#FUCK COMPUSERVE

[thegodthief]

For someone who grew up with CompuServe and Prodigy and ICQ and AOL ...

I have no idea how to connect with people online now.

I don't know where to connect with people offline anymore.

And while I am completely comfortable to be alone, fuck me, I am painfully cognizant of the difference between solitude and loneliness.

[mechanicalinertia]

STMPD Recommends Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction: The Works of Jeanne Hedge

Ho ho ho ho ho, it's time to bring out an easy recommendation, or rather a series of recommendations, one I'm honestly surprised I haven't done before.

I mean, come on. It's Jeanne Hedge, baby. She didn't write much longer stuff compared to Innpchan or Ben Hutchins, but she wrote really good, really focused stuff. Moreover, the record of the sheer number of 90's-era fic writers who reference her suggest that she was the Carrie Fisher of alt.fan.bgcrisis, a real script doctor for everyone. Whatta character. Pity she died from pneumonia in 2020 - I would have loved to invite her to the more modern corners of BGC fandom, like the subreddit and the discord. Learn from the old masters, yeah? Yeah.

Here's Hedge's old website. For the more convenience-minded among us, here's her FF.net page.

So: Hedge. Sysop of a CompuServe anime and manga forum from 1985 to 2005. Mod for the old Fanfiction Mailing List. Moderator for the fanfiction panel at Anime Central (ACEN) from 2001-2006. In other words, a superfan from a time when Crunchyroll was a ripping site, Funimation wasn't Sony's pawn, when anime was an eccentricity among eccentricities on the old 'World Wide Web'. Incredible, no?

Oh, yeah, and she was a pretty good writer, too! Her writing style isn't particularly fancy, and her topics are usually more light-hearted explorations of the series save for two instances. We'll go through the short stuff first, then the two biggies.

Dear Mom: Not even two thousand words, a gag where some gaijin girl is living in an office building across the way from the LADYS633 and is navigating dealing with the locals while hunting for an apartment. The punchline is that it takes place between OVA 8 and Crash, so of course she sees the Knight Wing launch from the building, and when she brings it up at the LADYS big reopening party, Sylia is all 'whatever are you talking about' and promptly makes sure this woman gets an apartment across the city. "You'd almost think they couldn't wait to get me away from here!" is what's said in the last bit, which is funny as hell. Written, apparently, on a dare.

We Just Want To Help You: Jeanne is transported to what appears to be the BGC Universe, but is, in fact, not. Her attempts to convince Sylia otherwise don't go well. Another one-note gag, but in my mind not as funny as the other one.

Spin Cycle: Linna's power goes out, she needs to do some laundry, goes to a laundromat with a laundry-dispensary Boomer, said Boomer goes rampant and starts terrorizing people, Linna must evade the Boomer and help other customers. Short, silly, charming, and does a nice job of outlining the wider world of Megatokyo, the normalcy of life in the world's mightiest megacity, where clothes still need to be cleaned.

10 Questions: This is a weird one, since it's one of Priss's great-grandchildren asking her about an interview with her she found in the attic. Ten easy questions about what happened to Priss in her public life - the Reps broke up, she started a new band, she started a record company that eventually got to sign Vision, she lost both her legs during the last great Boomer Rampage - hold on, wait, what the fuck?

Yeah, despite Hedge saying in an afterword that she wanted this to be the fic where Priss got to have nice things, she still loses her legs, Linna, and Sylia. The last quarter of the fic, in fact, is her just musing about all the different choices she could have made when Sylia pulled her over back during the fateful night played out in Asu E Touchdown... and I think it's implied Sylia, in the end, walked into GENOM Tower with a suitcase nuke. So... happiness? Even then, it's an elusive thing...

Okay, that's the small stuff. The warmup. Now for the big 'uns.

Into The Shadows: Probably Hedge's most famous work, 19K words detailing, from multiple perspectives, the origins of the Knight Sabers, from Dr. Raven talking Sylia into recruiting other members, to those other members being recruited, and so on. It was cowritten with Andy Skuse of Raven's Garage, which... is kind of a detriment to its quality? I've been rereading Skuse's own multichapter epic, Bubblegum Cross, and it's Not Very Good. I'll probably review it soon.

Anyway, it's part mess of flashbacks, part training montage, part this, that, and the other. Each chapter is fairly short - shorter than I would have written, in all honesty - but there's a good bit where Nene is cool with her EW, where even Linna is scared for a short bit, where Priss is as violent and unhinged as you'd expect her to be. The characterization is really on point here, I think, at least for a certain rendering of the Sabers in their early days. I quite like this one.

True Love: Priss can't catch a break, can she? In canon or in fanon. I mean, holy shit, this fuckin' piece. It's good, but... damn.

It's mostly, Priss's story, a bridge between Crisis and Crash in the darkest sense. See, she's trying to finally get the Reps signed, right? Reasonable, even if the sleazy-producer cliche is coming into play even before Priss's stint at idoldom in Crash. It's not going well. She gets forced into a bad contract by 'Oomori-san' (geddit?) someone's stalking her - and then said stalker shoots her in the throat. Her voice is gone (explaining the change in voice to Ryoko Tachikawa in Crash), she's in protective custody, and... ugh. Look, I don't want to go any further, because probably the best way to describe this fic is a) disturbing (stalkers are creepy people!) and b) depressing (Everyone's mental state gets seriously altered by what's going on here). The other part of the bridge from Crash is that Nene kills said stalker, just picks him up in her Motoslave and drops him into the canyons, and that's kind of the lead-in to her being much more aggressive in Crash as well.

