#First time posting a sort of drawing of him then

[spectralgecko]

Dead lander Hoaxe AU

Post the first out of... idk. Two at least, probably more. I'm 99% sure this has been done before by somebody but I haven't really seen it over here, so I have no idea, lol. At any rate the details are probably different XD

Basic premise? What if Hoaxe just... never left the Dead Lands? What if he never got cornered by dead landers, or crushed by the crystal, and continued to grow up and eventually matured in the Dead Lands, and was in the process hardened into a skilled survivalist?

Does this have plot consequences? Yes. Many. I have tried to patch things up into a more or less interesting alternative, but also. Many holes. Does it actually work just by the canonical laws of the game? I... don't really know, but probably not? This post will mostly be about Hoaxe rather than the plot. Anywho:

The wet cat himself:

(Granted, in this AU he is significantly less of a wet cat, but shhhh.)

Some basics about Hoaxe:

The fire magic - he does still have his fire magic, he just got it differently. He didn't get squashed by a crystal, but he's been around them a whole lot and has by consequence picked up (much more stable) fire magic from it. He also practices using it a lot more, and becomes quite skilled with it. He mostly uses it for cooking, though - larger, flashy fires can draw a lot of... unwanted attention.

I think the devs mentioned somewhere that Bugnish needs to be taught, so Hoaxe never really learns it. He doesn't talk much, and on the rare occasions he needs to communicate, he does so in gestures and non-verbal vocalizations. He takes notes in a logographic format. He does pick up a few words from the Roaches, some in Bugnish, some in Roach language (when he eventually finds the Roach village).

He does take notes, as mentioned above - usually charcoal on either dead lander shell, rock, or any other available writing surface. Usually, it's notes about the dead landers themselves, other local flora and fauna, and mapping out the area. Hazards, good food sources, safe places, dangerous places, hot spots for different dead landers, all that.

As far as the Roaches are concerned, Hoaxe is this... local, very occasional drifter. He drops by sometimes with interesting finds or notes and trades with them and rests while he's there. Over time, he becomes a local guard of sorts, helping keep dead landers away from the village and even sorta assisting with guarding the sapling, insofar as it needs it.

The Roaches have noticed that despite the residual crystal magic around him, he doesn't seem to react to the sapling vault. Some of them have wondered if its magic has faded, or if Hoaxe just isn't bothered.

Hoaxe accrues a few different weapons for taking care of himself, most of them ranged. He has a sling - think shepherds sling - which he uses to send rocks flying at mach-screw-you-in-particular straight into dead landers' faces. A similar premise applies to his blowgun and darts, and assorted sharpened sticks paired with a notched branch - a makeshift atlatl.

Hoaxe has an iron stomach in so many respects. He has also figured out how to cook most things into a semi-edible format, including dead landers, but the Roaches wouldn't recommend partaking of his diet unless you're desperate.

Hoaxe does not know his name, nor does anyone else. The Roaches just call him the drifter or some other such moniker. Hoaxe doesn't really care enough to puzzle over the notion.

At some point, probably post-game, Hoaxe registers that there is in fact land outside of the dead lands, and he could just... leave. He hesitates, though - he knows the dead lands inside and out, this is familiar danger. Everywhere else is strange new territory. In the events of the post-game proxy, he goes back with Team Snakemouth and co. to explore a bit, before eventually returning to help the Roaches with what he may.

Hoaxe is a strange inversion of a persistence hunter - he's more like persistence prey with an uno reverse card. He knows how scarce food is, and he knows he can outpace the dead landers, so he'll kite them around until they exhaust themselves chasing him, then strike. That said, he prefers to strike at range from the shadows where he can - ambush tactics are much safer and have a significantly higher chance of a one-hit kill.

While this is a strange mix of redemption and hypothetical alternative, in character Hoaxe is still not... the nicest. While he's a cunning strategist and capable survivor, he's a little uh. rough. around the edges. Quick to anger and frustration, kinda selfish unless you give him a reason not to be, and generally leaning anti-social. He's very quid pro quo when it comes to cooperation - he needs a reason to help you. He'll be civil if you're civil, but won't be much past that unless you plan on repaying the effort. On the bright side, he's honest at least, and true to his words. Promises are important to him (he and Astotheles get along in this regard, much contrary to canon).

Hoaxe prefers to operate alone. It's what he's learned, and trying to collaborate with a team is a hassle in his view. Stay out of his way, he'll stay out of yours.

He's not exactly keen on sharing resources unless he doesn't need them himself. Again, quid pro quo - if you give him something valuable in return he's down to barter, but his definition of "valuable" is directly correlated to survival and practicality. Unlike the original Hoaxe, currency and treasure and trinkets have little value to him. He deals in food, weapons, shelter, tools, and other such practicalities. Information, even. He's a fair trader, once you figure out his system of value assignment.

