#I wrote posts on here. my blog. about this happening. because the first one sent me into a 9 hour spiral

[padawansuggest]

You know, I've only followed you for a little while and I did so because I was interested in your star wars posts but wow!! I was not expecting the misogyny and kinkshaming!

I also noticed that you tend to say that you're autistic when people call you out on things or you go and start talking about how terrible people are for giving you anxiety or making you sick, which is another wow!! Like being autistic or chronically ill doesn't make you mean or disrespectful. That's all you.

And to then use those things as a defense instead of admitting you may have done something wrong?

I don't think I can read or follow someone who refuses to take responsibility for their actions anymore, so bye I guess.

Bruh just tell me you’re too stubborn to understand narrative tone, it’s okay.

I once more. Never said I hated ABO (tho idk how that counts as misogyny lmao) but that I get. Tired. Of 100% sex and sexual expectation. I even said I read those. Because they aren’t bad. But I don’t think I’ve ever liked one if it’s 100% sex. That’s my opinion, not kink shaming. I’m fucking tired of them all being expected to be smut.

Also. I mention I’m autistic because they (most people that come at me) claim I can’t understand neurological disorders. I mention I’m disabled because they claim I don’t understand disability. I mention those, because we all function differently and what is upsetting to someone else might not be to you. What is upsetting to me, might not be to you.

I haven’t done anything wrong :) and I don’t need to justify that at all. I just went over everything I said and I’m fully blameless, even if I spoke about something that probably shouldn’t be in my notes. I stated my boundaries. I stated I don’t like it personally. I never said they were wrong for writing it lmao clearly I read it from time to time. I don’t care what you write I’m just tired of it being 100% about sex.

And not all fics are 100% about sex but boy oh boy the ones that are. Are.

I stated what made me want to write this, is a personal trigger. That’s it. You can scream ‘you said you hated it’ over and over. And I’ll stand by that too. It’s not even bad to hate something. I hate a lot of things while refusing to kinkshame for it because that’s someone else’s right to write it.

But I’m saying, that I can only be pushed so far before I decide to write my own fic. Which is what I did.

Anyways. What about any of that made you think I was personally decrying their right to write that? I didn’t mention another person the whole time. I didn’t actually say people can’t write it or shouldn’t. I said the opposite. I also said that I read one too many of them for my personal tastes and it’s getting to my head.

What you should have criticized me about???? Why the fuck am I reading abo when it’s clearly a minefield for me??? That part you can yell at me about. But I’m blameless about everything else. It’s not kinkshaming if I state I have a boundary that keeps getting pushed and I’m ranting about it. You could have even asking me to just tone down the rant. But the summary is fine, and maybe the rants in the notes was a bit much. I’m not apologizing for using an actual writing technique to denote the tone of the main characters pov.

[dollgxtz]

My first and only statement on all the accusations

Hello, I’m sure most of you are aware of the accusations about me and some of the stories I posted on my account. This post is not only an apology post, but an accountability post that details everything that happened from beginning to end. Everything will be here, so I will not be making more posts about this unless it’s to direct to this one.

Adding a tw now for suicide baiting, death threats and mentions of razors. So sorry but it must be included.

First I just wanted to say, no I wasn’t avoiding any of this. When this all started I was still in the middle of finals week, and I don’t live on tumblr 24/7. I had to focus on my finals to ensure I can get my degree and graduate. That was my number one priority. If anyone was blocked or comments were restricted during that time, it was my mostly my irl friend ensuring I wasn’t consumed by tumblr and could focus on my finals. I was already under a lot of stress and she offered to take over until I was finished with finals.

I was also getting death threats (people telling me to skin myself I alive and to jump). So she was ensuring that when I returned to my own blog, I would not see such triggering content. I have a history with suicide attempts and this was necessary for my mental health. The appropriate people were unblocked and remain unblocked to this day.

I always intended to make a statement, I just prioritized my real life first. It also took time to craft the post you are seeing now. I wanted it to be authentic, no misinformation, and well written.

So, as far as plagiarism goes, yes I did plagiarize specifically 3 of zombiekillerbiceps stories. I can’t actually remember the names of them and the author has removed their account from the site. But on my end specifically “Getting Closer”, “Edge of Control” and “Thrills” were not my own writing. Before they deleted their account I had already reached out via dm and apologized. We came to an understanding. I do not know why they deleted their account but they essentially said in DMs they accepted my apology and wanted to put this behind us but they were very hurt that I had copied them.

Edit: I found the post she made calling me out and will attach it.

As far as His Watchful Eye goes, the only plagiarism that took place was specifically the first chapter of it and only the first chapter. The first chapter of Something Permanent and His Watchful Eye are very similar. The remaining 13 chapters are my own writing and ideas. I have already reached out to @explorevenus and apologized. She has responded and made her own statement regarding it if you want to go and read it.

The only reason it was in anon is because this account (dollgxtz) is my side blog. I couldn’t figure out how to send a non anonymous message without exposing my main blog, so anon was the best thing. I didn’t want people sending death threats too that one too. I should’ve put my username in the anon, but it was already very late for me and I hadn’t slept in about 26 hours. I just wasn’t thinking very clearly and for that Venus I am also very sorry.

@manika-whims (the person that first wrote about all this) will remain blocked and some of her followers because I do suspect it was that group of people telling me to die. Manika wrote a very long post as she was upset that I “mischaracterized” Xavier in His Watchful Eye, called me a bitch and a loser because of a fictional man in a fictional story, and I will not entertain such immaturity. Full stop.

One of the anons that sent the suicide bait also called me a bitch and a waste of space. It was just too similar.

I also got this one. It’s too graphic to show the entirety of it.

I apologize for the plagiarism. But I will never apologize for writing characters the way I do or for writing dark content. It’s just not that serious. After she posted that I started getting these death threats and more.

You had every right to call me out for plagiarism Manika, but I stand my decision to keep you blocked. It had nothing to do with plagiarism accusations or me hiding from them, but I do believe you egged on your audience to come attack me over a fictional story and for that reason you will never be unblocked. I’ve attached screenshots below of the entire exchange. This is not to deflect from my own actions. This is simply to explain why she is blocked. She will say it’s because I was trying to hide from this but that is not true. I am just very sure the death threats came from her or her audience. This isn’t to say that she absolutely did but just in case, for my own mental health and safety I had to have them blocked.

Now that that’s discussed, I would like to address my readers and any future readers of mine. The plagiarized stories “Getting Closer” “Thrills” and “Edge of Control”. have been deleted and will remain deleted. Those of you asking for copies, please do not. They are not my writing nor my own works. Any remaining single work story on my blog is my own work and 100 percent my own ideas. My masterlist has been updated to reflect this as well.

When I first made my blog and posted those stories, I was a very insecure writer. I did not think I was truly capable of writing or making a good story. I did those things out of insecurity and not feeling good enough. But as time went on, I began to create my own stories and realize that I can write if I put my mind to it. These are not excuses, only explanations. Nothing excuses my behavior.

If you want to defend me, that is your own choice. I ask that you do not though in terms of plagiarism because I ultimately did plagiarize and that is 100 percent wrong of me to do. But in terms of AI usage accusations, these are not true. I have never and never will use AI to write.

I have spent countless hours writing chapters for His Watchful Eye, pulled all nighters, and even lost sleep making this story. I have timestamps in google docs that show me editing and writing my own story. I didn’t even know AI had advanced to the point that you can write fully blown novels. But make no mistake, Ai checkers are not reliable. I had an incident in my first year of college where a paper I wrote got flagged for 77 percent ai generated content. That paper was written 100 percent by me over countless hours and still got flagged. It was a very scary time in my life and for that reason alone I will never use AI.

If you want to unfollow me, please do so. If you want to block me, please do so. I would never hold that against anyone and am not mad at anyone for doing so. Just don’t come in my anon box telling me to jump, don’t message me rude or disgusting messages telling me to die. I am a human, I am a real person behind the screen. What I did was wrong but you are no better telling someone to kill themselves. Please just block me.

All in all thanks for reading. If you unfollow, thanks for being here. If you don’t, thanks for being here. If you want to be removed from any taglists, please just message me. You will not be blocked. Just removed from any future taglists! I have vowed to only post 100 percent of my own content from here on out, so if you stay I can promise you will only be reading my own work.

I am no longer the insecure writer that I once was, I now know my abilities and am confident enough to make my own stories. I have a 240,000 word fic out right now, I genuinely am still shocked I have done that. Writing has become a joy for me and I will not stop now. I should’ve never been afraid to make mistakes or be bad at it. I’m sorry to the people I hurt, my readers, and anyone reading this in the future. I am still growing and learning from my mistakes, and this has been the biggest lesson I will never forget.

Plagiarism is wrong and hurts authors. If you are reading this and have done so as well, please rethink your decisions and take them down, just as I have done.

I love interacting with you all, when you send me asks and messages about HWE or any of my original single fics. It is amazing getting to explain stuff or gush with you guys over the things that I have truly written. I truly love being an author and want my future as one to be honest and communicative.