I don't want to spoil more, because this is a 'darkfic' in the best way, a deeply, perfectly uncomfortable way. It's the way that best shows what Hedge was capable of as a writer, and why her death was a tragedy in the truest sense. Read any or all of these, because they're all excellent.

[foone]

That's correct and it's funny, because if you've been on the internet long enough, this has happened before.

Like, around 2000 I was in a couple forums that were hosted on free forum hosters, the early version of Discord and Reddit and the like.

And guess what? It ended up terrible! The sites kept adding more ads (including pop-ups!) and new "features" that were terrible, we didn't have much control over themes or features, and there was always a spam problem, which we couldn't really combat and they sure as fuck weren't doing anything about it.

So guess what happened? We made our own, self-hosted forums. Those could be customized, they could be ad-free, we could control what features we wanted or didn't want. Some of those forums are still running today, two entire decades later.

And it's the same thing that's happening with the Twitter exodus now. People are leaving Twitter and many of them are building their own socials in the form of mastodon, and others are joining private sites like bluesky. Which one will work best and which one will still be around in 20 years? Well, we'll see, but I know where my money is.

(you could even trace it back farther to 80s/90s online services like AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve vs the open internet. Yeah those systems were nice if you were just starting out and didn't know how this worked, but any community you built there is long, long gone)

i'll just be controversial and say discord is not real social media. it's fine communication platform but it is not Posting! saying you're gonna move to discord is like saying you're gonna move to facebook messenger get outta here

[official-mistah-j]

trump was president bc of this lmao

had untangle that grapevine of incest lmao

imm supposed to be president

trolled satanists while blaspheming also, another satanist, this stupid fuck was disusting

kregoth666

and he says he aint goth. umm.

he showed me corpses im like 12. lol he didnt flirt with me idk. just bored on the internet ... off-brand of aol..compuserve

and i didn tlike god. pretty sure satans (theres many) like the marduk on south park omggg.. everythings name marduk.. lol

satan is beautiful, and handsome, muscular, and ethereal and surreal singing voice, --but i'd never marry him

[swrx-rant]

Chrome HTML Document - FUCK YOU GOOGLE

(As usual, RANT FIRST, solution after... scroll to the bottom unless you want to here me rip half the valley a new one)

Chrome can be useful for a lot of file types, especially now that Micro$hit has decided TO REMOVE SUPPORT FOR ANIMATED GIFS from their bundled viewers (this happened all the way back in Vista, “We have not forgotten, Señor Gates, nor shall we forgive.”) And, of course, since NOTHING else supports the new bullshit WEBP format, even though floogle is trying so damned hard to push it. (Irfan says they do, BULL-FUCKING-SHIT they do!)

But of course, the convenience of having a program that CAN ACTUALLY WORK WITH THESE FILES can quickly be overshadowed by the stupid shit it does TO EVERY FILE ASSOCIATED WITH IT! For some, paradoxical reason, Larry and Sergey (or one of their COUNTLESS MINIONS) decided to call EVERYTHING a “Chrome HTML Document”. I mean, WHO GIVES A FUCK IF ITS ACTUALLY AN HTML FILE IN THE FIRST PLACE... *.pdf? that’s a “ Chrome HTML Document ”; GIF89a? that too is a “Chrome HTML Document“ (I wonder if the assholes at CompuShit can sue them over insinuating GIF is theirs? Give it a shot guys, you wanted to sue everyone for using the format anyway, right?? For using the GRAPHICAL INTERCHANGE FORMAT to interchange graphical files? I mean, first you claim its an INDUSTRY STANDARD, then you try to claim its a PROPRIETARY FORMAT AND EVERYONE OWES YOU ROYALTIES... What, do you think your FUCKIN APPLE or somethin?? You fucktarded shits probably didn’t even come up with LZW compression, I bet you BOUGHT the fuckers that did, just like all you Silicon Valley douchebags... anyway, I digress.)

vvvvvvvvvv SOLUTION vvvvvvvvvvv

So here’s a quickie for anyone tired of this FUCKTARDED FILE DESCRIPTION that CHROME APPLIES TO EVERY GODDAMNED FILE ITS ASSOCIATED WITH REGARDLESS OF EXTENSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Open the Registry Editor: ([Windows]+R, type: “regedit”)

Search for the Offending String (there should be only 1 match in this case), or go directly to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML

You should see the FUCKTARDED DESCRIPTION there under the (default) value.

