#EDIT: went back to delete and it was SO obviously stolen

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Hi there, just wanted to let you know that the good omens art with the dog (the radar one) is reposted and uncredited. The real artist is @jennieplanet (their tumblr is inactive, but they're still active on instagram at jennieplanetink). Shame tumblr has been putting so much stolen artwork on the radar lately, because it's not okay. Anyways, have a great day!

Ohhhhhh damn that sucks, thanks for the info. Deleting the post and also publishing this ask as a reminder to myself to always check this stuff.

[sarah-sandwich-writes]

20 Questions - Fanfic Writer Edition

I was tagged by both @writer-or-whatever and @jmrothwell so I suppose I better do it 😅 Thanks guys!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 42 (*gasp* am I Miles Morales?)

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 1,265,660 lol

3. What fandoms do you write for? currently just Spider-Man but I used to write for Supernatural and before that Harry Potter. I'm a one obsession at a time kinda girl.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Paradise (spread out with a butter knife) - 72k spideypool soulmates au

Don't Freak Out - 136k parkner rivals to lovers speedrun

A Peach Like You - 73k parkner featuring autistic!peter, loveatfirstsight!harley, and a cringe self insert as the villain of the week lmao

The Distance Between (You and Me) - 29k parkner bodyguard au

You're Freaking Out - 166k sequel to DFO featuring plot (wow!) and Miles (yay!)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

My dudes I try. I know I'm not very consistent and I have a tendency to disappear for months at a time, but I read and cherish each one.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't really do angsty endings lol I think the closest I've gotten is Lay Me Down - 8k destiel major character death--lowest kudosed fic out of all 42 lmao

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

This is an impossible question. I am like the queen of happy endings? You want me to rank them??? Fine, it's You're Freaking Out. Best 10k epilogue in the land. Oh hey also I just noticed it has 997 kudos. May I humbly request 3 more pretty please?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No. Closest was when someone complained on one of my destiel fics about the grocery store not having plastic bags and needing a quarter in order to obtain a cart. I specifically remember they said, "I hate when writers do this," and went on to complain about us making up obviously fake stuff that pulls them out of the story. Like, first of all you're complaining about storytellers making stuff up ??? okay. And second, it was an Aldi. A real grocery store. That I didn't make up.

I had to take a day to cool off before I responded and then they were like oh yeah, my roommate told me when I complained to them, you responded to this really nicely though! WHICH folks LET ME TELL YOU made me angrier lol Like you found out you were wrong and didn't even come back to edit/delete/apologize for your comment???

Anyway after that I internalized that you don't know what kind of lived experience your commenters have so some comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Which is a double-edged sword bc sometimes I get really nice enthusiastic comments and read it like, okay but what if this person is 12 and read it at 2am in a fit of delirium and this is their first fic ever and it's actually not as good as they think haha

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I doooo. I haven't published any since I wrote for spn but I have a parkner pwp ready to go as soon as I muster up the nerve.

I have no idea how to interpret the question "what kind" lol uhhh the hot kind? pffft

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have but I never published them. Again, these were for spn which is hella fun to play with merging into other canon. I started but never finished spn crossovers with Firefly, The 100, The Hunger Games, Criminal Minds, Agents of Shield, and Teen Wolf. I think that's all of them. I've been thinking about putting all of my abandoned wips on AO3 for archive purposes, but idk still noodling on it. I wish there way a way I could elect to post without notifying my subscribers :/ Or at least send them a message warning them that I'm about to be incredibly annoying

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of 🙃

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! A few now! The ultimate kudo in my opinion, and one I never expected <3

The wonderful @bluettspetal has translated An Insignificant Problem, Undercover? I thought you said under covers..., and Completely and utterly devoid of sex appeal into Russian with plans to translate more.

And Faaayeee42 on AO3 translated Paradise (spread out with a butter knife) to Mandarin Chinese.

I'm forever blown away by this.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope! Done some brainstorming a few times but nothing that has evolved into actually writing out a shared thing. Not sure I'd be any good at it tbh. I'd probably be a very frustrating writing partner.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Peter Parker/Harley Keener. They're good boys.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

My Infinity War time travel fix it (make it worse) fic 😔 It's got so much potential but it is perpetually at the bottom of the to-do list.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and developing relationships

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

mother fucking action sequences and like, coming up with The Plan (the evil kind and the ones to take down the evil kind)

This silly little graphic I made for You're Freaking Out where Harley mocks The Plan made by the spider dumplin gang was initially one half of my brain negging the other half about being shit at making Plans and I decided that it might as well manifest as the characters lmao

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Eh. It's fanfiction, you know? Do what you want. Experiment. Try your best to do it justice. Accept that some people are going to let their eyes blur and skim over it while others will pick it apart but most will exist somewhere in the middle. Just write what you want to write, how you want to write it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

*sigh* Harry Potter. Looking forward to my own post getting gobbled up by my block list lmao

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Goodness gracious how do I even decide? I think Peaches Ain't Pretty is my favorite. It's the fic that showed me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can step outside of fanfiction and write whatever I want and be just as satisfied, if not more.

[hocuspocusbylooble]

Sorry I needed to say this again more calmly to satisfy an urge and it's not required reading or anything but

Random and self-indulgent, already mentioned in a freak out to no one and everyone. Mentioning it again because it's nagging at me

I had a ~15 y/o burgundy DSi XL with a copy of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies in it that I haven't seen since before my partner's ex-roommate left. It also had 2 brain training games and a doodle animator pre-installed. I had it since I was 14, and it has childhood memories on it, pictures, drawings, animations. It has 15 years worth of memories on it. It has one awkward animation my best friend drew when we were 15-16.

I would not assume it was the ex-roommate if the cat jar and several cups of mine hadn't also gone missing. If the cat jar turns up, I will update and say so. He also tried to replace one of the cups when I got upset over a missing mug, which... he replaced it with a cup that wasn't exactly like the old one, so that's how I became aware he was responsible.

He also had plastic stained (as in too dirty to ever be clean again) flamingo bowls he never used and didn't value enough to take with him, but he used our new bowls that he also ate out of to feed cats outside. When they would fall off the porch and roll underneath, he wouldn't look for them. He would use another. Now they're all gone.

I saw the bowls as a mistake. He washed dishes and cleaned more than anyone else. He was not the worst roommate and his problems with us were justified. But destroying/stealing possessions, including medication and my irreplaceable DS, are too fucked up. And he did not have a conversation with us about a lot of it until after things went missing and were destroyed. A lot of it, he never had a discussion with us about at all. And I have reason to believe he saw me struggling and suffering enough.

