#//i actually did research for this. Like I Went On The Wayback Machine To Find Wumbusworld Just For This.

[pierres-general-deliveries]

hey so whats up with the wumbus fanfic huh

I can’t believe you’re all still on about this! When will you guys leave me alone?

I got hacked! My account was used to make a fool of me!

And for the last time, I have never written gay Wumbus fanfiction!!!!

[violetsquare111]

The Dark Lord's birthday is not on october 2nd

so I was seeing a couple people also celebrating dark's birthday today. which makes sense, since that's the youtube upload date for ava3, and the date used in the flashback of ava uh.. 6 is it?

but this gave me pause because i did a tiny bit of research earlier on the general release timeline of ava, and i'd read on the wiki that ava3 was released on a completely different date: october 4, 2010, being first uploaded on atom.com (the site of the company that helped produce ava 2 and 3, now bought by paramount/comedy central)

now that is a drastically different date... but this is completely unsourced. do we know the actual date that ava3 was uploaded?

so i went on a web JOURNEY that i'd like to share with you all :D

tldr it's not oct 2 or oct 4. it's oct 11 2010

so the first thing i decided to check was who added that date to the wiki in the first place, and when. turns out it was an anonymous editor in 2016, not even a wiki account created... so, that's not going to get me anywhere. they didn't add a reference or any information other than just the date.

(ps you should read that 2016 version of the wiki page it's a fun janky mess lol /affectionate)

so i should just, like, check atom.com, right? well uh

yeah okay that is definitely not the same website. WAYBACK MACHINE IT IS (god bless wayback machine)

i scoured through different atom.com pages that were archived on wayback machine and found a few different tidbits:

the atom.com main page footer was updated with a link to ava3 on september 10, 2010 exactly. that seems pretty early!

the earliest capture of ava3 itself was on october 16, 2010, and the video is listed as being uploaded on october 11. interestingly, the video here was uploaded by "JO3Y", not Alan Becker... but later captures do show it as being uploaded by alan. i have no idea what is going on there

this isn't really relevant to the question at hand but you can watch ava2 on the website and it's very clearly flash-controlled, with a cool custom-made video control bar meant to look like Windows??? that's so cool????

this is also not relevant but the original description of ava2 seems to imply that this "chosen one" was originally meant to be the same stick figure as "victim". which is clearly not canon anymore but like. woag.

JO3Y's user page as of october 14, 2010 lists ava3 as being uploaded either... 6 or 7 days ago. (for some reason there are 2 uploads?? both are the same link.) that would put ava3's release on either october 7 or october 8, 2010.

guys there was an animator vs animation actual flash game. did anyone know about this wtf. the wayback machine link is busted but i managed to find a working version here and i am going to play it RIGHT as soon as i finish writing this

none of this was ultimately very helpful, though. there's multiple different dates here, none of which correspond to the elusive october 4th, and it could've even been as early as september. there's not many captures to look at, not many saved atom pages in niche places... what to even look at now?

oh.

oh i've been a FOOL.

the facebook link here is some kinda broken mess on wayback and also i don't know how to use facebook, so let's just check twitter. the given link is-

holy fucking shit did twitter look like this

right well. there's unfortunately no captures of this twitter account around the time ava3 could've released, and you can't scroll to see older tweets (those pages weren't archived), so no luck here. the account itself has also since been either deleted or renamed. a link to one of the tweets would surely also be defunct, right? but let's try it...

and oh my god. OH MY GOD. the account is STILL UP it's just under a different username oh my god. CAN WE FIND THE ORIGINAL AVA3 ANNOUNCEMENT TWEET.

lo and behold, one date-filtered twitter search later, here it is:

october 11, 2010. (and i DID confirm that was a monday)

dark's 14th birthday is coming up in a little over a week, guys...!

now, when was ava2 released? uhhhhhhhhhhhh oh hey the snipers are at my hou

[suemooon]

Origins of the Oncest ship: the history

Travelling in The Once-ler's fandom history | by suemooon

Welcome Oncelings!

to one of my most serious researchers I have ever done before, now, here’s a little explanation:

I wanted to make a fandom analysis using old posts, the way back machine, and other stuff to try to compare the once-ler fandom in its golden age and now, trying to suppose how it was and trying to see what happened there, but it would be later. Because I got a really interesting capture that I got while I was checking the Oncest tag in the wayback machine, and I got this:

IT QUICKLY GOT MY ATTENTION

Someone saying that they were the first ones to show the Oncest ship term.

I wanted to see if it was real and not a joke or something like that, so I copied the url of the tumblr and desired that the blog is still up, and I got it!!!

I explored their tumblr for a little while, and I noticed another thing, there’s a bunch of photos of the once-ler BEFORE the movie of the Lorax came out, this of course means that ye, there was some people who found the once-ler attractive and begun to share his pictures in tumblr (without any tag, if it wasn’t the help of this blog and some other ones, I probably couldn’t got them).

This makes a lot more sense than saying that the once-ler fandom was born after the came out of the movie I can say.

Those pictures belongs to all the Lorax trailers, in which ONLY appears the gray once-ler, not greedler. So we can say that the people who find him attractive in the beginning, the greedler was like a kind of “plot twist”

But the topic of the whole fandom will be for my another analysis, now let’s try to focus on Oncest.

2. Possible date of apparition

In my research, it seems that Oncest was born between 19th March, 2012, but where did I took this supposition?

Checking the dates between their first Oncest mentions (and also checking other old inactive once-ler’s blogs), there’s some important dates to make a highlight.

link to post: https://theambernerd.tumblr.com/post/19771248254/thank-you-all-you-lovely-people-for-following-me

In this screenshot, someone responds that this pairing has a name, this is from March 22, 2012, so the ship already existed and had a name too, so let’s check out the other blogs and their archives.

temporarilycheating

squidmama

Suddenly we see Oncest fanart.