"MODIFY...” this value (leave it a blank/empty string)

Now, the problem should go away from here (windows will go back to using the default “<extension> file” descriptions), but you may have to do one of two things to see the change, either:

a. Change the association to another program then back to Chrome

OR

b. Reboot the computer (especially if there are multiple extensions offending)

^^^^^^^^^^ SOLUTION ^^^^^^^^^^^

Now, a small SECONDARY RANT for anyone who asks, WHY? As in, “why would you want to do that... ?”, “why don’t you just... ?”, et cetera. Let me ask YOU something, WHY DA FUCK DID YOU POST A GODDAMNED RESPONSE ON A FORUM OR HELP SITE IF YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH EXPERIENCE AS A COMPUTER USER TO ACTUALLY OFFER GOOD ADVICE?! I mean, clearly, you’re even lacking a fully developed PREFRONTAL CORTEX if you can’t empathize with how fucking frustrating shit like this is.

No? Then let me fucking enlighten ya:

Have you, IN YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE, ever needed to SORT FILES BY TYPE????????? As in, I want all the GIFs in this group, all the PDFs in that, etc., so I can MOVE THEM INTO DIFFERENT FOLDERS TO BE PROCESSED BY DIFFERENT PROGRAMS!

If you answered no to the above question, THEN GET THE FUCK OFF THE INTERNET!!! Clearly, you’ve barely touched a computer and have no business trying to “help” others with your stupidity. Seems to me, you’re the kind of jerk-off that has never even SEEN a file extension, so what the fuck would you know about editing file-type descriptors?

Fact is, bugs like this cause a cluster-fuck of file types, because Gate’s minions decided Sort by Type should use arbitrary descriptors instead of ACTUAL EXTENSIONS, while Page and Brin’s minions decided that EVERYTHING is a fucking Chrome HTML Document, no matter what the fuck it is... is that water you’re drinking? No, my friend, THAT’S A FUCKING WEBPAGE!

(Sorry, I really had the best of intentions when I said scroll to the bottom, but I hadn’t gotten everything off my chest yet, so scroll to the middle... look for the arrows that point to the SOLUTION. I guess I’m incapable of a short rant... lmao)

[sashibunbun]

Things I'm supposed to take without question.

Hunter Biden, a 50 year old Lawyer has the wherewithal to update documents to current standards, had emails going back to 1990 that require a password and weren't lost to the ether of most 1990 ISPs not being around now, and those that were having, well, a group that purges them routinely so server space isn't fucked (ie AOL, Compuserv, GEnie, Prodigy, EDU domains) and simply didn't pay for a laptop repair, but it's totes true, even has footage of him smoking crack in his 20s that is in color and looks more like a 10 year old camera rather than a 1990s VHS or te absolute potatoes we had in the 90s.

The unhinged guy who went out to assassinate Biden and got caught didn't have a printout of what's basically "The Anarchist's Cookbook" but for certain types, quite a few guns, a parent who was basically my baby can do no wrong, and uses ifunny is just a plant.

Vaccines are the answer to things like the Flu, Polio, Tetnus, pretty much any not in the news except for their resurgence because a quack 20-ish years ago published a paper virus, and the overuse of antibiotics since Penicillin's discovery as an antibiotic for this kind of shit has led to antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

Taking the panacea of the tropics (antimalarial drugs), the panacea of places that didn't learn the above lesson about antibiotic resistance, and a current panacea of vitamin and mineral supplements only types will cure a virus that's in the news, pay no attention and don't dig into the doctor's saying it it works.

Every website has the right to ban troublemakers, and I'll celebrate if a website's ToS gets somebody or a group I dislike.

No website has the right to curate what goes on their site if it falls on my group.

Alternative medicine for the most part is absolute bunk, and even the shit that isn't is massively overstated and likely so outdated it needs more review.

This person who's not even a doctor said thing eaten by people I dislike is making them weak and is using a study on sheep from the 1940s, it must be true.

Oh wow, it's think for yourself until you question any of these narratives, then you're a sheeple, a lefty/fascist, a cuck, anything because actually pointing out holes in any of these things with some of the shit said in any of them starts to break down whatever the zeitgeist for one or the other is and promotes questions that start breaking the current political cult mindset. And hoo boy growing up around people who had been in cults AND seeing how they work, some of y'all really are getting stuck in the cult mindset.

Because, guess what, I've seen the above all literally come from certain types who for some reason call others hypocritical.

[frontlawnfood]

Oh I swear, these wee fucklings.

I'm a bit young for Compuserve, but AOL, LiveJournal, fanfiction.net in its heyday, WWOMB... babycakes I know fandom spaces you've never even heard of, many of which no longer exist. Hell, I created my FB account when you still needed a .edu email to sign up because it was originally designed for college students.

I was there when fanfiction was not a thing you admitted to writing, online or off. Community was a listserv, invites passed by email, hoping you hadn't just given your whole creative world to a lawyer or a studio stooge or someone who would go tattling to Anne Rice. If you wrote something REALLY cool and you had the audacity to think it was good enough, you formatted it for screenplay and then mailed it off to the producing studio in hopes they might use it for real. Knowing that by doing so, you gave up the overwhelming majority of your intellectual property rights over that creation and IF they decided to use it, you might get a "based on a story by ____" credit, you might get a call requesting more work, you might get a job... or you might get nothing at all and you didn't have the money to prove in court that the studio stole your idea.

