#"A Thousand and One" review

[dgspeaks]

Finding Strength: A Review of "A Thousand and One"

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and winning the prestigious Grand Jury Prize, “A Thousand and One” is a captivating drama that explores the themes of family, resilience, and identity. Directed by A.V. Rockwell, this powerful film delves into the complexities of motherhood and the indomitable spirit of survival in the face of adversity. A Story of Unwavering Determination “A Thousand…

[bookguide]

Currently Reading:

The Betrothed by Kiera Cass

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

I posted 8,123 times in 2022

That's 1,044 more posts than 2021!

34 posts created (0%)

8,089 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@someasoiafart

@mariedemedicis

@hylialeia

@fortunate-hal

@phoenix

I tagged 8,109 of my posts in 2022

#queue and me we're in this together now - 8,042 posts

#asoiaf - 5,703 posts

#asoiaf art - 4,399 posts

#excellent - 1,976 posts

#lovely - 1,364 posts

#asoiaf graphics - 944 posts

#house of the dragon - 940 posts

#sansa stark - 524 posts

#lololol - 510 posts

#fancasting - 498 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#dunno if “a familicide” is a title in the same way “a regicide” is? oh oed says “parricide” was the word though it usually means father now

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

"Peace", by rhett_77/@rhe77, posted to tumblr with the permission of the artist.

383 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

#4

Ok, so, this is probably ridiculous, and I can't believe I have a House of the Dragon theory before it even airs (I can barely believe I have a HOTD theory at all), but...

Since the release of The Princess and the Queen in 2013, and through everything published about the Dance of the Dragons since then (TRP, TWOIAF, F&B), it's known that Daemon and Aemond Targaryen have a lot of parallels. Besides the most obvious point of their names (just move the D, lol), they're both hotheaded, vengeful, kinslayers, brutal and ruthless, excellent swordsmen, more martial and physically active than their kingly older brother who they were nevertheless devoted to... culminating in their final showdown in the Battle Over the Gods Eye, the aging older model vs the would-be "new hotness". Though a major difference is that fandom tends to treat Aemond as far more of a pretentious wannabe, a bad Xerox copy with his marysueish sapphire eye and ooh so hardcore dialogue, generally disliked while Daemon is beloved (or at least opinions are far more split), the Darkstar to his Oberyn.

See the full post

399 notes - Posted August 21, 2022

#3

He didn’t break his oath but he broke my heart 💔 - by Rachel Hoo (raychelwho)

936 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

#2

"But Rhaenyra's heir was a bastard! That means the Greens were right to support Aegon II instead of her!"

So you're telling me, if Rhaenyra had by chance married Harwin Strong, and he was her only husband, and she had 5 very legitimate dark-haired sons with him... Alicent would've just sat back and let Rhaenyra take the throne instead of Aegon? Criston would have? Otto would have? All the other lords of Westeros would have preferred a woman as ruling Queen, instead of the king's son?

Well. That's news to GRRM, because in an early version of the Dance, Rhaenyra was married to a Strong, and had three legitimate kids with him... and the Dance of the Dragons still happened.

See the full post

1,119 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

When I first met him... he was the most gallant of lovers. He knew so many things. He delighted in sharing his knowledge. He had a castle full of treasures, and he took such pleasure in showing them, giving them to me. He was so gentle, and his skin felt like white silk against my skin. And I gave what I could give to one such as he. When we made love, it was like a flame: I felt utterly engulfed, utterly loved. Treasured. I have been with many poets, many dreamers... but his love alone was ice and fire. His eyes were stars.

Calliope, in The Sandman #71, by Neil Gaiman

4,271 notes - Posted August 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[merakisphere]

Hello! I’m a maker of the once popular 3D wire mandala trinket from the 90’s era. During those “ancient” times, people would often enjoy this as a nifty hair piece, or fashionable bracelet. Nowadays it is more commonly used as a fidget toy and/or desk ornament. What makes this special is its hyper-versatility and the freedom of being able to use this however you can imagine.

I invite you to discover my handmade Fidget Blooms, and browse my hundreds of styles and colours favourited & reviewed by thousands of happy customers. Very demurely, use code TUMBLR at checkout for a special discount. Thank you for discovering my art, I do hope you enjoy it! :)

“The entire point of life is to take chances on dreams that seem crazy to most but feel like destiny to you.” -Timothy Shriver

I wanted to share this quote as it relates to my journey as an artisan specializing in wire art. It is a statement about pursuing one’s passion, even when others might find it unconventional or risky, as long as it feels personally meaningful and aligned with one’s purpose. <3

PS: 90s kids, don’t forget to take that Ipuprofen today for that back pain. XD

[ms-demeanor]

making my own post because nobody needs my bullshit on their post:

OP:

Reblog 1:

Reblog 2:

My response:

The IRA blogs were here and they were active and they were quite popular; their posting patterns did not match normal tumblr users (i was followed by lagonegirl and followed back only to be put off by the account reblogging the same five or ten posts every hour for a day before selecting another five or ten posts to reblog hourly the next day - it was clear engagement bait).

Tumblr has never been as transparent about these accounts as both Twitter and Facebook were, but several of the accounts had shared names across platforms and you can find a significant amount of data that was released by both facebook (ex: ads purchased by the IRA accounts) and twitter (over three million tweets from IRA accounts). Academic researchers have published papers on the data released from facebook and twitter. Several papers. So many papers. Soooooo many papers. We have a LOT of direct evidence that you can explore for yourself that there were hundreds (possibly thousands) of IRA accounts that were created on Facebook and Twitter. Of those accounts, some shared usernames across platforms, and of those accounts, a few had tumblr accounts that posted the same content on twitter and tumblr.

To quote a buzzfeed news article from the time:

The Russian-run Tumblr accounts used the same, or very similar, usernames as the account names contained on a list of confirmed IRA accounts Twitter submitted to congressional investigators. In some cases, the Tumblr and Twitter account has the same profile image or linked to each other in their bios. Some IRA Tumblrs and Twitter accounts also cross-promoted content between platforms, further linking them together.

Current tumblr user @ alwaysbewoke (who I don't want to tag because I'm sure he's got better things to do) is interviewed in that article and talks about following one of the blogs identified by tumblr as an IRA blog that had a matching account on twitter identified as an IRA account but unfollowing when the left-leaning blog supposedly run by a black creator started rooting for trump in the election.

Dr. Jonathan Albright is heavily quoted in the article; the data review he collaborated on is one of the only reviews of this subject that includes data from Tumblr and Reddit.

