#Your algorithms have no power here

[breelandwalker]

Hi my name is Bree. I am your friendly neighborhood introvert who longs for a career position as an ornamental hermit. My interests include books, history, scary movies, and burning things in iron pots when I am displeased with the state of my life. I talk to birds and trees and kitty cats. On half a dozen occasions throughout the year, I run away to the mountains to beat my closest friends with plumbing supplies. I am equally likely to watch wrestling on television or attend a live burlesque show and I'll be hooting my head off at both. And I have very strong opinions on apple varieties and canned holiday fruit goop.

And I'm not even CLOSE to the weirdest person you'll meet on tumblr.

[torpublishinggroup]

Celebrate Pride with Tor Publishing Group!

The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Bandits of Liangshan proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats. Together, they could bring down an empire. 

Now available in paperback!

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

The long-awaited sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it. Welcome back to Marsyas Island—home to six magical and purportedly dangerous children. This is Arthur’s story.

The West Passage by @jpechacek

When the Guardian of the West Passage dies in her bed, the women of Grey Tower feed her to the crows and go back to their chores. No successor is named, and no hand takes up the fallen blade, so the West Passage—the ancient byways of the beast—goes unguarded. This is a weird and delightful journey across a deliriously medieval landscape where decay thrives in abundance and giant Ladies rule a palace the size of a city. 

Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker

On the thirtieth anniversary of the largest magical massacre in New Orleans history, Clement and Cristina Trudeau mourn their father and care for their sick mother. But their mother isn’t sick, they learn: She’s cursed. Cursed by a member of the same magic council over which she used to preside. Cursed by someone who will come for Clement and Cristina next. 

Now available in paperback!

Bury Your Gays by @drchucktingle

After so many years, Misha’s big Oscar moment is here. All he has to do? Kill off the gay characters in his long-running streaming series, “for the algorithm.” Misha refuses, but that’s hardly the end, because monsters from his old horror movie days have begun to step out from the silver screen and stalk him. 

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

The Cleric Chih accompanies a young bride to her wedding to Lord Guo, the aging ruler of a crumbling estate, but amid the elaborate courtesies and extravagant banquets, they realize something haunts the shadowed halls. As the big night nears close, Chih will learn that not all monsters dwell in shadows; some hide in plain sight. 

Remedial Magic by Melissa Marr

1) An unassuming librarian falls in love with a powerful witch. 

2) Previous librarian discovers she too is a witch…

3) …and that she must attend magical community college to learn how to save her new world from annihilation. 

Swordcrossed by @fahye

Part-time con artist / full-time charming menace Luca Piere didn’t expect to get blackmailed into teaching a chronically responsible merchant Matti how to wield a sword. He also didn’t expect to find his charge so inconveniently handsome, or to get so entangled in his tale of intrigue, sabotage, and matrimony. 

It’s important to read Swordcrossed because while you’re reading gay fiction, you can also study the blade.

Celebrate Pride with more titles from Tor Publishing Group here!

[drchucktingle]

From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead. Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple. As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.

----

BURY YOUR GAYS cover has been released today and theres something TRULY INCREDIBLE about it, something that bends timelines and melts away the edges of the void and brings tears to my eyes. can you see it? let me explain in a thread as you PREORDER NOW... 

for nearly ten years i have been publishing my stories despite pushback that they are too odd. us buckaroos are the outsiders, but this community has kicked open the door for art that is sincere and strange and beautifully unique. that is my trot and that is OUR trot as buds

we came out of nowhere and made CAMP DAMASCUS a usa today bestseller. every step of the way that book overperformed. buds were CONFUSED that a book from ‘silly meme erotica author’ could take flight. but us buckaroos knew it was inevitable because we know the power of love

i still recall the question ‘are you SURE you do not want a new horror pen name?’ HECK NO i am proud of the tingleverse. i am not ashamed of these queer erotic stories i drag up from bottom of my heart and spill with raw sincerity across irony poisoned timelines

i have been mocked my whole life as author that is ‘ridiculous no-content meme’ by those who have never read it. that my work is ‘not real’. i have been mocked for my autism and queerness and told THIS WOULD NEVER WORK. which brings me back to cover of my new book BURY YOUR GAYS

looks like the name chuck tingle is NOT a liability for the mainstream. all devils who doubted can gaze upon this cover and see bold CHUCK TINGLE staring back at them PROUDLY from the shelf in all its queer autistic glory... HOVERING ABOVE THE TITLE AND JUST AS BIG AND PROUD

thank you nightfire and chucks manager and chucks agent for believing in me. these buds have always had my back. thanks to BUCKAROO COMMUNITY who have always supported my way, this next step in our trot is not just about me IT IS ABOUT US. we kick open these doors together

so heres to making this world a little more unique and strange for those of us who are, ourselves, unique and strange. heres to bending timelines to us, instead of us bending to them. heres to name CHUCK TINGLE big and bold ABOVE the title on a big five traditional published book

and remember the best way to support an author, especially someone on outside pushing their way in, is to PREORDER THEIR BOOK. because of publishing business model it is SO IMPORTANT so if you would like to support chuck then PREORDER BURY YOUR GAYS NOW

[1001hertz]

hello dear instagram please consider this: maybe i don't want to be snatched and hot and stylish and aesthetic and darkly feminine maybe i just want to have a good time, thanks!