This world you live in, where the writers and actors of your favorite shows/books/manga are X-ers and Millennials and older Gen-Zs who lurk in social media groups and deepdive AO3 to see what you're saying about their work and writing with their characters and consider fanworks transformative and valid even if they don't like your individual piece? This world where actors of shows you loved when you were ten have Cameo accounts and will actually read your fanscript and if they like it enough, get together and put it out on youtube just for the fun of it? That's all new, darlin'. And unimaginable even twenty years ago.

Look at the fics from the early aughts... they're all prefaced with legalese boilerplate disclaimers declaring which characters and bits of plot are owned by which company/studio/author and which are their own creation. That's because back then, fair use laws had not expanded to encompass fanfiction, fanart, etc and people were still getting sued left right & center. Imagine that. Sued. Over shipping people the director didn't ship. Telling stories the studio didn't approve. Making characters gay when the creator said otherwise. (*cough*ANNE RICE CAN EAT MY METAPHORICAL LEFT NUT AND I HOPE HELL IS TOASTY *cough*) Just ... try to imagine a world where the characters and worlds that bring you joy and make your life feel a little less like a trap you'll never escape are closed to any interpretation but the original. Where you are not allowed to envision yourself in that world, or at least not legally permitted to write that vision down, draw it, sculpt it, for others to see and enjoy as you did.

That's where us "grannies" lived, kiddo. It was honestly a pretty weird time, and the world has changed SO much, so very quickly. I am so pleased that you never lived in that world, truly I am.

Yes, there are proper Old Folx on "your" tumblr and social media and fandom spaces. And we're not going away. Because it was ours first. We built it. We plastered our harmless fanworks in boilerplate in hopes of avoiding Cease & Desist letters from multinational companies and authors our parents' age. We fought when those letters came anyway because for fuck's sake, we're none of us making money here, we just want to play in the sandbox too. We got the fair use laws expanded to cover your "inspired by" art and sewing patterns and mugs and screen-accurate custom-fitted cosplay shops. We grew up and became the writers, producers, directors, actors in the shows you love today, who see a really cool idea in a fic and contact the author to find out if they mind it becoming canon... because any of us is ever gonna say no. Also if your work is really good you might be offered a job, you'd be surprised how often that's happened!

I love that you feel so free and comfortable and entitled to take up space in today's world of fandom, precious child. That was in fact our goal and I am thrilled beyond measure to see it so fully realized.

But we came first. We built these spaces where your imagination can run free, and we're hardly going to pack up and shuffle off to some digital old folx home just because your fragile butt is "embarrassed" to be seen in the same spaces as our wrinkles and gray hair.

You're not embarrassed being an old woman and being in tumblr? I would rather die that my grannies have an actual account on tumblr for celebrities rho

Why would I be embarrassed for having interests I enjoy? My guess is that you’re really, really young. And that maybe you don’t actually have solid relationships with adults who have lives outside of parenting or work. But I hope for you that when you’re my age you have hobbies that bring you happiness. And that by that point you realize that trying to shame someone for being an adult only makes you look too immature to be in adult spaces, which Tumblr is.

When I was 20, I loved music, making art, writing and reading good stories, fashion, talking about popular culture, making friends, going to concerts… You’d be surprised how little changes when you’re my age. I just have way more money and time to enjoy those things now. I’m only 55. I’m not dead. I’m also not a “granny”, but even if I was, I’d probably still like all of those things.

Ageism isn’t cute, love. And I sure don’t ever see people telling men they shouldn’t go to football games or have their little “fantasy football leagues” or wear their favorite player’s merch. For every comment you guys like to say is misogynistic (but isn’t), this is one that really reeks of it.

[this-lioness]

I legit miss the simplicity of the Old Internet.  Not necessarily the drag-and-a-half of connecting to Dial-Up, but how new and innovative and exciting it all felt.

Sending and receiving emails was fun. Roleplay in self-contained MU* universes was fun.  Downloading unpolished freeware and shareware that did really useful, dynamic things and seeing the friendly messages from the developers.  Websites with crude interfaces but deeply useful content that was neatly organized and required no slogging through a jungle of ads, or clicking through endless arrows to load more and more pages.  There was no mindless parallax scrolling that served absolutely no purpose but to look extra.

The availability of things like ICQ and AIM felt like you were constantly, privately connected to the people you cared most about.  You could hang up your little “Do Not Disturb” sign when you needed a moment, but otherwise everything was right there, universal, friendly, accessible.  We archived what we loved and shared it.  We circulated the tapes.

Blogging was personal.  It was a thing you did for yourself, and then gradually invited others to participate in.  Or not.  You didn’t need an audience, and your audience didn’t need you.  We were all curious, passive observers permitted a window in or out.  You didn’t need to throw wide your sash so people could see everything, and the people on the outside weren’t required to press their faces against the glass in order to prove they were really paying attention.  We didn’t need sponsors in order to keep going.

The Internet was a place you went. It was not something that was constantly in your pocket, always on, always with you, always waiting and listening and demanding satisfaction.  You went online... being online was not something you sought respite from.

It’s hard to explain, but it feels like the advent of social media deeply compartmentalized us.  Divided us under the auspices of pulling us all together.

“Oh, you’re not on MySpace / Facebook / Instagram / Snapchat / Whatever the New Fucking Thing Is, you HAVE to be, that’s where we are all now.”