One of the claims that I've seen is that tumblr just deleted funny black people, but these were blogs with thousands of followers on tumblr who never recreated, never popped up on another social media site, never started a reddit account after getting banned; nobody ever showed up saying "hey this is 4mysquad, I got banned on tumblr and twitter, follow me to pillowfort". These very popular blogs got deleted and, as far as I know, nobody ever popped up claiming to be a person who was deleted - and it's not like tumblr users haven't figured out how to evade bans.

What you are doing when you make posts saying that the IRA accounts on tumblr never existed is *absolving tumblr of guilt for their utter lack of transparency.*

Tumblr is not the only tech company that has tried to fly under the radar as its larger counterparts face regular scrutiny in Congress and in the press. Earlier this month, Reddit revealed it too had deleted hundreds of accounts with ties to the Internet Research Agency. A WIRED investigation found more than a thousand links to Russian propaganda websites are still live on Reddit, and unearthed two suspicious accounts that Reddit immediately shut down.

So should you believe what Tumblr says? No, because Tumblr has been functionally fucking silent on this issue and the information about this subject aside from the list of blogs has come from the hard work of data scientists, journalists, and researchers.

(For the record; some of those bot accounts that were recorded by Dr. Albright also had Google+ accounts in 2017 - there is every possibility that they had myspace accounts).

Now, the reason that I'm popping onto this post as an annoyed anarchist is that I was tracking a similar group of blogs for a while and was discussing them and I stopped precisely because of the galaxy-brained liberals who are now trying to dunk on communists for criticizing electoralism. One of the people who was following my project was one of the ones who started calling out the "joe biden kills dogs" posts as disinfo and I realized they were using some of the guidelines I'd written up to "identify" misinformation and that is very a rock fucking stupid approach to what was clearly a leftist making jokes and was horrified and realized there was no way that I could continue documenting what I was documenting without someone attempting to call actual leftists russian bots.

I've seen the post that OP is referencing [it's one where someone makes a very obvious joke about the democrat presidential ticket and people jump on to call them a bot and then someone tries to do the "AI tell me a story" thing and OP is just like "I don't want to :(", proving that they are in fact a person and not an AI] and have deeply enjoyed the humor of watching liberals a) not understand a very, VERY obvious joke and b) become the unwitting butt of a joke they were trying to make, but also I am so exhausted by watching normie dems call leftists AI bots after years of watching normie dems call real live actual leftists who hold actual political views that real people actually have, like prison abolition, russian bots.

But I am also so fucking tired of left conspiracism and how stupid it sounds when leftists dismiss a preponderance of evidence that is easily accessible and publicly available for analysis as "lol so you just trust everything tumblr tells you?"

No, dipshit, learn to click a fucking link or twelve.

[vaspider]

Measure 110, or the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

So if y'all aren't local to Oregon, you may not have heard that the Oregon state legislature just voted to -- essentially -- gut Measure 110, the ballot measure which decriminalized all drug possession and use in the state. It turned all drug use into a citation instead, and the citation and fine could be waived by completing a health screening. The entire point of Measure 110 was replacing jail with health care and services to help people instead, and while I could probably write a very long side post on the imperfections of that approach, it was at the very least a move in the right direction after decades of the pathetic failure and absolutely racist mess that is the "War on Drugs."

You may hear this pointed to in coming years as a reason why we have to just throw people into jail for using drugs, because Measure 110 failed. And like... it did fail, kinda. Sorta. It failed in that it did not manage to fix everything immediately, and it created some new issues while also exposing older issues more sharply.

It also saved the state $40 million in court costs prosecuting low-level drug offenses, kept thousands of people whose literal only crime was putting a substance into the body of a consenting adult (themselves) out of jail, put at least one addiction services center in every county in the state, invested $300 million in addiction services, and an awful lot more. See the end of this post for more reading.

But where it failed, it failed because it wasn't supported. Police and advocacy groups both asked for specific tickets for this new class of offenses which had the phone number to call to go through the health screening and the information about how going through that health screening would make the ticket go away printed on it prominently - lawmakers declined to fund this. Governor Kotek budgeted $50K to train officers on how to handle these new citations and how to direct people to the treatment and housing supports, but lawmakers thought that training officers on this new law at all was a waste of money. Money moved extremely slowly out to the supports that were supposed to come into play to help people obtain treatment or get access to harm-reduction strategies. People freaked the fuck out about clean-needle outreach, fentanyl testing strip distribution, Narcan training, and other harm-reduction strategies.

And at the end of the day, Measure 110 gets called a failure because it wasn't a silver bullet. Never mind that thousands of people are not sitting in jail right now for basically no fucking reason. Never mind that people have gotten treatment, harm has been reduced, overdoses have been prevented...

So, yeah. You'll probably start hearing this trotted out as proof that, well, we triiiied decriminalizing drugs, but look what happened in Portland! Well, what happened in Oregon is that we got set up to fail, and still didn't fail, just didn't totally succeed.

Measure 110 highlights, quoted directly from Prison Policy Initiative:

The Oregon Health Authority reported a 298% increase in people seeking screening for substance use disorders.

More than 370,000 naloxone doses have been distributed since 2022, and community organizations report more than 7,500 opioid overdose reversals since 2020.

Although overdose rates have increased around the country as more fentanyl has entered the drug supply, Oregon’s increase in overdoses has been similar to other states’ and actually less than neighboring Washington’s. A peer-reviewed study comparing overdose rates in Oregon with the rest of the country after the law went into effect found no link between Measure 110 and increased overdose rates.

There is no evidence that drug use rates in Oregon have increased. A cross-sectional survey of people who use drugs across eight counties in Oregon found that most had been using drugs for years; only 1.5% reported having started after Measure 110 went into effect.

There has been no increase in 911 calls in Oregon cities after Measure 110.

Measure 110 saves Oregonians millions. Oregon is expected to save $37 million between 2023-2025 if Measure 110 continues. This is because it costs up to $35,217 to arrest, adjudicate, incarcerate, and supervise a person taken into custody for a drug misdemeanor — and upwards of $60,000 for a felony. In contrast, treatment costs an average of $9,000 per person. The money saved by Measure 110 goes directly to state funding for addiction and recovery services.

There is no evidence that Measure 110 was associated with a rise in crime. In fact, crime in Oregon was 14% lower in 2023 than it was in 2020.

Further reading/sources:

[hotcheetohatredwastaken]

July LU Write-a-Thon: 351,092 Words in One Day!

On July 1, we hosted our second monthly LU Write-a-thon (organized by @not-freyja and @hotcheetohatredwastaken and joined by their new mods @noorahqar, @a-manicured-lawn, and @winterfen). The purpose of this event was to write as many productive words—words that furthered yourself, the LU writing community at large, or your own stories—within 24 hours as humanly possible. 

