#I'm going through my FB notes

[z-haven]

Chlavisy Adventures

We're angsty, we’re woobie We're all a little kookie In this epic story We're sizzling your TV

No smutty filters We mash up all the censors On Chlavisy Adventures Get a dose of remedy

So here's small town Sm*llville It’s meteor capital Our home strange home, never alone Where weirdness never stalls

Our scripts were accepted But expect the unexpected Cause Chlavisy Adventures is about to start

They're tipsy, they're funny They're Clark and Lois Laney Oliver Queen has the money Lionel is insane

There's Martha and hubby DP Reporter Chloe Davis is an EMT and Lex Luthor is insane

At Chlavis University We earn our smut degree The onion reports Of enormous sorts Since the first look in Plastique

We're angsty, we’re woobie We're all a little kookie It's Chlavisy Adventures Come and watch with us.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 -   

cdessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[hyperions-light]

Making Fanfic Banners/Collages with Canva for FREE

Hello friends! Canva is an online software tool that mostly gets used for creating social media advertisements, but YOU can use it to make pretty, custom banners/collages/images for your fanfiction! For FREE!

WHY should you do this?

Fun

Custom art thing for your fic!

If you put pictures on your fic posts, sometimes you get more notes (sometimes)

The joy of creation!!!

I will walk you through it (with pictures) below the cut!

STEP ONE: GO TO CANVA, MAKE AN ACCOUNT

You can sign up with email, gmail, or FB. Gmail is the most convenient, but I think they do 2FA no matter what, so take that into account.

STEP TWO: DON'T PAY ANY MONEY & IGNORE AI

Every time you login or make stuff or do ANYTHING, Canva will try to get you to pay for Canva Pro. Don't do that. I've had access to the Pro and free versions and there's no reason to pay for anything on here. Also, they have an AI that's supposed to make things for you, but it sucks & isn't fun. Ignore it.

STEP 3: CHOOSE A TEMPLATE

Okay, so if you're a graphic designer... I mean I'm not sure why you're reading this tutorial, you can definitely make cooler stuff than I can! You should just use the 'create blank [post type]' button and go to town! But if you're not (like me) what I usually do is pick a type of template that Canva has (like blog banners, instagram posts, facebook covers, etc) and go browse their designs. My advice is not to look for something that you completely like, but something that has the right vibe-- you're going to be messing with all the individual aspects of the post anyway, so just pick based on aesthetics. Try to make sure that if you're going to put your fic title on your work that you pick/create a design where the text is clearly displayed/in an easily legible font.

NOTE: Some of the designs will have a little crown in the corner, and these designs are only available if you pay for premium. If they have a little $ on them, instead, that just means they have individual paid elements in them that you can get rid of, so feel free to use those, too!

STEP 4: CHOOSE YOUR PICTURES

Okay, so I like this screaming seagull one. I clicked on it, and selected 'customize template'. So now I want to get rid of the seagull, and replace him with my own stuff. You can do this a couple of ways: if you have screenshots from your game/show/other media, you can upload them by clicking on the little cloud icon on the left side that says "Uploads". If you DON'T have pictures, or you don't have ones you need, there are a couple options:

You can try to browse Canva's selection of pictures. It is in the "Elements" tab; you type in a search, and then select the "photos" filter from the little marquee below the search bar. My advice is to only use one word search terms, because Canva loves showing you all the photos that you can use if you pay for them, and if you use more words, they do that more often. There ARE free photos in there, but you have to scroll a bit.

If you don't want to deal with the search system or can't find what you're looking for, sites like Pixabay, Pexels, and Unsplash provide free photos that you can use without attribution, and do not require you to have an account to download. Please DO NOT just search using google/other engines and take things from there-- those photos are often not licensed for free use. The sites I linked will try to sell you pictures, but not as much as Canva, and there's usually a lot of free stuff to choose from. Download the pictures you want in a good resolution and upload them to Canva!

STEP 5: MESS AROUND WITH STUFF!

Okay, so now you can add your stuff and mess around with it!! Just click on the element (like the seagull) and delete it. Then go to your uploads and click + drag the image you want onto the canvas. You can use them as the background by dragging them to one of the corners, but you can also just put them on the canvas and mess around with them. In the left picture, you can see some of the options you have to resize and move around the image, so different elements appear on top of or behind it. If you click on the button that says 'edit' on the little bar menu that comes up when you select the image, you'll get the menu in the right picture, where you can mess with filters and colors, etc. It's not a completely comprehensive editing software, but you can do a lot of things! I encourage you to mess around and see what looks cool!

STEP SIX: ADD MORE STUFF, IF YOU WANT!

I love adding more stuff. You can change and add text by clicking on the textboxes that are already there, or you can use the "text" section on the left menu to add new blocks. They have some fun combinations and a lot of fonts! A thing I like to do is go in the elements tab and search for 'patterns'; you can add them on top of your image or elsewhere! The opacity setting is your best friend; you can overlay a bunch of stuff and create interesting/unique collages! You can also add basic shapes, frames, moving elements, and clipart, if you want!

STEP SEVEN (FINAL): DOWNLOAD YOUR THING!

When you're done, the 'share' menu in the upper right corner will let you download your image in a bunch of different formats (I'm pretty sure you could make a looping GIF for your fic here on Canva, too!) I usually do PNGs for the quality. I haven't had any issues uploading on Tumblr (or on Twitter, when I used it).

Anyway, I hope you'll try making these! I didn't show it, but there are a lot of different templates you can use, so if you want to make a collage instead, just look around! I think it's super fun to do for my fics! If you have any questions, you can bother me on my blog or in the replies section of this post, just please be polite! Thanks for reading!

[csphire]

I think what really breaks the Solavellan romance in VG for me is how much closure for the Inquisitor is sidelined in favor of Solas's half of the relationship. I get it. Forgiveness is important and it's his lowest moment but after everything Lavellan as a character had to go through and experienced, everything the character canonically loses, there's something off about seeing it all kind of end with an anti-climactic "Lavellan joins him in fade prison so he doesn't have to be alone." It feels almost like she's his reward. I'm glad for some people they like the ending but, man, it just doesn't sit right with me. Who comforts Lavellan over her lost friends? Who is there for her while the blight destroys Southern Thedas? Who helped her adjust to life after the loss of her arm? And unlike with Solas, none of that was the result of her choices or due to mistakes she made. Idk maybe I'm just wildly off base but I feel like while at least some of the writing has compassion for Solas there is none that is tangibly afforded to the Inquisitor. It feels like compared to the Warden and Hawke at least, a Solas-manced Inquisitor gets such a lack of care. They do almost all of the giving and they lose so much but it's never really tangibly acknowledged within the VG romance. people like to say "just head-canon it" but why am I doing the writers job for them? They had this romance span two games and involve a major antagonist, there should have been a more thoughtful and nuanced ending for VG.