The comments on this will be monitored, but not restricted. Voicing your thoughts is okay as long as they are respectful and not a direct threat to me or anyone’s life. Questions are okay as well and I will answer to the best of my ability. Please no:

insulting me or any of the people mentioned in this post (manika, venus, zombie, etc)

death threats or suicide baiting anyone

I want this to be a mature and honest discussion, and that can’t happen if I allow such comments. Despite what has been said about or to me, I do not want to replicate any insults/drama on my own blog. You can voice your displeasure or opinions without name calling.

Same goes for any messages or anon box messages you all may send to anyone involved here. We are all real people with feelings. Keep that in mind please before you message anyone.

We all make mistakes. Without mistakes, we cannot grow as people. It’s what we do after we make those mistakes that truly attest to our character. And this is what I’ve chosen to do. Lay it all out for my readers and the rest of the LADS fandom to see, apologize to the people I hurt and only write my own stories from here on out. Thank you to the readers and friends who approached me with kindness and encouraged me to keep writing authentically. And thank you all for reading, I wish all of you the best in life 🤍

-Umi ૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡

[rpgchoices]

More on Davrin's past, arc and journal (part 2)

Part one where I wrote down all the banter about Davrin's Dalish past is here!

I wanted to put all codex (I could find) in order, divided by topic! (Also I wanted to say I will post more Davrin stuff on my personal blog @lucrezianoin haha to not fill this one with just Davrin!)

This is divided in:

Davrin's past and his feelings of guilt for the Dalish clan

Weisshaupt being the only home he has

Meeting Assan and the griffons (and naming Assan)

The Warden vs Nature choice for the griffons

Other (stuff on the Gloom Howler etc.)

Davrin's past and Dalish clan

Just a bit more here on Davrin's guilt for leaving his clan and we do get the confirmation that Davrin has not seen Eldrin since his kids days, and contacted him thanks to a chat with Rook.

Also interesting that the way Davrin was treated by Eldrin is very similar to the way Davrin treats Assan at the start. In the quest we also find out Eldrin was quite harsh (making him eat Halla food as a way to learn, which led to hours of hallucinations and sickness, and kicking his butt when he felt Davrin was wrong).

We don't really get that deep into it, but I like that while Davrin firmly believes in "Throw yourself at it, if you don't learn you get hurt" for himself, he squanders that idea pretty easily when it comes to Assan, even going so far as to start wonder if there is a "non fighting" future for Assan.

I will put this codex later on but I also wanted to show it here for Davrin's past, in "The Nature of Griffons" Davrin says: "Talking to Rook about Assan's insticts got me thinking. Can you change something you're born with? Or are we blank slates who can make our own way? Was I born a monster hunter, destined to do this job, or did I have a choice?" which makes me scream because I need to know what happened in his clan.

From the banter and his personal quests we know that Davrin hunted everything, and then started going to Eldrin's during the summers and he learnt to hurt darkness (monsters) and things that threatened the forest. Did he have a drive to hunt that Eldrin needed to re-direct, where were his parents? Were they the ones sending him to Eldrin? And why is it that a talk of nature vs nurture and his Dalish clan makes him think only of Eldrin and not his parents? (We realistically can imagine Davrin's mother is alive, given that during the gym scene Taash insults her and Davrin says "She can take it" when Taash apologize).

Weisshaupt (and the fall of Weisshaupt)

Davrin often talks about Weissaupt with affection and jokingly but the code really expresses that Weissaupt was his only home.

When Davrin leaves to follow Rook we find out that he knows the First Warden would not take him back. He describes the fortress in detail (loved the "libraries of books I'll never read, getting bruised and battered while sparring etc." as some nostalgic positive thing - miserable and exhilarating). And of course "It's the only home I got", which is telling knowing how he feels about his clan never taking him back if he asked.

And then the heartbreaking entry for Weisshaupt fall.

There are a few other entries:

Which also has a bit about Assan: "I have been thinking of Assan as an assignment: something I need to protect until he finishes his training. But we're in this together now, and it's time to lick our wounds and move on. I'm all he's got, and in some ways, he's all I've got."

How Davrin got to work with Griffons and meeting Assan

My favorite entries are about how Davrin got his assignement and how sweet he was on Assan (unknowingly!!) since the start!

We find out it was the First Warden (from Weisshaupt) that sent him to the assignment. I am still unsure how it works for a Warden who is a Monster Hunter, but we know from the entries that Davrin lived at Weisshaupt and considered it his home, so I supposed he was just sent here and there? Like a specialized Warden? He also mentions he was sent as a bodyguard, basically, and he seems both fascinated and a bit skeptical (they poop a lot haha, and he admires Lancit's patience).

And then he meets Assan. "There's one griffon, this little guy." From Endril's words we know Davrin used to be small and scrawny as a kid, so I wonder if he saw himself in Assan. "He's a little slow on the uptake, but he's fast in the air." And so Davrin suggests the name Assan for him. And my favorite part "If I do nothing else in this life, at least I can say I got to name a griffon".

We also have these late entries about the nature of griffons and Davrin's realization that they are not "made" for fighting by nature, but taught so. "Can griffons do anything else? Would they want to? I wonder". Also he is such a dad, writing about Assan's first taste of an apple.

About Assan and the halla, Davrin writes "the instincts of a dog herding sheep", and I personally think it is about learning. There is a moment in the dialogue at the start of Davrin's recruital where we find out that griffons learn better in groups, they clearly are very social animals. I fully believe Assan fed the Halla simply because he saw Davrin doing that, he learnt from watching, he sees Davrin taking care of Halla so he learns that is the thing to do and how it is done.

Then we have some notes on Griffon's extinctions, and a note about Assan's love for gingerwort truffles (which Davrin tried and did not like.. we also find out Davrin hates broccoli... please Davrin... I love broccoli...)

Warden Griffons vs Arlathan Griffons

These are the two different notes:

Interesting the "Warden" choice starts with "Deciding where the griffons should go wasn't easy" which is not present in the Arlathan choice. I do not think there is a right/wrong choice, but after reading this I will always lean more towards Arlathan.

"it's time they got a chance to explore nature instead. The griffons are going to love Arlathan"

Other codex

Interesting that he says he does feel sympathy for Isseya.

[factcheckingmclennon]

harry nilsson quotes double feature: fact or fiction?

"Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying 'I Love Paul'. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, 'Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?' He said, 'Because I love Paul.'" -Harry Nilsson

"I'm just like everybody else, Harry, I fell for Paul's looks." Harry Nilsson (on John)

these quotes get passed around unsourced, or wrongly sourced, constantly. so...

are these harry nilsson quotes about john lennon real?

shockingly, after getting an anon correction on the first one and then discovering myself on the second one through the world's most random search engine imaginable bc SOMETHING felt unfinished...... the final verdict for both?

...ish? the second one is sort of neutral bc it's taken a bit out of context but i'll get to that

let's get into it, because this one took me on a journey!

(and btw the sources on these were SUCH a pain in the ass to find due to lack of sourcing & wrong sourcing so i am on my hands and knees for these to get passed around w the proper sources now that they're in one place bc they're so good)

first of all, these quotes keep getting mixed up and messed around with different wording. which was my first road block on finding a proper source. second of all, they have been wrongly attributed to a) one single interview together and/or b) a rolling stone interview with nilsson. this made things aggravating. but in the end, an anon sent me the audio for the first quote and for the second one i FINALLY found someone a looong while back actually naming the book it's in & successfully found it!

made a post earlier concluding both were fake, but we just had to go a little deeper folks.

anyway, onto the good shit

who was harry nilsson? he was a friend of john's, specifically during his 1974 lost weekend era. they lived together for a while (along with others, including ringo!) and were pretty close.

"because i love paul"

this one gets misquoted the Most honestly like you'll find a bunch of different variations of it, but you can find it in a 1984 interview with geoffrey giuliano as such:

GIULIANO: Did he miss the Beatles? Was he mournful about what happened, over the, you know—? HARRY: Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying ‘I Love Paul’. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, “Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?” He said, “Because I love Paul.” [laughs]  

(source) (and again, it's a tumblr blog, but given that it's audio, i'm marking it trustworthy. i just uploaded it to archive.org in case it ever gets deleted)

"i fell for paul's looks"

this one. this one was a goddamn journey and a half. this sent me on several rabbit holes and dead ends. the author of the last source said "nope it's definitely not from the tapes i found this audio from or i would've posted it too" and couldn't find the source either. no one had a source. until finally i found someone on a forum saying it was in the ballad of john and yoko published by rolling stone in 1984, in an essay titled "harry remembers" and thank christ it was on archive.org

so here's the full quote, found on page 236

"He spoke the way James Joyce wrote. And to me he was the Beatles. He was always the spark. In a late wee-hours-of-the-morning talk, he once told me: 'I'm just like everybody else, Harry. I fell for Paul's looks. George knew more chords, so he was in. And Ringo, he's just Ringo.'"