The dates are between 19th and later, is this the origin of the ship?

Of course this is just a supposition, I had to see it at that time to prove it, but it’s not the case. All I can do is make suppositions.

You can take it as something true or fake, that’s your opinion.

3. Who was the original person who brought up with the Oncest idea?

This one was one of the most complicated things that you can try to research, we are talking about something that is 11 years old, so some pretty amount of information got lost with the time.

In words of temporarilycheating.

IT’S CALLED ONCEST BECAUSE I SAID SO! Lol but really…actually, I’m kinda the one who came up with the name in the first place… The pairing existed, but I think it was originally called twincest or something… But anyhow, in month one of the fandom, back when Sirsteeve made some of the first oncest fanart the fandom went CRAZY over the idea…and so did i. So I was sitting in my living room having a feels moment over this new OTP…but since the fandom didn’t really have a name for it, it made me think… It came to my mind that the fandom was somewhat dividing the once-ler into two seperate people of the same relation-oncie and greed-ler. To me, it sounded like incest. So I played around with that idea a bit in my head. And after saying incest repeatedly in my head I noticed the ‘ce’ in the word. I came to the conclusion to 'once’ in addition to the 'est’. thus 'oncest’. I had a fangasm and posted my idea to tumblr ASAP. Apparantly, it caught on cuz it’s still called oncest today and is widely known C: That has to be one of my greatest achievements in this fandom.

link to post: https://temporarilycheating.tumblr.com/post/25857778616/why-is-it-called-oncest

There's a small mention to someone named "Sirsteeve" who explains that were one of the firsts ones to draw Oncest.

I searched and their oldest Oncest post I found is this one.

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: sirsteeve ( hour - 5:22 PM )

So we have in our eyes one of the first Oncest post ever.

Is that the original Oncest post? I don’t know, it only says that is ONE of the first persons in the fandom who brought up the idea. Is it made by one person or a group of people? I don’t know.

Other very first posts about Oncest:

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: cartoonjunkie ( hour - 10:39 PM, 5 hours later after sirsteeve )

Date: March 20th, 2012 by: owlapin

Date: March 21st, 2012 by: rutella

4. Who gave the name of "Oncest"?

GUYS!!!! I KNOW WHAT TO CALL THE PAIRING!!!!! Y'know, once-ler/green suit once-ler!???? IT SHOULD BE CALLED ONCEST!!!! GET IT!? Its like incest, but with himself! :D WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK!? If you like the idea, reblog this to spread the word! :D

Date: March 20th, 2012

It seems it’s true, temporarilycheating was the one who created the Oncest term, we should give her more recognition for it!

link to post: https://www.tumblr.com/temporarilycheating/19650360910/guys

Conclusion

Second part? who knows. But the only thing I can say is… this one was one of my most complicated things to find, but now I got some important information. I'm here for you to share my knowledge!

I must say, I’m very proud of me for this, you guys have no idea how excited I got when I found these photos and data, maybe is not too much but I think they’re really important yet; this information forms part of our fandom history, and I think we should keep that information up and don’t lose it.

As a reminder too, as I already said once…

Oncest is like an icon for our dear Once-ler Fandom, whether we like it or not.

We can’t deny its existence, we can’t blame it, we can’t try to delete it, it always will exist as always the fandom will exist and some people like it.

And… My opinion about Oncest?

Well, I don’t hate it, I don’t love it thou, but I can like some posts about it, I can appreciate art from this ship, and it’s idea too.

Any reblog, like, and comment it's appreciated!

[desertdollranch]

Opening my Amy Elise doll

Meet Haley!

So I'm sure you all know I love rare and discontinued 18 inch dolls. It's a lot of fun finding out that they exist, hunting them down on the secondary market, receiving them in the mail, introducing them into my collection, seeing my collection become more diverse, and knowing that I'm one of the very few people who owns them. I also think it's fascinating to observe the individual differences between brands. While my 18 inch doll collection started with American Girl dolls, it certainly won't end there.

Haley was no exception to that. I first noticed her while searching for another brand of rare dolls. I stumbled across her listing, tried to research but couldn't find much about her, and so decided to think about it for a few weeks. She was so inexpensive (less than the price of a new Our Generation dolls) and yet looked like she was lovingly made with high quality materials. The mystery around her was so intriguing that I went ahead and bought her.

When I received her, the box gave me the URL of the now-defunct Amy Elise brand, and so I was able to plug it into the Wayback machine and see the site as it appeared when it was active. I also noticed the box refers to Amy Elise as "books and dolls with a purpose". What purpose could that be? I wondered if, based on Haley's lab coat and clipboard, that maybe these dolls encouraged young girls to consider careers in science. I didn't receive a book with my doll, so I could only speculate.

The lab coat was featured on Hayley's profile on the Amy Elise website, which was archived by the Wayback machine from 2007 to 2009.

The other available doll, Marissa, is a young detective who likes to solve mysteries. A good start to a later career in forensics, I guess?

But if you read the introductions closely, each mentions learning lessons about faith. And if you look closely at the pictures of the two dolls, you can see the golden cross necklace each of them is wearing.

I was way off in my assumption. Rather than being science-focused, Amy Elise was one of the many Christian alternatives to American Girl that began popping up in the 1990s. That's still happening today, although it's becoming less common as smaller brands realize how hard it is to compete with American Girl's massive advertising budget, as well as more budget-friendly alternatives like Our Generation. For that reason they tend to quietly go defunct within a few short years.

I think this calls for a deep dive into this small, obscure brand.

The Wayback machine doesn't always archive the complete sites, and especially not the pictures, but it seems to have gotten a pretty comprehensive shot of the site.