[were--ralph]

why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

[doberbutts]

Recently Youtube's algorithm really wants me to watch Schindler's List and I never had so the other night I sat down and actually watched it.

Having a lot of thoughts about it but a major one I keep coming back to is how even an immensely and deeply flawed human being can go against "just following orders" and instead put in the work to actually help.

It may never be fully enough. It may never save as many as you'd hoped. But when you have a choice to either follow orders or save your fellow humans in front of you, I hope you choose the latter.

Schindler died in poverty. He was not a renown war hero nor was he at all famous or widely beloved. But he saw that he could help, even in some small way, and so he helped.

He was a Nazi who saw what the Nazis were doing to Jews and said no more. Enough. If I can even spare those under my charge, maybe a few extras, then at least I will have tried to do something about this.

I think a lot of people do not fancy this type of activism. It is messy, dangerous, and often completely thankless. Schindler survived as long as he did after the war due to those he saved helping him with donations. He was not popular in his hometown due to his association with Nazis, he was not popular in Germany, he was not popular in Argentina. His businesses all failed. His wife left him. A movie about his deeds was released several years after his death, where he would receive none of the benefits. He went to prison multiple times for simply refusing to hate Jews.

I think a lot of people like to think they're activists, but are sorely unprepared for doing this type of work, and then in truth become activists in name only. This is hard work. But without him, another thousand or so people would be on that death toll.

He took his position of extreme power- a Nazi owning a factory almost entirely operated by Jews, making oodles of money off that cheap slave labor- and said you know what? No. I'm not doing that. I can't save everyone, but as long as they are within my factory, you will not kill my workers. As long as I'm here you aren't harming one hair on the head of any Jew under my care. You're not sending or keeping them in Auschwitz. You're not randomly executing them for entertainment. They're people. You're not murdering them.

"Just following orders" they say. But they didn't have to. They could have helped. They could have did what he did, look around and say "what the fuck am I doing here", and stop. He did. They could have. They didn't.

[littlebatgames]

How to make a powerful, hot vampire you still want to hug

Hi tumblr! I'm Cyrus Nemati, creative director at Little Bat Games, and a voice actor you might know from games likes Hades (I did the really secure guy and the really insecure guy).

We're closing in on the release of our debut title, Vampire Therapist, and based on tumblr's response in the past, I think you might be interested in seeing our creative process.

Andromachos is our 3000-year-old vampire mentor you'll meet early in Vampire Therapist. He's a complicated character: he was an assassin and warrior for most of his 3000 years, but a personal crisis put him on a voyage of self-discovery in the 1800s. Therapy never existed in his time, but as it developed, so did he. We needed a character who expressed wisdom and strength, but also gentleness and compassion. And of course, he's a vampire in a sexy vampire game. He needed to look like a Mediterranean dream.

This was our initial sketch of Andromachos by art director Ruth Bosch (https://x.com/rthbosch). As you can see, he's already oozing confident vampire energy, and he clearly has the wisdom of 3000 years. This is someone you want as your therapist. Vampire Therapist is a game with specific needs, and a certain lightheartedness is one of them. This Andromachos is very much grounded in reality, and just might be *too* realistically sexy.

This was @nomnomroko's first test render for Andromachos before joining the team. Right away, she understood the *figure* of Andromachos and poise of a man who has lived for 3000 years, but this was a more villainous (albeit super hot character). We toned him down shortly after, and brought back in some of the more grounded humanity from Ruth's initial sketch. You can make fan art of this version, though, we won't mind. This version might come back if we ever do a prequel!

Here's his toned down version, already much closer to the Andromachos we see in the final game. He's lost none of his power, but is already the welcoming presence we needed to have in Vampire Therapist.

Body language is also a key aspect of our game. In a game about therapy, we are mostly sitting, so the ways we can express emotion and intention are more subtle. You can already see the strength of Andromachos's character here.

Which takes us to our final rendering!

I love Andromachos. Or Andy, as more familiar folk call him. And I think you will, too. To me, he's a perfect synthesis between Ruth's initial rendering and Sybille's test that fits the comedic, warm, and very human tone of our game.

You can check out our game on Steam and GOG, and your wishlists will make algorithms happy. As you know, everything is algorithms! Help us make Vampire Therapist 2?