I agree, with all the build-up in Trespasser it felt set up for the Inquisitor to play a bigger part in DA4. And out of all of the companions, it also felt like Varric was the one who helped the most, for not just Lavellan but any Inquisitor, to pick up the pieces after Solas left. He gave them a Kirkwall title, and key to the city, and basically rolled out the red carpet to help them feel like they had a place to call home when they would inevitably leave Skyhold behind for good. I feel like he led the charge in tracking down Solas in what I've seen in the comics too. So his death is a gut punch to any Inquisitor but it's just brushed aside and minimized for the plot twist and so a Lavellan can choose to go with Solas into the Fade. Please keep in mind, one thing I've not gotten a clear answer on, as I've not made it so far into the game is, did Rook know Varric was dead when he encourages the Inqusitor to redeem Solas? But on another note, the Veilguard broke at least one rule when it came to party sizes so I don't understand why we could not have broken another rule and had two protagonists to control when it came to dialogue at least. And many of us would have loved to have seen our Inqusitor fighting again as a temporary companion too because so many in the past in FB groups would drop ableist comments on how the Inqusitor cannot fight anymore with just one hand. It sickens me BioWare seemed to double down on this. With all the tough things out there they have handled in the past to address racism, sexism, gay and trans rights they shy away from addressing ableism? Like with Neve if we told her to take it easy because she was hurt at the beginning she could have had a talk with Rook about coddling her because of her artificial leg. But that didn't happen or any comment made about it at all. On one hand, not addressing that injury and focusing on her character might be cathartic for someone in a similar situation in real life. But honestly, I feel like Neve missing a leg was just put there to silence any criticism of benching the Inquisitor and in your words turning a Lavellan into Solas's reward. But I have seen some comments here and there that Mike did not want a Lavellan happy ending to happen at all. And it was the writers who pushed for it to happen for the sake of the Solavellan fans. So I sit here with a lot of mixed feelings about the whole thing. Two of my favorite characters in the whole Dragon Age series and one of them murdered the other and it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. I don't think Solas should have been so much of an antagonist in Veilguard mainly because he was not in the Inquisition. For me, Solas felt so out of character in Veilguard. Plus what he did ruined any chance for my Lavellan to reconcile with him because he's now killed two of his friends one of them a mutual of our Inquistor's. For me at least one does not run off with someone who has a track record like that ten years after he dumped my ass. Plus giving Solas a second chance feels... dirty, like an insult to Varric's memory. That and Lavellan deserved better than to sacrifice her safety, comfort, and possibly even life for Solas at this point. And I hate how the writers and the whole game set things up that leaves me feeling like that.

[lycorogue]

Bot Invasion of Fanfiction.net

Well, gang, it's finally happened. The bots found my ffn account earlier this year. We're coming up on the close of the 13th week of 2025, and I have received as many bot requests to create illustrations for my stories. Woooooo 🎉[party popper emoji] I started compiling them on FB, but I think I'll have fun also sharing them here. Who's ready for some fun?

(I didn't note the dates for the first handful, but I'll date the rest)

Here is my first-ever bot DM. Such an honor, "Roselyn". It was also on my fictionpress account...

Subject: Creating Visuals for Your Fanfiction Hello! This is Roselyn you know what I think your story Blame Fate for This, is quite interesting I'm just wondering how about If I can make something for your story in my art style 🙂[smiling emoji]

Fun note: Blame Fate for This is one of my original stories. Not fanfiction. Cool... cool...

Another one over on Fictionpress:

Subject: Making Art for Your story Hey! I'm Maya I really admire your story Blame Fate for This and I'd be excited to create artworks for it!

Good gravy, why can't I get messages like this from real people? (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Subject: Appreciating Your Work Hello lycoRogue, I am absolutely enthralled by your writing; the worlds you create are simply enchanting. Your way with words is a gift that teleports readers into new dimensions, and your passion for the subject shines forth in every single word you write. I'd love to bring your words to life, be it through book covers, character illustrations, or simply visuals that go along with your work. Of course, that would need to be a paid service, but I would love to collaborate in a way that extends your storytelling further. Would you be interested? Do you also have any social media accounts where I can connect with you?

The start of them flooding my ffn account instead of Fictionpress:

Subject: open commission Greeting, Hope you are doing well I read your story and you get my attention

Last one that I mass-posted on FB. Boy, is it ever fun to FINALLY get messages related to my stories, only for every last one of them to be bots. Weeeeeeee. 🫠[melted smilie emoji]

Subject: Artist and Reader Hi, Your creations inspire me a lot; the way you defined the scene is amazingly done, and I would be thrilled to feature your stories through my art skills in affordable prices . If you're up for it, let's join together.

February 12, 2025:

Subject: Concept Artist / Reader Hello, Your creations are incredibly inspiring! The way you bring scenes to life is truly amazing. I'd be thrilled to showcase your stories through my art at an affordable rate. If you're interested, let's collaborate!

Happy Valentine's Day! (Only needed to wait 2 days for this one)

Subject: Story/review Dear LycoRogue, I'm Madeline Ava a concept artist and illustrator passionate about storytelling. Your work on Fanfiction inspired me and I'd love to collaborate. I create stunning affordable book covers and character illustrations starting at a minimum price.

At least that one was sent to my ffn account, so it accurately identified my stories as fanfiction that time....

February 24, 2025, this one I have contact info for! Fancy! I'd feel guilty sharing said info, but I'm like 99.9999% sure this is another bot, so... screw it. 🤷‍♀️[female shrug emoji]

Subject: Truly admire to your story. I'm genuinely impressed by your story and the depth of your characters. It would be an honor to bring your vision to life as a comic. Please feel free to reach out at your convenience using the contact details below. Contact Details Email: emmanoah1969 at gmail dot com Emmanoah333 on Discord

February 26th, 2025. Oh, this one was super convincing. A+ human mimicry here... (no typos on my part here. This is a straight copy/paste)

Subject: Creative Feedback Hi there, Your storytelling truly inspire me, it's amazing how you make each setting come to life in fair prices. I have a few ideas I'd love to share for that.

March 3, 2025. Thank god the most-convincing ones are also the ones that openly ask for a payment:

Subject: Artist/Reader Hi, Your storytelling is truly captivating it's so vivid and inspiring, like the scenes are alive. I'd love to bring your stories to life through my minimalist art style in minimum price. Would you be interested in collaborating on a project together?

March 14th, 2025. Not even the bots are reading my stories now…. yay….

Subject: Kathy! Hello, I'm Kathy Clay and a concept artist. I recently found your book and, while I haven't read it yet, I'd love to create a cover design for you. Once I've had a chance to read it, I can come up with a great idea. I know a lot of people might say they've read it, but I prefer to keep things simple and direct and I also have several ideas to relate your stories

We've caught up with earlier this week: March 25, 2025.

Subject: commission artist Hello fellow authors, After reading your book, I couldn't stop thinking about how amazing it was! I have some thoughts and suggestions about it that I'd love to share with you if you're interested.

And finally, the bot du jour (today; March 29th, 2025):

Subject: Commission artist Hey Jacquelina parson. is my name, and I'm a computer artist. Upon reading your book, I found it to be rather captivating. Is it feasible for me to contribute character illustrations for your book in the future?

Yet another real convincing one.

Who else is having this problem? Is it at the same frequency? My pity to those who are flooded even more than I am.

[runabout-river]

Thoughts on JJK chapter 261 (Spoilers)

The Fuck

We start with Yuji's last attack and a redraw of last chapter's last scene. Yuji didn't manage to injure Sukuna's heart further and gets thrown to the side being forgotten immediately together with Todo because Sukuna has a new/old opponent now: fucking Yuta.

We do get one more panel of Yuji thinking of Choso which fits my recent post about Yuji's accumulated trauma. Other than that Yuji/Todo get sidelined for the rest of the chapter but that was needed to explain what the fuck Yuta had done

Also, Okkotsu Yuta is now on name-basis with Sukuna, a place only very few people have reached at this point like Fushiguro Megumi and Gojo Satoru.

