is a narrative that if you're gentle and kind with fascists in their moments of distress, they will become less fascist because of how amazingly supportive and welcoming you are. Is there any evidence that that's true? Because it sounds like what the fascists want you to do: never make them uncomfortable, always embrace and support them, always accept them, no matter what atrocities they commit against you. Stay quiet about it, pretend it never happened. Show them how generous and forgiving you are, that'll teach'em!

Buried inside there is the idea that those people are fascists because someone like you wasn't kind enough to them, and pretending to forgive them now will somehow undo that earlier mistake and make them see the light. If you're honest about your anger and the harm they've caused, you'll just alienate them!

Who does this victim-blaming serve?

The idea that lying about reality to protect fascists' feelings will somehow reduce fascism is just absorbed censorship. It's a neurotic, perfectionist mind trap. It's a control fantasy.

I don't think it's respectful or kind to lie to people. I don't think lying to people in the hopes of manipulating them is particularly winsome for your side, especially once they learn the truth (that you were furious with them and not at all sympathetic). Unless the idea is that they never learn that truth. In which case, you're not manipulating them. You're bowing down to them.

[ivyblossom]

Crow Update

Me and my murder of crows continue to be good friends. I think I frighten people sometimes when I'm walking down the road and suddenly 40 crows appear out of nowhere all headed towards me. I used to think people were getting annoyed at me for befriending so many crows, but now I realize they might wondering if this is a Hitchcock The Birds situation and worrying about my safety. I am perfectly safe! These birbs are family.

I am fully embracing the weird bird lady reputation I am probably building.

I talked to my crows. You have to talk to creatures. All creatures. It's disrespectful not to. It's silly to assume all creatures are dumber than us and wouldn't understand. Crows can see colours I can't even imagine and don't know exist. Crows can probably see forces in the world that we can't. They might understand quantum mechanics, you don't know that they don't, I say. So: talk to animals. It's rude not to.

I met one crow the other day who didn't react like all the other ones do when I throw peanuts. I assume that was a new guy from a different area, and we must not have met yet. So I picked up the peanuts and delivered them in a different spot, and welcomed him to the neighbourhood.

I think in the video game played by crows, I am a loot crate. I'm okay with that.

[ivyblossom]

I understand that the answer is probably no, and I completely respect that.

Is anyone who knows me willing to look at a draft of an original story? It's been pretty heavily revised already, so it's not raw, or anything, and I'm open to further revision. It would help to get another perspective on that. Upper middle grade speculative fiction, 72K.

I have been trying to apply all the advice I've been given and gleaned over the years on how to build original stories well, and I learned a lot writing this one. It's definitely the best original story I've written, but whether I actually figured out how to do it well yet or not is an open question.