(source)

so this one gets a... true/neutral rating from me. why neutral? well, the "i fell for paul's looks" part is certainly there. but in the full context, he's talking about why he wanted each member in the beatles. basically, paul was the pretty face. however, he did say that verbatim and it is incredibly fucking gay imo. like specifically the "i fell for" wording is craaaaazy to me. but i do think the full context should be included if we're talking about it, as well as the actual source.

so no, they were not indeed both from the same interview. one isn't even FROM an interview. but they are both true! which is great bc i love both of these quotes and truly thought they were fake! pleasantly surprised on this one

now, take these with a grain of salt. the first quote is a third-hand source. it's nilsson recounting what some random fan told him john had done YEARS prior. the second one is a second-hand source and nilsson and john were like pretty infamous for getting drunk/high together. but the quotes themselves? certainly exist from harry nilsson, and that's the question. believe them if you want to, or leave them! i'm certainly taking them lmao

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How a billionaire’s mediocre pump-and-dump “book” became a “bestseller”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on, your middle name is 'Cory.'"

"That's weird. Why?"

"Because from now on, your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author.'"

That was how I found out I'd hit the NYT list for the first time. It was a huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First, because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly, because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.

Once your book is a Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book. Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.

My books became Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them alongside the book.

That "From now on your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author' gag is a tradition. When @wilwheaton's memoir Still Just A Geek hit the Times list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say @jscalzi had already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton

But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.

Famously, the Church of Scientology was caught buying truckloads of L Ron Hubbard books (published by Scientology's own publishing arm) from booksellers, returning them to their warehouse, then shipping them back to the booksellers when they re-ordered the sold out titles. The tip-off came when booksellers opened cases of books and found that they already bore the store's own price-stickers:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-scientology062890-story.html

The reason Scientology was willing to go to such great lengths wasn't merely that readers used "NYT Bestseller* to choose which books to buy. Far more important was the signal that this sent to the entire book trade, from reviewers to librarians to booksellers, who made important decisions about how many copies of the books to stock, whether to display them spine- or face out, and whether to return unsold stock or leave it on the shelf.

Publishers go to great lengths to send these messages to the trade: sending out fancy advance review copies in elaborate packaging, taking out ads in the trade magazines, featuring titles in their catalogs and sending their sales-force out to impress the publisher's enthusiasm on their accounts.

Even the advance can be a way to signal the trade: when a publisher announces that it just acquired a book for an eyebrow-raising sum, it's not trumpeting the size of its capital reserves – it's telling the trade that this book is a Big Deal that they should pay attention to.

(Of all the signals, this one may be the weakest, even if it's the most expensive for publishers to send. Take the $1.25m advance that Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins paid to Sarah Palin for her unreadable memoir, Going Rogue. As with so many of the outsized sums Murdoch's press and papers pay to right wing politicians, the figure didn't represent a bet on the commercial prospects of the book – which tanked – but rather, a legal way to launder massive cash transfers from the far-right billionaire to a generation of politicians who now owe him some rather expensive favors.)

All of which brings me to the New York Times bestselling book Read Write Own by the billionaire VC New York Times Bestselling Author Chris Dixon. Dixon is a partner at A16Z, the venture capitalists who pumped billions into failed, scammy, cryptocurrency companies that tricked normies into converting their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money into shitcoins, allowing the investors to turn a massive profit and exit before the companies collapsed or imploded.

Read Write Own (subtitle: "Building the Next Era of the Internet") is a monumentally unconvincing hymn to the blockchain. As Molly White writes in her scathing review, the book is full of undisclosed conflicts of interest, with Dixon touting companies he has a direct personal stake in:

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

But this book's defects go beyond this kind of sleazy pump-and-dump behavior. It's also just bad. The arguments it makes for the blockchain as a way of escaping the problems of an enshittified, monopolized internet are bad arguments. White dissects each of these arguments very skillfully, and I urge you to read her review for a full list, but I'll reproduce one here to give you a taste:

After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionistd) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems.

This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap,e prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs … afraid to build products" in the United States.f

As White says, this is just not a good book. It doesn't contain anything to excite people who are already blockchain-poisoned crypto cultists – and it also lacks anything that will convince normies who never let Matt Damon or Spike Lee convince them to trade dollars for magic beans. It's one of those books that manages to be both paper and a paperweight.

And yet…it's a New York Times Bestseller. How did this come to pass? Here's a hint: remember how the Scientologists got L Ron Hubbard 20 consecutive #1 Bestsellers?

As Jordan Pearson writes for Motherboard, Read Write Own earned its place on the Times list because of a series of massive bulk orders from firms linked to A16Z and Dixon, which ordered between dozens and thousands of copies and gave them away to employees or just randos on Twitter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7emkx/chris-dixon-a16z-read-write-own-nyt-bestseller

The Times recognizes this in a backhanded way, by marking Read Write Own on the list with a "dagger" (†) that indicates the shenanigans (the same dagger appeared alongside the listing for Donald Trump Jr's Triggered after the RNC spent a metric scientologyload of money – $100k – buying up cases of it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-triggered-sales.html

There's a case for the Times not automatically ignoring bulk orders. Since 2020, I've run Kickstarters where I've pre-sold my books on behalf of my publisher, working with bookstores like Book Soup and wholesalers like Porchlight Books to backers when they go on sale. I signed and personalized 500+ books at Vroman's yesterday for backers who pre-ordered my next novel, The Bezzle:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53531243480/

But there's a world of difference between pre-orders that hundreds or thousands of readers place that are aggregated into a single bulk order, and books that are bought by CEOs to give away to people who may not have any interest in them. For the book trade – librarians, reviewers, booksellers – the former indicates broad interest that justifies their attention. The latter just tells you that a handful of deep-pocketed manipulators want you to think there's broad interest.

I'm certain that Dixon – like me – feels a bit of pride at having "earned" a new first name. But Dixon – like me – gets something far more tangible than a bit of egoboo out of making the Times list. For me, a place on the Times list is a way to get booksellers and librarians excited about sharing my book with readers.

For Dixon, the stakes are much higher. Remember that cryptocurrency is a faith-based initiative whose mechanism is: "convince normies that shitcoins will be worth more tomorrow than they are today, and then trade them the shitcoins that cost you nothing to create for dollars that they worked hard to earn."

In other words, crypto is a bezzle, defined by John Kenneth Galbraith as "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

So long as shitcoins haven't fallen to zero, the bag-holders who've traded their "fiat" for funny money can live in the bezzle, convinced that their "investments" will recover and turn a profit. More importantly, keeping the bezzle alive preserves the possibility of luring in more normies who can infuse the system with fresh dollars to use as convincers that keep the bag-holders to keep holding that bag, rather than bailing and precipitating the zeroing out of the whole scam.

The relatively small sums that Dixon and his affiliated plutocrats spent to flood your podcasts with ads for this pointless 300-page Ponzi ad are a bargain, as are the sums they spent buying up cases of the book to give away or just stash in a storeroom. If only a few hundred retirees are convinced to convert their savings to crypto, the resulting flush of cash will make the line go up, allowing whales like Dixon and A16Z to cash out, or make more leveraged bets, or both. Crypto is a system with very few good trades, but spending chump change to earn a spot on the Times list (dagger or no) is a no-brainer.

After all, the kinds of people who buy crypto are, famously, the kinds of people who think books are stupid ("I would never read a book" -S Bankman-Fried):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-reading-effective-altruism/

There's precious little likelihood that anyone will be convinced to go long on crypto thanks to the words in this book. But the Times list has enough prestige to lure more suckers into the casino: "I'm not going to read this thing, but if it's on the list, that means other people must have read it and think it's convincing."

We are living through a golden age of scams, and crypto, which has elevated caveat emptor to a moral virtue ("not your wallet, not your coins"), is a scammer's paradise. Stein's Law tells us that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop," but the purpose of a bezzle isn't to keep the scam going forever – just until the scammer can cash out and blow town. The longer the bezzle goes on for, the richer the scammer gets.

Not for nothing, my next novel – which comes out on Feb 20 – is called The Bezzle. It stars Marty Hench, my hard-driving, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant, who finds himself unwinding a whole menagerie of scams, from a hamburger-based Ponzi scheme to rampant music royalty theft to a vast prison-tech scam that uses prisoners as the ultimate captive audience:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Patrick Nielsen Hayden – the same editor who gave me my new first name – once told me that "publishing is the act of connecting a text with an audience." Everything a publisher does – editing, printing, warehousing, distributing – can be separated from publishing. The thing a publisher does that makes them a publisher – not a printer or a warehouser or an editing shop – is connecting books and audiences.

