#eff reads: the one

[wafflesrisa]

ADHD hyperfixation is really something else because imagine talking to your colleague at your sad grey corporate job about a sad grey corporate project and 95% of your brainpower is actually trying to Macguyver a way to naturally work the conversation towards tactical techniques for armed assault on fortified locations or recipes for Russian pelmeni dumplings

[randomnameless]

Would have been cool if they had gone with their original idea of Galerius becoming an evil centaur Unicorn while Alain becomes a Unicorn with his chosen maiden riding him.

I think this would have needed too many rewrites of the plot to go anywhere lol

But now I'm imagining maiden-Mordon riding Unicorn!Alain and I can't ignore it anymore

From what I could understand (and what I put through the GT lens, this artbook has so many stuff I want to understand lol idk where to start!) some ideas from the beta version was about having an unit called "unicorn knight" - whose model was later re-used to make Virginia/Ilenia and Alain - but idk if the main lead - they designed the "prince" unit, that was re-used for Gilbert! - was able to turn in an unicorn, like proto-alain, or if it was from another scrapped draft thing.

They also had ideas about adding monsters on the fields, but dropped it so the only "remains" from this idea are the bones from Drakengard and Baltro's ominous lines.

TBH... I don't know if I would have appreciated this "monster" inclusion given how Fodlan completely botchered it (but then UO seems to have been designed with more care than Fe Fodlan so...) but if they went through the "and Baltro resurrects long dead/forgotten monsters to fight against the party!" it'd have been to reminiscent of a FE game where a Gharnef like resurrects "dragons" to fight/use against the party lol

Galerius' evil centaur thing, like him having a second transformation/phase would have been neat, and yet, I still think painting him as a "red emperor" was, despite the ties to FE, really nice, in the sense that Galerius is Alain's foil and would be a "him" that didn't bother to read to the plot, thus gets fucked by it at the end (Baltro doing Baltro things once again, since it was his idea in the first place to kill an unicorn!).

But then, I suppose if centaur!Galerius and unicorn!Alain were kept in the final product, VW would have found a way to write them in an acceptable plot so, who knows?

[eff-exor]

i would never go to olive garden, i hate olives

[emmodii-mode]

Just finished my first playthrough of BG3. Romanced Lae'zel, but ending up turning into an Illithid because the idea of making Orpheus or Karlach do it didn't sit well with me (or my character).

I told Lae'zel to leave with Orpheus in the end (I heard she wouldn't stay with a ghaik anyway, which she's valid for, but also, it doesn't feel right to ask her to stay when I know how much her people mean to her). And like-

Her face before she flies off---

She looks so heartbroken and sad.

[nick-cassidy]

x

[bcyhoods]

im either so incredibly dumb or this assignment makes no sense

[anachronistic-falsehood]

still thinking about putting the eff boys in worm. ouhghh putting alex sawyer thru ten times the horrors by giving him devastating powers he doesn’t want to keep <333

[pit--rat]

the best part of his books is that light and love and trust and laughter are the strongest forces in the world

which seems odd for horror novels about the apocalypse but

it really feels like the ethos of these books is that the brightest parts of humanity can triumph over anything, both the darkest recesses of humanity and incomprehensible, alien, ageless horrors

that's why i re-read these books, not because the concepts are cool or I really like his descriptions (though I do like these things)

it's the real, human friendship and love he depicts in the worst moments of people's lives, it's the characters that learn what really matter and to forgive and trust and move on together and i will hold them all in my heart forever

so many people would break, would lose themselves to that darkness. to the anger, the terror, the horror of the world. but, despite moments of rage, of weakness, of selfishness, these kids, they always come back, they always triumph

[boleynqueenes]

"At this rather intimate gathering (intimate enough that the attendance would render the Great Hall hollow…not that there was ever much chance of the King hosting there, the chamber which is visible and accessible from the King and Queen's watching chambers, but here, here said Queen cannot enter without kingly permission), he watches the mingling lead into dance whilst sipping water, the only water safe to drink of this isle, far as he knows (the same, ferried from Rosamund's Spring in Woodstock, for it is certain the King wishes the newly arrived cardinal to believe there is nothing Rome has that excels anything available in England—although of course there is), splashed with just enough cold, crisp ale to flavor."