Steam:

And GOG:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Google’s trial secrecy lets it control the coverage

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

"Corporate crime" is practically an oxymoron in America. While it's true that the single most consequential and profligate theft in America is wage theft, its mechanisms are so obscure and, well, dull that it's easy to sell us on the false impression that the real problem is shoplifting:

https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime

Corporate crime is often hidden behind Dana Clare's Shield Of Boringness, cloaked in euphemisms like "risk and compliance" or that old favorite, "white collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

And corporate crime has a kind of performative complexity. The crimes come to us wreathed in specialized jargon and technical terminology that make them hard to discern. Which is wild, because corporate crimes occur on a scale that other crimes – even those committed by organized crime – can't hope to match:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After decades of official tolerance (and even encouragement), corporate criminals are finally in the crosshairs of federal enforcers. Take National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's ruling in Cemex: when a company takes an illegal action to affect the outcome of a union election, the consequence is now automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

That's a huge deal. Before, a boss could fire union organizers and intimidate workers, scuttle the union election, and then, months or years later, pay a fine and some back-wages…and the union would be smashed.

The scale of corporate crime is directly proportional to the scale of corporations themselves. Big companies aren't (necessarily) led by worse people, but even small sins committed by the very largest companies can affect millions of lives.

That's why antitrust is so key to fighting corporate crime. To make corporate crimes less harmful, we must keep companies from attaining harmful scale. Big companies aren't just too big to fail and too big to jail – they're also too big for peaceful coexistence with a society of laws.

The revival of antitrust enforcement is such a breath of fresh air, but it's also fighting headwinds. For one thing, there's 40 years of bad precedent from the nightmare years of pro-monopoly Reaganomics to overturn:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

It's not just precedents in the outcomes of trials, either. Trial procedure has also been remade to favor corporations, with judges helping companies stack the deck in their own favor. The biggest factor here is secrecy: blocking recording devices from courts, refusing to livestream the proceedings, allowing accused corporate criminals to clear the courtroom when their executives take the stand, and redacting or suppressing the exhibits:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-27-redacted-case-against-amazon/

When a corporation can hide evidence and testimony from the public and the press, it gains broad latitude to dispute critics, including government enforcers, based on evidence that no one is allowed to see, or, in many cases, even describe. Take Project Nessie, the program that the FTC claims Amazon used to compel third-party sellers to hike prices across many categories of goods:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices-6c593706

Amazon told the press that the FTC has "grossly mischaracterize[d]" Project Nessie. The DoJ disagrees, but it can't say why, because the Project Nessie files it based its accusations on have been redacted, at Amazon's insistence. Rather than rebutting Amazon's claim, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar could only say "We once again call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices."

It's quite a devastating gambit: when critics and prosecutors make specific allegations about corporate crimes, the corporation gets to tell journalists, "No, that's wrong, but you're not allowed to see the reason we say it's wrong."

It's a way to work the refs, to get journalists – or their editors – to wreathe bold claims in endless hedging language, or to avoid reporting on the most shocking allegations altogether. This, in turn, keeps corporate trials out of the public eye, which reassures judges that they can defer to further corporate demands for opacity without facing an outcry.

That's a tactic that serves Google well. When the company was dragged into court by the DoJ Antitrust Division, it demanded – and received – a veil of secrecy that is especially ironic given the company's promise "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful":

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

While this veil has parted somewhat, it is still intact enough to allow the company to work the refs and kill disfavorable reporting from the trial. Last week, Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – published an editorial in Wired reporting on her impression of an explosive moment in the Google trial:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

According to Gray, Google had run a program to mess with the "semantic matching" on queries, silently appending terms to users' searches that caused them to return more ads – and worse results. This generated more revenue for Google, at the expense of advertisers who got billed to serve ads that didn't even match user queries.

Google forcefully disputed this claim:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297

They contacted Gray's editors at Wired, but declined to release all the exhibits and testimony that Gray used to form her conclusions about Google's conduct; instead, they provided a subset of the relevant materials, which cast doubt on Gray's accusations.

Wired removed Gray's piece, with an unsigned notice that "WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

But Gray stands by her piece. She admits that she might have gotten some of the fine details wrong, but that these were not material to the overall point of her story, that Google manipulated search queries to serve more ads at the expense of the quality of the results:

https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1711035354134794529

She says that the piece could and should have been amended to reflect these fine-grained corrections, but that in the absence of a full record of the testimony and exhibits, it was impossible for her to prove to her editors that her piece was substantively correct.

I reviewed the limited evidence that Google permitted to be released and I find her defense compelling. Perhaps you don't. But the only way we can factually resolve this dispute is for Google to release the materials that they claim will exonerate them. And they won't, though this is fully within their power.

I've seen this playbook before. During the early months of the pandemic, a billionaire who owned a notorious cyberwarfare company used UK libel threats to erase this fact from the internet – including my own reporting – on the grounds that the underlying research made small, non-material errors in characterizing a hellishly complex financial Rube Goldberg machine that was, in my opinion, deliberately designed to confuse investigators.