Sorry, I deleted the paragraph about my adderall before posting this. Now I've edited it a lot so whatever. But he threw away a CVS bag that very obviously contained a full pill bottle and I spent hours trying to find it. It was in the nasty outdoor trash can. If I hadn't found it, I would have been screwed for the rest of the month. I had just bought it, it hadn't been opened, so that was an entire month's worth of adderall. I left it in the living room by accident, he threw it in the trash, and there was no way he couldn't have noticed the noise, the weight of it, the movement of the pills. I took that into account when I found it and it was too hard to believe it was a mistake.

And I never made a problem about anything he did wrong to me because I felt like I was worse. But in hindsight, it bothers me a lot more now. It never happened while we were in the same room. I wasn't aware of any of it until after the damage had already been done, and I felt too guilty over other things to make a problem about it.

He never had a conversation with me or tried to talk about any of his problems with me. He did one time, during one bad incident, and he was very helpful that one time, and he showed he had the ability to be reasonable and considerate during that one incident, but only after he had left me on read and given me the silent treatment before. And he was very nonverbal, which was why I never wanted to hold it against him. I have trouble talking to people I feel awkward with, and I know it can be taken as silent treatment, but this was “silent treatment” since it was over text and he left me on read.

I would have preferred negotiating repayment with him over time instead of having my possessions stolen or destroyed, but now I don't feel indebted to him at all.

I feel like he was impulsive and destructive when he was angry at worst, and maybe felt entitled to stealing things instead of asking to be paid back, and nothing much worse than that. If either the cat jar or the DS shows up, I will update this.

[girinma]

i've been lazy with posting this but finished two books on my last boat trip so my thoughts on Kraken by China Miéville and Under Ground by Megan Marsnik.

Kraken

another jacob geller recc and my least favorite of the 3 i've read. Museum specimen collection boy Billy gets his giant squid stolen and enters a world of urban fantasy. It's a fun romp though really good worldbuilding but the central plot ultimately falls flat. 7/10

I don’t understand where breaks between paragraphs are. The scene won’t change nor will the POV character. Why is there a blank line. It feels like it was a web serial and these were breaks from that but if so why maintain them in the print version? Also there will be an indent for dialogue when both lines are by the same person. Why????

Also while I liked the realism of the dialogue it was sometimes difficult to read because of the way things were written as if someone literally said them combined with the accents. Sorry for being anglophobic.

Under Ground

I don’t understand how this book came to a Charleston used book thing when it is so Minnesota regional? A mystery. Anyway it's the 1910s, Katya leaves Slovenia because her parents die and she moves in with her aunt and uncle in Minnesota. but uh oh! the iron mines fucking suck so the miners are going to go on strike. surely the management will be willing to negotiate. right? it's based on an actual strike which is neat. 6/10

In general it's very easy to read and reminded me of grapes of wrath. This is obviously not an Author Author so I cut her slack but there are multiple points where you can tell she’s basically recounting a real thing because it does not fully mesh with the narrative sections. Forrest Gump esque scenes.

I would have appreciated a map of Minnesota because I ain’t been there but also I don’t know how this book escaped Minnesota so ?

For a book about unions, it was Not Socialist Enough. I wanted more vitriol. It tries to paint a happy ending at the end but I think it should be more call to action. “These people will kill you and nothing will ever happen and they keep getting away with it.”

Loved the focus on women, very good. Yes comment on the unpaid household labor the girlies are doing so their husband can work twelve hours in the mine. A shift that long and in that time period? Couldn’t survive without a woman doing everything else in your life.

Boardinghouse is such a good setting. It had a great cast of characters and was very natural to have everyone around. I know they were real but I think it worked really well for the story.

I’ve realized I’m pretentious and don’t really like historical fiction. Like yeah I’ll read it but if I want to read a book set in the past I’ll just read a book from the time period…

Overall it was fine. Not super memorable but it was obviously a passion project so yay Megan happy you finished it and got published :)

AND spoilers under the cut as usual

KRAKEN

The ending is… I don’t know. I like it in some ways and not in others. It did a good job calling back to the beginning and I think it’s very funny to bring The Christian God into this polytheistic world. That being said, I don’t think Vardy’s plan was foreshadowed enough in the middle? As soon as he disappears it’s obvious what’s happening but before that it wasn’t really there beyond the beginning. Also I don’t get it. Ok, he pushed the squid apocalypse forward as cover for his actions? But how did he get Griz to want to steal the squid? I think Vardy giving him the idea should have been made explicit.

I wish the author went more meta with the Griz fight. Like, the book is printed in ink and he is ink! Use that! The author already has some fun with page breaks and italics n such, so put some strikethroughs when Griz is editing reality to delete things and have Billy use footnotes to put things back in. House of Leaves this. Also if he did this he could add like a scene that’s partially destroyed by the memory fire. Literally just add a REDACTED or something.

The little epilogue/finale sucked. Just pairing off characters in straight pairings as if billy and saira or collingswood had anywhere near the relationship of billy and Dane. make it gay. Dane also got a shit ending he should have died with more fanfare. I think the book should have just ended after the cops came and arrested people.

As I said before the worldbuilding is wonderful I love every little concept he comes up with. The gunfarmers are my favorite but it’s all very fun yet aware of the eccentricity. yes everyone has themes weapons and yes people complain about it to their leaders because guns would be more effective BUT NO. The familiar strike and Wati in general was also very fun. Leftist king.

I really dislike Billy’s arc? He starts out interesting - refusing the call, he’s a funny little academic thrust into the world of fantasy. I like how long he’s sad that Leon died but I wished he had more to say about him. Like little things reminding him of Leon and not just reliving the moment he died. But as he comes to accept his role he becomes very much a vehicle of the plot. He becomes simply Hero without ever really using his skills (no preserving no squid knowledge no biology knowledge) and even though yes he lies a bit he isn’t A Liar. He does a little taxonomy at the end with Griz but I want more. He gets a phaser and then he just does what other people tell him. It’s like the author forgot Billy could have any knowledge from before the story started.

Under Ground

Everything after the bar shoot out is rushed but doesn’t go straight to epilogue? Like there was a struggle to wrap things up when the strike fails in real life and nothing good happens ever.