—Nowe Thus: Chapter 12

[demonictumble]

Im trying to post but the app is blending my words with the background??

[deus-ex-mona]

✨baller✨ results tbh~

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You should be using an RSS reader

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

[eglerieth]

Some of y’all are not appreciating Bilbo Baggins enough. I am here to remedy that. This guy has:

• somehow managed to establish himself as a respectable, staid hobbit by the time he was fifty, despite being both a grandson of Bullroarer Took and the Shire champion of pretty much every aiming-game known to hobbitkind

• had an in-depth debate on pleasantries with a random guy passing by in the street, who turned out to be GANDALF

• collapsed in front of his own fire shaking and muttering “struck by lightning” over and over again in response to hearing about dragons and danger

• mind you, this was after he screamed loud enough to startle a roomful of Dwarves

• signed up for a dangerous quest completely outside of his league out of spite

• when told to scout out a mysterious light, saw some trolls, and instead of reporting back with the information, decided to PICK THE TROLLS POCKET

• arrived in Rivendell for the first time and said it “smelled like elves”

• upon meeting a strange creature that visibly wanted to eat him, he decided to play a riddle game with him- and guessed pretty much every one, and made up his own riddles, afraid and alone, that not only were good and full of linguistic puns, but actually stumped the other guy- AND THEN CHEATED AND WON WITH A QUESTION

• showed mercy to said strange creature who wanted to kill him, and was now standing between him and freedom

• eavesdropped on the dwarves arguing over whether to try to save him, then popped up casually smack in the middle of them just as they were debating

• somehow managed to sleep like a log at the really really high eyrie full of wild predators

• found himself in a bad situation, said eff it, and turned around and antagonized and fought off an insane amount of man eating spiders, like enough of them that fifty was a small portion, by singing at them with incredibly complex and punny insulting songs composed on the spot, while simultaneously slaying them in multitudes despite having zero combat training. Seriously, we don’t discuss enough how epic the spider scene is.

• broke a company of dwarves out of the very secure prison of the Elvenking by inventing white water rafting with barrels

• charmed his way out of being eaten by a dragon

• stole the frickin Arkenstone from the guys who employed him, one of whom was a king

• took part in an epic battle, only to be knocked out in the first ten minutes and miss the entire thing

• was named elf-friend by the guy who’s prisoners he sprung

• wrote his own autobiography, complete with all the narrative recognition of his own heroics

• spent 60 years writing said autobiography

• taught his lower class neighbor’s kid how to read

• taught his nephew Elvish- not only Sindarin, but Quenya too

• spent decades telling his cousins his own story as fairy tales, complete with character impressions accurate enough that one of them was able to fool a servant of the Enemy with a second hand impression

• used the One Ring of Power to hide from his neighbors

• planned an elaborate feast with multiple social faux pas to mess with his neighbors, complete with a purposefully bewildering speech and culminating in him vanishing into thin air in front of everyone

• left his cousins and neighbors very unsubtle passive aggressive gifts in his will

• settled into Rivendell, randomly befriended the heir to the throne of like half of Middle Earth, and apparently spent his time writing very personal poems about his hosts and reciting them to crowds of elves

• after being invited to a Council of basically every major kingdom in the continent, spent a quarter of the time reciting vague poems about his friends, a quarter of the time telling anyone who would listen about his heroic past, and half the time interrupting to ask when lunch would be

• volunteered to bring the ring to Mordor

• became one of only four or five mortals in history to live in Valinor

Seriously, Bilbo Baggins may well be the most chaotic, insane person in the entire legendarium, and that includes the likes of people like Finrod “bit a werewolf to death to save the life of guy who he just met and gave up his kingdom for” Felagund.

[roger-paladino]

god the hyperfixation is so bad this is embarrassing

[jackson-imbecille]

Man, it always sucks when I’m listening to a fic and the screen reader goes “doubleyou ach ay tee eye ess why oh you are eff ay vee oh are eye tee ee see oh ell oh are doubleyou ach ee are ee dee-”

And I pause it like what the fuck, then find my phone to look at the screen and I see “whatisyourfavoritecolorwhered-”

Like, bro, please, why would you do this?

Or when it starts going “EXEXEXEXEXEXEEEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEXEX!!” Because somebody didn’t use the code for a line break. At least just make it one dash, please.