Like the corporate crimes revealed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, the gambit is complicated, but it's not sophisticated:

Make everything as complicated as possible;

Make everything as secret as possible;

Dismiss any accusations by claiming errors in the account of the deliberately complex arrangements, which can't be rectified because the relevant materials are a secret.

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/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Jason Rosenberg (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/underpants/12069086054/

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

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

[commodifyme]

I know some of you follow me because you listen to Big Soy Naturals, but if you aren’t a listener then you may not be aware of the fundraiser for a friend’s family in Gaza that we are trying to help meet its goal as soon as possible.

The Himdan family is displaced as a result of Wasrael’s attacks and are struggling to afford basic necessities like food, clean water, diapers and medicine.

Wasrael consistently blocks aid, and when aid does arrive, the IOF opens fire on Palestinians gathering to receive it, which makes these resources very scarce. We are lucky to have a listener audience large enough that if each person gave $3, the fundraiser would be complete before our next release, but I know not everyone has $3 to spare.

That’s why we’re going to make use of the collective power of all our communities’ reach and ask all of you to share this post and text the link to this gofundme to anyone you know with the means to donate even $3.

For as long as Wasrael occupies the land and attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, we must see the suffering of our siblings in Palestine as our collective responsibility. We must believe in the need for their liberation to be as important as our own.

If you have over $1000 in your bank account, please donate just $5 to the fundraiser. If you have more to spare, that’s great, but small donations can make a huge difference if we all share the burden. If you can’t donate, you can help this fundraiser break out of the social media algorithm suppression chamber by sharing and interacting with this same post here and on our twitter and instagram.

Thank you for reading! Here’s the link to the fundraiser one more time. 🇵🇸 From the river to the sea, baby!! 🍉

[ohnoitstbskyen]

... y'all know Lae'zel is acting scared, right?

Video transcription: I've seen a lot of comments on my short about Lae'zel dismissing her entire character because she's mean and… I'm just checking in here… you guys know she's scared, right? She's terrified. She was kidnapped by the worst monster she knows, infected with the most horrifying death anyone in her culture can have, and then stranded on a hostile world, alone, with nothing to guide her except the dogmatic military cult indoctrination of a cruel lich demigod, telling her that her only hope of salvation is to follow Gith doctrine with total unyielding faith. And still she tries to save you. When she keeps insisting that you must get to the Githyanki crèche, it's our only hope, she's trying to guide you towards the only salvation she knows from the parasite, so she can share it with you. And Gith... aren't supposed to do that, saving an outsider is not part of the doctrine, she's breaking the rules trying to do right by you. None of that means she's not being an asshole, she's rude, dogmatic and unpleasant. But everything she does comes from a genuine, very misguided and abrasive, desire to do the right thing. It doesn't make her behaviour okay, but there is more to her character than just "being the mean one."

To expand on this a bit more than I can in a 60 second short, people acting from fear and from their damage is a major theme among the Baldur's Gate 3 companions.

Lae'zel is terrified and falling back on the only thing she believes will give her back some control over her situation, which is the dogma of the military cult she's in. Shadowheart is much the same, amnesiac and grasping on to the only solid thing she knows, which is her faith, which preaches deception, loss and duplicity as the only certain factors in life.

Gale is an inveterate people-pleaser desperately dependent on other people to help him feed his magic addiction, with his overtly affable exterior hiding a rolling boulder of guilt, ambition, greed, arrogance and legitimate hurt. Asterion is... well, no way to really lay out his deal without spoiling, but the boy has been through it and his self-destructive, hedonistic and selfish impulses are all coping mechanism and self-defense all the time.

None of that make their shitty behaviours okay, but in a fictional story, those kinds of flaws and toxic behaviours are what make for interesting stories and characters. I don't blame anyone for finding Lae'zel unpleasant and abrasive, but I do get a bit Old Man Yells At Cloud about people who casually brag about shoving her off a cliff-side, or murdering her because "she was a bitch" or whatever.

Like... being unable to face discomfort in your media is not a virtue, and lashing out reactively against fiction that doesn't validate your power fantasy isn't a flex.

Of course, I saw a lot of those reactions in YouTube comments and on social media, so my sample is biased by those algorithms, but still. A lot of people seem aggressively proud that they never engaged with her story because the terrified indoctrinated child-soldier wasn't immediately nice to them and I can't explain it but something about that reaction feels puritan to me.

[makingqueerhistory]

Invitation: Making Queer History in 2024

The urgency around learning and uncovering queer history feels more present than ever. Queer stories are being suppressed globally, and much of that includes the queer community's long legacy. It is easier to erase a group of people when they are unaware of their roots. That's why in 2024, we are inviting everyone to make an active choice to learn more about queer history. That can look different for different people, but here are some suggestions:

Read queer books, there is a reason queer books are being banned. They are powerful tools to connect community, use them. Read them, request them from your library, support queer authors in these uncertain times. (The masterlist linked is an affiliate link)

Follow queer accounts on social media, if possible, social media is a regularity in many of our lives, and it's a great way to keep queerness and queer history present in your mind. Our social media are here on Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Sign up for newsletters about queer history, email newsletters are a lot harder to suppress with algorithms. https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/ https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/ https://www.glbthistory.org/newsletter https://arquives.ca/

Look for and record queer history in your local community, there are lots of city-specific queer history projects around the world, and they would love your stories. If you don't have stories, see if you can find some. Queering the Map is a great alternative if there is no queer center in your city.