When I first saw the stitches on Gojo's head, I thought of Kenjaku and Kenjaku only. Even after Sukuna called him Yuta I needed a moment to understand what had happened here. Do you all understand how awesome that is 👀 JJK has an active theory based fanbase and I at least have never heard or thought of this possibility 😣

We get a flashback to explain how we got to this point: the idea of taking over Gojo's body came from Yuta and most people were initially against it. Of note: Yuji was not part of this discussion probably for the same reason why no one told him about Todo.

We get a reminder why it has to be done this way but Maki throws in that Yuta's copy only lasts 5 minutes. So the question is, what happens when those 5 minutes are up?

Yuta dies because Kenjaku's possession ability needs to be active constantly

Yuta dies at some point because Kenjaku's possession ability needs to be activated again and again

Yuta's new body permanently becomes Gojo's body

Honestly, I don't think 3) will be endgame for Yuta. It might happen that he will become Gojo in body permanently but story-wise his death signs are through the roof. I don't believe that Yuta will survive inside Gojo 😢

1) is has to be false otherwise Kenjaku wouldn't be able to use other CTs like CM and AGS. 2) is a probable option as in Kenjaku had to intermittently re-activate his original CT but he still had the option of using other CTs as well.

Also, secret 4th option: Yuta dies but his body hopping shenanigans bring Gojo back to life.

It's good to see how Yuta is concerned about Gojo. Yuji would've been right there with him. He told Gojo about his plan but the guy was absolutely sure that he wouldn't lose anyway, haha...

Gojo speculates that Yuta might also be the descendent of the Fujiwara in addition to being one of the Sugawara and I'm not a genetics experts but I'm pretty sure that after 1000 years without migration happening in your family tree that you're descendent of everyone who lived that long ago. Except for Sukuna because he never had children.

Also, the original gang from JJK 0 came together to be part of some murder. The deaths of the higher-ups we saw at the very beginning of the Sukuna fight is now explained: Gojo killed them for a better future of the JJ Society but he was a little hesitant about it.

The flashback jumps first to Yuji's old friend who's name I forgot. We learn that his CT is sugar (??) based which leads to him becoming part of the medical team. Then the FB jumps to the aftermath of Yuta's fight against Sukuna: he was cut in half and is about to die

In a funny call back to when Yuji died at the Detention Center, Gojo is both dead and completely naked on a table. Just like Yuji, he also rises again albeit not completely alive when it comes to himself.

(Why did Yuta waste crucial seconds to put a shirt on?)

Shoko says that she fully sutured Gojo's bisected body and because Kenjaku's CT (as far as we know) only works on dead bodies, we have the confirmation that Gojo has indeed died against Sukuna. Except of course that he's about to be revived again.

Let's not forget that as far as Kenjaku's CT is involved, body and mind are treated the same. Something that will involve Gojo and his consciousness is going to happen at some point because of Yuta's decision to do this body hopping.

A new Domain Battle between Sukuna and GojoYuta is about to start. Yuta not only watched the previous battles, he also acquired Gojo's memories so it's exciting to see how that will play out.

It's also interesting how the visuals of the domain clashes changed so much. GojoYuta's is still the same (the first confirmation that a possessor can use the possessed's DE) while Sukuna's deteriorated somewhat, represented with the beastly construct in the background. He also has to use Gojo's handsign.

Break next week but now we can speculate to hell and back about what will happen now.

[aprillikesthings]

stuff about an au fic where they go on the Camino that I haven't started (and won't until next year) but am seriously considering writing, and I know I've mentioned it before, but--

so I've half-joked about writing a fic where Catra and Adora go on the Camino. A good portion of it would, obviously, be based on my own experiences. They'd be sleeping in the same albergues I did, doing the same km per day. Like I'd literally be going through my tweets and facebook posts (...which is why I literally can't even start the fic until late April of next year, when those posts come up in my fb memories lol, I'd be copy/pasting my posts into the doc to use as inspo), and tbh I could probably even hotlink some of my photos (...the ones that don't have me in them) into the fic

And I already know how I'd structure it, to some extent--there'd be really upbeat "blog posts" Adora writes in first person mixed into swapping 3rd person limited scenes.

What's funny to me is that, of course, the first time I thought of this I asked myself: why the FUCK would Catra do the Camino? and of course the answer is "because Adora asked her to," and obviously they're not a couple at the start of the fic and are by the end lol

(do they have their first kiss in the square in front the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, or do they do it earlier than that? hmmmm. either way it'll be fun to write them lying in separate bunks at some albergue or another, struggling to sleep because they're thinking about each other. the next morning they both blame a loud snorer for their lack of sleep.)L

OKAY ANYWAY so here's the thing I worry about:

I did, in fact, do the Camino in part for religious reasons. I went to mass as often as I could, I prayed the rosary most days, I prayed for people I knew all the time, I did morning prayer in both big and tiny churches, and evening prayer sometimes. And some of the most profound experiences of my Camino were faith-related.

And......I don't know how to work those in, or if I should.

Catra I figured out first, she'd be a lapsed Catholic with very mixed feelings about God and The Church. I know a lot of people like that.

And the temptation is to just make Adora an Episcopalian, like me. Or even just someone who grew up Episcopalian, and she's not sure if she's Christian necessarily, but she has neutral-to-good feelings about it.

BUT. My worry is that if I include some of my own experiences re: faith, it's going to sound like I'm evangelizing to people.

Which is not the point of the fic, obviously!

I dunno. I am probably over-thinking this. I feel like I can just write an author's note that's like: "Hi, I'm not trying to convert anyone; but this fic is based on my own experiences, and so I included some of the religious stuff."

Some of those experiences I've rarely shared with people, because they're hella personal. (I think I've posted about them to the Episcopal subreddit and that's it.) Like some of them I don't even think I've told my partner. So it's...kinda weird to put them in a fictional story with a focus on the romance?

But also there's stories from my Camino that I can already figure out how to work into the fic--

Like the time a few of us got into a, uh, vigorous discussion about religion at the dinner of an albergue in Navarette, and it was mmmmostly this Korean-Australian dude who was bordering on anti-theist, arguing with a woman from Texas who was a "non-denominational" evangelical. And I kept trying to butt in to point out that there's another way of looking at a lot of the things they were arguing about, but it was difficult because I could barely get a word in edgewise. And by the time we were all done eating, I got so frustrated I stood up fast (and my chair made a hideous scraping noise on the floor) and everyone stared at me as I announced "SO ANYWAY I'M GOING TO CHURCH" and walked off. And I did go to the church, which was open, but they weren't having mass that day, so I just whipped out my phone and the Venite app and did evening prayer and then just sat for a bit admiring the HUGE retablo and trying to identify the saints/biblical stories.

^literally that one! Look at it. It's INSANE. The full-sized image was too big for tumblr lol. Also I can spot St James, and Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven, and baby Jesus being presented at the temple, among other stuff.

I just want to point out: Navarette is small. And yet. Look at that fucking retablo--the actual altar is at the bottom of the photo. Not every small town had a church that ornate, obviously; some were far smaller and plainer than that. But it was always wild to be in some small town of a few thousand people and it would have a church that was built in the late-medieval era and was far grander than the diocesan cathedral at home.