Like, it’s your fic and you’re writing it for free and that’s cool, so if you see this and you’re like, “mmmm, nah, still gonna do it my way” then that’s chill.

Just know that it’s really difficult for people with screen readers to read some of these fics. Me personally, when I find a fic that does this, I don’t give it a chance no matter how good it is.

[enhard]

nishimura riki — “late night wishes”

: late at night, you find yourself missing him like crazy. what better way to spend your night other than sneaking out together?

not proofread!

pairing: n.rk x gn!reader

cw: fluff, established relationship, cuddling, kissing, just ni-ki being as sweet as ever. (& jay teasing both of you)

——————————⋆·˚ ༘ *🔭——————————

you’re laying on your bed, waiting to fall asleep.. but how can you fall asleep when you can’t stop thinking about your dear boyfriend.

you squish your pillow between your arms and body, wishing that it was riki instead.. holding him in your arms and running your fingers through his silky hair.

the song “one and only” is playing in the background, hearing his voice isn’t helping the situation but.. you love this song. mainly because riki is your one and only.

you tell yourself not to text or call him since he might be busy or he might just want to rest after a long day, but lucky you, he decides to text you first.

from the second you hear the phone bing, you grab your phone to see who’s texting you at this hour.. you can only imagine the excitement on riki’s face when he saw that you read his message, thinking you’re already asleep.

my love🐥🩷

“hey baby, hope you’re not asleep yet.. i need to see you. i know its risky going out right now but i’m craving a kiss from you badly. 😓”

“riki you have no idea how much i miss you, i’ll do anything to see you rn. let’s sneak out.. i wantttt some boba 😜”

“fineee let’s get you your boba.. just because you’re so cute”

“hold on jay is calling me”

“oh he just told me that i need to go to sleep mannnn eff him seriously🙄”

“just ignore himmm ugh i don’t care i need to see you..”

“i’m getting dressed rn, you better be ready by the time i’m outtt”

“fine fine i have to be quick, if jungwon catches me it’s over☠️”

5 minutes later..

“ok i’m getting out right now, are you there?”

“yup, hurryyy it’s cold out”

read 23:06

anddd.. you suddenly see him running up to you. the smile on your face automatically forms, spreading your arms to hug him. he falls into your embrace.. his scent sucking you in even more.

“i missed you so much love.” he says immediately leaning in to kiss you. his leather jacket shining thanks to the fairy lights hung on the boba stand.

you smile, leaning in to kiss him again. “i missed you too. i actually couldn’t sleep because i was thinking about you.”

“oh really? you love me that muchhh? come on. let’s get you your boba.”

as you’re drinking your boba, he can’t help but admire you. he grabs your hand just to feel your warmth.

you end up walking through the park a bit, small lights from the stars shining in your eyes..

riki is holding you close trying to keep you warm. you finally finish your drink so you toss the empty cup into the trash.

“wanna sleep at our dorm?”

“huh?” surprised with his question, trying not to seem too excited.

“yeah i mean, we can sneak in. come sleep in my room, wanna?”

your eyes widen and you grab his arm tightly, getting all bubbly and happy.

“duhh!! come on come on lets go alreadyyy”

riki laughs at you while he’s getting dragged by the arm. —

you get to the dorm, quietly sneaking in, thinking you’re slick but. you get startled by jay’s voice coming from the living room.

“oh you lovebirds came back already?”

“shut up jay. come on baby let’s go.. i’m tired.” riki grabs your hand, walking you to his room.

“oooo if i tell jungwon about thisss”

“no you won’t.”

jay rolls his eyes and lets you guys go, drinking his tea like a middle aged mom.

riki immediately gets in his room, only having a dim light on, his bed looking mad comfortable for your sleepy self.

he gives you a hoodie of his to put on, which is over sized for you but.. it smells like him.

you both get in bed, cuddling so close together, his read resting on your chest. you play with his hair just like you wished almost an hour ago.. he’s whispering sweet nothings as he’s on the verge of falling asleep..

“go to sleep my love.. you must be tired..” you say smiling at him, seeing how his eyes grow heavy.

“i love youuu…” he mumbles.

you both fall asleep hugging each other, warming up yourselves under the blanket. you fall asleep admiring his pretty face.