We had a whopping 90+ participants as opposed to our previous 16 - none of us expected such a large turnout, and were suitably unprepared 😅 We’ll definitely be making a lot of changes to accommodate that many people during the next Write-a-Thon, occurring August 1st. Thank you all for your patience!

But, until next month, here’s the awards and titles earned by each participant, as voted upon by the Discord server through an anonymous survey. The mods read through all your hundreds of submissions (thank you guys so much!) and picked either the highest voted title or the funniest custom submission for each person, as we found appropriate. First up is the winner’s circle, then the clubs, and then everybody else in alphabetical order right below this readmore!

The Winner’s Circle (5 Most Wordiest)

20,037 “Writer of All Time” and “Most Likely to Make 1K become 100K” (As can be seen in all its glory in your Aspects AU) @tashacee: You took advantage of Freyja and Cheeto’s beefing about who would be first and snapped up the win right from under their noses. Well played! 

20,011 “Writer of Some of the Time” and “Pen and Paper (Scritch... Scratchy?)” @hotcheetohatredwastaken: Missed the mark by juuust a bit, for the second time in a row. Cheeto, you suck. (:3 –Cheeto) (Qar wrote this, for reference!). Also wrote for most of the marathon on pen and paper!

17,491 “Writer of Last Time” (for winning last month and then failing to defend their title) and “The FourShadow-er of all Time” (for the unholy amount of Chekov’s Guns they leave lying around loaded in their docs) @not-freyja: you are the most autistic about Legend. Nerd.

13,203 “Will Make You Cry” and “Captain of the Twilight Angst Tag on Ao3” @somer-writes: Boosting the Twilight economy, and we’re all happy about it. Also the second-funniest person in the server, with the second-most stars!

13,000 “AU Collector” and “Four Enjoyer” @zarvasace: Whether they're heroes with disabilities, space rangers, or vampires, if Mina wrote it, the boys will be written well.

Clubs

Now while everyone’s accomplishments as individuals were nothing to sneeze at, teamwork does in fact make the dream work. A few lovely people made a couple of equally lovely groups, either by their own choice or as assigned by peer review.

Aimed for the Funny Numbers Club

“Literally Satan” @allwayswildchild: with exactly 6666 words, you deserve every bit of this cursed title. 

“Lawn Blart Mall Cop” and “Qar's Mom in a Moment of Weakness Apparently (And Then Qar’s Sister in a Moment of Un-Weakness)” @a-manicured-lawn: The latter explains itself. Apparently, the vision of Lawn segwaying around is amusing. [Some people just can’t appreciate the beauty of a white shirt, tie, and glorious moped… ~Lawn]

“The Reincarnated” @defenestration13: Hadn't written in six months but then reappeared to write multiple thousand words. Good job.

“Multimedia Powerhouse” @passerinesoncaffeine: The art, the writing, Raven's got it all! Painting, analyzing music, commenting, whatever you touch it turns to gold.

“Dark Miette” goes to @rebornofstars: An inside joke that I don’t understand. Also thought you should know that you got [insert bee pun].

“The Memer” and “Literally Wind” @savimatteo2810: These are related.

“The Quoter” @whatvioletdoes-blog: For spending the event harvesting quotable quotes for their chat-fic.

(freyja overshot all potential funny numbers, but is a member at heart)

Most Likely to Get Fangirled (Gender Neutral) Over Club

“Literally Hyrule” @across-violet-skies: Also called the Spunky Sidekick and a calming jasmine tea type person. Hopefully your ghost pepper recovery goes well. 

“The Snippeter” @imperialkatwala: For sharing so many snippets to us hungry folk. Thank you kindly.

“Friend Shaped” @polynomialpandemic: A friend to all. Also a “Snippeter” - thank you for feeding the masses!

“Four Tormentor” @undertheopensky: For really obvious reasons. Also managed to make Freyja scream for 10 minutes with your mere presence alone!

Other Friend Groups

“Sad Wet Cat Club” @cinis0 and @lunaopus, you two seem to have nominated one another, so you get this club all to yourselves! However, I would love to know what the talk of forgetting that the Queen died was about…. (Qar has requested to be an honorary member of this club)

@awildsilver and @four-eyed-nerd, you two get to come together as “Four-Eyed-Nerd’s Rat” and “AWildSilver’s Cat,” which is I think our favorite group of all in this month’s running. I do have some additional questions for you two, however, about a mention of the bee movie as an original work (allowed as long as it’s not copy pasted and also hilarious) for you Wild and the title “Honey I shrunk the Links” for you, Four. 

The Community Support Team

“The Commentator of All Time” @1-renegade: To directly quote, “Ain't NOBODY give better feedback and comments than lawlessland.” 

“Will Make You Cry” @artsyanonymity: Anonymity is the sweetest and kindest commenter in existence! SHE. WILL. MAKE. YOU. CRy. Writes the nicest comments and they make me (and apparently several others) cry

“The Encouragement Itself” @cat-at-a-writing-desk: For encouraging others to reach their goals. We appreciate you!

“Drill Sergeant” @gintrinsic-writing: Made Qar get 5k and scared everyone else into writing. (You did it! I got 5k! The fear (with funny intonation) dragged me over the finish line -Qar)

“Drawer of A Thousand Words” @la-sera: Ruler of the Legend and Hyrule brotherhood, inspirer of writers, and the spreader of so much love with your art this Fan Joy July with the art you spent the marathon working on. Can’t wait to see it all as the month goes on.

“The Reader of all Time” @life-in-winter: Or as you all probably know her, passerine44, the writer of the best ao3 comments of all time. Thea, you walk into a digital room and every writer there makes heart eyes at you. Cannot wait to read the writing you’ve been working on (and leave a comment) to return the favor.

“The Respondent of All Time” @silvrash-797: Silvrash had over four months of unanswered ao3 comments that she caught up with, congrats!

“Lives up to the Screen Name” @sunny-porridge: To quote: “Sunny is 100% a ray of sunshine and anyone who says otherwise can FIGHT ME” and I think we all agree.

“The Wildest Supporter.” @twilightangel83: Supported people and sent a lot of Wild emojis, so much so that we started picturing you as Wild!

“Poet” and “Master of the Shrimp Check” @winterfen: Writes good poetry, and also made sure that everyone was appropriately fed, hydrated, and rested for this event. 

Transfer Students

“I don’t work here, Lady” goes to bArk who neither has a tumblr nor writes for this fandom, but showed up and had fun anyways. Thanks for joining us!

“He Who Finished His Book” goes to jr_for_potus44 (not on Tumblr). Congrats!

“Split Screen” goes to @straight-outta-hobbiton for writing two fics on two screens at the same time, neither of which were LU. Frightening.