Learn and share queer history with your friends, talking about queerness in history does more than spread awareness it builds a legacy for often forgotten figures.

Support queer history projects, queer history costs a lot of money to research. With academic paywalls, language differences, and active erasure, this job is not easy. Help queer history projects continue by supporting them financially.

As the year ends, most people start thinking about their goals, and many will be discarded as 2024 goes on, which is why I put a lot of options, both long-term and short-term ones, on this list. Almost all of them are immediately actionable, though. You can do them right now on your phone, and I encourage you to. A lot of people talk about the importance of queer history, but the active choice to preserve and uplift history is much rarer. Don't let queer history slip through the cracks, not when so many people are trying to sweep it out of the narrative entirely.

[animentality]

Dude I'm so confused

Why are the redditors refugees here-

Whats up with the tag 196

AND WHY IS EVERYONE BEING SO NICE WITH THE TWITTER REFUGEES CAME WE GAVE THEM HELL (almost)

The Reddit refugees are here because several subreddits have gone private in protest of reddit's new policy of charging third party developers for access to its API.

Hence the term reddit blackout.

196 specifically was a very queer friendly subreddit that had one rule: that you post before you leave. 196 is trending because those Redditors have come here and they're basically sharing their memery here instead as they protest reddit's greed.

As for why we're welcoming them when Twitter refugees were seen with a little more irritation, well.

Think of the culture similarities.

Tumblr and reddit have far more in common than Tumblr and Twitter.

Twitter is about clout and manipulating algorithms and discourse in 280 characters or less. It's about bad takes that reach the right people and it forces you to see things you don't want to see and it's crawling with the worst people imaginable and you're forced to see them, all the time. They also brought bad tagging and 2016 Tumblr discourse with them, because Twitter culture really involves starting fights for clout and braindead opinions that no one really wants to come back to Tumblr culture.

There was a time when Tumblr did the same thing, but worse, with more words...but nowadays, it's really calmed down.

The worst people...went to Twitter after the porn ban. Ironically, it made the site less toxic and hostile.

But then they came back.

And it was like...hm. no thanks. Stay back where you came from.

But Tumblr and Reddit have much more in common.

Both have a more streamlined way of customizing your online feed. You can choose what subreddits you see on your home screen, just like Tumblr only shows you the content of your followers, on your dashboard, and in chronological order rather than what's trending. You can join a very specific weird niche group of freaks with a shared obsession, and not care about the rest of the site at all. You also don't have a character limit on either site, which lets you ramble more and share weird detailed stories.

Reddit might have karma, but like Tumblr, the majority of people are lurkers and not posters. It also allows you to downvote bad opinions, and moderators who have to adhere to certain guidelines of behavior, which means a lot of banning disruptive people.

Granted, sometimes their mods are power hungry, but. You know.

It does more to control its users than Tumblr do, and that's a good thing in terms of keeping toxicity and illegal shit off its subs.

Reddit also has a way more leftwing attitude than you would think.

It has a reputation for being full of incels but I honestly think that's outdated.

It's cleaned up its act quite a bit since the old days.

I see way more vile shit from Twitter and TikTok. Like seriously.

Twitter is crawling with conservative bots and propaganda machines and just outright inflammatory lies. TikTok literally has the worst comment sections I've ever seen, like edgy teenagers cracking racist and misogynistic humor and acting like it makes them different and special. Its algorithm also spoon feeds you garbage and is designed to be as addicting as possible.

At least reddit's culture, while chauvinistic and regressive in certain subcultures, is mostly on the tech positive, atheist libertarian side.

It can be a little pretentious and caustic about certain subjects, and a little full of itself. Some reddits are also very male leaning and disregard female concerns in favor of moaning about how men have it worse than anyone else on earth.

But for the most part?

...well.

I welcome them here, because if they left reddit in protest, then we always support protests. But 196 specifically is also a queer subreddit, and we support that even more.

Plus they're funny as fuck.

What's not to like, really?

You should welcome them with open arms too.

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 8:

"'Censorship Made It Better': Anti-Fans and Purity Culture in English-Language Chen Qing Ling Fandom" by Abby Springman

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

Rejoice! MDZS has been cancelled!

What drew you to this topic?

When I got into CQL fandom and started lurking on its outskirts on Twitter, I started getting this weird sense of déjà vu. There was this bizarre similarity between the arguments I was seeing about the aspects of CQL/MDZS and their fandoms being "problematic" from a progressive, social justice point of view and the demands for censorship in American libraries that conservative groups were (and still are) making at an alarmingly increasing rate. In an attempt to make sense of this, I fell down what ended up being a really long rabbit hole, and, well, here we are.