Then reaching out to people to connect became a game we played against one another, not with.  It wasn’t a comfortable evening coffee with friends, it was Here’s what I’m doing with every minute of my day, and how does my life stack up against yours?

It threw wide the doors to insecurity.  It stripped the sweet novelty out of it and monetized it, put a visible corporate logo on it that you were now beholden to forever.  It made it aggressive and demanding and constantly needy.  It made itself into a teat that you were required to suckle from if you didn’t want to be isolated from everyone and everything, rather than a resource that you could draw for succor when you were already feeling that way.

I was born into and raised in a world that did not have the Internet.  I saw its advent in the middle age of BBSes, was excited by Prodigy and Compuserve, and felt a legitimate thrill waiting for the sounds of connectivity to AOL.  Graduating from a GUI internet service to free-from dial-up felt energizing, exciting.  It made me want to explore.

The Internet is never off now.  It is a constant cycle of new and steadily more obnoxious trends, new avenues for boys to convince girls to take off their clothes, platforms for kids to tell others to kill themselves.  It’s not a thing you go to in order to connect, it’s a thing that constantly hounds you and follows you around at the expense of never feeling connected to anyone anymore.

I wish I could go back to it, but I think that age is long past us now.   I don’t even properly know how to explain what it was like, because the current generation was born into this.  It’s all they know.  And I think that makes me sad as well.

[ladyarjuna]

Lore Dump: “The Tower”

tl;dr This is what happens when Freakazoid isn't a kindly computer nerd, but instead a virulent misogynist who absorbs shitty internet forums and argues about who is better between asuka and rei

The proper name of The Tower, to anyone who’s never fucking been there, is “The Osaka Hikkikomori Genius Locus”, named for its (now unknown) creator. It is, in fact, named for the only two facts we know about him. 

We also know that the place was established in 1988, in the middle of the Japan tech boom, and that the hikkikomori survived. She is currently the yamato nadeshiko type, Owari Nara, and was transformed at some point in the genius locus's history, though no one interviewed is sure just when it happened. 

What little else is known is this: the person who would become Owari Nara was utterly obsessed with idols and the ideal of the perfect wife. He spent hours upon hours on the fledgeling Internet and Compuserve debating the various merits of idols, body types, discussing the current idols of the day, and hurling spite upon spite on those that had fallen from the ideal. One day, the obsession, will, and the new power of the computer combined to create a true prodigy. The house was reported as sinking into the ground as the computer glowed and overheated.

What truly happened was the creation of a genius locus, a new font of magic. Immediately detecting the curse, the Mage Association sealed the locus until it could be exploited. Initial forays determined that the curse had been growing exponentially, so instead it was simply determined to be a lost cause and sealed. 

The Cunning One (Nostus Harken) opened the seal and felt its restrictions upon her, and immediately fled; for the more powerful you were, the more powerfully you would be sealed, until little remained but your wits and a knife. Having run into these sorts of dungeons before, she scribed a warning outside the building, left, and promptly forgot about it for 30 years. In the intervening time, mages, head priests, warriors... All of them headed into what, unbeknownst to the hikkikomori, was a growing, deepening dungeon under the streets of Osaka. The curse, without direction and becoming nearly a mere grudge, enacted its lust and murderous will on the intruders. Those that survived even this had a further trap waiting for them-- for in the intervening years, the hikkikomori had written books. 

Carefully bound by the power of the locus and burning with subtle, directed, transformative magic, those who read the tomes on the things a perfect example of whichever beloved 'type' the hikkikomori had waxed poetic on for a year or more, transformed as they continued to read. Should they desire any of the useful or powerful information within, the mental compulsion to continue reading and absorbing the information, letting the magic transform you further, took hold.

In this way, no fewer than 36 people, including the hikkikomori himself, were lost to the curse of the locus. With no one left to sink the vast magics that were building in the locus, the rudimentary, instinctual intelligence within was forced to come up with other ways. The fierce protections became fiercer, which in turn gave off more magic. Deepening the dungeon alleviated some of the pressure, but caused more throughput. And the terrifying magics of the people within only fed this growing engine. 

One of the ways in which this sink was accomplished was the equipping of monsters. For the locus feared the Cunning One, though she had shown herself only briefly, and equipped its constructs to be worthy threats to her. The other was the creation of noble metals from base ones; a process which took months to years, but which nevertheless constantly drew down a stable amount of magic.

In this manner, in the deepest pits of the dungeon, well-lit and living an idyllic life while waiting for their hero, the heroines of the dungeon talked some about their past lives. As beings cursed and controlled by the locus, they could no longer leave. And so commanded to protect the place, they waited. And learned. And loved, until little of their past selves remained. This, too, was as the locus preferred. And it all worked, until the day two weeks after Beacon died and Trunk was ejected from the universe. For the Cunning One had, indeed, returned, but instead, she had brought a soul-shard of her grand-daughter. The Vigilant, then known as Metier, was the last surviving soul-shard, and Nostus felt it best to care for her-- or, at least, take her mind off her loss for a little while.

The systematic destruction of the defenses took four days. 

