#i'm so so so so SO TIRED OF THIS

[lord-squiggletits]

Tbh sometimes the culture around gently asking people to comment on fics is so annoying to me. "Leave comments but only if you're comfortable and want to uwu" Actually I think you should leave comments bc that's the one fucking form of compensation we writers are asking for in exchange for the hours we spend writing stories FOR FREE and no I don't really care that it's "hard," it's hard to WRITE too but I still fuckin do it because I love it and get a sense of gratification out of the act of giving.

Like for fuck's sake before I became a Tarnma writer I wrote only MegOP, a literal top 3 of all ships in the fandom, updating regularly for like 3 years on end, regularly being put on rec lists, having over 200 user subscriptions. And yet with the exception of my most popular multichapter fic my comment rate is still fucking abysmal. Dozens or even hundreds of kudos (individual people who liked reading my fic, not hits which is the number of visits) yet I'm lucky if my comment section just hits fucking double digits. Literally one of the top popular writers for a top popular pairing and STILL most of the comments I get are just from my regular readers. They tend to leave comments on every chapter of multichapter fics which means my total number of comments doesn't actually represent the total number of people commenting. Popular fucking writer for a popular fucking ship and my comments section is still abysmal.

I actually don't care any more. Fucking comment on my shit and fucking comment on every writer's shit. I'm tired of only getting new comments for maybe the first few days/week after posting and that's it. I'm tired of feeling like I have to be a content farm constantly pumping out content in order to get any engagement at all, and if a fic is older than a year (or even honestly a few months) I might as well kiss goodbye to ever getting comments on it again.

I actually don't care anymore. If you read a fic every day then fucking tell me. Give me like a handful of fucking sentences telling me SOMETHING I know 99% of people on AO3 have taken a goddamn literature/composition class and know how to do something besides mindlessly consume content. Leave fucking comments it's really not that hard.

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[tyanis]

Kinda feel like there's some untapped meme/reaction image potential from old horror movie trailers...

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Also increasingly aware that a LOT of people "manage" getting through the 40+ hour work week by sleeping less than is healthy and relying on stimulants like coffee and energy drinks to keep them going.

For people who are unwilling or unable to do this...work really does just dominate your life. Like we really should not have to rely on unhealthy practices just to have a social life or keep on top of housework or whatever.

I know I post about this a lot but I'm so TIRED all the time and it's just so depressing that this is how we're expected to spend the one life we have.

[archibaldtuttle]

[lazylittledragon]

made a sticker for anyone to slap onto their work if they need to

[barabones]

I forget exactly where I saw the initial post asking for volunteers, but on July 10th, I reached out to the listed email. Jane, the organizer, got back to me right away and within an hour I was added in their discord.

Up until this point, I had been maintaining an average 8 ESims myself, so I already had experience checking in on them on a daily basis. The folks there helped me onboard with the spreadsheets for keeping track, and now it's very easy for me to catalog new ones I buy and record daily data usage. The whole process takes me maybe 20-40 minutes a day depending now on how many ESims actually need to be topped off.

Jane has been very up front with lots of the group's information, with frequent announcements about the groups current funds and amounts of daily ESims sent out. She and the others have been super helpful with getting funds to us when needed, and I've almost never had to actually spend any of my own money for any of this.

In the time that I've been volunteering, they figured out how to run a Business account with the Nomad ESim company. Which means that now and then they can just send 15 or so ESims my way, and I just catalog them and send the QRcodes towards Mirna and the Connecting Gaza folks. No more wasting time with the purchasing process, while getting a bit of a bulk discount on top of that.

We also share updates on whatever brand of ESims are most needed. When folks on the ground tell us that one network doesn't seem reliable, we are able to switch over for a while until either the networking issue is fixed, or we all pressure customer service enough to replace them for us.

There's also lots of complaining about new UI updates an general website bugs. There's surprisingly a lot of them and it's good to know other folks are getting info from customer service when things go wrong.

In August they made a meme channel

Anyways....

Lets get into some stats for myself. In 2 months (July 10- Sept12) I have:

Send off 171 ESims

Maintained around 60 active ones

Topped up these active ESims 139 times

Spend over $6400 donated dollars

I have multiple power users who have burned through close to 100GB. 2 of them have broken 200GB. These are most likely being used as hot spots.

Why am I sharing all of this? Mostly to show how easy it has been to make a marginal difference. I have helped at least 60 people stay connected with the outside world in just 2 months. Probably more if we assume some of the power users becoming hotspots for other folks. This is 20-40 minutes of my time a day, and I honestly regret not signing up to do this sooner.

I was specifically limiting myself to this workload because I wanted to test the waters. Those stats was me specifically not wanting to push myself and see what impact a normal person could make with 20 minutes a day. At this point I think I will be taking more advantage of Nomad's Tuesday discounts to really bulk up my numbers. It's pretty easy to buy 15 or so every Tuesday, and then send em over.

If you would like to join us in this endeavor, please reach out to Jane at cripsforesimsforgaza(at)gmail

We are specifically looking for people in European time zones, since a lot of us are in the Americas and that's quite a difference between us and Gaza. If not, that's no problem!

If you can't participate, that's totally fine, but please donate what you can! Folks like you are the ones who keep us going!

I hope this information has been useful in some way. Like I said, I wish I had heard about this group sooner, with how easy it has been to do. I can track my direct impact of what my daily time is doing for folks, and seeing the data be used up a little bit more day by day gives me hope for everyone in Gaza. Thank you for your time.

[i-still-mask-because]

Nassau County of Long Island, New York passed a mask ban bill today. Please make a habit of calling your city, county, state, and federal representatives expressing your opposition to mask bans because fascist legislative proposals like this is absolutely going to be domino effecting throughout the US. AND WEAR A MASK IN PUBLIC. WEAR A MASK TO NOT ONLY PROTECT US, BUT SUPPORT US.

Editing to add (8/14/2024): Please read the recent update.

[sga-owns-my-soul]

reblog to give ur mutuals a soft lil kissy on the head

[localvoidcat]

weirdest part about being an artist (and, to an extent, a writer too) is feeling like. shameful that you aren't creating massive pieces of art. how dare i not line and color and shade every drawing. how dare i only draw two poses. how dare i only write 1k words. how dare i not write an entire book. how dare i

[hellenhighwater]

It's a Thursday night and I've got nothing better to do than make something that uses whatever I have around already.

[yamikakyuu]

Me every damn day

[josukespimphand]

I haven't posted in a while but <333

[riverthebooknerd]

"but why do you even ship them-" IT BRINGS ME JOY AND WHIMSY!!!!!!!

[theaceofarrows]

Reblog if you're asexual and tired

[lazylittledragon]

dadkarios doods sponsored by my stress migraine