Here is the mission statement and letter from the CEO of Amy Elise.

Fortunately this statement manages to convey their purpose without insulting American Girl, or referring negatively to non-Christian girls. I also did Google the CEO's name to see if she's still involved in doll production of any kind, and I can't find evidence that she is.

Elsewhere on the site, there are a few other faith-related products sold separately from the dolls.

The images here are broken because they were not archived.

There are a few other outfits and accessories for Haley and Marissa as well. Larger images weren't archived. None of the outfit descriptions give any sort of link to the characters' stories.

That's about all that's interesting about the site. The author's blog is more of a journal of her life and thoughts. Only the first page was archived and nothing in it is related to the dolls or their stories.

So let's open the doll. (You might have already spotted her a few weeks ago when I made a post about my dolls visiting a pumpkin patch--Haley was there. I actually got her in October and just haven't gotten around to posting this until now, mid-December.)

Haley was never removed from her box, so she's in flawless condition. She came with a pretend clipboard, pretend pen, and a cross necklace.

Her outfit underneath the lab coat is very cute.

Everything fastens with snaps instead of Velcro.

Her shirt has buttons on the left shoulder.

Her jeans have snaps and a zipper.

Her wig is one of the nicest I've ever encountered! It's soft but not slippery, and feels very realistic.

It did come off pretty easily when I tugged on it, so I moved it over to give her a side part, which I think makes her look a bit younger than she does. To me she doesn't look ten years old like her book says. She definitely has a more mature look to her face.

Overall I'm really impressed at her high quality materials. She's made of vinyl, but it does look like porcelain. She has a cloth torso and the standard articulation at the hips, shoulders, and neck.

She fits nicely into American Girl clothes, despite being just a little bit slimmer.

She fits into Maplelea clothes too, and this robotics club outfit looks perfect on her. I like the pink and purple hair on her but I don't think this wig change will be permanent.

Her feet are slightly bigger than AG doll feet, as seen on the left. I tried Haley's shoes on my Maplelea doll Léonie, and they were a much better match!

[sorry-mom-ive-sinned]

Hello! Be ready for a long reblog lol, I hope you don't mind.

I knew I had seen these before, so I did some research and these are actually from the offical flash website that went up around the movie's release, and I tried getting screenshots for you from the wayback machine but I couldn't get it to work on my phone and don't have my computer on me sadly :( so heres the link to that in case you can get it to work:

But! I found a few accounts on youtube (that I suspect are all from the same person) that has the pages for each golden ticket winner! Its not the highest quality but they zoom in on the text so its readable at least. So I'll link those as well here:

And lastly the web design museum uploaded a video of the catcf website going through it, and they show Willy Wonkas page, The Oompla Loompas page, and Mike Teavee's page in really good quality so this one would be good for screenshots! Sadly it's only those three tho :( I'll link that here as well:

I also google image searched the screenshots from these videos to see if there was any higher quality ones out there, but couldn't find any myself. There may be some on the internet archive but it seems like it would take a lot of digging to find if it is there.

Anyways I hope this was helpful! And feel free to reach out to me about anything catcf related, I've done a lot of searching and know a fair bit of niche things about catcf, mainly about the 2005 movie and merchandise :)

Catcf tumblr I need ur helpppp!!!!! Does anyone know if there’s other versions of these images for the rest of the gtw? If so I would love if you’d share them with me!!!!

Also if anyone has a higher quality version of Mike’s card that would be wonderful too :)

[20dollarlolita]

How to get dye stains out of clothes? Or how to set leaky dye?

So I had kind of forgotten about this ask (Sorry anon!!) and then I ran into this tutorial someone did in pre-2014, which links to this now-dead page on the EGL livejournal (thank you, Wayback Machine) I haven't tried this, but their pictures look pretty good. They have some basic scientific confusion about how vinegar and salt and heat impact different dyes and fabrics, but that's textile science stuff and you don't have to understand that to be able to remove stains. It looks like their results are good, and I don't think that spot-treating dye bleed will hurt a print as long as you're not scrubbing across the entire print.

How we handle fugitive dye in *dramatic pause* THE THEATRE! is that we either wash it until the dye doesn't come off anymore (which may or may not change the color of the piece) or just not wash it at all. Neither of these are particularly practical for actual daily lolita, since we care if our clothes fade and we also care if our clothes get washed.

If you really want to get any extra leaking dye out, and that is the single most important factor, you want to go for Synthrapol (or Dharma Professional Textile Detergent, which is almost the same, but cheaper and safer). This stuff is designed to keep loose dye particles that didn't bind with the fabric in suspension, so that they don't settle down and bind onto the light or white parts of your garment. If you wash something with this, it will not bleed ever again. If you have a blouse or a coat that is all one color, and you want the dye to stop bleeding onto other garments that touch it, this might be what you want. If you have a print that is leaking one color onto another part of the print, this will solve that, too.

The bad thing about that is that, if the majority of the color of your piece was from dye that hadn't properly bonded onto the fiber, you can end up with a piece that's faded once you've washed it. Check to see if the piece is prone to fading, or if it's just prone to bleeding and running. I worked a show where the characters all wore hand-painted t-shirts (done by a local artist) where all the colors were incredibly fugitive. We would not have been able to wash the shirts even once without ruining the art on them, so we had to clean them with costume spray and spot-cleaning the armpits. To facilitate that, every actor wore undershirts, the armpits has pit-guards basted into them, and the shirts never went out into the world to be touched by non-theatrical dirt. There originally was a plan to auction the shirts off at the end of the run of the show, but we had to have a sit-down with the artist, the producers, the marketing team, and twelve never-washed shirts. With the artist's blessing, we synthrapol'd those fuckers, and they were pretty faded when we were done, but they still auctioned for a decent price. Obviously, "don't ever wash it" is not an option that really exists offstage (and barely exists onstage), but armpit guards do a lot.