The Silent Ones

@pelicanpig, @mmelete, @wayfayrr, @raeofsky, @summaryscar @sunkissedkales: You guys came, you wrote, you did not elaborate. How mysterious your aura is (positive, deeply positive.)

"The Almost Silent One" @the-au-collector: Talked before and after, but not during the event. Probably too busy writing, or busy in general - good job either way!

Everybody else!

“Frequent Flier (WPM)” @anime-obsessed: For participating in so many sprints. Also earned “vocaloid enjoyer.”

“Keyboard Warrior” @august-the-friend: You fought autocorrect and lost 3-0, but it was a valiant fight nonetheless. You did great.

“Artist turned Writer” @aurora-boreas-borealis: Took a break from streaming to write—a huge shout out for all your hard work and your help with colors! (~the actual pigments, not the Links ~Lawn) 

“Literally Sun” @beesandhoney1219: Warmer than sunlight, sweeter than sugar, and absolutely obsessed with Sky’s girlfriend.

“Most Likely to Include Raccoons in their Fic” @bittirsweeteer: They Who Has Given Legend Espresso (thank you for your service).

“Last Minute Vidow” @deleetrix: Something that should always be encouraged. Thank you for feeding us.

“Stargiver” @emberlylion: For starring in a lot of posts, especially cat pics. Thank you for your service.

Move over Time, @estelian-01 “Will Fight Majora and Win” and then go back to studying.

“Studious Student Who (has not) Studied” @gerudoevernight: Self nominated for “Studious Student who Studied” for hitting their goal while in school. The mod team disagreed with the accuracy of that title and affectionately chose this one instead. Good job hitting your goal!

“The Outliner” @gia-d: Accidentally wrote a first draft. Also think it should be noted that everyone is convinced you either could kill a god or that you carry one around in your pocket.

“Onomatopoeia Outrage” @haloburns: Who debated the word “ow” so hard they inflicted it on the people around them.

“The Scholar” @irenkaferalkitty: For her extensive collection of well-researched data, presented in charts, documents and yes, excel sheets. We appreciate you.

“Most Improved” @labyrinthdancer: Their writing has improved a lot since they started posting! also they write really dark twilight & the chain fics. Being a new writer is scary, but they kept at it and are doing so well!

“Writer of Most Cursed Victorian Child” aka their take on Ravio, is @lele5429 with their first ever fic, which is as gorgeous in words as your art is in ink.

“The Hype Man (gender neutral)/Moral Support” @lemoncatssss: For all the encouragement that you gave others. Also the cat photos. Especially the cat photos.

“The accidental friend acquirer” @lennsart: For somehow befriending literally every single person you talk to.

“Severe Case of Clacking” @lerikwrites: You know why. Pennies in a washing machine my friend.

“Hyrule Hurter” goes to @linkiscool333: We all have the blorbo we love to put in the blender, but no one blends Rulie like you do.

“Marcus Actually Writes!?” @marcusdoodlesalot: For a second month in a row, some of us are still befuddled that Marcus is actually a writer, and not just an artist. Hard to believe that someone can have that much talent in both fields.

“Soup Soup Soup Soup Soup (Soup Soup Soup Soup Soup)” @marsnoodlesoup: I... do not know what this means. Congrats, it seems you’re soup.

“The Veteran” @musical-chan: For sharing stories of the early days of fandom. Back in my day but the most positive way possible

“Artist Turned Writer” @mysticstars105: Came out and wrote a whopping 400 words, which is so many words especially when you’re new. Gold Star!

“Art Fight Pre-Gaming” @nebulapaws: For their talk of Art Fight. Hope you have fun participating this month!

“Resident Audiophile” @needfantasticstories: Not just for writing with speech-to-text all day, but for your constant enthusiastic screaming about Epic the musical.

“Most likely to fight God and Win” and “The Modderrrrrr” @noorahqar: Who is actually Sky. Not with the sleepy part though. She actually wrote so much about Sky that he stole all her sleepy. Number one on the starboard, with the proud title of MVM (Most Valuable Mod) for sticking the landing as midnight hit. Also the one with “The Most Sigmas to Grindset” whatever… whatever that means. (Please help what does that mean?) 

“Picture Perfect Exhaustion” @nyastri: Their PFP (Four Doubled Over, hands on knees) combined with the announcement they'd reached their writing goal at the end of the marathon really just sold the picture for me. Well done.

“The Sleepy One” @ocha-blue: who justifiably went to bed as soon as they finished. (Hope you're recovered by now.)

“First Time Fic Writer” @peepthatbish: for breaking into the fic scene and boosting morale for our mod team, especially Lawn. We appreciate you!

“Slow And Steady (WPM)” @pokegeek151: Who was chugging away all day long.

“Doomed by the Narrative” @ra-archives: Google docs acting up, cat sitting on lap, and yet you persisted. Good job.

“My Little Friend Who I Love (This Is Qar Btw) (This Is Part Of The Title)” and “Wordsmith” @rosehipandroots: This is a direct copy paste from your submissions, Rose. Hope you enjoy it. But your amazing descriptions really make you a wordsmith. “The SkyBoy Enjoyer of All Time” @sapphicseasapphire: for your lovely art and writing of the boy!

“Task Succeeded Successfully” @screaming-but-i-have-four-swords: was an artist turned writer that tried to write words, and did! Good job.

“Artist Turned… More Artist” @seaotter-17: We were told you write descriptions like a poet, but in this event, you were most recognizable by your drawings of Nina the cat. Thank you for sharing. 

The “Person with a Passion for Pudding” (which is definitely an inside joke I do not understand, so I hope it makes you laugh) @somanyfanficssolittletime: Thanks for participating!

“The Fic Reccer of all Time” @staring-at-a-blank-page: For recommending so many fics, their own and others, up to read. Thank you!

“The Drabbler” @tenderleavesbob: For their lovely drabbles, of which they wrote around 10k of. The title is appropriate - it seems your drabbles have taken Tumblr (and the participants in this survey) by storm!

“100% Bunny Accurate Fiction”  @toyouhellohowareyou: writer of the most rabbit-fact-checked fics of all time by our own Bunny Lord [Beloved Pet and Bunny Boy (Legend) Himself]

“The Podficcer of All Time” @unexpectedstormy: For podfic making, promoting, and educating. And if that wasn’t enough fae is also our very own “Dragon Tamer” who spent the event working on their HTTYD WIP!

“The Dashshunder” @vivalaplutothedachshund: For sharing your lovely menace of a dog Pluto with us all. We also appreciate you both in the chats and in our rampage to give PolynomialPandemic 109 hugs. 

“Mod Emotional Support. We love you” @wanderlustmagician: You know what you did, and Cheeto’s firstborn deservedly belongs to you.