Was there anything you were surprised to discover while researching?

I was surprised by the wide variety of fannish backgrounds found amongst members of English-language CQL fandom! I'm not used to seeing so many different "areas" of fandom intersect over a single piece of media like this. Some folks are primarily into the live action movies and TV shows side of things, some are mostly in bandom, some (like me) are traditionally a part of the anime, manga, and gaming contingent, etc. I think that's fascinating, honestly.

Did researching/writing your chapter change how you saw the text, the fandom, or the media? How so?

I didn't use the block button on Tumblr or Twitter for anyone in the fandom while I was working on my chapter. It definitely changed how I saw fandom on those platforms—literally. It really highlighted how much power social media algorithms have over what kind of content is presented to us front and center.

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

I'll be thrilled if it makes people think about "problematic" content in less black-and-white terms. They don't have to necessarily agree with my conclusions! But if my words make even one person stop and think more about context before posting a reactionary comment, then that would be great.

If you were isekai-ed into MDZS/CQL, what sect affiliation would you choose and why?

The Lan. My existing skills are most likely to be applicable there (see: the library), it seems easy to find some peace and quiet when you need it, there are bunnies, and Hanguang-jun is there.

Chaotic one-sentence pitch to get your friends into MDZS/CQL?

My elevator pitch for CQL has historically been, "It's the adaptation of a book about a gay necromancer, except they can't actually show the gay romance or the zombies on screen."

What is one (1) book/media you would recommend to a MDZS/CQL fan? Tell us about it.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. It's probably the most accessible collection of Chinese stories of the supernatural available in English. If MDZS/CQL was your first exposure to traditional Chinese cultural beliefs about ghosts, exorcisms, and the like, this is a great introduction to the less xianxia-specific aspects. If that isn't the case for you, I still highly recommend it on its own merits!

Character you keep getting in those "which MDZS/CQL character are you" quizzes?

Wen Ning

Anything to say to potential readers of the collection?

Thank you, and I'm sorry—no, that's a joke. More seriously, I really am thankful for anyone interested in the collection. It's the product of years of hard work by many people, and I'm sure there's an interesting chapter in there for everyone.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[lovetei]

Heyyy,

I saw your toxic things the demon bros will do to keep you with them and i absolutely fell in love with. More of, my mental health issues felll in love with- ANYGAYSzz

I was wondering if you could maybe do the same for the side characters¿¿¿¿

Also did you drink water today? Cuz if thats a no here you go 💧💧💧💧

And some cookies just incase 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

Love anonymous 👑

I'm not actually supposed to post anything for tonight, because I don't know? I didn't get to start anything this morning so I crammed this post T_T

But love lots! Hope you enjoy this piece ^^

But seriously, I was like "Oh shit, the algorithm I don't have!" And proceed to finish this.

--------------------------------------------------

What are the most toxic thing they will do in a relationship just to make you stay with them?

Versions: Demon brothers, Side Characters

Warnings: Manipulation, yandere themes, execution, mention of torture, psychological torture, love potions, Mentions of murder, framing, alcohol

Links: Masterlist

--------------------------------------------------

DIAVOLO will use his authority

He's already so happy to have you by his side

And by staying there you already secured the position of the next ruler that will stand beside him

So, why do you have to leave..?

And the reasons

"I'm not fit enough..."

"I don't deserve this much..!"

"There are more people out there that are more worthy than me..."

Won't cut it.

He knows your worth and he's sure you do too.

So why?

Perhaps you're just nervous that you won't be able to match his grace?

You don't need to.

His grace is unmatched among the demons and yours is too among the mortals.

You both are on the same chapter, just on different pages.

So why make things hard for yourself?!

All you need to do is say yes and everything will be taken care of.

Clothes, food, money, status, security and literally anything.

He loves you and you does too so it's not going to be a marriage with no love...

SO WHY?

You're starting to drive him insane, MC.

And he might just do the same to you

So he'll invite you over for a fancy dinner and a few drinks

You accepted, despite knowing that Diavolo might try something after he got you drunk

Thinking that Diavolo forgot that you can't get drunk by just a basic demonus

Fool

That's what you are for thinking Diavolo actually misses something, anything about you

So he changed the bottle of demonus to an actual human liquor but neutralized it's taste by the help of his one, loyal servant

Barbatos

Not even two hour passed by and you're already putty in his hands

Dancing just like how he wants it on his palms

Then he'll slide a paper into the table to you, together with a beautiful pen

He then point at an empty line with his finger and said "Look at that MC, this line right here wants your signature."

"Hmm, why?~"

"Because it's such a huge fan of you and it needs you to become something, someone better, so why don't you give it a sign?" Is what he said while smirking.

And there you are, signing the papers while your mind is clouded with alcohol

Oh what is it?