If you want to look into it, you can check out what things fix dye onto what fibers. Fiber reactive dyes, sublimation dyes, acid dyes, protein dyes, bleaches, other kinds of dyed i'm not thinking about right now, all of them are activated by different things and are deactivated and set by different things. What sets a dye in cotton won't necessarily set a dye in polyester.

You can do a lot of research at home by finding an innocuous spot on the piece (I love the buttonhole end of waist ties for this) and use a wet cotton ball on it to see if dye transfers. If the dye transfers, you can let the dye intentionally bleed and then use textile detergent to remove the bleeding. After that, you can compare the color of one waist tie buttonhole to the un-abused end, and see if you can notice a difference. Button-on waist ties are just the greatest for this kind of experimentation. I just love them.

Wow, that was long, but if anyone else has advice, please leave it in the notes!

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Mary Ruth Keller

Mary Ruth Keller has 42 stories at Gossamer, plus her stories are at AO3. She's written a number of short standalone stories, but she's thought through the X-Files mythology and written about it probably as much as anybody ever has. So if you want to dive into the mythology and all its drama, you need to go read her mythology fics ASAP. (But read this long, interesting interview first!) Big thanks to Mary Ruth for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Quite frankly, yes. The Kuxan Sum Cycle branches off the actual series following the Third Season episode Syzygy. I took the myth-arc as it stood at that time, post Nisei-731, and the agents in mid-Rift. Although I didn’t quite realize it when I started out, I was most interested in moving the myth-arc forward in a continuously unfurling narrative, one where Scully and Mulder became an effective investigative team who support each other as partners and friends again. After I started writing in my little corner of the X-F universe in 1996, there was a lot of stuff on the show that just happened, with no real storytelling logic to it I could fathom, but that seemed to be popular. I stopped writing in 2000 because I was frantically busy at my new job (which consumed far too many twelve-plus-hour workdays and weekends) and because my sister and I were trying to take care of my elderly, increasingly frail, Mother. So, I never expected, when I started writing in 2018 and posting again in 2019 (I reposted all my stories, in order, to AO3 and fanfiction.net, because Chermera would never have made sense without them) for readers to take an interest in myth-arc and character issues that the series writers had simply abandoned to go chase, well, anything else, especially if it made no coherent sense whatsoever. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

The fandom was a lot of fun. There were many interesting, engaging discussions I took part in with other fans of the show, some of whom I am still in touch with.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

All of the above. I spent a lot of time discussing writing and characters with other writers on ATXC, except when I was actively working on my novels. Since I was doing basic research into microwave remote sensing of the Earth while working at the Naval Research Laboratory at the time – yes, I was one of those dreaded Department of Defense scientists the show had a love/hate relationship with – my writing happened at night and on weekends. Novels, especially the longer ones, take me about a year from first words on disk until release, which meant I didn’t have all the time to participate on-line as I would have otherwise. But, I enjoyed chatting with the fellow denizens of the Endies Board, and on the EMXC, Scullyfic, and Je Souhaite mailing lists. I’ve saved some of those posts and conversation threads on my older computers, where it’s fun re-reading them from time to time. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

There were a lot of generous, funny, very intelligent fans involved with X-F back then (not that there aren’t now; there are, of course). I started writing because I wanted to get the myth-arc and the characters back on-track, the long-term story moving forward and the agents again being the smart investigators I loved hanging out with on Friday nights. But, outside of having read a lot of myth, literature, fiction, and non-fiction, I didn’t know enough about the mechanics of writing fiction. Several authors were willing to help out, some explicitly through E-mail conversations, and some from general comments about crafting stories that were posted to ATXC. I had a real problem with how I initially handled dialog, which I had some E-mail guidance on, that was very much appreciated. I also had two quite diligent beta readers, one an on-line fan, and one a real-life friend, both male, who helped me with the direction of the Scully-Mulder half of Anath. I was, at the time, utterly exasperated with how the pair of them had become such complete morons on the series, both totally incapable of investigating anything successfully, which was affecting my writing the characters in that story.   What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? Ooh, boy. I’d like to say I started watching with the show with the Pilot, but I didn’t, quite. Tom Shales was the Washington Post TV critic at the time the Pilot aired – yes, not only was I a government scientist, I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1992. He was intrigued by the characters and premise and found Duchovny and Anderson engaging while playing their roles. At the time, I was wrapped up trying to work on a PhD while still employed at NRL, so I tucked the review away, waiting until I had Friday nights free to check it out. I’m a great lover of science fiction, so I thought to give the show a try, eventually. [Lilydale note: I found a couple things Tom Shales wrote about The X-Files premiere in 1993: Fall 1993 TV preview article and a “Pilot” episode review.]

The first episode I sat down to watch was the First Season Darkness Falls, where Mulder and Scully get trapped at the logging camp with the Earth Firster, Doug Spinney, the logging executive, Steve Humphries, the Forest Ranger, Larry Moore, and the gooey green bugs. I was amazed by that story. It was as perfect a little piece of science fiction as I have seen on TV (except for one bit toward the end), with an environmental moral to it as well, where all the characters make good and bad choices, and they all suffer or succeed because of them.

What hooked me, really hooked me, were the first/second acts, specifically, Dana Scully’s actions, once they find the desiccated logger in the tree. The investigation is handled logically, in that it’s not the big male agent who goes shinnying up the trunk to look at the evidence while everyone else stands around watching and wailing, “Whatever shall we do!” No, it’s little Dana Scully who takes the ride to the upper branches. This made oodles of sense, in that she was this tiny woman whom two men could lever up that far with a rope, a hand winch, and pulleys. When she gets there, after grimacing (who wouldn’t, considering what she saw), she starts investigating. She does an on-the-spot post-mortem exam, while Mulder makes an ooky male-body-parts joke, but everyone takes her results seriously. I was thrilled. Here was a female character I could really relate to, someone who could hold her own in a difficult situation, unlike most of those on the tube, then or now.