“Word Weaver” and “Fanfiction Foul---was writing at work instead of working” @weavingstarlight: Your words sparkle as bright as you do, glitter jar.

“Literally First (also shared cat pics)” @witchdoctor39 : Even Hylia can’t hold a candle to how much you love that poor poor man!

Thank all of you for participating, we appreciate each and every one of you so so so much! Please note that we had 90+ participants, and as such, there is probably guaranteed to be some mistakes on the list above. If you find any typos or pronoun goofs or anyone that was put on the list twice or missing or under the wrong name or put under the wrong name or any error that comes with having different discord and tumblr names or if you were left off the list in error or if you want to request a different name than the one you received or you want to be put into or removed from one club or another or anything else that could have gone wrong—please feel free to contact @hotcheetohatredwastaken or @not-freyja with your concerns here on tumblr!

Again, a big thank you to everyone for coming to the event from all of us on the mod team! Can’t wait to see you guys next month! And stay tuned---there will be another post with more information about the next event within the next couple of weeks!

[marvelousgeeks]

Respectfully, we’re f—ing tired. A TV show’s audience isn’t going to grow in billions overnight, and especially in the year of our Lord 2024, when viewers know that networks and streamers are notorious for canceling. Prime Video’s My Lady Jane cancelation also comes as a complete shock when the show gained a steady viewership from its first weekend, favorable reviews from critics, and is still trending on social media with a steady buzz from fandoms.

The cancelation also doesn’t factor in the fact that the show was released right before the Summer Olympics, which means now that the games are over, people are only just beginning to watch other content. For years, executives have failed to understand the enormous power that fandoms hold, and half of that comes from building trust between them. One simply needs to look through the thousands of quote tweets on Twitter’s announcement to see how many people comment something along the lines of “See, this is why I don’t start new shows until I know they’re renewed.” People are jaded, and rightfully so, as the trust between big networks and fans continues to fracture.

Continue Reading

[mediumgayitalian]

(very late im so sorry) fic rec friday 7

hi!! welcome to fic rec friday. every week, i pick five fics i have bookmarked and rec them with a little review. check them out!

i am indeed aware it is monday. i am a fool who is Bad at planning. my bad.

A Place To Start by @wintersky101

Nico can speak English, Italian, Latin and Ancient Greek. Unfortunately, he can only read and write in two of the four, and even more unfortunately, English isn’t one of those.

paul blofis & nico isn't something i knew i needed but i LOVE. like lets maybe get this kid a real grownup, huh? also i think it's really funny that nico is older than paul technically. like i imagine paul, who is a history nerd, would be spending half their tutoring sessions grilling nico about the 40s lol

2. Transitioning to Manhood by @nicostolemybones

Will gets a box from his mom of childhood memories.

i have quotes from this fic framed. it is deeply moving, especially that one paragraph about conditional love....like yeah it got to me. i wept about the conditional love paragraph. if you are ready for some catharsis this is indeed the fic for you

3. Doctor solace to the rescue by Phantomxlegend

Will idolized Beckendorf when he was younger, and who wouldn’t pass up on a chance to heal your idol and prove that you could be just as strong?

ON MY HANDS AND KNEES ON THE FUCKING FLOOR......WEEPING AND CRYING AND CLUTCHING THE BLUE FUCKING CURTAINS. WHY. WHY. CLAWING THE SKIN OFF MY FACE AND SOBBING INTO MY HANDS. no exaggeration when i say i never fully recovered from this one. baby will and quiet nobel beckendorf. beckendorf i love you. beckendorf you deserved a thousand times more than what you got. i can't feel my chest

4. Silver Rings by @buoyantsaturn

Barely a second later, he said, “What’s that?” “What’s what?” Will said back to him, not taking his eyes off the gash. “That ring.” Will froze, eyes widening. “Isn’t that Nico’s?

secret relationship my EVERYTHING. makes me buckshit feral every time its so FUN. cj ur iconic and you have been THEEE backbone of this fandom for years. i love this one particularly bc the whole thing with will glowing will never not be funny shdhfdjsnfkf

5. A Little More in the Closet Than Out of it by @buoyantsaturn

The only thing they could do to keep Harley in the infirmary so they could keep him monitored was to keep him entertained, and somehow, Will had gotten himself roped into a game of hide and seek.

giggle was giggled at the title. i am easily entertained. but the fic was fun and sweet; harley is the camp's darling as is his right. nico is such a dweepy dork loser hes so real i love him

thank you for joining me this friday!! happy reading!!

[fortpeat]

LOVE SEA EP1 REVIEW

OMGGGG OMGGG WHERE DO I EVEN BEGINNNN OK FIRST THINGS FIRST YES I AM ALIVE - THAT WAASSS AMAZING 🥹🥹🥹 OH MYYY I AM ALREADY IN LOVE WITTH OUR BABIESSS. 😍😍😍

You know a teeny tiny part of me was kind of scared that Rakmut would remind me so much of Paisky becoz they have been a huge part of my life since the beginning but that was so not the case yes there were certain scenes that did remind me of them but overall Fortpeat was phenomenal in bringing these two characters to life flawlessly. And yes we only have one episode but for me what we got was plenty good to understand their characters a lot more 🥹🥹

Let's start with Mahasamut 😍

MY GOD HIS ENTRANCE 🫠🫠 woww... As a fellow Ocean / marine life lover I can say that Mahasamut's entry while he's doing what's he passionate about took my breath away and yes his shirtless scene also took my breath away 🫠🫠 obviously. Thank you MMY for the slow mo hair flip and saving me from doing it again 🤣 with what we got his relationship with Palm I like how they are like siblings 🤭 I really want to know more.

He is such a puppy I mean come on look at that smile... I am melting here. Also these smiles clearly shows his younger side and it's Soo cuteee 😍😍 I want to see more also I LOVEEE HOW HE IS HELL BENT ON ANNOYING TONGRAK 🤣🤣 it's interesting to see how it's portrayed that nothing effects him and that all the comments that Tongrak throws his away is brushed off easily coz I have a feeling that we will be seeing more into that 👀👀

Next Tongrak 😍😍

This man's prettiness knows no bounds 😍😍 each and every single outfit that he had on this episode was just wow... I was drooling .... 🙏🙏 Let me worship you Tongrak HOW CAN SOMEONE BE THIS PRETTY 🤣 ALSO EVERYTIME TONGRAK WAS COMPARED TO A KITTEN I WAS DYING 🤣🤣🤣 He is portrayed as rich but lonely who obviously doesn't admit it. He is definitely attracted to Mahasamut but won't admit it which makes me want him to be the first one to cave in the tug of desire war 🤣🤣 PLEASEEEE 🙏🙏 Rak definitely knows what he wants and I don't think he is someone who backs aways from getting it but interestingly with Mut he would play hard to get obviously since he "hates" Mut 🤭🤭

NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS SCENE 🤣🤣🤣 I WANT TO REPLAY THIS A THOUSAND TIMES ALREADY 🤣🤣 COZ I DIED... RAK THINKING HE WAS SUCCESSFULLY SEDUCING MUT BUT MUT'S FOCUS BEING ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC ALSO THE "SMOOTH AS A PEELED PEAR" 🤣🤣🤣 THAT IS GONNA BE THE QUOTE OF THE YEAR 🤣🤣 I CANTTT WITH THEIR BANTER 🤣

AHHH THESE TWO SCENES 🫠🫠🫠 KILL ME NOWWWW THEIR MAGIC 😍😍😍 ✨✨✨✨ BABIES ARE KILLING ITTT ALSO THAT HANDHOLDING 🫠🫠🫠

It's safe to say each and every scene in this episode has captured my heart 🥹🥹 the wait has been so worth it and I am so happy 😍😍😍 I NEED THE SECOND EPISODE HERE ALREADY AND FROM THE PREVIEW... AHHHH I AM SO NOT READY BUT GIVE IT TO ME ALREADY 🫠🫠

(p.s I am dedicating my favorite scene from the episode with another post)

[mariacallous]

“Now, how long will this take? The Ukrainians behave like charlatans and we continue to pay,” reads a quote in French next to a picture of Taylor Swift on what looks like a promotional poster for an upcoming tour. “That is not right.”

“Every time the Ukrainians get money, everything goes wrong,” reads another quote in German next to a picture of Selena Gomez on what appears to be a page taken from a fashion magazine.

"It's just disappointing how the Ukrainians use our help,” a quote, also in German, reads next to a picture of Kim Kardashian speaking on stage. “Someone needs to stop this, seriously."

Though the images make it look like these quotes were said by Swift, Gomez, and Kardashian, they weren’t. They were the product of a pro-Russian network of fake Facebook and X accounts that created and disseminated an ad campaign suggesting that some of the most famous people in the world back Russia and detest Ukraine. Among the celebrities included are Beyoncé, Oprah, Gigi Hadid, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Cristiano Ronaldo. “Supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable,” reads a quote next to a photo of Oprah. “Their actions destroy lives and societies.”

The disinformation campaign, which was launched in November, reached at least 7.6 million people on Facebook alone, according to a database of the ads reviewed by WIRED and collected by Reset, a nonprofit that provides grants to those tackling disinformation. It’s still in progress, and two separate groups of disinformation researchers believe the campaign is run by a notorious Russian influence operation dubbed Doppelganger that has in the past been linked to the Kremlin. New information shared exclusively with WIRED suggests the campaign has links to Russia’s GRU military spy agency.

At the beginning of November, researchers at Reset discovered what they described as a “blitz campaign” by two networks of fake Facebook pages. Over the course of a week, the researchers saw at least 560 Facebook ads that feature images of celebrities alongside pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian quotes. While some of the ads reached only thousands of users, others spread far more widely. One featuring Cristiano Ronaldo reached over 115,000 people before it was deactivated. Alongside the image of Ronaldo was the quote “It's frustrating to see how the Ukrainians use our aid. Someone needs to stop this, seriously.”

Researchers at Reset believe that the campaign “exploits loopholes in Facebook’s ad verification and content moderation systems to foster hostility against Ukrainians and undermine EU support for Kyiv.” Including fake quotes from celebrities within images makes it harder for Facebook to spot a coordinated campaign, they added. The campaign, which specifically targeted people in France and Germany, also removed any links or additional text in the ads, making it harder for Meta to track it.

Doppelganger has been actively spreading disinformation on both Facebook and X for some time. The organization was unmasked in September 2022 by EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit working to combat disinformation against the EU, but it had been operating since at least May 2022. The group used clones of media websites, including The Guardian and Bild, to spread disinformation, filling the fake sites with articles, videos, and polls designed to push pro-Kremlin talking points about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Facebook first announced action against Doppelganger in September 2022, and said it was removing pages and accounts associated with the campaign.

In June 2023, another campaign targeting major French websites including Le Parisien, 20 Minutes, Le Monde, and Le Figaro was exposed by the French government. “French Minister supports the murder of Russian soldiers in Ukraine,” read one fake headline on a page that looked like Le Monde during that campaign.

Despite being repeatedly found out, the operators of Doppelganger have managed to continue their work: They also created fake versions of Fox News and other news websites to seed chaos and confusion during the Israel-Hamas war.

While Doppelganger campaigns in the past have been linked to the Kremlin in some media reports, new information from researchers tracking the disinformation campaign shows a link to Russia’s GRU.

A network of bot accounts on X, which in the past have been used to push Doppelganger’s fake websites, has also been used to push people to websites with direct links to Russia’s military spy agency. “Doppelganger bots promoted two sites recently, which both have strong connections to GRU,” researchers at Antibot4Navalny, a Russian anti-disinformation research group that has been closely tracking Doppelganger activity on X, tell WIRED. The researchers did not want to be identified due to security concerns.

The first site promoted by the Doppelganger bots was ObservateurContinental.fr. The Whois data, a public record of information related to the registration of a website, for this site shows that it is connected to InfoRos, a news agency previously linked to the GRU that operates hundreds of websites to push Kremlin propaganda. InfoRos was first reported to be a front organization for GRU Unit 54777 by The Washington Post in 2018. At the time, the group was said to have been active as far back as 2014 to spread disinformation about Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The second site pushed by Doppelganger bots targeted Germans. In October 2022, an investigation by the German newspaper Die Welt found that the author of content on the EuroBRICS site was being paid directly by InfoRos, which is registered as the operator of the EuroBRICs website by the German domain registrar.

Many of the same images from Doppelganger’s campaign, along with others targeting an English-speaking audience, were also shared on X by the same network of bots that have previously shared links to the Doppelganger campaigns.

“We collected a whopping 75-plus fake quotes by celebrities from the US and EU, all massively posted recently by bots of Doppelganger, the pro-Kremlin influence campaign,” one of the researchers at Antibot4Navalny tells WIRED.

The campaign on X, which coincided with the Facebook campaign, used over 10,000 bot accounts, according to the researchers. In the space of one eight-hour period, the bots posted over 27,000 messages. At one point, the bot accounts were posting 120 messages every minute.

The posts on X are identical to those posted as ads on Facebook identified by Reset, except that some of these posts were in English. The X campaign also featured mocked-up versions of celebrities’ verified Instagram accounts, making it seem as if screenshots of celebrity Instagram accounts, using similar anti-Ukraine quotes, were being shared.