Just a marriage contract

You don't want it?

Look into rules and regulations, Claus 5

It's against your human rights?

How foolish, you're not in the human world.

You will tell the whole Devildom about it?

Lèse majesté

And what's the punishment for committing that? Simple.

Death.

BARBATOS and his timeline power

He loves you

So much actually

At first, it was fun to be in a relationship with him

It's fun, slowly opening him up like a present and seeing the gift, a part of him that only you know.

He builds up trust for you and so do you for him

Then it started to get suffocating

He won't admit it openly but you know,

You know that the one who kills anyone who dared act close with you is him

And it terrifies you

You may allow it if it actually harms you, severely

But it's not for your protection anymore

He's doing it out of pure annoyance now

He doesn't like you around the brothers

The angels

Solomon

Thirteen

Or even Lord Diavolo

In fact, he doesn't want you around anyone.

And it's making you feel more unsafe

He's starting to isolate you from everyone and everything

He's trying to isolate you from the world

So you decided to end things with him

And he doesn't seem to take it lightly like how you expected...

How did you know?

Simple.

You woke up weeks before that break up happened

You know how it happened and you know who made it happen

It's none other than your boyfriend of course

You thought that maybe if you talk nicely with him he'll actually understand the problem

But he didn't

He started to get more and more aggressive with you

Then when the week end

It repeats

And repeats

And repeats

And repeats again

And again

But it will keep going on like that until you learn

Until you learn that there's no other option than him

No other ending than him

He doesn't mind driving you crazy if it means you'll continue to love him

So good luck, MC.

SIMEON might just ask Father for help

Ho doesn't understand!

Why would you want to break up with him?!

He did everything, MC!

It's not clear!

Nothing is clear!

You just belive that you two are not fit together..?

You don't want him to end up like Lilith..?

He doesn't care!

He'll burn these precious, white wings for you!

He'll kill for you!

He'd actually prefer to end up like Lilith rather than this!

Because, at least, Lilith managed to be with her love until her life ended...

He'd rather be a demon or a human rather then live like the adored angel he is without you...

...

You'll still leave huh?

Alright then.

I guess he has no choice but to ask Father for help

What do you mean it will cause him to fall? Oh dear, it won't.

It might actually even promote him into a higher rank.

Father wants you in his side.

In fact, the whole celestial realm want you on this side

So when he asked "Father, it seems that we need to take even larger measure to have MC side with us. What do you think we can do?"

...oh?

Luke?

What a brilliant plan.

Now,

Let's see if you can still leave knowing an innocent life, Luke, will be put under danger because of this tantrum,

Because of you.

SOLOMON and his hidden antics

Oh dear, angel

His little devil

His most prized possession

His favorite concubine,

You won't be leaving him anytime soon, dear.

When you told him that "I want to break up with you."

He kept himself quite for a while before answering "Let me give it some thought, MC. For now, stay with me."

And just as he expected you listened obediently.

But then, his grip around your waits became more rough

And the hand he used to playfully wrap around your neck became more tight

It's hard...

It's hard to feed you his love laced cooking

But he found out that you just loves, adored even, Luke's baked cookies...

And since you're a human, he knows that Luke creates special cookies just for you

One that don't contain exotic ingredients that will upset your stomach

And it just made the work of latching love potions easier for him

He'll just add a few drops and it will do the magic for him

So, all he has to do sit tight

And wait for you to crawl back to his lap yourself.

RAPHAEL will use spears for example

Haha...

But he loves you, MC..?

He might just start crying if you say more

"Sure... But I'll make sure you'll come back to me..!"

At first, it sounded like a joke and it's funny enough to make you giggle

The beautiful memories of peaceful separation didn't last long after you saw a dead body pinned by spears though

His spears, to be specific

It doesn't even make sense

You don't even know this guy...

He hasn't talk to you and you don't even know him

Hell, you don't even recognize his face...

So what's the catch?

Why is he killing completely random people...

That's what have been running around your mind

You haven't seen him around RAD anymore

And if you do he refuse to answer your questions

Except his face will lightly flush and he'll even smile a little before sa say "Ah~ It's nice hearing your voice..."

His tone, the way he says it, none of theme are innocent

And he made it known that he knows what he's doing

The curiosity didn't last long

Until you found out that the corpses aren't for you from him as a threat

It was for the families of the victims

You found out that each of them have high power among the nobilities of Devildom

And he killed them to make the families think that you're telling him to do so

It's not to make you feel guilty, it for them to start attacking you

Until you're pushed back to a corner where no one else can save you

Except for him.

MEPHISTOPHELES's way only

Ha...

Man he loves you so much...

But all he do is stare at you blankly after you told him you ant to break up

Staring at you like you're just some kid throwing a tantrum

It's Mephistopheles in front of you, I mean, he's rich, handsome, tall, smart and has good family background

If he's a human everybody would have gone crazy over him already

Plus he wears heels and he has a sexy cane

What more could you ask for?