I made a point, over the following summer, of watching as many re-runs as I could, catching up on the episodes and characters. The stories ran to science fiction and horror, which are my preference. Further, although there was an emphasis on the paranormal, several of the first season episodes were written so both Mulder’s wanting-to-believe-but-needing-proof intuitive, emotional approach and Scully’s logical, scientific, justice-oriented viewpoint each got the narrative coherently from initial crime to identifying and apprehending a suspect. It was some spectacular, complex writing, and I was hooked, hopelessly hooked. I discuss this some on my old author web-page, which still exists, courtesy of the Wayback machine), so I won’t belabor it. What got you involved with X-Files fan-fic? The shenanigans within the Third Season, quite honestly. The myth-arc wasn’t moving forward, as it had during the Second Season, which I really couldn’t understand. Carter had given us this bang-up start in the ABC Trilogy with all these new fictional possibilities to explore, but instead, bupkis. The MOTW’s were retreads with no depth or moral/ethical weight to them, except for Darin’s stories. The intelligent agents I had enjoyed spending time with while they pursued their oddball investigations were evaporating before my eyes. Mulder had always been this deeply intuitive character who cared about others and knew he could get it wrong, so needed Scully’s logic in their investigations, even if he didn’t always want to hear her observations and questions. But that character was being replaced by a cookie-cutter misunderstood anti-hero, who wasn’t thinking, just running off to chase butterflies, who was always right because he was The Guy. Scully, as an investigator, the little agent who could, was simply being sidelined. Sure, she’d argue with Mulder, but the writers had stopped giving her and her logical viewpoint a real role in their cases, Darin excepted, again. As the series went on, the Agent and Doctor Dana Scully I respected was replaced with this snappish little female whose only notable skill was running in high heels, who spent her time standing around with her arms crossed, and made pruney faces at Mulder if she were required to do any actual investigating. I hated that character, but, apparently, the all-male writing staff just loved her.

I knew about the on-line fandom, so I thought to check out if anybody else had noticed these “improvements.” First, I spent time at ATXF, discussing the changes with the series, that disturbed a lot of folks, not just me. Eventually, I tripped onto ATXC. There were writers there who understood the two characters, quite well, but weren’t that interested in the other problems with the show that bothered me deeply.

Like many fan-fiction writers, I decided to try to bring in, or in my case, bring back, what I was missing in what was being aired. Sins of the Fathers was the result. As I mentioned above, it was a far from perfect story, but I learned much putting it together, and it got a lot of positive feedback. So I kept writing and trying to improve what I wrote. Folks appreciated it, then and now, surprisingly, which was endless encouragement to keep going. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? With work and my Mom, as I mentioned above, I dropped out for a few years. My new job is still microwave remote sensing of the Earth, at a University-affiliated laboratory, not working directly for the government, but the NASA/NSF-type funding for the research I like to do is much harder to come by, so it takes up a lot more of my time to keep funded and working. Adding to that, I haven’t found places like ATXC in the 90’s or the Endies Board, but I suppose lightning only strikes once. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Not really, no. I’ve enjoyed other TV series, but, I never felt those shows were just throwing away essential parts of themselves as X-F did, or, if they went bad, I simply stopped watching them. A fandom is, or can be, a huge time commitment, which, as I’ve noted, I don’t have that much of. I discuss this quite extensively in my author’s notes at the end of Chermera, so I won’t repeat myself. [Lilydale note: the long author notes are at the end of the story’s last chapter, not in the AO3 notes section.] Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

As a child, I loved reading myths and legends from many different cultures. So many amazing stories, so much that touches on truth. Greek myth, Norse legends, Islamic tales, Celtic fables, all of them. It goes without saying that discovering Tolkien’s fully-realized Middle Earth in my early teens was like falling into an river of endless delights.

In literature, perhaps the character I enjoy most is Sherlock Holmes. On television/in movies, I’d have to say: Beverly Crusher, (early) Dana Scully, Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan and (early) Aeryn Sun on Farscape, Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1, Hermione Granger, and most recently, Lagertha on Vikings. Dunno, there might be a pattern there. Possibly. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Yes, absolutely. I started rewatching the series when it ran on BBC America, enjoying the first two seasons again. I’d actually never stopped thinking about Mulder and Scully; I just lost the time to write about them, until two years ago, when I managed to land some long-term funding so I wasn’t staying up nights writing proposals every few months. I’d have a thought about how to advance the story that became Chermera, so I’d make a mental note and play with it in my head. I also have two more novels and a satyr play left to go in the sequence of stories I want to write, so I’m turning over plot-lines and potential arcs in my head all the time. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I do read X-F fan-fic. Since the series has wandered so far away from what engaged me, and most fan-fic keeps up with that, I don’t read very much. As far as other fandoms, one was enough. Do you have any favorite X-Files fan-fic stories or authors?