X did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED about the Doppelganger campaign. Since Elon Musk took control of the platform in October 2022, he has eliminated most of the company’s trust and safety team, and disinformation has flourished on the site, especially around breaking news events like the recent Israel-Hamas war.

One of Reset’s researchers, who did not want to be identified to protect their privacy, tells WIRED that, in recent days, researchers have seen Doppelganger’s celebrity-based campaign evolve. Some ads on Facebook now, like the ones on X, feature screenshots that appear to show verified Instagram accounts of the same celebrities, adding a further layer of authenticity to the campaign. In one case, a screenshot of a fake Instagram post from the entrepreneur Richard Branson suggests that he believes America was behind the Nord Stream explosion.

The researcher also found video ads that feature real footage of celebrities with fake audio dubbed over the top, which they say have been created with text-to-speech apps. The researchers at Reset were unable to identify which app was being used to automate the creation of the videos. One example reviewed by WIRED showed footage of German filmmaker Wim Wenders speaking in English about his own films, dubbed to make it appear as if he was speaking in French about how “the Ukrainians are ruined.” The ad was posted to Facebook on November 25 and was seen by up to 3,000 people before it was removed for failing to have the “required disclaimer,” according to Facebook’s ad library.

While Facebook has taken down the majority of the pages, some of them remain active, and the campaign shows glaring gaps in Meta’s ability to deal with disinformation on this scale.

Meta declined to respond on the record to WIRED’s request for comment about the campaign and the network of fake accounts created to disseminate the false ads. In a report from August, however, Meta acknowledged that Doppelganger was the “largest and most aggressively persistent covert influence operation from Russia that we’ve seen since 2017.”

The automated creation of accounts on Facebook is a well-known problem, and Meta has deployed a variety of artificial intelligence systems to combat efforts to mass-create fake pages and accounts. By its own admission, Facebook deletes millions, and sometimes billions, of fake pages every quarter, sometimes within minutes of their creation. Meta claims that around 5 percent of its monthly average users are fake, but outside experts say that figure is substantially higher.

While the Doppelganger group ran the campaign, the fake Facebook pages it used were purchased from an agency that specializes in creating massive networks of inauthentic pages on Facebook, according to Reset. They are still investigating who created these initial networks, but the researchers say this campaign was pushed out by two separate networks they identified containing 52,000 and 25,000 pages respectively. In October, Reset published a report identifying even larger networks of inauthentic Facebook pages, including one that had over 340,000 inauthentic pages. Despite having been identified publicly, these networks are still operating today.

With a number of major elections taking place in 2024, experts are again concerned about Meta’s ability to reign in disinformation.

“Meta’s sloppy product safety is a security liability for both Europe and the US as we approach next year’s elections,” Felix Kartte, EU director at Reset claims to WIRED. “Threat actors will continue exploiting loopholes in Facebook’s advertising systems to target deceptive and inflammatory content at millions of voters in the world’s biggest democracies.”

[lorelaiislatte]

NCIS: Hawai’i Renewal Demands - Actions to Take

Since many of us are unable to physically arrive and beat down the doors of CBS, here are a list of actions to be taken. I personally dislike the use of planes, billboards, etc - they’re a waste of money and resources in the current climate, and networks rarely care. Here are a list of direct-to-network actions to take that don’t involve any cost to fans.

1. Contact CBS directly through their feedback form, which you can find here. Select ‘Late Night’ and ‘NCIS: Hawai’i’ when prompted. Within your message, be sure to include the following: why the show is important to you, steps you have taken as a direct result of the news (cancelling Paramount Plus, for example), and a demand for at least a final season. Syncing our demands is particularly important. I know it’s tempting to let all hell break loose, but ultimately, firm demands for at least one final season are significantly more effective.

2. Sign the petition. I know people have mixed feelings on the effectiveness of them, but we’ve hit over seven thousand signatures in less than twenty-four hours. That’s not nothing. You can find it here - please, please ask friends, relatives, whoever else to sign it, even if they aren’t an existing fan.

3. Continue to make a storm on Twitter/X. Use the hashtags #SaveNCISHawaii and #RenewNCISHawaii and tag @/CBS and @/CBSTVStudios in every tweet. Edit: to expand on this - simple retweets (and private account tweets) do not get counted in numbers. Please quote tweet publicly whenever you can and add those hashtags each time.

4. Flood their Instagram comments - whether the post itself is NCIS: Hawai’i related or not. Do not allow them to avoid our frustration.

5. Continue to amplify the articles and reviewers who have expressed surprise and disappointment. Ratings and critic reviews hold weight in which shows get renewed and which get cancelled. If SWAT could be revived, there’s no reason NCIS: Hawai’i can’t.

If more routes become available, I’ll reblog and add them here.

[talonabraxas]

Nature Spirit

The inhabitants of the Elemental Kingdoms

Many people who are not clairvoyant wonder what fairies look like. The occultist and writer Bulwer-Lytton provides the answer in his famous novel Zanoni (reviewed in our books section of the website.) in which he says:

"Now, in space there are millions of beings not literally spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the spirit. Hence the Rosicrucian's lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet, in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each, than the Calmuc from the Greek,—differ in attributes and powers. In the drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers between earth and heaven."

As ever, this peer among mystics sums up the whole matter in a few lines. The elemental beings who direct the invisible hidden forces that drive the great storms that rage across our planet may well be regarded as 'hostile as fiends to men'. Their work seems utterly destructive and cruel, often leaving thousands dead, injured and homeless from the devastation wrought by tsunamis and hurricanes. But such elementals are not 'evil'. They have no consciousness of self as we understand it, and therefore no concept of 'right' or 'wrong.' They are simply the unconscious or semi-conscious agents of the universal laws they serve. The occultist and seer, Geoffrey Hodson, three of whose books we review in the books section of our website, gives a very vivid and true description of such air elementals in his book Fairies at work and at play. We quote his description in full in our afterword to this article at right, together with other clairvoyant observations from his books.

What about those nature spirits which are 'gentle as messengers between earth and heaven' which Bulwer-Lytton also mentions? You can read about these heavenly messengers of beauty and joy in Geoffrey Hodson's lively descriptions in our extracts from his books in our afterword at right.

From the foregoing and the examples we give in our afterword, it will be clear that a comprehensive description of the inhabitants of the elemental kingdoms is an utter impossibility. One might as well try to count and classify human beings from a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual perspective, and then distil this down to a single statement. You may object that the writer Douglas Adams did just that when he described humanity as "mostly harmless" in his book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but amusing as this statement may be, it does not really tell us very much about mankind. Were we to say that nature spirits are 'mostly good' you would probably very quickly stop reading this article and look for a more complete answer, and serve us right for our levity!