Seen in this light, publishing is a subset of the hard problem of advertising, religion, politics and every other endeavor that consists in part of convincing people to try out a new idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

This may be the golden age of scams, but it's the dark age of publishing. Consolidation in distribution has gutted the power of the sales force to convince booksellers to stock books that the publisher believes in. Consolidation in publishing – especially Amazon, which is both a publisher and the largest retailer in the country – has stacked the deck against books looking for readers and vice-versa (Goodreads, a service founded for that purpose, is now just another tentacle on the Amazon shoggoth). The rapid enshittification of social media has clobbered the one semi-reliable channel publicists and authors had to reach readers directly.

I wrote nine books during lockdown (I write as displacement activity for anxiety) which has given me a chance to see publishing in the way that few authors can: through a sequence of rapid engagements with the system as a whole, as I publish between one and three books per year for multiple, consecutive years. From that vantagepoint, I can tell you that it's grim and getting grimmer. The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

I don't know what to do about this, but I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.

Meanwhile, I've got to go get ready for my book tour. I'm coming to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Buffalo, as well as Torino and Tartu (details soon!).

If you want to get a taste of The Bezzle, here's an excerpt:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

And here's the audiobook, read by New York Times Bestselling Author Wil Wheaton:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459_-_The_Bezzle_Read_By_Wil_Wheaton.mp3

[ekgfiction]

Hi, I'm back?

...Hello everyone ! This is a very much needed update after a long time of not posting... sorry.

First of all, thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who sent me a kind message, you are angels and I'm so sorry it took me this long to answer your questions.

For those who don't wish to read a long text that looks too much like a page from my diary, here is the summary. I'm officially back working on OLYMPUS. I don't promise you much, but one update a month for now (not necessarily a game update, but an update on me working on the game...yay?).

My 4 goals for January are a lot of ground:

Finish the character pages

Relearning twine

Update the outdated info on Tumblr / itch.io

Fix prologue (because of changes in the outline)

And for those who are nosy like me and want to understand what I was doing until now, buckle up !

I started this blog in the summer of 2021 and posted the demo for OLYMPUS exactly three years ago, in 2022. At the time, I was living alone in the US, with no life outside of work and this project, which was very dear to me. It was my first "real" creative project I wanted to be serious about. I was also very depressed, being alone and away from friends and family sucked.

When I came back to France in the summer of 2022, I was determined to work on the game again. But then, real adult life happened ! My health issues, that I didn’t understand yet, started to really affect me. I lost two dear family members, saw my best friend become a mother and discovered that being a teacher is a fucking hard job. I was an intern teacher and had a final exam at the end of the school year to be a "real" teacher. So I focused on that, and it was a success. A couple of days after that, I decided to go back to OLYMPUS, and that’s when my laptop broke.

The one I had since I was 18 years old. Which contained not only all my class materials from my first year as a teacher, but also my essays and memories of my college years, and all my writing. And I mean, all my writing. From my very first bad fan fiction on Amour Sucré (or My Candy Love in English) that I wrote when I was a teenager and that I managed to save on my laptop, to all my documents on OLYMPUS, a project which had 5 years at this point. I was devastated.

Moving to the Paris suburbs for work didn’t help. I was finally back living somewhere close to my friends and family, when my job made me move far away again, to one of the most expensive and yet hardest place to work as a teacher in France. Because of the very high rent, I was first in a shared apartment, which was not the greatest. Work was even harder to manage. At the end of 2023, I felt stuck, watching life around me move forward while I barely kept up.

In 2024, things began to shift. I let go of some things and people, but made new friends, joined a DnD group, traveled, and even saw Dimension20 live in London (how crazy is that !). I moved out of my shared apartment into a cozy studio, traveled around France to see my loved ones, and finally got a diagnosis for my autoimmune disease, which helped me understand and manage my health. I also bought a new computer and started writing again !

Not on OLYMPUS though, no. Not at first.

The thought of returning to it felt overwhelming. The asks in my inbox, the followers, and the questions on itch.io made it feel like an impossible task. I convinced myself it was too ambitious of a project for a beginner like me. That no one cared anymore—not even me. It’s better if it stays a a silly little daydream I think about on my way to work.

Then, someone left me a kind comment asking if I was still working on the game. It wasn’t the first time someone asked me that, but something clicked. I thought of the me that posted the demo in 2022, how she felt and how I feel now. Maybe, if I started again now, it would be alright? I feel better, healthier. Instead of seeing the project as a burden, something I didn’t accomplish, a very public failure, I wanted to give it another shot. And if I failed again, so what? At least I'd tried. I don't to give up on this story.

I had to start from scratch of course, because everything but the demo on itch.io was lost. Rewrote the world building and the outline. I haven’t finished everything, but I finally feel like I am at a good place to start working on it again. Like, actually working, writing it. Not just my world building, or the outline. I am sure I made a lot of changes from plans I had before, and will probably change it again at some point. But that’s fine. You're pretty much having the first draft of the game anyway, and it'll be easier to rework things than to start anew every time.

This time, I’m being realistic: I’ve set aside four hours a week to write, balancing work, hobbies, friends, family, and my health. It doesn’t sound like much, but to me it sounds manageable, and adaptable to my work and my health. It means I could update you once a month on things I plan to do and have done.

So, for January ! The plan is to finish the character pages, which should take a week. Then, I want to spend some time on twine to relearn how to use it and eventually redo the prologue to fit the new outline. I also have to update itch.io and tumblr as well. Basically, a lot of ground work to let me start the final week of January with the first work path of chapter 1.

Anyway, if you read everything and reached this far, omg thank you so much and sorry I know it was way too long.

Really, thank you. I can't explain how much you, and all of this means to me. Your likes, comments, asks kept this project alive when I didn't believe in it nor in myself.

Love, Elena

[sizzlingcloudmentality]

my 2024 review

@guiltyasdave tagged me, thank you so much babygirl 🫶

writing

I published 11 fics and wrote about 19k words this year. Which is, for me personally, huge.

I tooted my own horn here, so if you want to cut to a super short "best of" just visit that post. For the rest: the yapping starts in 3... 2... 1...

The man of my year was DAVE YORK. He got me back into writing in May and since then my thoughts are orbiting around him. I almost wrote exclusively for him. I sent him to a club, had him eating croissants while doing the dirty, made him confess his sins. 8 oneshots in total and I even started something like a series with in the sheets. Plus, still absolutely mind-blowing for a newbie writer like myself: slow has over 500 notes. What in the ever loving fuck? Thank you all so much!

And then I wrote for JOEL MILLER. Imagine being in Ireland and meeting this gorgeous Texan in a pub. It's fluffy and warm and exactly how I imagine a first kiss happening in Ireland.

And then there are so many wips for other characters like Max Phillips, Marcus Accacius, Javier Peña, Oberyn Martell... Most of them half way finished. All of them are part of challenges (I'm so sorry...) but they will come to you some time soon-ish in 2025, pinky promise!

And then there are wips for some Jake Gyllenhaal characters: Rusty Sabich, John Kinley and Lou Bloom. At least two of those should see the light of day in 2025 too (please send thoughts and prayers).

reading

I suck at reading. One of my new year's resolutions: read more (maybe a fic per week, not a fic per month...). And work on a system to find my fic recs on my blog so I can talk about them in length for the 2025 review. Until then: You are a talented bunch of lovely people, please be kind to each other and yourselves, thank you for creating pure magic!

all the highlights 2024, a selection

This year was all about connection, in the form of grief and friendship. Which is both ultimately love. In January I felt unbelievably lonely and sad and now I don't because it gets better. It always does. We just have to hang in there.

I reached out into the Jake Gyllenhaal fandom and met precious and insanely talented people there. @davidayer @charliehoennam and @gyllenhaalstories you three made my year so much better and I am beyond grateful to be allowed to live in your DMs 💛 (I'm working on responding in time, I swear...)

Watching Presumed Innocent every week in the wee hours of the (European) morning with my lovely Laurie, screaming at each other about writing, just chatting and holding space for each other... @gyllenhaalstories I love you so much sweet pea and I hate that there is this stupid ocean between us. We are meant to be eating blue candies while watching movies and hug at all times.

I started some polls and asks in the Jake fandom and it was so beautiful to witness how people came together and started reaching out and talking. I am a little proud of myself that I was part of the reason for that.

And finally: @guiltyasdave. I never thought I would find a friend in this fandom just because finding friends is hard and making a friend in real life is even harder. But not with you. With you everything is easy. You're not getting rid of me anytime soon 💛🥹

Oof, that was a lot. Thanks for reading!

Absolutely no pressure tagging, this post was some real work haha: @toomanystoriessolittletime @gyllenhaalstories @ace-turned-confused @yxtkiwiyxt

dividers: @steddiecameraroll-graphics

[sophaeros]

love your blog, if possible could I get an Albert and Jules lore dump? I read your other post but I am hungry for more context (and sources)

omg hii glad u like it here !! 😋 umm ok i can try to do like a rough little timeline w notable moments maybe? whatever comes to mind lol

in err 1991 i believe when julian was 13 he got sent to that one swiss boarding school to curb his alcoholism (did not work clearly) and two years later when julian was 15, 13 year-old albert also arrived. julian stayed for two years and albert stayed for six months. julian had this to say about their meeting SNIFFLES. theyre never beating the soulmate allegations i fear

How did you become friends at first? Julian: Two of us arrived in a private school in Switzerland. I felt I had nothing in common with the others. They were so different from people I knew in New York, they were obsessed by clothes Haut Couture. I missed New York so much, it’s really a part of my soul. Meeting Albert was a relief. At last, someone with whom I could talk. There was immediately something, a feeling of complementarity. We talked a lot of music, of our band plans. We gave ourselves 2 years to create a band or to bury this dream. After 2 years, we gave ourselves 2 more years, (laugh).