But yeah...

You don't want to be with him forever?

Sure, he'll talk to Diavolo.

"I'll buy MC's contract and I'll put them under my wing." Is all the reason he needs to say and a few more to have Diavolo selling you

What about your family?

This amount will do right?

I mean...

He paid for what your worth so don't expect it to be much.

Anyways, you're his now

By the eyes of the law, money and his

He'll never let you get away?

And if you did try to?

He'll simply frame you for treason and let's see if you won't come crawling back to him

After finding out that he can choose what type of punishment, torture method, to give you.

But don't worry.

He likes the game cat and mouse

He don't like playing it for a long time though

So be careful

His patience isn't as long as the line of money and connection ahead of him

THIRTEEN basically holds your life

Break up?

"You're not." Is all she said as she holds your candle

She's grinning widely as she let your candle melt, its 's wax falling directly in her hands

"Why would you even want to?" She asked even though she knows, no reason can separate the two of you

And if you did say "I don't care." as she holds you candle

She might just accidentally extinguish one of your loved ones candles

So be careful, MC.

Among everyone

She's the only one who won't joke around.

And just so you know

Her patience is shorter than the amount of time it requires to kill someone's fire off of their candle.

[hana-no-seiiki]

YANDERE ! SAGAU (SAHSRAU?) ! NANOOK x READER

Omfg this is exactly what I was thinking!! I wasn’t gonna post more stuff today but I couldn’t help but think about petty Nanook.

I keep my Stelle at Destruction because of this and cause I have Himeko as a fire dps already.

In any case,

Just imagine Nanook, with all the golden liquid in their hands just shaking it around in anger. You'd think they’ll try destroying TrailBlazer but nooo what they do is even worse. They make sure that every being on their legion attacks everyone but you even when you taunt.

Somehow none of your enemies have a fire weakness and all of it demands a physical dps.

You try building Sushang to compensate? Too bad so sad. She’s dead before you even get a turn with her. Bailu ain’t helping you here either.

And at this point if you the player doesnt give up and idk does something like report it as a bug, they’re already ahead of ya. Sending a message through Hook (mostly cause i thought it’d be funny but also cause she’s in the path of destruction) saying that her honorary member just has to switch back!

Hell he’ll even show a tutorial for you in case you forgot how (like my dumb ass did for a while)

He buffs TrailBlazer like hell and even manipulates your algorithm when you see stuff about HSR. Destruction TrailBlazer is just better. Don’t look at those tier lists, they don’t mean anything! Don’t you see the amount of damage you do?

The upsides (if you see having Destruction TrailBlazer in your team 24/7 as a downside) are that your drops are mmm 👌🏻 godlike. Your TrailBlazer power refills so goddamn quickly. Any destruction character’s banner you pull on has higher chances of appearing.

And last but not least, doesn’t matter if your team and build is ass, as long as you have the destruction path in the simulated world. You’ve already won.

[drchucktingle]

I have a Bury Your Gays question. All the victims of Mrs. Why that we have SEEN are rendered catatonic by existential cosmic hopelessness. Would there be any victims you could see being taken by an existential EUPHORIA instead. Still trapped in the visions, but vibing in the perpetual ebb and flow of existence rather than horrified?

GOOD QUESTION buckaroo

SOME SPOILERS IN ANWSER, so if you have not read bury your gays yet then do that and come back

anyway mrs whys power is to show the end and beginning of the universe which is too much for mortal human brains to grasp and kind of sends them into a catatonic nihilistic state. they will eventually starve to death. NOT FUN. but here is the thing, MRS WHY is FICTIONAL. she is part of a tv show called TRAVELERS (and loosely based on mishas IDEA of agent y from a show called dark encounters).

point is SHE IS NOT REAL. her power implies a dystopian view of existence because that was the view of the show she is on. HOWEVER i personally believe existence is proof of love, and i have a positive view of existence and creation

so it is my belief that in REAL LIFE, outside of books, if mrs why was trottin around on our timeline, her touch could very well cause euphoria instead. that is almost a broader philosophical question of 'what lies at the end of this timeline?'

the issue is that in BURY YOUR GAYS, when mrs why 'comes to life', she does not really come to life. it is an approximation of the character. she is not ACTUALLY causing the buckaroos she touches to see the end of time, she just makes them act like that. a KEEN EYED READER will notice this is revealed when the news talks about the dust and metal found in the catatonic victims brain scans

some readers have had this question of WHY certain victims of mrs why got better once they have this knowledge. you cant just TURN OFF the knowledge you gain, and that is true. the answer is because AFTER YOU UNDERSTAND THE TWIST OF BURY YOUR GAYS you can infer that she does not ACTUALLY have the power to show anyone anything, she just has the power to make buckaroos ACT that way. of course, this will have the same result on a long enough trot (starving to death) but FORTUNATELY it can also be turned off if that is beneficial to the algorithm