I uh. have missed a lot of things, most certainly. If you have questions, curiosities, or comments, fire away! The ask box is open and I am happy to ramble.

[neptuii]

Okay, I've been fighting with Tumblr's quality issues for about 2 hours now and I just give up- tried re-sizing these pictures SO MANY TIMES its just ridiculous. Used every possible hack and tip I found and none had worked so I'm just gonna roll with this although I am upset as I spend a lot of time on these doodles- more than I would want to admit.

The middle drawing is still uploading and if it looses quality as I post this I will re-do this post because there is just too many details to loose on. If anyone has tips on how to deal with quality issues on this platform please let me know, the artist here is STRUGGLING.

----------- Anyway, some more detailed depictions of my human KMKY!Bill Cipher design. I mostly based it off the original description that is given in the 5th chapter; in other words, the moment Ford bought him his first own set of clothes. I really like the idea of him wearing loafers. I know that in the chapter 12 he ruined his first pair by running into a muddy forest while it rained. And so I imagined that after that event Ford bought him a new pair with golden buckles in shapes of triangles as these aren't uncommon, right? What I mentioned in the latest post was that Ford could've put in the effort and maybe sew in a triangle design into his og black sweatshirt as maybe Bill mentioned it was a bit too plain for his liking (even though its quite comfortable). First I thought of a possibilty of it being a bit of a too straightfoward clue for Fiddleford to connect the yellow triangular symbol with the traingle statues in Ford's study but then I thought that maybe Ford or Fiddleford himself would explain it as some sort of portal project personalized merch..? I mean, Bill IS the "benefactor" as Ford put it so that could be the excuse lmao. Anyway, I wanted to include some of my human Bill headcanons in this post but it's already quite lenghty so I might make it a separate post- especially if the quality of these pictures will be ruined as I upload this. fanfic mentioned: Knowing Me, Knowing You on Ao3 by @f-imaginings

[docholligay]

Okay, so, first off I want to apologize to everyone reading this liveblog for this post. I know that Roy is like, an asshole, and would be considered a war criminal probably if we had the Geneva Convention and it had been an officially declared war. I also know that Hawkeye would be right behind him committing war crimes because if nothing else she is deeply loyal to nightmare of her choice, and that's Roy. I get not being into any deep dive read of this two.

Unfortunately, I imprinted on them like a baby chick and now you all have to deal with it.

I love that Roy is an idiot. Scar is an objectively very dangerous man, who has a real hateboner for State Alchemists, and is still very correctly angry about Ishbal. He has many not every right, but certainly a lot of rights, to kill Roy. Roy sort of has it coming here. I know I just called Roy and idiot, but he is also not an idiot. He has seen the people who have been killed or laid low by Scar. He has know that he is in danger here.

So why does he put himself on the chopping block? AND PLEASE DON'T TELL ME I HATE HAVING TO BREAK THE FLOW OF THESE POSTS WITH MY PLEAS FOR MERCY BUT I WANT TO NOT BE SPOILED OR HINTED. Is it arrogance? Roy is indeed very, very good, and he is strategic as well as powerful, and very fast. But I don't think it's that. I think Roy is smart enough to know that arrogance, at least of a heady quality a la Ed (though I do think Roy was very arrogant in his younger years) will get you killed but fast. Is it guilt over Ishbal? AHahahahahahahaha no. I don't think Roy carries around the same kind of thing Marcoh does. Maybe Roy feels like it was shitty and disproportionate and he didn't like doing it, but even if he does, he's got it so fully compartmentalized that it barely makes a dent. Is it a sense of honor to his men? Hm. Maybe. That Scar wants something out of the Alchemists specifically. I don't love it but I could take it. Is it bluster? Ahhhh now we're getting to where I land. Roy is a smart man, and as a smart man, he knows that a lot of times, if you act like you are the tougher and more dangerous dog, people will back down. It will put them off. He gets Scar's attention. He does not run. He identifies himself. He acts like he is bad enough to take on Scar, in the hopes Scar will believe it.

BUT LET'S TALK ABOUT HAWKEYE. "Fuck you, Roy" she seems to say, as she catches the gun he throws to her without looking, because he knows where she will be at all times, because he knows he can trust her to catch it. THESE TWO FUCK MY WHOLE LIFE I AM SO FUCKING MAD ABOUT THIS. And she is! She is there in a hot second! He knows where she will be and she can read his motions maybe even before he can.