ANYWAY in my fic it would obviously be Adora trying to get in a word in edgewise and failing and then announcing she's going to church, and Catra would follow shortly after and just silently sit next to her. And then they'd have a discussion about the other people arguing where Adora would be like "well, they each only know the Christianity they grew up with," and Catra's like "they don't have to be assholes about it though," and then Adora's shushing her like "omg don't say things like that in a church" but she's giggling.

Ugh. I just. I don't want to write a fic where the plot ends up being "Adora and/or Catra find God." Especially given how much of the show's plot was in response to Nate's religious trauma. The fact that his trauma is from conservative Calvinism wouldn't make it any less shitty.

Lots and LOTS of non-religious people do the Camino. In fact, the people there for religious reasons are absolutely the minority these days, even if lots of other people would say "spiritual" reasons. So it wouldn't be inaccurate to leave most of the religious stuff out.

(I've repeatedly joked: The Camino is a long walk about Jesus. The amount of Jesus is optional to some extent, but if any Jesus bothers you, the Camino might not be the long walk for you.)

ANYWAY I have like six months to think about this before I could start writing it lol

[gallawitchxx]

weekly tag wednesday thursday <3

omg how is it wednesday thursday again already?! where has this week gone? i've basically been MIA here since the last one lol so thank you to @jrooc @creepkinginc @energievie @deedala @gardenerian

@blue-disco-lights @sgtmickeyslaughter @vintagelacerosette for the tags! i love you all! i love this place! i'm so happy we get to scream about it today!

- - - - OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT - - - -

how did you get into the fandom? i fully fell into gallavich in the spring of 2021 & starting shoving fics in my face faster than ian & mickey took their clothes off when ian went to get the gun back, mickey. then i started noticing that people were linking their tumblrs in the end notes & so i lurked suuuper hard through the summer until i finally made my own blog!

how long have you been here? almost three glorious years <3

what’s the first fandom channel you found? (Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, Insta, Twitter, FB, other?) i suppose youtube is correct because i watched a bunch of edits that really cemented my obsession, but tumblr was the first place i interacted with fandom friends :)

what’s your favourite now? i'm a tumblrina for life!

which mutual have you known the longest in the fandom? this will always make me so fucking emotional -- my first mutual was @metalheadmickey & now i've been to their wedding *sobs forever*

which tumblerino’s did you have your first fandom crush(es) on and wanted to get to know? oooohalskfj this is a hard one! there have been so many! when i first showed up, i started collecting beloved mutuals like pokemon... but to steal from mel, there was a real HUZZAH moment around getting a message from @whatwouldmickeydo & now i'm gonna go to their wedding *continues sobbing forever*

first Gallavich fan fic you read (or that blew you away that you remember) the holy trinity of my early fandom days were absolutely like real people do by grayola, restoration by @palepinkgoat & the increasingly poor decisions of ian gallagher by @goodkwuestion

first fan art that blew your mind? yooo we are so blessed around these parts & at the beginning it was another trilogy lol - @steorie @psychicskulldamage & @darthvaders-wife

fanfic trope that you were sure wasn’t for you but now you low key (or high key) love? a/b/o! truly shocking to discover & then love & then WRITE A WHOLE MULTI-CHAP FIC OF

What surprised you most about this fandom? omg how smushy soft everyone is! halskfjalfj - like, it's a pretty hard show to watch at times & the characters are all so messy & not saying we have it altogether over here or anything, but everyone's just a kind little marshmallow! :)

moment in the show (or YT vids if you’re one of those) that you fell in hyperfixation with Gallavich? the first one was probably s3 "not everybody gets to blurt out how they fucking feel every minute!" because i was like, OHHH OH THIS IS GONNA HURT ME & then it just kept getting worse....

Ian or Mickey? mickey baby ily so much. but to echo others, they really are two halves of the same brain cell & they've fought so hard to be together. so idk how you choose!

Which Gallagher or Milkovich are you? jeeeez, maybe fiona? lip? liam? hahaha probably none of them tbh, but i love 'em like family!

- - - - -

tagging @thisdivorce @rereadanon @sickness-health-all-that-shit @crossmydna & @heymrspatel if you wanna play! if not, i'm smooching you on your nose <3

[theinkedknight]

Rose Quartz

Based off this post by @cryptotheism that I saw on FB

I sat behind the counter, looking up at the twin sets of flat screens perched over the high shelves carrying boxes of cereal and multipacks of toilet paper. On the left screen, a multiple panel view of the various security cameras set up all around the bodega, the right screen a rerun of Judge Judy. I was mostly paying attention to the right one.

At the table set along the window to the outside sat an older Puerto Rican man, his straw triby on the table next to him, brushing something I couldn't see off the tank top he wore under his unbuttoned bowling shirt.

“Listen, I'm telling you. New yor-wiccan.” He said, drawing out the word.

“Shut up Danny.” Called out the older woman behind the deli counter as she worked the grill.

“What? It's good! I can see it on the shirts.” He retorted.

“You're not even wiccan.” I said, shaking my head.

“So what? You think everyone selling gold crosses is a Christian?”

The door alarm dinged as a pair of young people entered. I could smell the tourist on them. Spend enough time behind a counter in Manhattan and you'd be able to as well. It's the wide eyed gaze and almost deer-like quiver.

They start to roam what amounts to aisles in the cramped store. Next to the cup soups, various small packages of laundry soap, and ice salt stood Catholic candles of various colors and saints, icons from a dozen various idols from the faiths of the people who lived or worked in the neighborhood, and bins of assorted crystals. Through the windows and on the cameras I could see the piles of garlic, oranges, apples, and bundled dried herbs for sale under the shop’s awning.

“He has a point, Flora.” I say, eyes returning to the court show.

“You're so full of shit, Danny,” she replied with a tone that sounded like this was a basic fact of reality.

The two tourists came up to the front counter, either sisters or very, very close friends. Their auras looked as though they were the same, or else rhyming so closely it was hard to tell the difference.

“Do you…um…do you sell rose quartz?” The slightly taller one asked.I continued watching Judy for a beat, as it was about to go to commercial anyway, before looked down at the two.

“Flora, we got rose quartz?” I called over to the grill. A black cat walked around from the corner and wove herself around their legs before jumping up to the table next to Danny’s hat. Flora walked around the counter with an aluminum tray filled to the brim with boiled yucca, pickled red onions, grilled sausage, and fried eggs. She put the tray next to Danny, his hat, and the cat, pulling a fork and small bottle of hot sauce from her apron and all but dropping both on the table with them.

“Yeah, no. Fresh out, remember that little bracelet brujita always buys me out. The one with the green hair. Plant name.”

“Aspen.” I supplied.

“Yes, her.” She looked the two women up and down. “What you need if for? You looking for someone?” Their cheeks reddening was all the older witch needed to hear.

She walked behind one aisle, muttering to herself in Spanish. When she returned, she held a pair of pink candles in an unmarked glass cylinder and two cans of soup.

“Damien, get them two vials of rose water.” She told me. She continued speaking to the girls as I turned my back to search the wall of incense, oils, single dose packs of Advil, condoms, and “nail polish remover” behind the counter. “What you wanna do is anoint yourself and the candle and burn it next to your bed at night.”

The taller one nodded as if taking mental notes. “And the soup?”

“Cook it for him. Men love soup.” Flora said as if speaking to an idiot.

As her friend/sister was turning redder still, the shorter one was looking at Danny eating his breakfast.

“Isn't it, like, unhygienic to have a cat in a place serving food like that?” She asked, genuine concern in her voice.