The romance was cuuuuute very cheesy in a This is a Book for Women ;) way but overall it was good. I will take Katka’s “this guy is sooo hot I’m immediately in love with him and will fantasize about him for years before he comes back from prison for being anti-American” over Billy’s “I need to fuck a magician let me call all the women I know.” I did wish there was more of a honeymoon period and not just Paul coming back and being like “I’m also madly in love with you yayayay” because if he got to know her he would have loved her. She is not just some Slovenian girl but she also works on an independent newspaper and does journalism!! His union leader ass would love her pro-labor reporting.

Katka is kind of a bland character though. I KNOW it’s 1915 but she literally is only an individual because she 1. Can type and 2. Likes guns. Could she have a fucking flaw? She needed inner conflict - have her be against the strike and come to view it as necessary, or maybe she’s depressed due to her parents dying and doesn’t see why she should care about the future. She needed something going on Internally beyond “paul <3”

[naralanis]

Fic Writer Review!

Thanks @mssirey for the tag! I totally didn't have a crisis with the very last question, not at all bwhahaha

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

41, soon to be 42. ASJKLDBLAHSDSD how. And also why. But mostly, how.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

565,934 EXCUSE ME WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. I was going to check my unpublished works but ya know what. Maybe I've written enough akdjsa

3. How many fandoms have you written for?

Technically speaking, I've written and published fics for five fandoms. However, I only have one story for OUAT (and I have @shadowdianne to thank for that... or do I?) and one for Captain Marvel. Mirandy was my first love, Cissamione the second, and Supercorp has burrowed in my brain and just won't let go.

I've also technically written for Xena, Legend of Korra, and Criminal Minds, but since I never published those, we're going to pretend they don't exist!

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Only two are WIPs! YEAH! They're the top two, but WHO CARES, here they are:

1) Perhaps, aka my baby, my child, my darling, the apple of my eye. If I ever had to choose to finish only ONE of my WIPs, this would be the one. This story has grown with me, and I think you can tell when you read. Or maybe not!

2) For the Better. If the former is my baby, this one is like... my moody teenager. I love it dearly, but... it takes a lot out of me. An ode to one of the first fandoms I actively wrote for, it sits unfinished, but nearly, oh so nearly done. I will finish it, damn ittt.

3) The Date. Honestly, this one really surprised me -- it's one of my oldest one-shots, and something I definitely dashed off between lectures back in Scotland, maybe alternating with FtB chapters. It's one of my first attempts at humour, I think.

4) Bits and Pieces. AYY, I wasn't sure Supercorp would make the cut, WOOOT! This one was the second Supercorp fic I ever wrote, and I did it because Lena Is Baby and the idea just wouldn't leave my brain.

And lastly, the fabulous number 5... Perfect. AKA Nara's First (published) Explicit Fic, featuring Praise Kink and an Enchanted Dildo (for... reasons). I'm not gonna lie, I am so HAPPY this one made it, because it has a special place in my heart. It's where Soft Butch Hermione comes to life, and if you don't love Soft Butch Hermione, I'm sorry, we can't be friends. I love her.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

Eeermmm... some? I do want to respond, but I'm terrible with keeping up with comments, I really am. For whatever reason, even when I do my best, I don't really love responding directly on AO3. I also turned off all email notifications for AO3 because turns out my brain WILL be distracted by even a single one.

I'm much more responsive on Tumblr, I promise!

6. A fic you've written with the angstiest ending:

Any of my Narlily works, I guess? Like... All Flowers Wither or Carry On.

Unshackled would be another one, though it's Cissamione... but I caved and made a happy(ish) second part for that one.

7. Do you write crossovers?

Nope! Crossovers just don't do it for me, generally speaking (reading or writing).

8. Ever received hate on a fic?

EvEr rEcEIvEd hAtE-- yes. Oh, yes. I've been told my writing is terrible, I've been told my stories were a 'waste of time,' or 'overhyped,' I've had people tell me there was only One Way to write a certain pairing and my way was definitely Not The Way.

The list goes on.

It used to really, really bother me--still does, but in a much smaller way. Delete/Block buttons are my friends.

9. Do you write smut?

I write an absurd amount of smut. I just don't publish any of it because. Fear.

My pretty, pretty pens have created some filthy, filthy things.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

A couple of times -- only once or twice like, straight up attributed to someone else who acted like they were the one writing it. The other times were reposts or translations (without my permission, so still. stolen).

11. Ever had a fic translated?

I've authorized a couple of translations of a few of my DWP works. I'm usually cool with people translating my stuff IF THEY ASK ME FIRST and GIVE ME PROPER CREDIT.

9/10 it's some Brazilian who translates it to Portuguese without my permission and then gets upset when I, another Brazilian, do not endorse it and politely ask them to take the thing down. Thankfully it's been a while. ASK ME, DAMN IT.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Nothing published bwhaha!

13. All-time favourite ship?

Right now SuperCorp is definitely barking a little louder, so to speak, but I don't really have one favourite overall. It depends on the fandom, sometimes! Cissamione is very dear to my heart, because it's just so fucking out there and literally every one in this ship has some of the most fascinating headcanons for this pairing and it's just. So wonderful.

14. WIP you want to finish, but don't think you ever will?

Eeeeuuughhh.... Right now? Probably The Appraisal. I forget what I wanted to do with it, I'm not sure if I'm still feeling the premise... IDK.

I think the same could be said of For the Better, but I PROMISED to finish it, and GOD DAMN IT, I am so close I can't throw in the towel just yet.

15. Writing strengths?

You want ME to say good things about MYSELF? I'm still learning how to do that asldkjbasdn it's a work in progress. But I think I'd say... maybe world-building, at least on my longer works?

I would also like to think I do pretty OK in... IDK, some of the punchy stuff? The 'oh wait a minute' moment? IDK if that makes sense!

16. Writing weaknesses?

Organizing. Plot (HAHA IKR). Consistency. Editing (which is rich from someone who literally edits shit for a living... but go figure). Pacing. Weirdly long sentences? Commas for DAYS.

I could go on.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I am a-OK attempting it in French/Spanish/Portuguese. It may not sound natural, but it will be correct. If I'm trying another language, I'll definitely get help! But I've got no problem with it.

18. First fandom you ever wrote for?

Harry Potter, Dramione specifically, and you'll never find a shred of it. I was like 12, and almost a decade later I figured out Hermione was much better off with Draco's mother.