In the end, in its absolute panic, it attempted to brute force the godly power within the Vigilant, now named Monkhiin and adopted by Nostus Harken. 

The contest of wills failed, and Monkhiin simply took the knowledge it offered and gave only one bare inch of her bustline to the curse. Defeated and awakened, and now under Monkhiin’s control, the dungeon began to rise once more... 

This is the form of the tower now; part demiplane, part physical place, part giant mansion, part deparment store. Magic flows still through every pore, and in every brick. 

Taking inventory alone took three weeks of dedicated work; Monkhiin had taken a fortune in magic, precious metals, and gems. 

More than that, however, were the women. Monkhiin, wise, charming, but not, perhaps, intelligent, figured that the best way to get the women to go away was to give them what she figured they wanted-- their freedom. They were free to leave. She would even help them establish new identities and find new interests and occupations. 

She had underestimated gratitude and genuine words. And so, now she has a lot of women who want to love Monkhiin without understanding her reasons or her methods. 

It promises to be quite interesting... 

[t3andcrumpets]

...man.

I’m going to date myself, here.

I’ve been writing fanfic since I was 12. Now, mind you, I didn’t know it was called that at the time, and the internet was barely a thing at that point (Compuserve, anyone?), so it’s not like we were even starting to come out of the cringe state. I’m not even going to claim it was any good, because, it was not. Not in any way, shape, or form.

But there were spiral notebooks of Star Trek and Star Wars stories, and I dreamt of writing my own novel one day, or being good enough to win the Strange New Worlds contest when I saw my friends winning. (Oh yes. Every. Single. Bloody. SNW has one of my fandom buddies in it.)

I’ve been around the block a few dozen times by now in a few dozen fandoms. And I just feel old because I’m like, “yeah... I remember the days of lawlessness and crazy shit just happening.” And now it’s like, “What the fuck is this noise?”

So, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m just an old fandom granny now, but at least I’ll go out with my sequinned straightjacket and my goddamn grasshopper.

[the-inevitable-minor-fires]

When I was maybe 20 I interviewed my favorite living guitar player Mick Turner of the Dirty Three via email and he had a compuserve email address and even then (very late 90s) that blew my mind

Computer Gaming World - March 1994 CompuServe

[oh-my-dead-vicious-wizard-duck]

Good shit from Teen Slasher series

hello Teen Slasher is super hilarious. take this:

- “literally anyone can shout their names”

- “that is disGUsting, Corey”

- Joey’s speech at the beginning of ep 1

- “you can text alpha to two– *point in the wrong direction* goddammit” “oh shhhhit” “briann!”

- “oh, ahh, she dies at the end but she’s pregnant with the half alien baby, so” “wHAT” “spoiler alert..” “GOOOOOOD” “what a little bitch!”

- “THIS…. WEEK’S TITLE IS…… i forgot”

- “AND WHAT DO YOU WANNA SAY DEBORAH AS THE SILENT CREEPY ONE” “DEBORAH”

- “now that I’ve seen him three or four times I kinda have a crush on him”

- “I use my tongue–” “EW CASSANDRAAA”

- “how old are you, how old are you son?” “fifTEEN”

- Lauren walking in and immediately making a weird old man sound I love her

- “where’d you go Simmers?” “oh, I- I left” “okay, bye” “bye”

- LAURENS SO CLOSE

- ok no but the choices were gold: “A a missed high five, B a perfect high five, C someone counts to five”

- “and you know, say a prayer to Jesus Christ or something”

- “I thought you guys were here to make friends!” “We are–” “only her. Only her, she likes Jesus”

- “Bart sit down” “where” “right here at the chair. what? what do you mean where, in the air??”

- “well….. see, I go to this summer camp-”

- “that’s what I was meant to say, that I was talking about by the way, I was talking about the summer camp” “okay but.. mine’s different”

- BRIAN MCFREAKIN BUMPED INTO LAUREN HARD

- “listen guys just let me get a word out alright” “okay, one word, you get ooone, you’re fifteeen who cares about your words” “Cassandra.” “……okay, keep going, I’m sorry”

- “wHERE’D HE GO”

- Joey keeps changing Bart voice

- “you’re so wonderful Bart, I love Jesus too!!!!”

- Ashley leaning over the chair so she can see the choice better

- “wait what does the bathtub have to do with anything”

- “~~and I know it’s only a matter of time before you kiss me instead of that fucking buzz lightyear doll I carry everywhere because I don’t have the balls to just ask girls to kiss me because I’m complicated and I’m thirteen, I’m a slut, and I love you~~” give her a Grammy holy shit

- “which Applebee’s there’s thirteen of them”

- “but Cassandra I’m like an incredibly intellectual person but even I don’t understand the metaphor between bath water and me and how are you gay”

- “we’ll take a table for.. none. cuz we’re not here for dinner” “we’re not here for dinner we’re here for justice” WOOAH

- “and Helen lived happily ever after working full time at the Jesus camp even when she was just thirteen. i think it was against child labor laws, oh well”

- “you can do this one of three ways” “two ways” “two ways” “it’s not three”

- “there will be gluten” Lauren: “ugh.”