“I'm cleaner than you are, Princess Midwest.” The cat replied, looking up at her with emerald green eyes. “This one needs some Florida water too, Damien. Her aura is a little…much.”

I tried to keep the smirk from my face as she jumped.

“Hannah, I told you if you're going to talk to customers, you need to be a person.” Flora admonished. The cat sighed, jumping from the table to the other chair. Between one blink and the other, the cat was gone and a pale skinned woman in a black dress replaced her. For a moment she still had feline eyes, before blinking and her human form completing.

“Anyway, spritz it on yourself after you shower. If you're good, you'll clear that…” Hannah made a general hand gesture to encompass what must be the woman's aura. “...in about a week.”

They both stepped up to the counter, wide eyed and more than a touch shaken. “So, would that be all together or separate?” I asked, trying to calm them with a gentle smile.

They indicted together and made to pay, pulling out a crystal bedazzled iPhone to tap on the terminal. I wrapped the candles in yesterday's Daily News and put everything into an ‘I HEART NY’ bag. As quickly as they could without running, they were out of the store again.

“I would buy that shirt.” Hannah said, reaching over and stealing a slice of meat from Danny's plate, who moved to slap her hand but was too slow.

“See! And she is wiccan. I am smart.” Danny proclaimed.

“Full of shit.” Flora replied, shaking her head and returning to the deli counter.

[yvesdot]

I'm writing to ask some advice on the pros and cons of social media for writers. Specifically, do you think it's worth it to make a bluesky account as a writer right now, and why or why not? I am a writer with a several semipro pub credits currently in the process of querying my first novel with agents. My only active social media is my main tumblr, a less active side tumblr where I post about writing, and accounts on instagram, fb and xitter that I haven't touched in years. I am very averse to marketing myself and I dislike the twitter/bluesky format, but I'm aware that there are probably opportunities I'm missing out on by not being on there (i.e. another writer I know irl mentioned an upcoming manuscript pitch event on bsky). In your opinion, is it worth it to hold my nose and do the little marketing dance in the hopes it will improve my chances, or are the benefits negligible? Any thoughts you have on the subject are greatly appreciated

The best advice I've received on the social media game is to pick the thing you can stick with and do that. So, if you think you'll use bluesky, worth being there. If you're only ever forcing yourself to post, it likely wouldn't be of much use to curate a regular presence. You can always take note of the general timing of various events and/or follow them through your friends and other spaces like Discord or, well, Tumblr! (Also a good reminder to post about various opportunities you see in your communities—I am especially bad at this.)

To actually answer your specific question... I admit to liking Bluesky despite disliking the Twitter format, which I maintain is awful. The main reason I enjoy Bluesky is its improved moeration and its teeny-tinyness right now, which may fade, but for the moment gives an increased intimacy to your interactions with individual artists that I very much like. People actually see your replies, which is encouraging.

I haven't yet used it for any sort of writerly things, in part because it's just so exhausting keeping up with anything. I am on the Authors Against Book Bans giant starter pack, so I get a lot of followers from that, but so far little to no 'engagement' with what I'm posting (if you're averse to marketing lingo look the other way!), which I suspect is simply what happens when people follow you as part of a massive group of people who are going to post more and chat more and general out-social-media-you. So I only post what I feel like putting into the void ^__^

I do think Bluesky is very clearly where all the writerfolk fed up with Twitter are moving. I initially made an account because my publisher (tRaum Books) was there, and I've since seen quite a few celebrated trans authorfolk post and even like my replies to their posts, which is, as I say, heartening. I would imagine "writing professional who is fed up with Twitter" is a good sort of person/page to surround oneself with.

But people have gotten agents before Bluesky and they will again. If you have writing credits, you most certainly have an advantage. You don't need to play the games if you don't want to (though, as you've noted, it can help). I'm not playing any games right now! And I have never signed with an agent for a novel. Shop this one around, and make your own pros and cons list, and see how you feel. Congrats on the publications!

[dreamsinfiction]

Jan/Feb 2025 (aka when time was both a glacier freezing in the winter and melting in the summer)

Is it just me or is 2025 speeding by so quickly? Am writing this in mid-March (update: only publishing this in Apr; help my procrastination is next level these days hahaha) and it feels like the days, weeks and months are slipping through my fingers 🥲

Since this is my new year post, I'm going to start it with my goals for the year and intersperse with life updates (so that I don't ramble on and on):

a. Be clear with my intentions / do intention-setting as much as possible

Picked this up mainly from L's video on how she uses Sundays to reset for the week ahead (putting in meetings/social events she has for the following week in her Google Cal, writing to-do lists) but I've also learnt more about it when talking to my Maktaba friends! Life is funny when coincidences happen back-to-back.

I realise I have been doing some form of intention-setting all this while with me needing a physical planner each year to set my to-do lists on weekdays but I want to expand it to beyond work and incl life tasks/goals too.

So far, this has been working! I'm in a good head space when I can see what are the things I want to work on for the day/week/month/year and ticking them off gives me great satisfaction hahaha.

Side note, this has also been working in my social life hehe. Met this guy (let's call him S) at one of the bookclubs and I thought he was a pretty interesting person - he was very emotionally and philosophically mature (not sure if this is the right word but the way he thinks is very interesting). Was keen to know him more (intention right here lol) so I struck up a convo (seriously who is this 30s me who is seemingly fearless)! One thing led to another and we're now talking quite occasionally and I feel we have a similar wavelength. I also found out he lives nearby! In all my years, I've not met anyone who lives near me (who is not a childhood friend). Anyway, not going to put much expectations (case in point: Z who has been a bit disappointing to say the least but it's okay we move on) and just appreciate the fact that I have a new friend 🙂

b. Journal more frequently

I've been on-and-off journaling pretty much my whole life but keeping up the habit is hard. Part of the reason is because sometimes the empty page is very daunting. So for this year, I got a journal with smaller spaces for the days to trick my brain into thinking that I don't need to write much to fill up the segment.

The journal I got in Korea at a random bookshop in Myeongdong Cathedral. It has the different lunar phases in Korean!

Journaling tracker:

i. Jan: 22/31 (New year energy driving me to journal everyday hahaha)

ii. Feb: 14/28 (My work days were mainly taken up by XE and cleaning up her mess hence wasn't in the right headspace to journal. But proud of myself for going on a few social gatherings during the weekends to maximise time before Ramadan heh. More details in second half of post!)

c. Read more diversely

I always aim to read 20 books a year cos it seems like a manageable goal without putting too much pressure. But this year, I want to be a bit more intentional - I will still be a mood reader and pick up what strikes me in the moment (hi fantasy, manga reads) but also non-fiction and Islamic titles on my bookstagram feed do look interesting so I will venture into that space!

Also, been using StoryGraph for the past year and am going to focus fully on it because i) the UI is nicer, ii) the data insights/charts are interesting, and iii) the biggest push factor, my Goodreads account got locked out hahaha. I think it's because I used my Facebook to create a GR acc and they've discontinued FB login since late last year 🥲. Thanks friends for jumping into SG with me heh.