— the strokes for les inrockuptibles, march 2002 (x)

after albert moved back to la he and julian lost touch until 1998 when albert moved to new york at 18 to go to film school and find himself or whatever. and of course they have the most red string of fate ass second meeting oh my god it makes my stomach hurt. I COULD LITERALLY SEE HIM FROM MY WINDOW. why arent they in a stupid hallmark movie romcom COME ON

“When I first came to New York,” marvels Hammond, resplendent in red and black winklepickers, “the way things happened to me, it was like there was someone… doing it. I moved into my apartment, it was directly across the street from where Julian worked. Like, what are the odds? I could literally see him from my window.”

— albert hammond jr for q magazine, april 2002 (x)

and so albert becomes the final member of the band, completing the set ❤️ (the talk, 2013)

Albert, did you have to try out to be in The Strokes? Yeah. I remember when I met everyone. I met Julian first, then Nikolai, got really drunk one night, and then I went to go try out, even though Julian told me later that in his mind I was already in the band. How come? I was an okay player, I could play chords and stuff, but I looked awesome. (Laughs) I just looked like there was only one thing I could do: be in a band.

albert and julian lived together for seven years from 1998 to 2005 when julian got married, they had two apartments together and the first one is the most well known, it's the dumbbell shaped one. idk about the layout of the second unforch

ehhh scrubbing ahead a bit. julian wasn't there for albert's intervention in 2009 because he was on his solo tour

but happily in 2013 we get albert releasing his comeback ep through julian's label cult records (and then he leaves cult records in 2015. c'est la vie.) (nme september 2013)

“I’d been talking to Julian about wanting to release something on his label since he started it,” Hammond Jr explains. “He was like, ‘Let’s put out a song’. So I went, ‘Alright, I’ll start working with Gus [Oberg] and maybe after we do a few songs there’ll be one that’s fun in there.’ I sent him the first, ‘Cooker Ship’, and he was floored. I got an email back with a million ‘yes’-es on it!”

speaking of which. i've posted this before but SIGHHHH (the talk 2013) that song is for his fucking then-gf justyna. (well, most likely. i dont think hes ever outright stated who he wrote it for but the mv is pretty domestic (for the most part......) and theres a bit where theyre kinda dancing in the living room which is one of the things albert told an interviewer he and justyna did a lot → vice june 2015 but of course i suppose you never know)

Kind of like The Strokes’ song “You Only Live Once”… Julian wrote that. I’m in the band, but I still take his lyrics like a fan would. You always relate lyrics to yourself, and I even do that with him even though he is one of my friends and we lived together when he was writing it. God knows what they were truly about. But it came full circle when he was over listening to “St. Justice” from my new solo EP. It was really cute, he was like, “Is this lyric about me?” And I was like, “…no, man.” It really wasn’t, but it was a good circle because I’ve felt that way about so many of his lyrics. When we got in the band, Julian had such a vision, he was just a strong writer, so the first three records are all his.

and then there's. whatever the fuck is up with one way trigger. i'll make a post about that swear

ending this post here i think bc otherwise i'm never gonna post this SORRY. i'll try to think of more but the tragedy of julian/albert is that it's actually really hard to find fuel for them. unlike milex where they're apparently physically incapable of not being all over and waxing poetic about each other. but then what you Do get is kinda crazy. such is life

[badaziraphaletakes]

Apparently were the big bad bullies of good omens for…calling out toxic bullshit behavior😭😭

Whew. It feels weird to be answering this ask now that we’ve lost Tori. 💔 But I didn't want to leave it unanswered, because that felt worse.

So...

First of all: No idea who the original author of this post is, because Tori, with her usual class, submitted it anonymously - just like the vast majority of takes we feature are submitted to us. (Of the rest, the vast majority of those come from our bucket of bad takes that we rage-screenshotted post-S2, the majority of which are over a year old now. We didn’t pay any attention to who wrote them or save the handles back when we took those screenshots, and we definitely don’t remember who wrote them now. Hell, we barely remember which sites those takes are from at this point.)

Now, with that out of the way...

Literally no one has ever said to us “please stop posting screenshots of my stuff”. That has never happened. People have said  “please shut down your blog”, yes (albeit usually without the please, and worded much, much less nicely), but that’s different. We’re obviously not going to stop posting altogether just because someone demands it. Anyway, moving on to the next point.

In the nine months or so this blog has been running, we have had, so far as I can recall, exactly two people reach out to us identifying a take we posted as theirs.

One person said "Was this my take you posted?" We replied "Yes, would you like us to remove it?" and they didn't get back to us.

With the other, someone didn't like that we quoted their description of our blog as a "flaming pile of garbage" (that was one of the very few times we knew who we were quoting, though under the circumstances, I don't feel bad about doing that lol). So we stopped engaging with their content.

And that's it.

No one has ever said to us "please take down this post you made about my take". That has never happened, so I have no idea what the OP is talking about.

If anyone ever asks us that, we will take the post in question down, no questions asked. We've been perfectly clear about that from the start.

Admittedly, there is the possibility that someone might then submit anonymous content to us that was the person in question’s without us realizing it (though we’d do our best to check). BUT the thing is - if someone ever contacted us asking us not to post their content, we would make that clear on the blog. We would say outright “X person has asked us not to post their takes anymore, so please don't submit their takes to our blog”.

And we feel confident that our followers would honor that. We trust them. That's the kind of people they are. This is a good community we've been lucky enough to gather around us here.

And we have never, ever sent our followers after anyone. That's just not how we operate. It goes against the entire purpose of this blog. I'm not even sure we could send a mob after anyone even if we wanted to lol; I'm pretty sure our followers are too smart to get swept up in something like that. (Though we have had someone attempt to send an online mob after us lol. True story.)

Finally, because I do know the kind of groups OP is referring to, thanks to conversations I had with Tori, who devoted some of her precious, all-too-brief time on this earth to running a blog fighting back against their hate:

I’m cringing at the euphemism of calling the Georgia and Anna hate blogs "people who have 'specific opinions' about David Tennant and Michael Sheen". If you have been spared the corner of the fandom that this is in reference to - count yourself lucky, and feel free to move on.

If you haven't, you probably know already that people's dislike of said blogs (which are devoted to saying absolutely unspeakable things about Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg) has NOTHING to do with that.

No one gives AF if people have “opinions” (🙄) about David and Michael. That was never what was going on here. The problem with those blogs is that they are chock-full of people saying toxic and defamatory misogynist bullshit about two women who are minding their own business and whose only offense was to marry a celebrity. The content of those blogs does not fall within the realm of “opinions”- it’s slander, pure and simple.

The audacity of calling bloggers like that people who want to "cultivate their own bubble free of hate" is excruciating.

And finally, I've been wanting to use this gif for a very long time, so here we go:

[sgiandubh]

Imma need an in-depth breakdown of Puff please! And I’m not being sarcastic either. Puff pre-dates my time in the outlander fandom.

Regards,

Your curious anon.

Dear Puffy Curious Anon,

If my cantankerous boss would have summoned me at 03:03 pm EEST (when your request landed in my inbox), just to tell me "Imma need an in-depth breakdown of the Greek trade unions' position on the current critical understaffing of the HoReCa sector", I would have politely answered "yes, ma'am, when is the deadline". I would have then turned on my heels, rolled my eyes, sworn like a drunk sailor under my breath (fuck my life comes to mind, pardon my French) and quickly be done with it.

You, bless your Anon heart, wrote: "Imma need an in-depth breakdown of Puff, please". Wee difference, Curious Anon: you are not my cantankerous boss. That being said, since the question has been asked by several people in the comment threads of the day's posts, I am gonna give you my two cents on Queen Pufflander, even if you've been around before I even knew this weird place existed. And hopefully put to rest this nonsense forever (wishful thinking, doubt it will happen).

Once upon a time, when S&C's bantering was the plat du jour on Twitter and this fandom a considerably less toxic place, Puff the Magic Dragon of the US East Coast was one of the Queen Bees of Shipperville. Her blog was witty and no-nonsense (if a tad verbose) and, as *urv, she quickly earned her fair share of side performers: Stella and Deep Throat (SOURCES) or the tarot reader(s) immediately come to mind. People loved Puff and that is only fair, to be honest: I bet the farm she was great fun. Little by little, information traded in DMs started to pile up in her famed Vault, from which she was generously sharing, from time to time, sibylline rants ("maybe they did or maybe they didn't, but don't worry, something happened and all shall soon be revealed"). I can critique that forever and a day and tell you that all this sent people's expectations up the roof and beyond, of course. But, again: I was not here. It is unfairly easy to judge all these things with a historian's eye, and people who lived to tell the tale are far more entitled than me to comment their fandom experience, circa 2015.