Reaching back into the dark ages, I’d say Pellinor and Nascent. They may both be available on Gossamer. [Lilydale note: Fortunately, they are!] What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? Zurvan is the favorite of my older stories. It, like Twelfth Night (Denha on AO3 to avoid confusion with another X-F story named Twelfth Night), builds on the past stories in their trilogies and brings the overall arc to new places. It’s fun to uncover surprises when writing and develop challenges to address in the future, which both of those stories did. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I’d certainly like to. I had planned to write three trilogies with their satyr plays, each of them focusing on an aspect of the mythical Triple Goddess: Maiden, Matron, and Crone, in the X-F universe. Only, being me, I turned it around. Sandra Ann Miller (Samantha) is the Maiden, but I’ve just started telling that part of the arc with the transitional Anath and the first trilogy story Chermera. I’m approaching this trilogy as a coherent tale spread across the three novels, which is different from the other two. The Caroline Lowenberg Trilogy didn’t really get organized until Twelfth Night. It was only the third story I’d ever written, so perhaps I can be excused. The Dana Scully Trilogy was all interconnected, but that was more of an organic, rather than a pre-planned and deliberate, effort. I didn’t really grasp the full arc of what I was creating there until I was writing Chermera and looked back over the threads running from Rustic Suite through Anath. The next story in the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy involves the exposure of the Japanese arm of the Consortium, but, I need to read up on Japanese history, myths and legends, and world view before I write it. After finishing and posting Chermera, that’s what I’ve been doing. The conflict between Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and her ne’er-do-well brother Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the god of, among other things, storms, marriage, and love, as told in the Kojiki and the Nihongi (both written down in their near-final forms at the same time as we in the West were just recording the first skeletal versions of the Arthurian Legends), will definitely get worked into the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy. I’m starting to put the arcs and plot-lines together, but, I’m not ready to begin writing yet. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As I’ve discussed, I do. Part of why I take my time is because Mulder and Scully are owed real, challenging cases to solve - the two intelligent agents with their own approaches, strengths, and weaknesses, remember. Partly, because I have original fiction ideas I’d like to pursue. Trying to do the best I possibly can in the sheltered world of X-F where I attempt to create stories with universal themes, well-realized settings, coherent plot-lines, and original characters who resonate with my readers is practice for the original fiction. I’ll never write the Great American Novel (whatever that is), but I’d like to write stories that are as good as I can make them and fun for my readers, so I keep plugging. Where do you get ideas for stories? Reading and thinking, mostly. I try to look for ideas that haven’t been done to death, or different approaches to old themes. I have four original novels I scribble mental notes on. After I bring this myth-arc I’ve been working on to its (to me) logical resolution, I hope I’ll be able enough of a writer to get started on them. What's the story behind your pen name? Actually, it’s my real name. At the time I started writing, I didn’t think to do anything else. On ATXC and Gossamer, I wrote several of the shorts that are separate from the Kuxan Sum Cycle under the pen name Lise Meitner. She was a Twentieth Century theoretical physicist who explained nuclear fission, then was cut out of a Nobel prize because the judges of her day thought Marie Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie were “enough” women physicists working in radioactivity to be so honored. [Lilydale note: here’s her Wikipedia page. Among many other fascinating things talked about there, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times in two different categories and had the 109th chemical element, meitnerium, named after her. She also escaped Nazi Germany in a plot involving trains, boats, planes, and an emergency diamond ring. You really ought to read about her.] Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

I’d shared the first five of my novels with my family back in 1996. They liked them, my sister especially. I’m not sure they knew what to make of them. I haven’t shown them to my in-laws, but, I think my sister-in-law found them on her own. We haven’t discussed them, as they aren’t her usual preference, which is Romance. One distant blood relation was thrilled to discover them on-line and wrote me about them. My sister, though, is my (self-admitted) biggest fan. When we were kids, she and I shared a bedroom, where I’d make up stories to tell her at night so she could fall asleep. She and I correspond regularly by E-mail (she’s in Florida and I’m in Maryland). Back while I was working my way through Chermera, she asked out of the blue if I was ever going to write any more. She was thrilled to hear I had been but she doesn’t have regular Internet access other than at her job. I made printed, bound copies of all my stories to mail to her last Christmas. She loves them, bless her. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’ve sent Chermera to Gossamer, but, it hasn’t been updated since July 2018. All the rest of the stories are there.

At AO3, my stories are under: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkeller. The Kuxan Sum Cycle is linked together at: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555492.

I’ve published the Lise Meitner stories under my own name there: Faustus Mulder; Late Night Thoughts on Evolution, Hard Times, and Lost Pets; You Just Don’t Understand; and Lux Perpetua. Since I could separate out the trilogies into their own cycle, it just made sense.

At fan-fiction.net, they’re under: https://www.fanfiction.net/~maryruthkeller

Again, the Lise Meitner stories are under my own name. Since fanfiction.net doesn’t have a linked series option like AO3, I’ve added a header to all eleven of the stories in the Kuxan Sum Cycle so far explaining the order. The novels all are tagged with thumbnail versions of the covers I made for them. Also, the literary quotes I started each chapter and begin and end each story with, are kept in the AO3 versions, but are removed at fanfiction.net to avoid potential copyright issues. Shakespeare, Christine de Pisan, the Popol Vuh, the Ugaritic myths around Anath, and others are all long out of, or never were in, copyright, of course, but, just to be on the safe side, I’m following fanfiction.net’s rules.

If folks care to write, I’m still at my old eclipse address: mrkeller@eclipse.net. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Enjoy it, use it as an opportunity to make connections and expand your horizons as a storyteller. Fan-fiction was much more of a home-grown effort back in the 90’s than it is now, when there are how-to books, of all things. But, don’t get so wrapped up one forgets about real life. That’s where all the best stories are.

(Posted by Lilydale on October 27, 2020)

[kuro93]

The search for the truth about Ikisatashi (part 3!) - An epic lasted fourteen years ends here and now.

Sooo...I’m here again, and...I’m ready to drop the bomb.

I already did a post about the so-called Ikumi’s interview at Romics on 10th October 2004. You can find it here. But the whole question was still outstanding and I was not satisfied. So, I keep on with my researches for the truth.

I thought that I could find hints on some old Italians websites or forums. Unfortunately, most of them are dead or inaccessible since 2008 or 2009, and it’s impossible to find them on google.