19. What's your fav fic you've written so far?

DON'T MAKE ME CHOOOSE asdkljasdl I CAAANNN'TTTT

I mean, obviously Perhaps is one of them -- it is my baby, that has been established. I think Little Bumps in the Road is also up there, because it was just a random writing exercise that got out of hand, and honestly? I'm here for it. Andddd.... I GUESS I'll put A Valentine's Evening up there as well, because it was the first time I didn't second guess every word I wrote when posting smut. I just... felt it, went for it, wrote it, and it felt really, really good to release some of that into the world lol

WHEW, this was a long one! I'll be tagging @intheinkpot, @shadowdianne, @delirious-comfort, and @16-pennies because I am a curious bastard. But, as always, feel free to treat this as an open tag. Go nuts!

[eleutheriana-a]

regarding jaz, aka @kryzeborn & @amidalc.

so i really didn’t want to make this into a big huge deal outside of my own blog and my own vagueing / angry shitposting because honestly, i have a right to my anger, as does red ( @rutalonidir ) , without owing anyone an explanation as to why we’re so angry. but the fact of the matter is, i’ve had multiple people come to me off anon expressing an interest in hearing my side of the story and what exactly went down between jaz and i, so i figured i’d just compile everything as it happened and explain, with links and screenshots so everyone can follow along at home. 

i’ve been writing padmé on and off for a few years now, something multiple people can attest to. i originally had a blog for her about two and a half / three years ago - ish, which has since been deleted and revamped, and then i moved her onto a multimuse for a while. i add this context in not to try and assert superiority, but to explain that my headcanons i’ve had on padmé have existed and been developed for literal years. when i had my old blog ( @eleutheriana-archive , originally libertinedeath ) , there was a meme that was floating around one day asking people to recast your fc, simply for fun. i reblogged it, and received a message from a friend suggesting tao okamoto, a japanese model and actress, due to the japanese and other asian influences on padmé’s character. i responded that i was really into the fancast and also mentioned that i’d been thinking about using fan bingbing ( the most popular padmé racebent fancast ) as an alternate for my star wars universe for a while now, but that i wasn’t sure if it’d be something people would be into, because it would require all luke and leia rpers that i interacted with using that fc to change their own fcs for those threads to keep the ethnicities correct. i got some good feedback on this post, and so i made another saying that i was going to consider starting to use her as an alternate ( when dealing solely with my star wars verses, as using an asian alt fc for modern verses means you have to take into account the real world reactions to race and can get into dicey territory, and was something i would have to think about more if i was even going to make that shift. ) but that i’d, again, have to do some thinking because it would change fcs of family members and i didn’t want to just spring that on luke and leia rpers. this happened on april twentieth, as you can see here. ( autoplay warning. ) 

the next day, i made an edit, found here, which was a way of providing suggestions to luke and leia rpers for fcs that they might be able to use if they wanted to interact with me in the capacity of an asian padmé / interracial skywalker family concept. shortly after i posted this edit, jaz reblogged it, found here. at the time, she was still using fan bingbing as an fc, and was following me as well. i looked at her account when she reblogged the edit, because it was tagged with her fc tag and i was kinda surprised, and i realized that she was a brand new padmé account, made only eight hours after i’d made a post saying i was going to be using fan bingbing as my alternate fc. 

now, i know what you’re thinking: “nicole, you just said above that fan bingbing is a popular fancast, that doesn’t mean jaz is stealing from you.” and honestly? i didn’t think she was stealing from me at the time. i didn’t think that my post had anything to do with her blog being created, at that time. was i suspicious? a little bit, but i’ve had some things stolen from me before and also had things just be a coincidence, so i wrote it off as no big deal and followed her back because i’m duplicate friendly. at the time, i did not think anything of her account, nor was i predisposed with a bias against her, as i’ve had no dealings with jaz in any other fandom, therefore, nothing to judge her on. to me she was just another padmé rper. i did, however, take a slight offense to something found in her rules, something that remains there to this day:

i can understand not wanting to inconvenience luke and leia rpers, but if you’re going to racebend your character and strive for more visibility for asian women, this is just....not cool. but again: i wasn’t going to pick fights about it, because to me she was just another padmé rper, and i didn’t think there was anything shady going on.

then things started to get a little odd. i started to notice some things here and there that kinda irked me, things that seemed a little...off. like she’d just lifted them from my blog. for example: i had a shitpost fest back in january with my main anakin and one of my friends who rps leia, as well as a cassian rper. i’ve had a headcanon since last december that in my rebel / survival verse, padmé ships leia and cassian pretty heavily and it’s been a running joke as well as a serious headcanon on my blog since i moved padmé to her own account off my multi. you can find recorded instances of this here, here, here, and here. i mention this and include screenshots because, to this day, i’ve never seen another padmé rper have this headcanon. that is, until jaz. i made this post as a general shitpost on april 24th, back when, again, jaz and i were still mutuals, and when her blog was only three days old. 

five minutes later, she made this post, as evidenced by my dash timestamps. not only had she just used the same scrambling of padmé's name, she’d also used the same headcanon i’d had since january. did this make me suspicious? definitely. it was a bit of a slap in the face for me, if i’m being a hundred percent honest, but again, i was willing to merely squint at her and let it go. i wasn’t going to start a fight over something petty and small like this, but it was definitely making me keep a closer eye on her blog and her headcanons, to see if she was taking anything else from me. if you’re still doubting whether or not i was still attempting to be friendly and chill about this with her, i actually replied to her post about cassian and leia mentioning that this was a long standing headcanon of mine, and that i was glad to see someone agreeing with me. of course, you can’t see this comment anymore, because she’s blocked me since then, but you can see that she @’d me after the fact to make another comment in agreement, which you can find here. so even though i was suspicious and keeping an eye out, i was still writing things off as coincidence, and trying to be friendly, because we were still mutuals. 

then i started noticing some more things: headcanons, threads, and most damning of all, an edit that was directly lifted from the one i’ve already pasted in here. unfortunately, i don’t have a screenshot of the edit itself, because i was so irritated at the time it didn’t occur to me to screenshot it, and she later took it down at my request, but that’s featured in our conversation you’ll see later. as far as headcanons go, there was a meme on the dash on may first that was to the effect of ‘send me nsfw headcanons you have about my character and i’ll tell you if they’re true or not’, which started the meat of the problem with jaz and i. here are a few of my published asks, obviously featuring nsfw text. while a few of these came from anon messages, most if not all of these were already headcanons i’d had previously and had been vocal about on my blog, just expanded on by anons. one. two. three. the third one is especially important here, as it’s something i’ve been super vocal about, and something jaz had never mentioned on her blog, until i posted that answered ask. she’s also stolen some general headcanons that are specific to my characterization of padmé, as detailed in these screenshots/posts, regarding her appearance info. jaz’s original ‘detailed appearance info’ survey can be found here, posted on april 27th, shortly before i’d reblogged my own version of the survey. note the voice section: “VOICE: soft, eloquent, a little childlike.” i’d initially posted mine in march, and then reblogged it again on april 27th, with some updated headcanons, mainly just a change of wording here and there to make it more clear and adjusting some scar and bra size headcanons. notice the wording of the voice headcanon, specifically. this is something i’ve had as a headcanon since march, if not earlier; i’ve got NUMEROUS posts on my archived blog about how i’ve headcanoned padmé to have an accent in every verse i have for her. on june 12th, a month and a half later, jaz updated her detailed appearance info survey, found here. note the wording on her voice section here in this updated version. it’s almost word for word this headcanon i posted back in january, with just a different location of the accent’s origin.