But she is also two other things: Annoyed and AFRAID. She also knows what a bad bitch Scar is, and in her voice, for the first time in the show, we hear CONCERN. When she says, 'Colonel!' it is not an affirmative, it is a warning. She is expressing to him that this situation is dangerous, that he is possibly biting off more than he can chew, that she does not want to be cleaning his fucking brains off the side of the wall, because can they even be separated? They're like the clematis that has grown around a rotting trellis and at this point its impossible to tell which is holding up the other and they will both go down if one is cut.

WOW EVERYONE SORRY ABOUT THAT I SURE HOPE YOU WANTED 700 WORDS ABOUT FOUR SCREENCAPS.

PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT ANYTHING THAT COULD EVEN REMOTELY LEAD TO ME REALIZING SOMETHING OR KNOWING SOMETHING NEW. Do not confirm, deny, draw attention to something I missed EVEN IF I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT, contextualize in a cultural or historical way, anything. I hate that I have to be so specific but I am trying to experience this show totally clean. IF YOU SPOIL ME I WILL BLOCK YOU.

QUICK LINK TO THE SPOILER-FILLED FUNTIMES DISCORD HERE. THEY WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THE THINGS YOU KNOW AND YELL ABOUT ME

[shroomerr]

Finally, my design for Mysterion!! this boy gave me so much heartache in the process of making this but its ok its all worth it for him <3

I also couldn't choose between the version with hair or without hair, so here's the one without under the cut (+ my initial drafts for his design):

[taruruchi]

Unfortunately it seems their wives were caught on camera ⁉️⁉️ (By Jade probably)

I'm spreading the Agenda ✨️✨️ (idk what to call this agenda but 👍)

(they're both wearing their guys' clothes... but it's a bit loose on them 😔)

OZ AND TARU! MY BABIESS I’M SEATED AND WILL BE SPREADING THE AGENDA

They both look so comfy in their guy’s clothes 🥺 Aww I really love your chibi style sm Taru, it’s so round and nommable 🫶

It’s them! Their wives are passing away from the cuteness offscreen 🫡 Trust me I witnessed it myself.

[bittsandpieces]

im supposed to be productive today but instead im trying to get the guy I went out with last week to send me a dick pic

[radjerda]

Sometimes your mind wanders while drawing characters hugging and you wonder: "What if Glorfindel ended up back in Valinor again, talked his way into going back to Middle Earth a second time, and then he decided to smuggle Ecthelion back with him?"

This was followed up with: "It would be funny if they were really bad at it."

Close-ups of the doodles and what I like to call them:

"The Hug that Started it All"

2. "A Brainstorming Session"

3. "Cloak Attempt #1 - In Which Glorfindel Realizes He Needs More Cloak"

4. "Cloak Attempt #2 - Sure, Ecthelion Can Crouch-Walk Out of Valinor"

[microwavetoaster-selfships]

World of selfshippers who draw their F/Os I need to know how y'all draw them while looking at references of them or references for how they look because I know this is what I need to do but it is so hard to do without exploding and I need answers. Is the strat really just having to deal with looking away every five seconds

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent images I suppose ~

[crystal-verse]

as soon as i found out about t'laqa tia i decided he and k'pheli should be best friends because they both suffer severe aether sickness, just in the opposite direction

[ricopop]

viwus wecwuitment 🤓 @cephalonheadquarters @superbellsubways

[thetangibleghost]

I've always wanted to wake up from a dream laughing and I just did but I realized after I woke up that I have missed a million social cues :((((((((((((((((( it wasn't even funny idk why I couldn't stop giggling. I dont even giggle irl.

[ekingston]

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is in my reblogs below, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much!

[sturionic]

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

[snekdood]

bitches prolly out here psychoanalyzing my old art on behalf of my abuser to cushion their belief that im a Horrible Person but then dont see the irony when I point out the shitty things my abuser has drawn and how I see it as clear evidence of their mindset and beliefs (of what's okay to do and how to treat people) descending and pairing that along with everything else they've done and it paints a clear picture of how this person got to the point of thinking it was okay to abuse me the way they did and then the people looking for reasons to hate me through my art will act like "they're just drawings !!!" about their art. which one is it. does someones art say something about them or not? or does it only say something about them if you hate them?

[luveline]

Hi Jade! (I’ve sent this before so ignore if you aren’t into it) just thinking about a bau!reader (maybe shy!reader??) who’s dating post-prison Spencer but didn’t know him before prison and she sees some footage of season one Spencer (maybe they need to refer to a recording of a previous case?) and she’s just dying at how cute he is 🥹

You’ve barely woken up with your face in a solid shoulder when Spencer’s turning around.

“Don’t,” he says when you whine, slipping a familiar hand over your hip. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Too early to make fun of me.” 

“Do you think I’m making fun of you?” 