Reading tracker (detailed reviews on my bookstagram!)

i. Jan: 6 (3 books, 3 manga volumes)

Highlights:

None actually cos Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez turned out to be my least favourite in the Part of Your World series and Gurmit's Singh biography was mid)

ii. Feb: 3 (all books)

Highlights:

Took the Human Acts photo at the mini Han Kang photo wall/exhibition in Kyobo Books during Nov 2024

Human Acts by Han Kang - amazing, best Han Kang novel I've read so far but with heavy themes of protests, death, grief

Safiyyah's War by Hiba Noor Khan - can't believe this is actually a children's book with the war themes involved, but I loved it for telling the untold story of how other religious communities, this one focussing on the Muslims, helped the Jews to escape prosecution in WWII Paris

d. Slower productivity, but not sacrificing quality (improve where I can)

Picked up this concept from Slow Productivity by Cal Newport (a recommendation by J!) and it's reset my mindset quite a bit. It's also due to timing - my current work now is more forward-planning, strategic in nature, less of comms on the ground so I can afford to be more thoughtful behind the work I put out since deadlines have a longer runway and planned in advance.

But when crisis comes, slow productivity is vehemently thrown out the window as I sadly learnt in Mar (will touch on this at next update).

e. Be more active!

Getting older means I need to start taking care of my health better. Not that I wasn't all this while - I don't smoke, drink, can't really eat much at one go. But the main obstacle has been getting regular exercise (other than my 25-min walk to the MRT on WFO days). Since my family and extended family's medical history isn't the greatest, I think it's about time I sit down and really dedicate some portion of time a week to get some active minutes.

And so far the gym has been working! Pretty pricey since I go to FF and have a PT but I can see some fruits of my labour now hehe. If anything, the steep price point motivates me to rush out during lunchtime on WFH days and get a session in cos I need to get my money's worth 😹

Exercise updates:

Learnt a lot of new machines, some more painful than the others lol

Learnt how to do proper squats with weights

I still hate lunges HAHA

Went for a random pickleball session with the office girlies at Delta Sports Centre (It's so nice now after the upgrades! Also, don't ask me how to play pickleball, we just went with the flow - I played it like I would play badminton, A played it like she would with tennis HAHA; much chaos, super fun)

My friends know how to enable me hahahaha

f. Continue saying yes to things that make me happy / make me initially uncomfy but will be good for me in the long run

A continuation from last year! Despite its ups and downs, last year was quite eventful and looking back I'm thankful I did the things I did. I don't think there was anything that I regretted doing even though the outcome wasn't always positive. So here's to less what ifs, and more doing.

Other highlights in Jan/Feb:

i. Harry Potter Visions of Magic exhibition

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This was so fun! Lived out my dream of being a real Slytherin student in Hogwarts - loved how immersive it was with all the wandcasting and wandering across different rooms spanning both HP and the Fantastic Beasts world. Definitely worth the ticket even though it was a bit pricey (went on a weekend morning which was considered peak period), since I'm not planning to visit any of the Wizarding World theme parks any time soon.

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ii. Seventeen's 'Right Here' concert

After loving their songs for close to a decade now, I was so happy to finally see them live. Went with SR and even though our seats were quite far from the main stage, it was fine since we went mostly for the vocals. DK's voice is so amazing live 🥹. Also there was a segment where they were on carts and pushed closer to the seated areas and I got to see them nearer hahaha. DK and Wonwoo were on the same cart homg my fangirl heart could not take it lolol.

iii. JB trip for P's wedding

First time chartering a van to take us into Johor and right to the wedding hall haha. It was a pretty smooth process thanks to the QR clearance and we made it in time for the 9.30am solemnisation (our call time to meet the driver at our block was 6.00am tho huhu).

But the wedding was really pretty and it's my first of 2 weddings in Malaysia I would be attending this year (the next one is in May heh). Even though Johor is just across the Causeway, some traditions are different than Malay weddings here which was interesting to see. I also got Gigi Coffee on Grab to try and omg it's so nice and strong (reminiscent of coffee in Korea) and it doesn't break the bank hahaha. Gonna try more Malaysia coffee brands when I'm in KL this year! I have my eye on Zus Coffee cos it comes highly raved and I don't need to wait long to try since there's a new outlet in Westgate heh.

iv. Bookclubs galore

Geeking out over books will never stop being fun ㅋㅋㅋ

Went for so many just in February! I rotate between the Quiet Readers' Club (name explains itself), Meet Cuties Club (romance book club; I join it for the hehehaha) and Maktaba Books' Silent Reading Sessions and Sama-Sama Book Club (this one is with NLB and they pick regional/Asian reads which helps meet my goal of reading more diversely). What I love about them is the safe space, hearing different views than my own perspective being raised and just meeting new folks/forming new friendships.

...and that's about it! This post has gone on long enough haha. It's definitely been a fulfilling start to the year - semi-excited about what's in store for the rest of the year but also semi-dreading the challenges that are inevitably coming my way huhu.

Till the next update! I swear I will start working on Mar updates soon~

[loveislandthegame]

thoughts on todays volume! we're not even halfway through the season and i'm already over it . i'm lowkey struggling to write these posts 😭

first up is excess baggage, where we get another glimpse into our forced backstory: MC didn't go to her season's afterparty, and later on it's revealed that finn was the host (i'm just like, why the hell has he been a host twice? what was he even doing in love island australia? but FB is putting zero thought into writing these seasons, so i should just put zero thought into analysing them)

like i've said before, it wouldn't be a LITG challenge without some bullshit. they decided to make finn's baggage "saying that MC is the sexiest love island star," that's great for people romancing him, but i was just grossed out 🫠 unfortunately it only gets worse from here

melissa and henri got dumped . at least it wasn't natasha or kelly, though kelly suddenly no longer cares about my MC, so it seems like that chat with melissa did lock in one wlw LI

kelly and finn get everyone together to play one of those guessing games, idk what it's actually called. but more importantly, tf is wrong with these people ? you weren't thinking that MC would be tired of everyone and their mother constantly bringing up the guy she was with for two weeks? at this point i wouldn't be surprised if they revealed that MC and stefan were engaged or some shit

side note, lyle's evening outfit looks beyond ridiculous but i kinda love that (tbh it looks like some shit tyler the creator would wear)

MC gets a note inviting her to the pool, i thought it was gonna be chen or maybe natasha, turns out it's fucking finn. we should've had the option to cuss him out 👹 (and a scene like this should've only been triggered if you're on his route, but FB cannot be bothered to branch, we're forced into this for the ridiculous drama/cliffhanger later)

i cant lie, this was freakin adorable, i would be a little tempted if i wasn't focused on natasha ... and if he didn't dump my ozzy route s6 MC for ivy 😫 (side note: with the amount of times he's been calling the other guys attractive...it goes without saying that straight dudes can compliment each other, but idk, make him bi/pan you cowards)

we barely had time with natasha this volume, so i had the gem scene date with her. cuteeee

i didn't screenshot it and i'm too lazy to go back for it, but she said something about us being in the hideaway together. (if you didn't see my other post, i did want to go with her but stuck with chen because i thought it'd be too awkward) i don't know what's up with all the glitches, i hope it doesn't cause issues later on, like in a movie night or some shit 😭

we return from our dates, and shocker, finn's note has kelly fighting with kat. i just hope we can clear everything up immediately, i'll be so damn mad if they drag this out for the whole volume 🤦🏽‍♀️

[heart-notes]

in which i finally review my thin wild mercury samples

- chelsea staircase by thin wild mercury is so good...very lemon iced tea. this is a half sweet iced tea with a lemon in it, but midway through i start getting sunflower. which is very buttery and kind of oddly savory? it's not like a gourmandy buttery savory, it does smell like sunflower, but it’s not a note i'm used to. but i did immediately recognize it bc ive grown sunflowers! i don't get a canvas or wrought iron note but there is a tangy-metallic musk? probably the fantasy note they're going for. this smells like yellow hazy sunshine.