When the whole Shatner/Watchtower baliverne started (early 2016, if memory serves) things ugly escalated and rather quickly so. People started jumping ship. With McSideburns already in the house (EIFF comes to mind and a certain poignant S&C penguin picture, too), enter Flukenzie Floozy. Thus, after IFH, Puffy decided to pack her crystal ball & tent and move to greener pastures on Wordpress. There, she held court with a keen eye for the Byzantine politicking of this fandom, not unlike what Perfidious Albion did with regard to the Thirteen Rebelling Colonies, after that Boston Tea Party. Her main moments of intersection with the rest of the shipper community are Covfefe Pics (of course) and Remarkable Week-end (of course). With regard to Covfefe, she quickly cried wolf, but by the time Remarkable Week-end happened, she pulled off a mighty witty breakdown of The Nuptial Charade of the Century. Blaze of glory was Quarantein Ha-wa-wee (of course), when she blamed S for all the world's evils and then some more. After that, she concentrated on her Neverending Feud with *urv (a Private Investigator was, at some point, hired and paid for via crowdfunding), which somehow managed to end (nevertheless) with a Report she might or might not have sent to S, "for further consideration".

As all good prophets, Puffy finally went into Occultation circa 2021, not without warning us that she was torn between Gay Sam & SamCait intellectual traditions, with a wee penchant for the first (reason why I completely ditched her peddling, because IYKYK).

I can understand why people might think I could be Puffy. I am, however, very sure about my own identity, whereabouts and creed: to state the opposite would really, really be mental. I fully assumed my responsibility and went ahead to actually prove you, this morning, I wasn't. Reading her rants was useful, but also taxing. I doubt Stella and Deep Throat were anything else but narrative helpers in a sophisticated Greimas actantial model. Something I would never do, for example: I am confident enough not to need any crutches. And I am very, very sorry for this word vomit: it should come, perhaps, as solace its length could never compete with Puff's storytelling marathons.

To wash my sins (not really: because I really love that picture), here's S,C, a penguin and a cakebox (?), at EIFF 2015. This is, you can be certain, the purest thing on this page, Anon:

[darkboysroadtrip]

Helpful Guide To The Road Trip!

First and foremost, the ask box is always open, I haven't closed it before and I'm not gonna start! Which means, send in whatever whenever all the time forever! I will never not want more asks, they are the lifeblood of the story! There's no dumb questions!

That goes for likes and reblogs too, go fuckin nuts!

And second, hi hello! You can call me Core (or as I have been nicknamed by the Road Trippers: CC)

Okay! Here we go!

Like the title says, this will be a helpful little guide! Here's what you can expect!

I'll be putting in the story thus far in bullet points if anyone doesn't want to read through everything.

Links to my art (they will be categorized by story, memes, requests, reference sheets, and any others there may be.

Links to things sent in (art/writing/memes)

Links to important parts of the story.

Useful tags I use (even though we all know the tag system sucks but oh well)

A list of all the emojis/names anons have used.

A link to a ficlet I wrote for this.

Links for the boarding school years blogs.

And here we go!! Buckle up! There's this post which is the first five days. Then a link with the rest of the days and THEN another link with all the other things!!

The links are here and at the bottom.

Days Continue

The Other Stuff

If you do want to read the whole story in its entirety and not just the bullet points, AO3 is your best bet to go through it!

The Story Thus Far And Important Story Links! As bullet points!

Not all of the links provided are essential to the story, but I do find them amusing. If the bullet points are enough context for you it's fine if you don't want to read the post.

Day One.

Remus makes the blog, pesters Dee and Virgil to go on the road trip. Link

Remus' car is a 1969 VW buggy, nauseatingly toxic green in colour. He adores this car. (no there is no foreshadowing with this definitely not)

They pack and leave once Remus gets home. (He was at Roman's)

Yes the three of them are in a relationship.

Virgil quits his job to do this (he forgets to quit)

They all met in boarding school, under not so great circumstances.

They have no destination, they're just going and doing, taking suggestions from followers.

They stop to get slushes

They go to the post office? Because it was a suggestion

The post office gets stuck up by a gun toting hooligan

Murder was suggested, they (unfortunately) did not go that route

Virgil throws Remus' slush at the mugger then hides, Remus fights the guy, knocks him unconscious and zip ties him, they leave before the cops get there. Link

It's revealed that Remus has one eye. He always makes a new story on how he lost it.

They get to a campsite for the night. Link

Short answer on how they got together, Bonfire at school, Remus made the first move on both of them. Link

Their ages revealed! Virgil and Dee are 26, Remus is 25.

Their heights are revealed! Remus tallest then Vigil then Dee.

A couple of asks about murder, Remus is for it the other two not so much (dependent on specific situations)

Dee has vitiligo confirmed.

They have been up for a long time, they go to sleep.

Day Two.

Day two begins post. Link

Virgil might have done crimes before. (what crimes? Who knows)

They plan to have a picnic today. It doesn't happen this day.

Dee is used to camping.

Remus likes to cook, he's not bad but he is Inventive. Dee is the best at cooking.

Remus asks Virgil to put 'atrocities' to their list of things to do. He does not.

Remus says money is handled and he will not lose it anytime soon. We'll see.

The anons want Arson. Dee says maybe.

Virgil remembers that he did in fact, not quit his job yet. Oops. He was a manager at an art store, his boss sucks and the job was soul sucking. No loss here.

Dee will not tell you his name.

Virgil puts arson on the list at the request of the anons.

Remus gets into a fight with a rabbit (anon)

Dee knows how to hunt, skin and clean animals for food. His mother taught him survival skills.

His mother is a sore spot for him.

[The anons dub me CC]

They're leaving the campsite, Dee is voted to drive, he loves driving.

They need supplies.

They ask for suggestions on stuff to buy.

A skeleton, beer, chocolate, sandwich bags, rubber bands, lube and water is suggested.

The skeleton is named August.

Their phones gain signal again. Roman is Worried. Link.

Roman is now following the blog.

Favorite food: Remus' sweet spicy ribs, Dees Korean barbecue and sushi, Virgils coffee mocha ice cream.

They get to a mall, it has a Halloween store where they get August, Remus and Virgil also get Dee to dress up in costumes for them. Link

They dress August up in grunge clothes.

Remus is banned from having gum, for multiple reasons, but mostly the gum catastrophe of 2015. No they will not elaborate.

Dee is asked his exact height. It's 5'4, he's not bothered by it at all.

He gains an army of short anons.

They get to the grocery store. They are kicked out of the grocery store. Link.

We learn that Remus (or at least his family) is Rich.

An anon calls Dee and Virgil Remus' sugar babies. Virgil does not take kindly to it. Link.

Like really not kindly to it. He sprains his hand. Link.

We gain our first antagonist anon.

We find out why Virgil went to boarding school, he's trans with transphobic parents. Link.

Dee knows medical things. He went to medical school for about a year.

Remus goes to the pharmacy to get supplies for Virgils hand. He forgot to bring payment.

Instead of going to get payment he... just kinda steals the stuff. Link.

Chatting in the car while driving to a motel, the boys are tired and calming down, Dee reveals that his mom is dead and died the year before he was shipped off to boarding school.

End of day two! Link.

Day Three.

Day three start post! Morning starts, Remus gets breakfast for the boyfs. Link.

The anons want to play truth or dare. It's Remus' favorite game, they can't not do it. Remus will do anything he's dared to do.

The first dare is that Remus needs to paint something on his car. He's down for it, they plan to continue playing and go to the store for paints.

Second dare is also for Remus. Link

Three truths for Virgil. Link

Another truth for Virgil, about his parents sending him to boarding school. Link

They get to the hardware store. It is Life Changing. (more on that in the next bullet points)

A crying small child approaches them. Link

The anons suggest kidnapping.

Dee and Virgil take the kid to look for his parents. Remus is left alone with the paints. He doesn't notice.

Dee loves the child. They may kidnap. Link , Link

Remus is unattended. He's pouring brown paint in toilets. He was alerted about the kidnapping as he was doing so.

They are probably taking the child. Link

Well, that's their child now. They re-name him. Welcoming Thomas to the group! Link , Link

Do we see a hint of abandonment issues in Dee? Link

Thomas' dad got mad at him for making noise.

They go to a Toys R Us and a clothing store to get some essentials.

Remus gets antagonized, it doesn't work. Link

Remus gets antagonized more, it kinda works. Link

Virgil explains what arson is to Thomas. Link

Dee and Virgil realize Remus isn't following them anymore. Link

Thomas is really small for his age.