I’m part of the Italian fandom since 2004. Tokyo Mew Mew has always been pretty appreciated here: a lot of websites and forums were born, especially during the years 2004-2006, and a massive amount of fanfictions on Tmm have been written. I thought that, somewhere in the oldest fanfictions I could find hints about the Ikisatashi thing and Kisshu, Pai and Taruto’s brotherhood. I’d like to thank a friend of mine, MewLeemon, that suggested me to do that and helped me on this research. So we went on EFP, Erika’s fanfiction page, the most important and famous Italian fanfiction website (MewLeemon and me posted some fanfictions there, too) and we found Elyon13’s fanfiction, named “Fratelli difficili” (I can translate it as “Troubled brothers” or “Hard brothers”, I think). As you might imagine, this fic is about Kisshu, Pai and Taruto’s “troubled” brotherhood. In the first three chapters, we can find Kisshu calling Pai “fratellone” (big brother) and also the whole story about the adoption is present. Futhermore, Kisshu calls himself “Kish Ikisatashi”, as you can see!

However, the first three chapters, where these information can be found, are all posted in August 2004, BEFORE Ikumi’s interview. If you want to check, you can found them here.

So, let’s go to the next source.

MewLeemon again made me know a pretty useful website, https://web.archive.org, that collects an incredible amount of “metadata captures” of any url, website or domain we’d like to know more, and allows them to be accessible to anyone thanks to its “Wayback Machine”. I have to say that I found something VERY interesting.

The first domain I’ll analyze is http://siria.altervista.org.

Here, the capture dated 07/22/04 (you can find it here) presents Ikisatashi “last name” and says that the aliens are all brothers. It is also stated that Pai is Taruto’s big brother and that Kisshu has been adopted by his family after his parents’ death. 

The second domain I found is http://mewmewtime.altervista.org.

In the capture dated 08/03/04 (you can find it here) the characters sections about the aliens state the same things, plus the fact that “Kisshu’s family has been killed by humans”. Emmrh...I don’t know how this can be possible, but...anyway, let’s not think about it. 

These sources are all prior to Ikumi’s interview, that I’d like to remind that occurred in 10th October 2004 at Romics. Webmistresses and collaborators of these two websites were active users of the most important Tmm Italian forum at that time, and they all knew each other, sometimes they cooperated in the creation of websites about Tmm.

So, the truth is clear: the whole Ikisatashi thing and the brotherhood HAVE BEEN INVENTED BY THE ITALIAN FANDOM, IN A TIME-FRAME WHICH WENT FROM JULY 2004 TO AUGUST 2004, MORE THAN TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE ACTUAL INTERVIEW. IKISATASHI IS FAKE, THE BROTHERHOOD IS FAKE, KISSHU’S ADOPTION IS FAKE. KISSHU, PAI AND TARUTO ARE NOT BROTHERS OR STEPBROTHERS.

Finally, after fourteen years we have concrete proof and we can put an end to this.

For the sake of the truth, I will be on service, nyaa~!

Thank you all for reading :)

[waqasblog2]

SEO Rankings Drop: A Step-by-Step Guide to Recovery - Moz

A few weeks ago, rankings for pages on a key section of my site dropped an average of a full position in one day. I’ve been an SEO for 7 years now, but I still ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, panicked that I wouldn’t be able to figure out my mistake. There are so many things that could’ve gone wrong: Did I or my team unintentionally mess with internal link equity? Did we lose links? Did one of Google’s now-constant algorithm updates screw me over?

Since the drop happened to a group of pages, I made the assumption it had to do with our site or page structure (it didn't). I wasted a good day focused on technical SEO. Once I realized my error, I decided to put together a guide to make sure that next time, I’ll do my research effectively. And you, my friends, will reap the rewards.

First, make sure there’s actually a rankings change

Okay, I have to start with this: before you go down this rabbit hole of rankings changes, make sure there was actually a rankings change. Your rankings tracker may not have localized properly, or have picked up on one of Google’s rankings experiments or personalization.

Find out:

If you’ve just seen a drop in your rankings tool and your traffic and GSC clicks are still up, keep an eye on things and try not to panic. I’ve seen too many natural fluctuations to go to my boss as soon as I see an issue.

But if you’re seeing that there’s a rankings change, start going through this guide.

Figure out what went wrong

1. Did Google update their algorithm?

Google rolls out a new algorithm update at least every day, most silently. Good news is, there are leagues of SEOs dedicated to documenting those changes.

If this is your issue...

The bad news here is that if Google’s updated their algorithm, you're going to have to change your approach to SEO in one way or another.

Make sure you understand:

Your next move is to put together a strategy to either pull yourself out of this penalty, or at the very least to protect your site from the next one.

2. Did your site lose links?

Pull the lost links report from Ahrefs or Majestic. They’re the most reputable link counters out there, and their indexes are updated daily.

If this is your issue...

The key here is to figure out who you lost links from and why, so you can try to regain or replace them.

3. Did you change the affected page(s)?

If you or your team changed the affected pages recently, Google may not think that they’re as relevant to the target keyword as they used to be.

If this is your issue…

Good news! You can probably revert your site and regain the traffic you’ve lost.

4. Did you change internal links to the affected page(s)?

If you or your team added or removed internal links, that could change the way link equity flows through your site, changing Google’s perceived value of the pages on your site.

If this is your issue…

Figure out how many internal links have been removed from pointing to your affected pages. If you have access to the old version of your site, run Screaming Frog (or a similar crawler) on the new and old versions of your site so you can compare inbound link counts (referred to as inlinks in SF). If you don’t have access to the old version of your site, take a couple of hours to compare navigation changes and mark down wherever the new layout may have hurt the affected pages.