- girl of the year is EASILY my favorite of the bunch. opening is soft cherry chapstick with an orrisy flair, but very distinctive leather jacket and a smoky incense like it's not the soft suppley leather i get from shalimar. this is a bit heftier. a little darker and muskier. weirdly very wearable on intimate sniff. very leathery, but the waft is cherry chapstick. when i get a job i'm probably going to get a FB of girl of the year. it's kind of the leather scent of my dreams; resiny and evocative and smokey, but light enough to wear. i think it's a strong contender also for best cherry scent i've tried.

- sheep meadow is confusing. definitely like. a blueberry fluff note. but it's cottony and not the right sort of sweet. i would say it's also kind of laundry detergent floral but not placeable. the lavender is there but it's musky. it's like a big pale blue stuffy. or like when they used to have those scented plush animals? this is what i imagined as a kid the blue ones smelled like. not what they actually smelled like but the vibe. i am assuming much like most almond scents on me, the almond will be in the dry down and it will last for fucking ever. this smells like a person. like i know this lady. i detect no chocolate. reminds me of osmofolia cirrus if it was also a blueberry vape

- the last one is 34 bohemian cafes. disclaimer: rose notes die on me so i knew this one wasn't gonna do it. it's a nice leather scent (this may be thin wild mercury's great strength), and the pepper is nice, but it's pretty dark, masculine, woody, and heavy- more than i usually go for. my preferred androgynous scents tend to be herby and this is very deep. i also get a woody resiny sweetness. in fact, this is a bit sweeter than girl of the year, but i think this is because i am more sensitive to wood/resin sweetness than other sorts of it, or my skin amps it up, because it isn’t as sweet as girl of the year on paper. smells kind of like the back of a smokey bar in a nice way, but i think this sample will be given to my brother.

i think the strongest two for me are girl of the year and chelsea staircase.

[evwuniverse]

You know, life can get pretty damn messy sometimes. I've noticed my outfit choices can sometimes reflect my moods. It's very hard for me to vocalize what I'm trying to say so writing is my preferred method of explaining things. I've had quite the night tonight and the first thing I did when I "went through it" was log into IMVU and create this avatar. I decided to become a VIP for $20 for one month just because I missed creating content on IMVU. This blog after all is Second Life AND...IMVU based.

I hate when drama enters my life, I've stayed away from it for 2 years and it just knocked on my doorstep tonight for no reason. If you would like to read up on a summarized version of what happened please continue below. I had to vent and I thought why not let me make an IMVU post mixed with the situation I just went through kind of like "AITA posts on Reddit."

** Disclaimer: this is something that happened in my real life, there is drama and it is important to note that it may trigger some individuals who are prone to narcissism and other manipulative tactics from others. As an empath, I can sympathize with you on this. If you read below please let me know if I'm the asshole or if it is the other person who is in the wrong. Please be respectful while reading and responding to this post, thank you. **

My mom always told me that you should never do business with friends or family. In any sense by the way, whether it's through virtual worlds and virtual families or real life. This is the one thing I must say she was right about.

How it all started:

I had an old co-worker/friend whom I always commented on her FB posts when I could and always liked or hearted what she had to say. It wasn't like I disappeared completely from her life but just as everyone else last year struggled in 2024 in general primarily emotionally but in other ways as well. It was hard for me to keep in contact with a lot of people and fell out of contact with many as well. This individual was one of them that I "fell out of contact" with but continued to still try to keep a friendship with her. She reached out to me first and asked why I didn't reach out sooner. I questioned this and proceeded and explain I had attempted to stay in contact and show I was still around by interacting with her posts, I explained what was going on in my life, and she seemed well understanding at the time. Fast forward a few days later and she wanted to voice chat and catch up. It was an amazing connection, we picked up right where we left off.

After the Conversation:

We rekindled our friendship one that never truly disappeared and I was so thankful. Then one day she brought up that she was trying to move out of her parent's house because she got knocked up from a one-night stand and didn't want her parents knowing she was having a child. Understandably, a lot of women who live under their parent's roof feel this way. They try to find a way to hide that they are pregnant whether it be to stay where they are at, not be judged by their parents, etc. So I completely understood. She sounded like she was out of options and I have a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom home with one room and bathroom that rarely get used. Being who I am (kind of a pushover but wanting to be there to help) I offered for her to move into the extra bedroom and we could talk about a monthly rent that would be beneficial for both of us. She was grateful and loved the idea and so was I, I was so excited because I've never had a roommate before and always wanted to have the experience at some point.

Fast Forward 3 Days Later:

3 days later, my cousin, who had roommates who were his friends (keep in mind he's a lawyer) provided me with the Rental Agreement he provided to his friends and I changed the numbers. My friend and I agreed to an $850 rent for her. Most of you know in today's economy you can't find almost anything for that much, especially in a nice neighborhood with amenities and I was giving a lot of what I'm used to for example I was providing her with my numbered spot because I knew she was potentially pregnant and has other medical issues similar to myself. I was giving her the pool pass so she didn't have to pay $50 for one. I was providing her with one of my parking passes and I only have two. I was also providing a bed frame for her bed so she could sell the one she had because that's what she was planning. I was also giving her free reign of the bottom floor, her bedroom, and the guest restroom all I asked is that she stay out of the office space and master bedroom. I was basically giving her a house to live in for $850 a month and then add on that I'm barely there she is always going to be there.

She loves animals she's a vet tech so she has 7 cats 2 dogs a snake 10 lizards, 52 fish, and a hamster named Hamtaro. She was housing 6 out of the 7 cats, wanted to keep the two dogs, and was planning on housing the reptiles and I caved in on the fish. So I allowed her to bring 12 out of the 52 fish the 12 were beta fish which all need to be in separate fish tanks by the way so I knew my house was going to be filled with them. It's important to note I only have 2 dogs and that's it... Also not to backtrack here but I'm going on a Cruise in April with my family and she offered to watch my pups while she lived here. Which would've been great and would let my boyfriend off the hook this time around.

It all sounded great and she and I talked about what was allowed pet-wise. We agreed upon her bringing 2 dogs and three fish that's it. But when she reached out to me and said a lot of the other people she would leave the pets with backed out I told her I would compromise. Later it came up to 3 cats (which my family is allergic to so I couldn't have them over to visit anymore), 2 dogs, and three fish. I wanted to help her get out of the situation she was in so I was willing to compromise further to help while keeping the price point at $850.

Fast Forward Again To Today:

She read over the Rental Agreement, maybe it got too REAL for her... I don't know. But she asked where the reptiles were in the rental agreement and I responded back remember in our last conversation you stated someone would be taking care of the snakes and the lizards. She said oh yeah! Then she stated, "I don't think this is going to work out the person who was going to take the snake backed out because she is afraid of snakes and lizards..." I know how hard she was trying to get out of a bad situation and I knew her situation so I again was willing to compromise. I said to her "Well, the pets seem to be adding up and my HOA really only allows two dogs which I have two but if we can work around it the two dogs are fine, and the 3 cats I can make work but a snake, I don't like snakes and if it's going to slithering around the house and on the walls I'm going to need to ask for a pet deposit similar to an apartment. We went from 2 dogs to three fish and I feel this is fair considering the amount of animals that are going to be in the house at this time. Would you be willing to compromise on a higher rent to keep the reptiles?" She then retorted at this point which I'm not sure why I was working with her to make things work, at this point my house was turning into a zoo and this was not what was agreed upon previously. She said something along the lines of;

She stated she wasn't even at work... Keep in mind I didn't even know she was away from her work but apparently is getting disability while going through some of the medical issues but this wasn't discussed prior so I had no idea.