Those nature spirits in charge of the waters, the woods, the hills, the mountains are mostly entirely benevolent and loving in nature. There are, further, the cloud and wind Devas, who paint those magnificent pictures in the sky at sunrise and sunset which enthral all sensitive minds. Nature spirits are only one of the ranks or orders of spirits who compose the Hierarchy which rules the Universe under God. There are vast numbers of them and they are divided into three main classes: the Bodiless; the Form Devas; and the Passion Devas. The Bodiless ones belong to the highest realms of light, completely inaccessible to all but the greatest seers, and are composed of what we may call mental elemental Essence. Form Devas are of a lower grade of evolution, and while their bodies are composed also of the same Essence, they have no direct connection with mankind. The Passion Devas dwell in the Astral World, and their bodies are composed of Astral Elemental Essence, and these are the beings most commonly seen by clairvoyants.

[qtubbo-is-not-fine]

Okay, it's so so bad, but that's fine. This was inspired by Soul Eater's Morality Manipulation Machine, Tubbo's black suit and message on twitter, this fic has both fed!tubbo and poly morning crew, and mood of this work jump from angst to flirting very quickly, probably very ooc. Enjoy<3

---------------------------------------------------

«Was it freeing, what federation did to you?»

This is what made Tubbo finally stop in his tracks, he looked like absolutely startled, the smile froze on his face.

After a second, he regained his composure, turned to Pac and said,

«You very smart Pactw, one could say too smart for your own good»

«Answer the question, Tubbo, please»

He quieted down, then,

«Yes» second passes.

«No» another second.

«Both»

Finally, Pac thinks, this is a progress. Because since when Tubbo was revived by federation, he wasn't himself, he was so so wrong. In fancy black suit, with neutral smile and cold calculating eyes, he was now working on the create mechanisms for both feds and Islanders, charging for it a small fortune. The Town of Fobo was now heavily protected, access to his farms was limited, with him asking too much money for a single use of them. All attempts at stealing from him and pranks were were repaired with extreme retaliation, with him stealing an entire storages of items, making such severe lag machines, that some people were feeling it days after, and killing, then bleeding poor soul for all their money in return for lost items.

He stopped to invite others to the quests, and refused all requests for when others invited him. Pac was wondering, were feds supplying him with cookies, that he was not allowed to to do group stuff in fear of loosing their control over him.

«Are you thinking that you could do happy pills again and make me normal? You really want to be martyr so badly?»

«Is this like happy pills?» «No, it's…. Fine, if you really want to know, I guess I can tell you, for a price, of course»

«How much?» «A five thousand coins»

«Deal»

«Wow, you really desperate for information, didn't even bargain with me»

«You are worth it»

Tubbo leans back in his chair, his eyes is for a moment become glazed. He then begins to talk, his voice monotone.

«I wake up in feds facility, Sunny was there, crying. They told me "we revive you", "you were dead for that long", "your job request was reviewed and approved", blah blah blah, "would you like to see one recording, please". I say yes, and… it was recording of Valentine's Day….»

«I'm dead, Sunny is in shock, and all that they do is laugh at that, and celebrate like nothing happened… They couldn't even comfort my daughter, Pac. And then Sunny begins to tell me everything…»

His voice starting to become harsh.

«You know the feeling when you overwhelmed and upset and suffering so much, you can't even cry? What am I saying, of course you do» his eyes flashed bright green for a second, «Then they said:

«Would you like to be happy again?»

There it is, Pac thinks, the information that could help bring Tubbo back.

«I said "I don't want your drugs", they said "it's not drugs, it's something better", a prototype machine, something something your emotional connections, something something empathy manipulation, I don't remember it very well»

«Did you accepted it on your own? Or did feds forced you to?»

Tubbo doesn't answer, just looks at him with unreadable expression.

«Anyway, I pleaded them to let me care for Sunny and they allowed it. I sit in this machine and….»

His face neutral, but voice starts to tremble.

«It was pure hell, like every fiber of my being was on fire. It's actually funny, after that, they told me it was so painful because I was filled to the brim with kindness. Maybe they were messing with me»

«And then suddenly, it's stopped. The pain. I felt myself so much lighter, like a big weight was lifted from my shoulders. And.. That's it, Pac. I don't think you could "fix it", he makes air quotes, even if you all try»

Pac thinks and then opens his mouth.

«Does that mean you can't make emotional connections anymore?»

«I don't know and don't care, if I'm being honest»

They sit in silence a little and Pac decided to take his chance.

«Would you like to find out?» Pac says and smiles, leaning closer to Tubbo. He's immediately becomes red in the face.

«I, wha- how- Pac, you are joking, right, are you that stupid, or insane, or, or-

«Is that a no?» Pac teasing him, taking his hand and kissing the back of his hand.

«I- Pac y-you have a boyfriend, wha- if he knows, he will just kill me-

«Who's saying he can't join us. We both were devastated when you were gone, and now when we have this second chance, we ready to work on this relationship, even if we need to do it from the start again»

Tubbo stumble over his words and covered his red as tomato face with his hands. He sits like that for several minutes.

Finally, Tubbo laughs and removes his hands from his face, «You are absolutely batshit insane Pac, with no sense of self preservation for yourself. Fine, I accept, but only if it's both of you»

Pac leaning much closer and finally, after so long, his lips are on Tubbo's mouth, and it tastes better than he could ever imagine.

«It's a date, then» He says and kisses him again.

[the-booty-crusader]

A tip for all authors, original or fanfic-wise:

Please create a summary for your work and put it where it can be read easily. You are missing out on THOUSANDS of readers!

I spent an hour at the library today trying to find a good fantasy book. One out of every 100 books was a fantasy book, so that was already a bit disheartening.

Imagine my frustration when, from about half of those books, I could NOT even see what they were about!

It was all just quotes from people whose opinions I do not care about comparing the work to other writers, whose works I cannot recall at a glance.

I ended up not picking up a single book to bring home.

I decided to discuss this with other avid readers I knew on the internet and they felt the exact same. Reading is supposed to be a leisurely activity that relieves stress, and the less steps between the reader and a soft chair, a blanket, a cup of tea and a good book, the better. Having to take out a phone or find a library computer to type out the name in a search bar to find a summary is, oftentimes, already too much of a pain for many many casual readers.

The same goes for fanfics without tags or descriptions. People have a limited amount of time to read every day and they (we) usually don’t want to waste that taking a chance on a completely unknown story.

So please; create a summary for your work and put it front and center. I promise you nobody wants to read how much other people liked your book when they could be reading what the book is about. If we really want to know how people liked the book, we will look up reviews. Those are worth that extra step if we’re already considering reading the book.

Please reblog this if you agree so that it can reach an author that needs it!