How you fix the problem depends on how much impact you have on the site structure. It’s best to fix the issue in the navigational structure of the site, but many of us SEOs are overruled by the UX team when it comes to primary navigation. If that’s the case for you, think about systematic ways to add links where you can control the content. Some common options:

Keep in mind that removing links and adding them back later, or from different places on the site, may not have the same effect as the original internal links. You’ll want to keep an eye on your rankings, and add more internal links than the affected pages lost, to make sure you regain your Google rankings.

5. Google’s user feedback says you should rank differently.

Google is using machine learning to determine rankings. That means they’re at least in part measuring the value of your pages based on their click-through rate from SERPs and how long visitors stay on your page before returning to Google.

If this is your issue…

6. Your competition made a change.

You may have changed rank not because you did anything, but because your competition got stronger or weaker. Use your ranking tool to identify competitors that gained or lost the most from your rankings change. Use a tool like Versionista (paid, but worth it) or Wayback Machine (free, but spotty data) to find changes in your competitors’ sites.

If this is your issue…

You’re probably fuming, and your managers are probably fuming at you. But there’s a benefit to this: you can learn about what works from your competitors. They did the research and tested a change, and it paid off for them. Now you know the value! Imitate your competitor, but try to do it better than them this time — otherwise you’ll always be playing catch up.

Now you know what to do

You may still be panicking, but hopefully this post can guide you to some constructive solutions. I find that the best response to a drop in rankings is a good explanation and a plan.

And, to the Moz community of other brilliant SEOs: comment below if you see something I’ve missed!

This content was originally published here.

[particlecounting]

What Is The Best Air Purifier on The Market Today?

I started thinking about finding the best air purifier for my home because I was living in Beijing when the “airpocalypse” struck.

    I had a cough I couldn’t shake for weeks, so I started doing research into air purifiers. Unlike another answer here, I wasn’t concerned about allergens like pollen. I was concerned about the very small particles of smog, mostly 2.5 microns and below. Can air purifiers get particles that small?

    The Best Air Purifier Needs to Capture These Particles

I saw air purifier tests done by a doctor in his own apartment in Beijing (Richard Saint Cyr MD). He used a laser particle counter to test his home for the very small particles that can penetrate deep into our lungs.

    His results were straightforward: the purifiers he tested reduced the particulate in his home.

    So I went out to buy one of the purifiers he tested, and wham!

  Are The Best Air Purifiers The Most Expensive?

That leads me to how I answered this question as an air-breather in a polluted city. When I was searching for purifiers, I found lots of pages saying that you need to spend a fortune to get clean air. Or some say, “Sure, this cheap thing works, but don’t you want the best!?”

I’m not going to point to a single brand, but I’ll talk about air purifier test data from multiple sources that leads to a conclusion:

You don’t need to spend a fortune to protect yourself from air pollution. Some of the best-performing machines are also the cheapest.

1. My Tests in Beijing

I’ve tested several big brand purifiers in my apartment in Beijing, including that fancy IQ Air above.

    Averaging over dozens of tests, I found no correlation between price and effectiveness.

    (Don’t believe me? You don’t need to! All of the data and methods are publicly available. 

Do more: Simple instructions for making your own air purifier.

2. Another Citizen Scientist’s Home Tests

Another dedicated nerd with very fancy test equipment published tests of several big brand and less-big brand air purifiers in the US (the original report keeps changing–and oddly removing test details–so I archived the early version as a resource for all, also available on the Internet Wayback Machine).

    Here’s what he found:

  His tests also found that the most expensive purifiers were not always the best. The most expensive purifier was actually second to last in his test.

3. Shanghai Consumer Protection Bureau Air Purifier Tests

Perhaps an even more extreme test of this idea are the tests of the Shanghai Consumer Protection Bureau. These air purifier tests might be more extreme because they tested many machines made in China for the Chinese market, and China is not known for high-quality products. Thus, if we were to expect crappy, low-price machines to fail, here’s where we should find it. But here’s what they found:

    Notice that the Sharp and Electrolux were among the cheapest machines, but they removed as much particulate as brands that cost more than twice as much.

(Nerd note: these air purifier tests use different methods. For example, the tests in #2 and #3 burn something to create pollution in the room. My air purifier tests and the doctor’s tests use naturally occurring air pollution in Chinese apartments. That means we can’t translate percentages in one test to another test; instead, we should compare price and effectiveness within each test.)

4. Other tests

Results are similar from other third-party tests of purifiers.

The CADR tests of the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers

Consumer Reports (results behind a pay wall)

For example, I plotted out price and effectiveness in the Consumer Reports air purifier ratings. There was almost no correlation between price and performance.

  Bottom Line: A Smart Way to Choose The Best Air Purifier

  All of this test data points to three simple conclusions:

1. We don’t need to buy the most expensive machines to get clean air.

2. There are many options on the cheap end of the scale (including DIYs!) that remove as much particulate as the big boys.

3. Choosing a purifier is as simple as checking out the empirical data linked above and selecting the best combination of effectiveness and price.

After I did all of these tests and read other people’s tests, I now use simple DIY purifiers in my apartment in Beijing. I know several people who have paid for that 14,000 RMB ($2,138) IQ Air I first read about; in my home, I’m protecting my lungs for and paying about 3% of that price.

Two More Tips

  1. Avoid ionizers.

    Studies show they are not effective in the doses seen in most commercial machines, and they create ozone. I wrote a simple explanation of how ionizers work here. (Also check out Consumer Reports’ warning against ionizers.)

2. Avoid ozone generators, unless you’re not planning on being in the room.

Ozone can clean the air, but it’s harmful to humans. To give a sloppy analogy, it’s kind of like filling your home with landmines to protect against intruders. They’d kill intruders, but also us! Consumer Reports says: “avoid dedicated ozone generators entirely.”

  Breathe safe!

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