- when Joey and Brian got their faces close together and Ashley whispered “yess!” a couple of times

- “I’m sorry, what was your name?” “…………………Randy”

- “are you celebrating, miss Martha? why are you dancing?”

- “woMeN geT OUT”

- “YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT ALL STAR TOO?” aww the way he said it was so cute

- THe FOREHEAD TOUCH

- “ARE YOU DANCING AGAIN”

- “I’M KILLING YOU WITH KNIVES”

- “SING IT. SING IT.”

- “excuse me, do you need a mother? cuz I’ll be a mother to you” PLEASE

- altough Lauren didn’t sing, the song was adorable

- “at least sing this, Lauren” Lauren: *doesn’t*

- i love how she says “thank you, wow”, she sounds so drained of emotion and unimpressed

- Lauren got hurt again and made that adorable sound

- “CompuServe!!!!” lol they are so cute

- ok but Lauren casually raises her leg why she do that

- alright……. Erica is my second favourite character in all of cod

- her voice sounds like she’s having a cold I love her sm already

- SHE’S A MESS SHE HURT HERSELF

- “WE’RE sixteen, it’s very hard to say words all the time”

- “have you ever cooked for a child that’s not there?” “woow..”

- “I’m not in the mood to watch the Princess Bride anymore. I’m gonna go in my bunk and cry about Pat”

- “Joseph,” “Ashley,”

- “oh, it landed right on our couch”

- “wow, you- when did you put wheels on the bottom of this chair” jesus and then he pretended to have a rocking chair?? i love him

- “were those children singing Kylie Minogue”

- “you think so Joseph!” “I do..?”

- ok they’re continuing to make golden choices: “A The coffee is too hot! B The coffee is too cold! C THERE’S NO COFFEE?!!”

- “I thought I heard someone say there was a weenie in here”

- “I KNEW IT!! I SAID NO WIENERS”

- “Wh- why are you so close to my body”

- “yea Alex missed A LOT”

- “that’s great Lyle it’s not a costume party” hahah I love her

- “WATER YOU DOING *wink*” NERD

- “alright I did it are you happy Calvin” “ye”

- “it’s the ugliest fuckin tree I have ever seen”

- “SORRY we’re old as hell”

- “Me, Mariska Hargitay Junior, says: I have some beanie babies but where am I gonna put them if you don’t want them??? i’m eight”

- “My mom’s Mariska Hargitay, uh, heard of her?” “Oh, I have. She was a……….. ice skater?” “NOOOOO”

- “My parents created beanie babies” “no they didn’t” “NO they didn’t” “JUST TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES”

- “no okay? I have a frog so, there”

- when Pat tells the kids to undress and Mariska Hargitay Jr immediately takes off her clothes and Calvin whispers “yea, hella yea”

- “she looks like a lady, Tim” “thank you for saying that” “you’re welcome”

- “do you ever like think about how much food your parents have made you?? and how it’s just SITTING on the TABLE??”

- “are you guys gonna make out?” “NOOO MAN” “NOT THAT IT WOULD MATTER IF WE DID THAT’S A FINE THING”

- when Ashley the retired cop says “woah” and steps back and Tim asks “what?” but she just says “go on”

- when Brian pretends to be a bird (??) to help Ashley leave the conversation

- “Pat, listen. I say, and this is gonna sound crazy, a lot of people have died, but let’s… kill your little brother..?” “yeah that seems right”

- JOEY’S SONG

- i love how Ashley just decides to sit down at the chair during Lauren’s monologue

- “and so now I am to repent. And I’ll…. I’ll become a man of the cloth”

- afgajagsn Lauren can’t whistle

- “SICK SICK SICK!! but don’t worry. I brought chairs for act two”

- “Good, Charlotte!!”

- “It’s Easter mghmmmmmmgh”

- “are your feet working anymore?” “yes” “oh. they shouldn’t be”

- “I don’t give a fuck about your power because I have egg on my shoes”

- “take them to jail” “you got it, Martina *gunshot noises*”

- “where did that fucking gun come from?!”

- “I was an olympic swimmer back in the day and then I lost all of my swimmin abilities when I got to be an older man”

- “you really whispered that quiet there”

- Ashley’s mad nine year old talk

- when Joey decided to play both characters in a conversation

- “*knock knock*” “yees?” “yes?” “whaat?”

- what in the absolute hell happened to Lauren’s elbow in the end wtf

[t4two2]

Fuck Sam/Cait and STARZ (ESPECIALLY STARZ) for shipbaiting. Releasing the chemistry test on valentine's day? seriously? THEY'RE the ones who encourage peddling hurtful fantasies to fans that Metin accuses shippers of. Don't fall for STARZ BS because Sam/Cait ETC. will NEVER stand up for their fans who were harassed. Next time we'll see them they'll be making fun of fans while their S/O trails behind them. JMO STARZ has got to do more to get me interested in the show again because I'm jaded.

I’m done with Outlander. STARZ is shady and sleazy and I unsubscribed months ago. They will NOT try to win you back, Anon.  They don’t care.  

Ship baiting? Maybe. A lot of things have gone down, and I overlooked and rationalized them.  Because that’s what I do.  I’m a middle child, a pleaser.  Plus, I just like being happy.  Being wept away in an amazing love story used to be fun. 