she also ripped off at least two threads of mine, one of which relating to vader and padmé reuniting after his surgery / procedure / whatever you wanna call it after mustafar, where he’s in the suit for the first time. i don’t have caps of her version of the thread, though i do have her wishlist post, and as you can see here and here, chloe ( @oletherian ) and i have been doing this since december, when i was still rping padmé on my multi. she also started doing a thread with one of her anakin partners dealing with anakin’s ptsd after the zygerria arc of the clone wars, which you can find here. i noticed this because chloe and i are the ONLY anakin and padmé blogs who were doing a thread relating to this topic, and i noticed jaz posting a reply to her version of the thread two days after chloe had replied to ours, which, combined with the content, made me incredibly suspicious. 

eventually. my friend wren then went on to send jaz an ask, off anon, asking her about all this, as i was getting more and more worked up by the incidents of what appeared to be blatant theft. jaz did not answer, and blocked him outright, though she later denied this. another friend also sent her asks, off and on anon, which she continued to ignore, until she finally got one that she answered, which you can see here. note the tags: “not even gonna reply to this bs until someone approaches me off anon”. at this point in time, at least two people already had, and she’d blocked them outright. 

shortly after posting this, she sent me an ask, as we were still mutuals at the time, giving me her skype and asking me if we could talk privately, to which i agreed, as i was more than willing to work things out with her on a private level. i prefer to handle things one on one to making a huge spectacle of things, and i was glad she was willing to talk to me privately. here is a complete record of our conversation.

( as a note for clarity: at the time, wren, ( @spectrefive ) , was still using his url “weaponexpert”, and still going by she/them pronouns, which is why i referred to him with neutral and feminine pronouns in these messages. obviously, he no longer uses those pronouns, but i just wanted to clarify in case there was some confusion. )

so while jaz agreed to delete the headcanons and the edit, she only deleted the edit. the headcanons are all still up on her archived blog and implemented on her current blog to this day. now, i was willing to let all this go, as we had both agreed to unfollow, block, and move on, despite the fact that i’ve gotten multiple anonymous hate messages that i’m pretty positive are from her due to the typing style ( there’s no date on this because i was mobile - and visiting my grandfather in the hospital ! - when i saw them, but the date was june eighteenth. of course, i don’t have proof because they were sent on anon and i don’t have an ip tracker on my blog, but the signs line up a bit too much for me to write this off as coincidence. ) , because again: i prefer to deal with these things privately and move on. i didn’t entirely believe her when she said nothing was actively stolen from me, or when she claimed not to have blocked wren after her sent her a message, but it wasn’t about belief. i’d said what i needed to say, so had she, and we’d moved on. 

then she started doing the same thing to red. most of you are familiar with this by now, as this is what’s started the drama currently, but for clarification, red wrote some nsfw headcanons on her old satine blog, found here, which she posted on the second of july. jaz then posted some extremely similar headcanons on the twenty seventh of august, right after blocking red’s blog. shortly after this was posted, red received this anonymous message, which then set the dash off. 

so anyway, there you have it. if you want to reblog this post, there’s nothing stopping you, but frankly, i’m not posting it to try and change anyone’s mind on who jaz is as a person or whether or not they want to interact with her. you’re all your own people and free to do whatever you want to or don’t want to do. it’s not my call. but i do stand by what i’ve said in my rules: i won’t have her on my dash from this point forward. thank you for taking the time to read this, and i hope you have a wonderful day.

[1ff]

The Society of Multiples, Chapter 3

Chapter One here

Chapter Two here

Here’s my NaNoWriMo novel, which I’m currently editing into a “second draft” and sharing here online. This is *not* the final version; but it’s good enough to share, and I’m hoping for some feedback and constructive criticism along the way.

So far everyone has been really awesome. Too nice, really. Stop being so nice. Feel free to point out where I’m going wrong, either in storytelling, grammar, characterization, representation, etc. Also, THANK YOU!!! The encouragement is giving me incentive to keep going even though our group in general is putting up with some seriously stupid depression right now.

Since I’ll be posting at some really random times, I’ll offer that if anyone wants I can tag them whenever I release a chapter? If you want this let me know.

-Ronin Ellis

if you love me you’ll reblog

Chapter 3

While on the coach bus from Lake Victor to Red River City, I had plenty of time to digest it all. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I'd done the right thing. There would be too many questions about why I was following Jace, why I was in a position to see him aim his gun, why I'd acted so strangely when dealing with the waitress and her headmate- whose names, I read in the news, were Winnie and Marley. On top of that, the obvious questions of why no one in my faked group was a registered person. So I'd run, as I'd done before. This was the third time I was reinventing myself, starting a new life. I'd gotten good at it. I knew where to go for work and housing where they wouldn't ask for ID. Since I'd never registered any of my false identities, I couldn’t prove any education or experience. I had no bank account or credit rating. It was possible to fix this situation in theory. I could always register one of my fakes- presumably Jan, the name I was given at birth- but then I would be stuck with that name, and I'd never be able to get any other name registered, since no dMRI would demonstrate any other mind inside my skull. In fact, just by going on and to get the test done, I risked the possibility of being detected as a singlet- and then, that would be the end for me.

But maybe it wasn't enough to just move this time. Maybe it was time to make a few new changes. I couldn't risk being rediscovered; I'd come too close this time. I couldn't keep going with Jan, Eron, and Tigh. I didn't really need to revamp everything though; it would be enough to just rename them. To make it easy to remember, how about- Jake, Eli, and Taft?

It felt strange renaming these three disguises. Names were so important to most people- they wouldn't just throw them around like this, once they have one they hang on tight to it, a token of their identity that stands for who they are forever. Naming a new person who comes into a system is a big deal in that system's life. I remember the ceremony and importance when I “invented” Eron and Tigh. It would be anathema to most people to even consider renaming.