They finally step into the stores. Thomas gets some new stuff, Remus is weirdly really good with kids. Link

Thomas thinks all rodents are just different rats.

They get back to the hotel, they're just chilling now.

We are informed that Roman is in a relationship with both Patton and Logan.

They start to get ready for that picnic they were gonna do on the second day.

Oh yeah, technically still playing truth or dare, here's a Remus dare that is funny. Link

The last post of day three, they go on the picnic, Remus' car actually gets washed so he can paint it, the rest of the night is peaceful. Link

Day Four.

First post of day four, Thomas is the first to wake, he's quiet about it, his father didn't like being woken up. He unintentionally wakes Remus, Remus does not care. The morning is quiet, they pack up their stuff to get on with the trip, a magic coin is found. Magic anons are on. Link

Of course the first thing the magic anons do... gives Virgil a dick. It's free bottom surgery babeey. (He owes Rat anon a favor now.)

Virgil also now has a pet spider. She is fuzzy, black and purple and kinda sentient. (she doesn't have a name, we kinda forgot about her...)

Magic anon sends bad memories to the boys. A little bit of Lore Link

Talking about Dees mom and abandonment issues. Link , Link , Link , Link

On that same note, was she really sick? It hasn't had a direct answer yet ;p

They pull over to get some air after the antagonizing.

The anons Will Not Let Them Rest. Remus throws the magic coin away in the forest. Link (warning for fake gore)

An anon takes their clothes away for 10 asks, they still have underwear, Thomas is still fully clothed. Remus is loving it, Virgil not so much. Link

Some of the nice anons however come in and give encouragement to our boys. And treats! The coin is unfortunately (for them) back ~Magically~ . Link

They decide to go to another campsite to unwind and sleep, they are going to be there for a while this time. Remus texts Roman to tell him about an ask that came in for him. Thomas is awed by fire. Link

Two anons have hugged them for comforting.

The attack on Roman, basically saying how fake he is and how he's probably jealous of Remus cause he doesn't hide his real self and not 'perfect' saying that people wouldn't like the real him. Remus defends Roman. We find out they didn't always have a good relationship and we find out Roman is a Broadway star. Link

The Main Antagonist Anon asks for hugs. No One Liked That.

Another anon comes in to take away their warm things for the night their blankets are gone and they're not allowed to start a fire. Their clothes will be back soon though. It is still going to be cold.

Another anon... doesn't exactly hug them so much as envelopes them in a sensation of tongues.

Another antagonist anon gives Thomas only a hug. And and ominous message of "I'll be back soon".

People are very huggy today, but at least this time the anon asked first. Virgil is getting sick of them, Remus is enjoying them.

An anon takes away their food by putting it all in a bag and getting it stuck in a tree. Remus mourns the snacks loss.

A ladder is given to them, Remus immediately tries to get the food down but it's stuck with magic. He tries to cut it open with a butterfly knife, still doesn't work and the ladder falls. He falls with it, he lands in a bush, the ladder lands on his face and his nose is bleeding.

Someone gives them bandages, Dee checks for a concussion, he's fine. We learn Remus' full name. Remus Able King, he doesn't seem to like it.

Oh yeah, his knife landed in his thigh when he fell. And his ankle is sprained. Dee patches him up. Link

UFO Anon distracts Thomas with a light show.

Rat anon erases the adults memories of each other, they are mentally teenagers again. This lasts the rest of the night. It doesn't go well. The only thing they remember is school, they don't trust each other. UFO Anon tries to abduct Thomas, Wasp Anon tries to as well. Remus is Not Okay with Thomas missing. The rest of this night is a pretty important part of the story, so there will be many links here for it. Link , Link , Link , Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link.

Day Five.

Day five begins, everything is normal again. They decide today is for strictly relaxation. Link

They talk a little bit about how last night was crap, and about how much they've changed since high school, and that them meeting was the best course that their lives could have taken.

They're determined to have a good day, they decide that swimming is a nice idea.

They get to the campsite beach, they give more insight to how they got together. Link , Link

They talk about how much their lives would have completely sucked if they didn't meet. Link

Talking about their parents reactions to them getting together (hint none of them cared a bit for it). Link

On how the school reacted to it also was not good, but our boys like to go against authority if nothing else. Didn't stop the adults from targeting them and turning a blind eye to anyone else who was deemed 'good' i.e the favorites.

They also didn't like Roman just by association with Remus.

Virgil was roommates with his bully. Here are some pranks he pulled on her for payback. Link

They used to sneak out a lot, to Remus' room or to the forest.

Virgil used to do gymnastics.

Roman begged Remus to join a sports team with him, Remus didn't really enjoy it.

Remus speaks German. Virgil knows Latin. Dee speaks French and ASL.

Thomas knows a little bit of Spanish, so does Roman.

They have yet to get into the water. Dee pushes Virgil in, Dee ends up falling into the lake when Virgil tries to drag him in too.

Thomas does not know how to swim. Remus tosses him to Virgil who is in the water to teach him.

They realize that they should probably be more careful with Thomas. He seems to have no self preservation. Link

They go back to the campsite, Dee says he's going to go to town to get food stuff, he's taking Thomas with him, and the two injured should stay there.

Someone suggests finding Mothman, they want to but are injured. So they make it a plan to go to Point Pleasant.

Virgil and Remus want some *ahem* Alone Time, so they turn the anons to Dee. It is uneventful shopping (except for the fact that I had to have Thomas accidentally erase all the asks cause... I accidentally did that...)

Also the cashier at the store is Suspicious of Dee (he seems to recognize Thomas (though no one picked up on that))

He goes to buy some clean blankets then back to the campsite.

The rest of the night is nice and smooth.

Before sleeping Remus and Virgil tell Dee that they're handing the blog over to The Others for a few days so they can relax.

Days Continue

The Other Stuff

[thestrangestthing89]

This situation with Noah isn't a new problem in the fandom. These fans have been harassing everyone for months in them name of progressive causes they aren't well-informed about. This is obviously not specific to the Stranger Things fandom. Go anywhere online and you will likely see a bunch of teens screaming about something even though they clearly skipped the step of educating themselves. Not only have I been the target of the dumbest shit, but so many other people have too. No one can post here without someone getting self-righteous and yelling about it. I have been accused of the following simply for posting something to my own blog: - I've been called misogynistic because I said El wasn't the main character. A thing the writers have said several times now (it's Will). The writers aren't misogynistic either. - I've been called misogynistic because I said El has character flaws like everyone else. - I've been called a condescending bitch when I politely tried to explain what misogyny actually is. A thing you'd think they'd be interested in learning if they actually cared about that cause (clearly they don't or I wouldn't have been called a bitch so much). - Been called racist because I said Hopper wasn't copaganda, even though I explained clearly why I thought this was. - Got called racist because I pointed out that Lucas was often filling his Ranger role and that's why he is helping Mike in S3 (the boys all play their D&D characters). But the trendy thing to say at the time was that he was being written in racist way so obviously this means I'm racist too. - Had multiple people say I was silencing them when I wrote my own damn post (not a response to theirs) about many of the above topics. I just simply disagreed with their points and that isn't allowed here. - Had someone I never interacted with spread a rumor that I sent them anonymous hate filled asks even though I had no fucking clue who they were. And those posts were anonymous so they have no idea who actually sent them. They just wanted my attention. But I never sent anyone an anon ask before anyway so this was just bizarre. But a several people believed it. - Pretty much every adult on here has been accused of pedophilia for watching a show with kids on it. This gets pretty relentless sometimes. I'm sure I could think of several others and other people have had a lot as well. The thing about this as someone who has actually experienced things like misogyny first hand is that being called this is incredibly upsetting, especially when you are being called this by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about and doesn't care about the impact of these words. They just want you to shut up and stop telling them they did something wrong.

This is all happening because they are watching a show that is overwhelming them and they can't deal with people discussing it in a more nuanced way than they are. This wouldn't be happening if there were more adults here to drown it out. But as it is, no one can actually discuss this show and it has nothing to do with Noah. It's because kids are watching when they shouldn't. And they have weird, boundaries with the fandom and the cast that are constantly causing problems. This didn't happen back in the first 2 seasons because it was only adults watching. I'm not saying adults can't be problematic too, but most of this shit is from people who are way too young to handle this. And now we are all getting lectured by 14 year old foreign policy experts. It's not ok and they need to spend a lot of time learning about how to interact with people online better. This isn't the shows fault. But they can make it clear who this is actually for. Because these kids are going to throw a fit over everything. They always do. They aren't going to like S5 either. They are only watching because it's cool and they have FOMO. They can't understand it and are constantly insulting it and everyone associated with it and the fandom. Seriously, amp up the horror. Make it rated R. A lot of us would really love to be able to discuss this show and can't because of how awful it is here.

[lesbian-deadpool]

The fact that I have to do this is honestly extraordinary... And yet, somehow, not surprising.

In the recent months I discovered that I had one of my fics stolen, by a person kind enough to send me a message letting me know.