Here was my turning point:  Diana.

For a woman who has made a shitload of money selling romance, Diana has a surprising lack of empathy for romantics. The sadistic shit that she created for Jamie should have been my first clue.  

I loved Diana’s books.  Despite their flaws.  Because of their flaws. I embraced the self indulgent, needless plot lines, and the lack of coherent storyline.  I overlooked the unnecessarily graphic sexual violence. I forgave the need for sexual victimization in order to move the plot forward.  I did all of this for one reason only: the messy, sexy, perfect love of Jamie and  Claire.

I could over look many things until Compuserve became a word that I actually understood. WTF

Do I need the author weighing in and shaming me for shipping? No.  

Do I need that same author to clarify that I am part of a sick minority (20 people or so) that is ridiculous and worthy of  ridicule? Hell no.

If you are still willing to be “won back”, we have nothing more to talk about, Anon. I sincerely hope that you aren’t going to waste time, money or energy thinking that STARZ, will make you feel better.  They won’t. 

[manders1984]

Did you happen to see the comments Diana made about a change that production made and put in the script about a major character that she strongly disagreed with? Sounded like she went down fighting to say that fans would notice it right away and def not like/would cause problems down the road with story. What do you think it could be? Sometimes (most) Diana, is full of shit, but she does fight to keep the story true to character (Jamie/Claire). Worries me that it will involve J to the bad.

I see you’ve been making the rounds with this. Anyways, I didn’t see her comments. And I’m not going to Compuserve. But I will say that DG greatly exaggerated what she referred to as the “jump the shark” last season with Laoghaire. It was not a jump the shark moment. They fucked themselves in Season 1 when they made Jamie aware of Laoghaire’s treachery. I don’t necessarily like what they did, but they had to do something to make Jamie marrying her more plausible (if that were possible, because I didn’t like it to begin with). Jamie is not perfect. He’s flawed and he’s a man. I get the worry since they’ve really done a shit job with his characterization. But I HIGHLY doubt it involves Jamie being unfaithful (deliberately, after Claire’s return, I mean). Anything less than that I don’t think is that big of a deal or something to get worried about in advance. To be honest, I’m more concerned about her retconning Frank’s infidelities and racism and her being perfectly OK with the show doing the same. We’ll see how they handled that by Episode 3, though.

I think you should just go and see what @just-a-wretched-wumman wrote about this.

[fishmech]

Op is right! You did not grow up on a different internet.

This is such a bad take. Most of what went on on the web and the internet was corporate siloes in the 90s and 2000s and 2010s too. That's always been the bulk of the use since the general public was allowed on. Companies were openly talking about harvesting data and trying to part you with your money as fast as possible as soon as it was open to the public. That's why we had the whole fuckin first internet stock bubble, and that bubble busting over 2000-2001 didn't change much in terms of how people tried to make money.

Also like fuck off with saying the internet didn't hand you far right garbage back then, the whole damn internet was markedly more right wing due to the sheer demographics of who was online, not to mention the general right wing turn of the media. Remember the fucking Iraq War? The violent right wing patriotism all the fuck over? You just couldn't pick that stuff out as being the far right monstrosity it was then cuz you were a kid who didn't understand how fucked it was.

Because you say that you saw 2girls1cup (a 2007 video) when you were 10 which means you were no older than 6 when the Iraq War started. Social media had already become the dominant form of user interaction online when you were still in elementary school. Facebook had already become the largest social media in the world by the time you saw 2girls1cup.

Back when you were first using the internet and thinking it was the wild west, there were already people posting the same stupid "internet was the wild west when I started but now it's corporate and we all have to use corporate sites" bs. They were wrong then and you're wrong now.

The internet started in the very heart of the military-industrial complex, gestated there for a solid 24 years or so, and then the military-industrial complex deigned to open it up for the general public - so other industries could make a buck. Even the educational institutions and scientific organizations involved in before general public access were tied in to the MIC with the vast majority having access due to being useful to it.

And of course there was the merging in to the internet of the various private online networks. AOL, compuserv, prodigy; dedicated business networks like ones run by Dow Jones, all out for a profit.

And the other side of it is, there's still literal millions of sites out there that aren't tied into social media companies you pretend to be upset about. The rest of the internet never went away, you just refused to you it. And it was the same for people in 2005 or 1995.

No, kids should not have unsupervised acess to the internet.   Yes, I got that and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.    Its a paradox.

[captawesomesauce]

Thoughts at 240pm...

Raise your hand if you have been online since the Compuserv/Aol/Prodigy day...

Ok, all of you are old.

And thats ok, I’m old too.

The reason I bring this up is the fact that I remember that back in the day, when the internet was first getting off the ground, we had TOS’s with our ISP’s that they were pretty damn serious about. Get into a flame war? Someone would write abuse@isp.com and you’d definitely get a warning or two then banned!

why can’t we bring that back for unsolicited dick pics, hate speech and all of the other bs?

Why can’t if someone sends you a dick pic, you press block and it also bans them from tumblr and notifies their ISP of their bullshit???

High speed internet is limited in most areas, you only have a choice of 2 or 3 .... be a jerk enough and you’ll end up on fucking dial up again!

We need this.