When I got off the boss, it was as Eli. The same person as Eron, really. Black hair a tangled mess from sleeping on the bus, limbs aching from the seats that were too small to sleep in, makeup a smeared mess. As I headed straight for the public switchroom I started rehearsing how I would work my way into a new life here.

When you live your life under the constant threat like I do, you learn to keep physical money in a safe place. I hadn’t saved up as much as I wanted, but it would be enough to get me on my feet. Getting around was a hassle; I’d ditched my cellphone in the lake on my way out of town, which was the right call, but now I had to find things the hard way.

The first few nights were spent sleeping under bushes in the cold, damp, Great Lakes air, while spending the day in the main branch library downtown working frantically to find a cheap apartment and a job.

My first night in my own apartment, I didn’t even care that I had no bed or mattress. There was heat in the barely-legal suite, and a carpeted floor. After what I just went through it was like sleeping in a rich man’s king-size bed.

It was two months later that I was in a coffeeshop wasting time after work, and I saw Jace's face again. I saw the face before I heard the context of the news broadcast; I almost didn't recognize him at first, stripped of makeup and put into a formless grey jumpsuit. It was his mugshot; or her mugshot, or their mugshot, it was hard to tell at this point. The caption underneath read “Jace/Rhonda – murder” and the face staring into the camera seemed lifeless and dull. The eyes were dark and deep-set into a pale face with the remnants of whispy balding hair and three days worth of stubble. The police who took this mugshot had gone out of their way to make them look awful. Even for a criminal, this degree of degradation, degendering, and dehumanizing was shocking.

I stood up and moved closer to the television. The volume had been turned down low, but I could make out what the newscaster was saying:

“...employed at the Grand Victor Hotel, where he'd developed an unhealthy obsession with co-worker Winnie. The suspect is believed to be a singlet, possessing only one identity and living a lie to appear normal. He had invented a headmate by the name of Rhonda, who is unregistered and believed to have been a disguise. Police have not confirmed rumours of a third false identity. The suspect, who police are referring to as Jace/Rhonda in the absence of a clearer identity, was found pointing a gun from a concealed location along a nearby mountain path. He was discovered before he had the opportunity to act on whatever impulses led him there- by a local named Eron, who has since gone missing-”

And there was my face, stolen from the Facebook page I'd deleted as I left. It showed Eron with black hair and grey eyes, smirking against the mountain backdrop. I nearly dropped my cover, gasped and stepped back. I forced myself to hold still and not react.

“-and is presumed to have left the province before he could be questioned. Police have asked that anyone with any information contact them regarding Eron's whereabouts, or his headmates Tigh and Jan...” There were their faces too, smiling at the camera.

I didn't listen any further. I took the last bite from my chocolate croissant, grabbed my paper coffee cup, and left the coffeeshop in what I hoped seemed like a calm and natural manner but probably came across as scared and hurried.

I was about three blocks down before I made a sharp right turn to lose myself into a crowd that was gathered around a local busker performing a dance in bodypaint and revealing faux fur costume.

The distraction didn't work- there was a woman behind me keeping pace, trying to look natural just like me, failing just like me.

Had she noticed? Was I imagining this? No, she was definitely following. I'd learned to trust my instincts; I knew how to observe people, a skill I'd developed over years trying to blend in. She was trying not to look directly at me, but when I made a sharp left at the next intersection I caught her looking carefully at my face, obviously trying to match it to the one she'd seen on the television.

She was observant too; she knew she'd been caught. She smiled, raised a hand to wave.

“Ennis, I've been looking all over for you,” she said, rushing to catch up to me.

I inhaled deeply. “I'm not-”

“I'm so glad to have caught you out here alone,” she said, stressing the last word carefully. She rushed up to me, staring at me with wide blue eyes, smiling almost believably. She looked directly into my eyes, watching for a response.

“I-”

“And such good luck, I mean- here we both are,” she laughed in a friendly and social way, “both alone, what good timing, right?”

I stopped, stared back into her eyes. Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

She stepped closer, whispering, “I caught your reactions. I saw it all. Don't worry, I'm a friend.”

“A friend to who?” I whispered back, still careful to not drop Eli's vocal mannerisms.

“A friend to people who are alone.” She glanced around quickly; in this crowd, we were definitely not alone, and drawing attention. “Why don't we go somewhere private to talk?”

I nodded slowly. My heart was racing; I couldn't believe this was happening. I hadn't met another singlet- at least one I knew of, for years.

“My apartment is empty. It's safe there. What do you say?”

I nodded. I knew I was in serious danger; if the situation wasn't what I thought it was, if it was a trap or a misunderstanding, this could be it- I wasn't even entirely sure what they would do to me if I was found out, but I knew it would probably involve nonconsensual “therapy,” which would be a euphemism for some kind of psychological torture. I'd heard rumours of electroshock, ice baths, and permanent incarceration in dark asylums. I had no idea how much of it was truth or reality; nobody talked about singlets. So many people didn't even know we exist.

I decided to follow her and find out what happened next. She led me a few blocks away to an three-story walk-up apartment building, and I followed her up two flights of stairs and down the hall to her apartment. I was getting increasingly uneasy; was this a trap? Why did she seem to feel so safe with someone she didn't even know? I realized as she unlocked the door to her home that we were both agreeing to take an equal, balanced risk. She knew the risk, and had probably taken it before.

Her apartment was small inside; a couple of couches, bookshelf, a kitchen separated by a short counter. There was a man sitting in a chair reading a book; he looked up when we entered.

“Eris? Who's this?” He took off his reading glasses, brushed his long hair out of his face.

“It's okay, Kane. He's one of us.” She shut the door behind me; I found myself standing, fidgeting, not sure what to say.

Kane put his book down, stood and put out his hand. “I”m Kane. What's your name?”

I shook his hand hesitantly. “I'm-” I was about to say Eli, but suddenly realized that this wasn't the correct answer. This man was Kane, singularly, without headmates. Kane was his actual name, who he was when he didn’t have to pretend.

“It's okay,” he said, smiling. “I imagine right now you're feeling very confused and you have a lot of questions. Have you ever met another singlet before? That you know of?”

I shrugged. “Once. Maybe. Years ago. I wasn't sure.”

“Have a seat,” suggested Eris. “Kane, maybe some tea?”

I nodded, slowly taking off my coat and sitting down. I was sitting awkwardly on the edge of my seat, as though I might need to jump up without notice to dodge a gun or an explosion.

“How did you find him?”