This person who had indeed stolen my work was already on my radar, as I myself had spotted another person's work that they had stollen.

Their blog used to be @gayestfeels26 but they now go by @simp4wanda26.

The first time they had stolen my work, I politely sent them a message asking them to take my work (and all other work that did not belong to them) down, seeing as this could greatly affect someone's love and want to write, instead of taking it public like I have been forced to do now.

They gave an... In my opinion, ridiculous excuse as to why they did what they did. They apologized, and never replied back.

Which was fine by me.

My work (and the other person's work I had spotted) was off of their blog, and I thought that was the end of it.

Until, that is, a few days ago.

When I received yet another message from someone telling me this person had stolen another work of mine.

Now, this work was stolen prior to me messaging them the first time, I just didn't spot it when I checked their blog for any more of my stolen work.

After some minimal plot that I'm assuming they wrote themselves, it cut straight to the smut I had written over on my NSFW blog, only with the names and other features changed on the character.

But now, for the receipts:

(WARNING: NSFW)

First off, proof of names and dates:

(And not only is this insulting to me, it's also insulting to the person who requested this, only to be given work by stolen someone else)

'She really should know better' than to steal other's work and claim them as their own:

Even the spelling mistake I made is there, only further proving that they copy and pasted my work:

And lastly:

But, if you need more proof... here are the fics:

The Original The Stolen

The only reason I am even making this post is because when I tried to message them about stealing my work once again, they turned off the ability to send them messages... and my stolen work is still up.

As can be seen here:

(Text scratched out for privacy reasons)

So this is my... call-out post for lack of any better words, for them to take down not only my stolen work, but everyone else's that might have been stolen.

I'm expecting that they will also change their name again, and try to pretend that none of this has ever happened, which is honestly fine by me, as long as they take the work down, and do not do it again... but my hope is not that high...

[lutethebodies]

Coming (Sometime?) in 2025(?): "Our Days Are Numbered"

Following up this post to say that I've chosen fanfic. I once swore up and down I'd probably never write fanfic, because it's never been my thing, so of course I now have to contradict myself, because now I Have Ideas and, as everyone knows, the first step to a brilliant and successful fic involves making at least one slapdash mockup "cover," (this is true for me and recording projects, so *surely* it must be true for everything) which I've also now done.

Seriously though, I kinda do have a plan. See, way back in a previous decade I decided to write a novel. Not a "real" novel, because at the time the phrase "vanity pressed" was much more pejorative than it seems to be now. But I did make a novel that I worked on really hard for about five years, sent through beta-editing, did the cover design, and even composed/recorded a soundtrack to play while writing. It was self published and sold about four copies, but it was still A Whole Thing.

What helped me do that was an idea I stole from Hunter S. Thompson (who probably stole it from someone else). Famously, HST wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as a cool-down mechanism while simultaneously working on a more difficult and dangerous Real Story ("Strange Rumblings in Aztlan"). In my case, all I did was spit out the occasional cringeworthy faux-Thompson ripoff political blog post, but those were fun, loose exercises to do in between the harder work of my novel's chapters.

Well, this year (as perhaps I've said too much already) I plan to complete and self-publish a second fantasy atlas. The first one (from 2022) was a massive amount of work, and this second one might not be as much, but it won't be easy. So I'm gonna try to do the laborious-big-work vs quickie-cool-down idea again—and this time, my cool-down's gonna be a Minthara fic starring her and my utterly ordinary swords bard. I understand that female characters are poorly represented among BG3 fanfic, so maybe this will help that.

Or maybe not! It'll probably be very basic-normie, because for better and worse that is me; I don't write salacious stuff well or often, and I'm sure I'll break umpteen Unwritten Rules of Fic. But whatever. I also won't pretend that a fic featuring a male human Tav and Minthara will get much juice in the Minthy fandom, let alone the wider BG3 fandom. And that's fine, because it would be my first one and expectations should be Very Low. It would simply explore some of the ideas from this answered ask about culture clashes, as well as this pricelessly inspiring jumping-off-point of a screencap.

Anyway, it won't be happening soonish, but when it does, it'll be linked here. Thanks in advance for your patience with someone completely ignorant Kool-Aid-Manning himself into something he probably shouldn't. But it's gotta happen at some point, because like I said, I don't make cover art for nonexistent stuff. I am, after all, a professional.

[dailysinclair]

Sinclair no. 02

Title of Abnormality: Ibuprofen Sinclair

Type of Abnormality: ZAYIN

If you are seeing this blog, you can see the name being "daily sinclair", but, upon reaching the dates of the last post in here, you will see that it was April 30th, almost a month ago! Wow! Does this means that whoever was behind DailySinclair gave up on him? No! It was because whoever was behind DailySinclair is a MORON

What happened was that i created the blog in mobile, and, upon writing the email for this account, i didn't notice that it was written wrong in the dumbest way possible (Like imagine the email being like S1inclairSweep@limbus.com and i wrote it as Si1nclairSweep@limbus.com) so, upon logging off the account in less than 10 minutes of its creation to go in my main, as i tried to log back, I COULDN'T, AND I DIDN'T KNEW FOR THE LIFE OF ME THE REASON FOR SUCH THING

And then, in a state of complete shock, i went to tumblr's staff to ask to please give me back the DailySinclair blog. Could i have just created a new one? Yes, i could, but no. I wouldn't be locked away from my account for such tomfoolery, i NEEDED DailySinclair back, it was a thing of honor already, so, i went and sent all the info i had to the staff, could they give me it back? Without me even knowing the email of this blog? Would they do so?...Well, after a week, nothing, then 2 weeks...Nothing again...And then, i went to check back my email...And it had only the email they sent me a day after i sent the forms, which i thought was just an automatic email so i didnt even read it...

...At the end of it, they told me to send reply to the email to continue the proceedure. Which i. Hadn't done.

So again, i was a fool, a dumbass, a moron, if you might say - but i replied to the email, trying to now show how desperate i was to have DailySinclair back.

And then, 1 week after...They sent me a link to put a new email in the account, and there it was - DailySinclair was back. After so long, we were back.

What have we learnt from it? Well:

Check your email first before logging off your new account

Read the emails people send you until the end

Do not tell your friends about your tomfoolery, they will call you a dumbass.

And there is it, thank you to whoever was with me in this, i love you all.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi Steph. I have some... Mary thoughts, specifically in regards to her shooting Sherlock. This is, taking TST at face value (although one weird moment to me was Mary asking Sherlock if she ever told him she liked him and he said yes, when she only said it in front of John, which could support the s4 is in John's head theory).

Her reaction to Ajay being shot, the way she screamed, changed the way I thought about her shooting Sherlock. I always thought she meant to kill him, but I never considered Mary could genuinely like and even love Sherlock and still be willing to shoot to kill.

She said AGRA was family, she was excited to see Ajay and yet she did threaten to kill him. And I believe she meant it. I think in her mind, killing to keep John around, or to save John (in regards to Ajay) is... justified?

I don't know how to feel about her yet, I can like her on the surface level if I don't think about her too much? But some things (one that always stood out to me was in the TAB plane scene where she is weirdly smirking and almost reveling in others' pain?) I know others picked up on it to, liking Mary at first and then beginning to find her suspicious upon rewatches and with new context was a very common fandom experience.

I guess I am sharing thoughts and kind of asking for your opinion? I chose to go off anon, and I am fine with it being public. Just saying that, because sometimes when I sent asks off anon people would assume it is like a private message. Still new to Tumblr etiquette, sorry -AA

Hey Lovely!

OOOOOOF I have SO many thoughts about Mary.... my blog was pretty well-known back in the hey-day for all the ridiculous amount of meta I wrote about her and coining 'the mary problem'...

I actually personally found her character interesting and fascinating up until S4, within which I feel they did a complete 180 on her character and instead went with a SHITTY "redemption arc" that was anything but.

As for her killing Sherlock, I have to disagree, she ABSOLUTELY meant to kill him. John was a trophy to Mary, and Sherlock threatened that prize being taken away from her. Ajay threatened to also upend her life, so he had to die. Mary cares about no one but herself. That much was clear even on the surface level of S4. She literally ran off without as much as a goodbye and abandoned her NEWBORN CHILD AND depressed husband. Like, she's a HORRIBLE person even if you're not reading any of the subtext, so I'm BOGGLED how Mofftiss thought that Mary doing an impossible jump in front of a bullet was supposed to redeem her character when... *waves all over* ALL THAT happened before the final moments of T6T.

ANYWAY, I wrote a LOT about Mary... you can check out the majority of my writing on these posts here:

Mary is a Femme Fatale

The Problem with John x Mary

Mary’s Brand of Abuse

Mary Meant to Kill Sherlock

Mary’s Gaslighting

The True Sociopath: People Fail to See It Unless It Happens to Them

And of course there's a TONNE to read in my 'the mary problem' tag too :)

Thanks for this ask!!! I like griping about how they ruined an amazing villain that could-have-been!