His talking warms your nose where his head is angled down. Your skin smarts with goosebumps as he trails his hand lightly up your back, down again, the slowest, tumbling touch. You shiver, and Spencer, ever so slightly devious in love, says, “Oh, you’re cold?” with great pity as he pulls you closer. 

You rub your face against his shoulder. “Sorry.” 

“Why?”

“I smell.” 

He hums. “Sort of. Not like sweat, though. You smell like sleep.” His lips touch your cheek.

He lets you ‘warm up’ in his arms for a few minutes, then however long you doze for, lost and too comfortable to bother even trying to wake up properly. Your phone pings a couple of times after it comes out of sleep mode, a sure sign you’ve overslept, but Spencer doesn’t make you move until your stomach growls. 

“Come on,” he says, kissing your nose and slipping you back onto your side of the bed. “I’ll make breakfast.” 

“It’s nearly twelve.” 

“You just woke up, and it’s the first thing you’re gonna eat. You are breaking your fast. Breakfast.” He looks pretty even through achy, tired eyes, all the sleep crusted in your lashes no match for Spencer Reid. How you went so long without knowing him is a mystery. 

You get up only because he told you to and because he looked quite lovely when he did it, not because you want to. The bed is warm, that pit of his arms calling your name, but Spencer’s already rolling out of bed with an eager hand scratching through his hair. Sweat has made them tight and a little darker in the back. You’ll both have to shower at some point, preferably after he’s made you breakfast in bed. 

He can see your expectations on your face, and he laughs as he pulls a t-shirt on over his head. “Get up! I’m not bringing it up here, do you know how badly your sleep cycle is affected when you start doing the wrong things in bed?” 

“What counts as the wrong thing?” 

Spencer laughs again, softer now, and for a moment he traces your face with his eyes without speaking. “Fine,” he says, waving a hand at you as he makes for the bedroom door, “stay there. But only ‘cos you look so pretty!” 

“Thank you!” you call back. 

This time with Spencer isn’t enough. You need ten more years of this, thirty, fifty, you need to wake up in his arms and have him touch you and tickle your cheek with his breath. He’s too far to have him come back, so you resign to hugging him when he returns. 

Your phone pings again, drawing your attention finally. The first notification is a reminder to buy toothpaste today at the grocery store. The second is a text from a friend, the third an email. It’s one from last night that piques your interest, another friend, full capital letters: HELP. 

Her use of a laughing emoji defers any urgency. You click on the text thread and scroll up, puzzled by her previous messages, a link, and a caption: oh my god he was so dorky??? 

You open the video and feel your breath catch in surprise. 

Is that Spencer?

You're not stupid, you’ve seen photos of him and his friends together dotted around the apartment from over the years, and every time you come across that photo of him and Diana at a spelling bee with his huge black-framed glasses you have to laugh, but it’s different seeing him to hearing him. 

He’s so nervous. You can’t understand what it is he’s saying, something about mathematical components to profiling criminals. Jason Gideon stands in the background watching him closely. 

“There’s actually a good joke that–”

“Spencer,” Gideon reprimands. 

You watch in awe as Spencer stammers an apology, his cheeks a little pink. You’ve seen Spencer blush, but this feels different. He looks so young. His hair is straight as a pin. 

“Spencer, did you used to straighten your hair?” you call, hoping he can hear you over the sound of a frying pan popping in the kitchen. “Or do you have a perm now, or what?” 

“What!” 

“I’m confused on the logistics of your hair!” You feel something weird in your chest as on screen Spencer tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear. It’s a mixture of wanting to eat him and wanting to reach through the screen to stroke his cheek with your thumb. 

Spencer treks back into the bedroom with his pink and white pinstripe apron over his shirt and sweatpants. He smells like cinnamon sugar already. “What are you talking about?” 

“My friend found a video of you and Jason at one of those lectures you did.” 

Spencer presses his lips together. For a moment, he doesn’t speak. “I didn’t do any lectures.”

“Uh, yes you did, liar, and you looked so cute.” You turn your phone to him. “So sweet.” 

He marches to the bed. Before you can stop him, he’s taking the phone from your hand, giving you the world's silliest, tiniest shove when you try to get it back. 

“Cruel,” you quip. 

Spencer stares at the phone screen, then you, “Sorry,” he says, turning pink, “I don’t know why I did that, just– I just–” He frowns deeply. “Can you stop smiling like that?” 

You climb onto your knees, a morning disaster, but when you wrap your arms around Spencer’s waist he looks at you like you’re perfect. His eyes soften, brows relaxing, his irises like dark dimes that slowly dilate as he looks you over. Your phone presses into your back, his arm wrapping around you. 

“You were adorable,” you say sincerely. 

“Not anymore?” 

You rub your cheek against his apron. “No, you still are. Let me watch the video again.” 

“Not a chance.”