“I was just in the cafe, and the news came on. There was a story about our friend here.” She smiled at me. “Apparently you're a bit of a hero.”

I shrugged. I could feel my face flushing. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“And now your good deed might be getting you in trouble, I take it?”

“I could get found out. I've been in hiding for a long time.” I looked up at both of them, so calm and reassured. “And you two? Are you pretending to be like them?”

“To be multiple? Yes. We both have identities we've constructed in order to fool other people. But we're safe here together. In this apartment we can be ourselves.”

“What’s a ‘multiple?’”

“It's what we call ordinary people, the ones who have more than one mind in their head. We figured if they get to make up a word to call us, we should get to make up a word to call them.”

“That makes sense.” I felt a long pause in the air, and then I exhaled slowly.

“It's real, isn't it?” I said, dropping Eli's voice finally. “You're actually here? I found you?”

Eris smiled. She'd obviously detected the change in voice. “Yes. You don't have to pretend here. And there are more like us; we don't know how many there are out there, but there's probably a lot more than any of us ever thought. There's a group of us who meet weekly here in Red River City.”

Kane brought the tray with tea. I hesitated.

“Something wrong with the tea?” Kane asked.

“I'm so used to measuring out sugar or honey or cream based on whichever identity I'm pretending to be. I hadn't really stopped to wonder how much I want.”

“All of us go through that,” he reassured me. “We finally get a chance to let our guard down, and we realize that we don't even know who we are anymore. You're safe now, though. You get to explore your own personality and figure yourself out.”

I stirred in one small spoonful of sugar, tasted the tea. It was fine. I looked around the apartment; Kane and Eris were watching me patiently. I took a deep breath.

“I don't even know where to start... how did you two get your names? Are Kane and Eris names of your fake identities, or your own names?”

“Eris was the name I was born with. Kane was originally named Abel.”

Kane smiled and shrugged. “It kind of made sense. I was born with a limp- grew out of it mostly, surgery took care of the rest. People were always wondering why all of my identities used the cane the same way... but really I didn't know how to fake using it any other way. I kind of thought the cane had a more consistent and true identity that I did.”

I nodded. “I feel like that sometimes. I don't even have a name. I don't really know who I am... sometimes I wake up in the morning and already I'm thinking in the mindset of one of my fakes... if I'm lucky and I have the morning to myself and 'they' aren't there, I get to have a coffee and look out my window and have some peace. But it doesn't last long... I haven't really 'been myself' around other people since I was a child... and I've never-” That was it. I couldn't go any further; suddenly I found myself bawling like an idiot, hiding my face in my hands, wiping away tears, shaking with a sense of humiliation and relief. I slumped onto a chair, feeling like an idiot. I couldn't believe myself; I didn't even know these people. I realized that at some point Eris had come over and put her arm around me; Kane had put a box of tissues in front of me. I tried to centre myself, tried to come back to a sense of stability, but despite an entire lifetime of training and self-control I couldn't do it.

“It's okay, cry it out,” Eris reassured me. “It's entirely natural. It would be surprising if you didn't. This is a very powerful moment for you.”

“What are we going to do?” I sobbed. I'd finally said it aloud, the question that had been plaguing me since I was only five years old and I had realized that I was different in a very dangerous and unacceptable way. “What do they even do to us? I keep hearing stories about all kinds of medical-” I broke down again, incoherent.

“That's why we're joining together, helping each other out,” Kane said calmly. “We're going to help each other to stay away from that fate. Yes, they don't like us. They want to convert us, make us like them, or kill us trying. I'm not going to lie to you; we know some of what goes on in the institutions. We're going to do whatever we can to try and stop that.”

I had never felt more relief in my life; I had found them, others like me, and everything I'd ever hoped or feared out of that discovery had come true.

“Take your time,” Eris said, her hand on my back reassuring me. “We're going to spend some time with you... teach you what we know, and help you if we can. You can't exactly go out there right now; sooner or later someone is going to recognize this face you're wearing. We'll help you sort something out, get you set up with a new disguise.”

[charlesjening]

UPDATED: What In the Hell Is Happening to CCH?

Get excited, Tax Twitter, you’re about to get your moment in the sun. Granted it’s a moment of total panic, but still, a moment.

So, if you haven’t heard, CCH has been borked since yesterday. When we say borked, we don’t mean “some users are having access problems,” rather the entire thing has been nuked to hell. Like POOF.

Artist’s rendering of CCH services rn, and by artist I mean me, and by rendering I mean a screenie I took in Fallout 76 after dropping a nuke

It appears this was a prophylactic measure by Wolters Kluwer, though why they would feel compelled to take down the whole enchilada is speculation we’ll save for a minute.

Need CCH support? Yeah, good luck with that.

Late last night, Wolters Kluwer made a statement on Facebook that, as expected, was greeted with a cacophony of criticism and littered with angry emojis.

On May 6, 2019, Wolters Kluwer experienced network and service interruptions affecting certain Wolters Kluwer platforms and applications. Out of an abundance of caution, we proactively took offline a number of other applications as we continue to investigate any impact. This prevented us from having adequate time to provide you advance notice, and for that we sincerely apologize.

We are working diligently around the clock to restore service as soon as possible.

We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We will provide further updates as they become available.

Obviously we’re not going to be able to get someone from CCH on the phone to ask what’s up, so as is tradition around here, we will instead fuel the rumor mill and speculate wildly as to what could be so bad CCH had to go bye-bye to hide from it.

Let’s start in /r/sysadmin. The popular theory is obviously some type of breach (“hackers” for you olds) or virus. Friendly reminder, people on Reddit are often full of shit so take this with a giant grain of salt.

I have a buddy who works there who said the Canada Office shutdown due to a potential virus outbreak, the other locations shut down as a precautionary.

EDIT: I learned that it may have made it out to some of the other locations before they got most end users to shutdown their systems. I saw another comment here saying they thought it was Megacortex, which would likely mean someone with Domain Admin rights had their credentials ripped off/stolen. I expect the next few days to be quite interesting, as this is no small company.

Someone who probably should have kept his mouth shut and stopped powerleveling on Reddit chimed in in a now-deleted post confirming the cooties in the system.

Sounds similar to what my wife said (she’s an employee). She they found the malware/ransonware in several locations across their network including the New York, New Jersey, Canada and Minnesota office. I know they use Dell for a lot of the cloud based systems.