"It went from you wanting to move me in for free, to striking a business transaction, where I pay more to live in your home as your roommate on either the top or bottom floor" -- Keep in mind everything was agreed upon in the very beginning she agreed to the $850. She wanted to move in with me. Again remember, it all began at $850 with 3 fish and 2 dogs and went up in pets from there. That is when I felt it would be fair due to all the pets to charge a pet fee and explained why I was charging it I was only asking for $50 more in case there were any damages caused by her pets. I work very hard to keep the house clean.

Then explained that what I was doing was extortion - honestly I had to look up the word not going to lie I had no idea what it was. But the cost was agreed upon in the very beginning and the number of pets was placed in the rental agreement before this conversation. She then stated she could no longer trust me because she "can't trust my intentions." What? my intentions were nothing but helpful and kind, I wanted to help her with her situation and she turned it on me and kept adding pets...

I reached out to my boyfriend to get his thoughts. He told me that it wasn't me and that she was then gaslighting me and manipulating me to live in my house for free at this point. I wanted to get others' thoughts...

Am I the asshole for charging a pet fee and for attempting to compromise and bend over backward to get a friend out of a bad situation or a situation she didn't want to be in? Do you think the amount of money I charged was unreasonable?

Thank you for reading and I hope to gain a little more insight from an outside perspective as this is currently eating me up alive haha.

[collecosplay]

All Hallow's Eve LARP by L'Chaim Games - Meiserich (my ghost OC, yes he was shot in the face)

aka "Ghost Ball! Ghost Ball!", London, 02.12.23

Photos by Astora Photography on FB

My jester took so long to make because I took inspiration from Diana Wynne Jones' 'Howl's Moving Castle' where Sophie cuts up Howl's suit into triangles and then sews it back together, so Meiserich's outer layer is all triangles.

I wanted to make Meiserich out of scraps from previous projects, so virtually all of the cost of the outfit is the time that went into it. I worked on him for six months in virtually any free minute I could find the energy for. But it was worth it.

It's not 100% historically accurate, but this outfit was designed to double as a cosplay for the Fool from Robin Hobb's 'Assassin's Apprentice' and the rest of the Farseer Trilogy. (I still have to read the other books! No spoilers please though I have seen some sneak peeks thanks to fanart <3)

More about Meiserich as a character under the cut!

Meiserich (anglicised pronunciation: My-Zer-Rick) is a colloquial German name for galium odoratum, sweet woodruff. It's a flavour you can get commonly in German desserts and schnapps (Waldmeister), but I've never come across the flavour in the UK.

Meiserich is a jester from the early 1400's and lived in a part of the Holy Roman Empire that is now Germany, namely within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Münster. At the court of Droste zur Aa Meiserich had a close relationship with Lady Klara of the keep. In 1412 this court took part in a knights' jousting tournament in Buda where the future Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund was also in attendance. Whilst there, through social occasions, Lady Klara found out and obtained evidence that Sigismund was the one who poisoned the previous King of Germany, Jobst of Moravia. She confided in Meiserich what had happened.

It comes to light that Lady Klara knows too much, so Sigismund sends soldiers to Münster to besiege the keep. Meiserich encourages his Lady to run and hide with the evidence of the poisoning. As a jester it was also Meiserich's job to act as a messenger and diplomat at times. However, the siege negotiations failed, he was shot dead with an early arquebus design and the castle was fired upon with trebuchets. Lady Klara initially survived in the rubble in an airpocket but ultimately suffocated.

Meiserich usually haunts the ruins of the castle keep he used to live in. It is now a tourist destination and he likes to tease the tourists. He also eavesdrops and through them and the keep staff learns of other things going on in the world. He has not forgotten about Lady Klara and wants to reveal the truth she uncovered to the world.

Please note: The poisoning plot is fictional, Sigismund doing this is something I made up based on some Wikipedia reading I did.

His wish to have fulfilled at the LARP was to have the keep in Münster renovated and restored, revealing the buried corpse of Lady Klara. In her hand are a vial of poison and a letter proving Sigismund was the one who poisoned the previous king of Germany, Jobst of Moravia. It will be a joy for the historians and great to hear the tour guides at the keep bring this up in perpetuity.

And he got his wish fulfilled at the game! I'm so happy. Monsieur Roc Flamboyant (a French noble, 1600's) was touched enough by Meiserich's story and devotion to Lady Klara that he made the wish for Meiserich. I could not have asked for a better end to this game.

Shout out to the podcasts that helped me put together Meiserich as a character:

Gone Medieval by History Hit

We're Not So Different - esp. episode "Medieval Fail Sons: Wenceslas IV & Sigismund"

Weird Medieval Guys - esp. episode "Sieging for Dummies"

The Court Jester by Kleio Pethainou

I'm glad I picked the early 1400's for Meiserich's death, this is still before the Western printing press, Columbus sailing off to the detriment of many, the fall of Constantinople, and the big witch hunting craze, so he died in a bygone world on the cusp of the Early Modern Period.

If I could give him one power like in BBC Ghosts, I'd say that the two bells on his hat are audible to the living.

[hell0mega]

uh oh

going to my hours-old death note post made old death note posts of mine show up as recommended, so i went through some of them, and ended up back in 2011. so i scrolled for just a second. and saw my ex. and the post still linked to his account. i thought, surely he's not using the same account. surely he's not active. i clicked. he is. last reblog 2 weeks ago. i checked JUST to make sure he didn't follow me and he doesn't. that would've been fucking WILD. but it is 5:30am and i need to go to bed before i do anything i'll definitely regret.

the girl he basically left me for (over ten years ago lmao) uuuuh died last year. they'd been broken up for a while i'm pretty sure so. but. i did consider reaching out, idk, to give my condolences? but i never did because that would be fucking weird. i also haven't spoken to him since 2013.

he really, really hurt me. he was kind of a terrible boyfriend. i'm currently the happiest i have ever been with the best fiance in the fucking universe of 9.5 years. so it's DEFINITELY not that. but. we were friends first. and there's a tiny, TINY, minuscule part of me that STILL misses that. he's a big reason why i am the way i am today, in both good and bad ways. and it would be weird to reach out regardless. it would be weird and bad. but every once in a while i'll think about it. it'll come up in my head. and this is the closest i've ever gotten to doing it, physically, i mean. like, i'd have to unblock him on fb and who knows if he blocked me back, or even checks messenger. but i actually went to his blog and he's still there.

i'm not gonna do it. i may never do it. i'm ESPECIALLY not gonna do it at 5:30am. but. i think about it. i've actually dreamt about it. we ran into each other at a restaurant and i pretended to need to take a call to meet him outside. i told him my new name and that was the extent of the dream. i remember feeling angry in it though lol. maybe i was going to tell him off. idk.

a big reason for me not doing it (other than it being a terrible fucking idea) is holy shit i can only IMAGINE what all my friends' reactions would be if i told them we reconnected. they're be like BITCH WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU OOOONNNN WHAT ARE YOU DOIIIING so i'm like. not gonna do it lol