Here’s another powerleveling blabbermouth who must have rethought doxing himself in the middle of a security breach as he later deleted his comments:

I’m a system engineer with WK. The issue is quite large and is not just affecting CCH Axcess, but rather all customer facing products across the health, Tax & Accounting, Governance, Risk & Compliance, and Legal & Regulatory. My office was not affected directly but was told to turn off our backup software and turn off all domain controllers effectively ending our work day.

He went on to “confirm” the attack is of the MegaCortex ransomware variety, which everyone has been assuming anyway. Again, this is all rumor so no one knows at this point, nor should one expect Wolters Kluwer to come out and say they were hit by ransomware while the attack is still in progress. If, of course, that’s what’s happening.

It seems a lot of people are twiddling their precious little thumbs waiting for CCH to come back.

We’ll update when we know more, and in the meantime … I dunno, not really much that can be done.

Update: Today May 8. 2019 Wolters Kluwer issued a statement admitting yeah, it was malware. Many services are still down as of this update however they are working toward getting them back online. The entirety of the statement can be found below:

On Monday, May 6, we started seeing technical anomalies in a number of our platforms and applications. We immediately started investigating and discovered the installation of malware. As a precaution, in parallel, we decided to take a broader range of platforms and applications offline. With this action, we aimed to quickly limit the impact this malware could have had, giving us the opportunity to investigate the issue with assistance from third-party forensics consultants and work on a solution. Unfortunately, this impacted our communication channels and limited our ability to share updates.

On May 7, we were able to restore service to a number of applications and platforms.

We regret any inconvenience and that we were unable to share more information initially, as our focus was on investigation and restoring services as quickly as possible for our customers.

We have seen no evidence that customer data was taken or that there was a breach of confidentiality of that data. Also, there is no reason to believe that our customers have been infected through our platforms and applications. Our investigation is ongoing. We want to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Update May 8, 17.00 CEST – For our customers in North America: As we continue to bring our support centers back online, please use this temporary number 800-930-1753 to contact us. While we may not be able to directly answer your question, we will forward your inquiry internally to the appropriate party.

The post UPDATED: What In the Hell Is Happening to CCH? appeared first on Going Concern.

republished from Going Concern

[lindyhunt]

How to Protect Yourself From a Facebook ‘Data Breach’ (And Why It’s Terrifying)

It’s likely that your social media feeds over the past few days have been filled with news of a data breach at Facebook at the hands of a UK-based data analytics company called Cambridge Analytica. Over the weekend, a whistleblower (and BC native) named Christopher Wylie, who’d worked at the data analytics company while living in London, revealed that, in 2014, the firm commissioned a professor at Cambridge University to create a personality quiz/app in order to get data about users’ personalities, political views, and other preferences and habits. Anyone familiar with Facebook has likely taken those quizzes at one point or another (remember when pop culture quizzes like ‘Which FRIENDS character are you?’ were all the rage a few years ago?). 270,000 American users took the quiz, allowing the firm to access their public profile data. What they didn’t realise is that the app was also scraping data from their friends’ profiles (something the site allowed at the time), resulting in information from over 50 million Facebook users becoming available to the makers of the app. This data was eventually used to target people with ads and news stories with the specific intention of influencing monumental political events (the firm was hired in 2015 by the Brexit ‘Leave.EU’ campaign and later by the Trump presidential campaign, but maintains that it didn’t use this massive pool of data in their work. Right.).

What makes it even scarier—you know, besides the whole manipulation-to-change-the-course-of-history thing—is that this isn’t a one-off “breach.” As Vox explains, “reports calling CA’s data harvesting a ‘leak,’ a ‘hack,’ or a serious violation of Facebook policy are all incorrect. All of the information collected by the company was information that Facebook had freely allowed mobile developers to access.” According to Facebook itself, via its deputy general counsel Paul Grewal, “No systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.” That’s all true. A small portion of the data that was taken from users was given up willingly, by granting the app access to their profiles, and the remaining bulk of it was taken legally from the users’ friends’ accounts (albeit without their explicit approval). But that’s what makes all of this really scary. We’re offering up our entire lives to the internet at large, with very little understanding of how far and wide all that precious information is travelling, and what it’s being used for.

“Social media is free because the commodity it is selling isn’t the platform, it’s you. The business of social media is to harvest and sell information about you, through various means,” writes information warfare expert Molly McKew for Cosmopolitan. “Millennials and Gen Z (people born from 1980 til now-ish) tend to lay their whole lives out online, and Instagram and Facebook and Tinder are amazingly efficient and sometimes sexy ways to communicate and form relationships,” she later writes. “But in the world of data, once you post something, you can’t take it back. Even if you delete a scandalous photo or undo a like, it might be gone from your visible profile but it’s part of your data profile forever.”

Now that we’re all suitably shaken, what can we do to protect ourselves going forward?

Obviously reading things like data harvesting, information warfare, and breach of privacy sent me right to my Facebook settings to see what sort of data about myself I was offering up to the world. I’m not a prolific Facebook user, I recently uninstalled its app from my phone, and I frequently delete or discontinue the use of apps that request to import my profile data from the social network. That said, there were several apps that apparently still had access to my profile and everything it contains, apps that I didn’t even remember downloading and that I’d probably granted access to several years ago.

But here’s the thing—they didn’t only have access to my bare-bones public profile data, as I’d originally thought. Some of the apps had access to all of my photos, including photos of me uploaded by friends (altogether that’s over 12000 photos just floating around in the ether!), all my status updates, and things other people had posted to my timeline. That’s terrifying. So I went in and systematically disallowed or curtailed the apps’ access. Here’s how you can do the same.

To edit the privacy and settings for your apps and games: 1. Click in the top right of Facebook and select Settings. 2. Click Apps in the left menu. 3. Click an app or game to edit its settings. 4. Click Save.

You can also head to Facebook’s Help Centre to learn more about the following: how to control your permissions when you create an account for an app or game, which allows you to review the information you’d be providing before you proceed; how to contact the developer of an app or a game to request that they delete the data about you that they have collected; and how to turn off Facebook’s integration with apps, games and websites.

“Until larger policy changes are made, there are some ways you can make smarter data choices,” advises McKew in her Cosmo explainer. “Never take quizzes or surveys; those are just about data access and collection. Don’t click on recommended pages or profiles; these come from algorithms, and feedback into them. Don’t link data profiles — don’t use your Facebook login, for example, to log in to other apps or services; when you do, you are giving those secondary providers access to everything in your Facebook profile. Keep in mind that apps running in the background on your phone are still collecting data.”

In other words, someone’s always watching.

If all this is a bit too much for you, The Verge has a handy step-by-step guide on how to delete your Facebook account.