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butdidmarlenacomebackhome · 4 years ago

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okay so I'm probably going to make an unpopular statement, above all considering the platform I'm sharing it on but I feel like Tumblr is one of the places on the net where one should raise awareness the most considering the popularity of this topic. frankly, I don' t care about the repercussions because this is a serious matter I'm really passionate about. I've already talked about it on Twitter, where a few days ago this was a hot topic & I collected a lot of data from various point of views. let me just repeat my own stand one more time:

please, do not romanticize the mafia in any way, shape or form

I think a lot of misconceptions have been spread all over the world about what the mafia is all about and let me tell you that as an Italian citizen well-studied on the matter, fancy lifestyles and hot-ass possessive mobsters ready to romance the fvck out of you is not it. it's quite disrespectful to picture this romanticized version of a real world-wide issue through media (official and unofficial) and I will proceed to explain why. a lot of people on Twitter think they have every right to treat the matter as something (and I quote) "meaningless" so I went ahead and made a thread about the "meaningless" crimes committed by the Italian mafias.

mind that the articles I've linked as well as their titles contain some pretty graphic descriptions and/or pictures, I recommend refraining from reading if those may trigger you

here are some of the most cruel and well-known atrocities that make up the mafious history (past and present) to better understand what we're talking about. I guarantee that everything you know about the mafia (from the concept of honor, to that of familial loyalty and union showcased into the media) is wrong:

The Forgotten Story Of Giuseppe Di Matteo, A Boy Dissolved In Acid By The Mafia

Three-Year-Old's Mafia Death Shocks Italy

Mafia in Naples is still going strong – and we must not forget how it affects everyday life in the city

Italian Prosecutor Fights the Mafia—and Fears for His Life

How the brutal murder of an anti-mafia hero altered Sicily

Italian politicians and police among 300 held in mafia bust

7 Major Mafia Murders [Warning: Gruesome Photos]

‘Migrants are more profitable than drugs’: how the mafia infiltrated Italy’s asylum system

Outrage as deadliest ever mafia boss, 86, who ordered 150 murders and a boy to be dissolved in ACID is set to be freed from jail so he can ‘die with dignity’

Paolo Borsellino: the massacre in via D’Amelio twenty-eight years ago

Lea Garofalo was killed by her Mafia family. Now she's the face of anti-mob protests (this one to show you mafia has no fvcking honor, kills men, women & children alike & if you get in their way not even family bonds can save you)

Italian mafia boss suspected of trying to buy a baby for €10,000

Meet the Sicilian Mafia Hitman Who Killed 80 People and Will Be Free in 5 Years

The shadowy world of Mafia boss Diabolik who strangled a pregnant woman and murdered 50 others

How the Mafia infiltrated Italy’s hospitals and laundered the profits globally

[ tw for graphic images ] 'My photos are just blood, blood, blood': Cosa Nostra's brutal murders in 1970s Sicily are revealed in images taken by female photographer who defied Mafia death threats to cover their crimes

[tw; graphic images] Children murdered by the Mafia as Italian mobsters sink to new low

Italian mafia groups are cashing in on COVID-19 by exploiting the social and economic crisis

Revealed: Mafia’s prime role in human-trafficking misery

Italy remembers general killed by mafia

How the mafia is causing cancer

adding this one too, which is a list of victims killed by the Sicilian Mafia ONLY, countless others have been brutally and unjustly murdered by the other Italian mafias too

in conclusion: people have died, people still grieve the losses of their siblings and friends and co-citizens, people are still fighting and people have died trying. to create fictional works or tiktok videos or whatever people are doing these days twisting the very cruel and very gruesome reality of the mafia is and will forever be disrespectful to its victims, past present and unfortunately future. this doesn't mean one shouldn't be free to create a fictional work based off the world of criminal organizations, but to do so while being unproblematic requires two possible solutions:

1. to respectfully treat the issue through a realistic depiction of the mafia, based on documented research and actual facts

and/or

2. to satisfy your need for a criminal/mobster love interest WITHOUT attributing the scenario to the mafia, for example by simply calling it a criminal!au instead than a mafia!au - this is really an easy and accessible solution, it costs literally nothing to change this habit

keep in mind that in no way am I intending to bring forward any sort of "cultural appropriation" speech as the mafia is in no way part of the Italian culture, nor should it be treated as any cultural asset: it is rather an on-going historical plague. I want to clarify (as many of the people who have spoken up about it have been accused of this) that I am not asking to attribute it to Italians, but rather to recognize the gravity of this deeply-rooted problem.

Mafias are not an aesthetic.

choosing to ignore this crucial fact is to serve as an accomplice & to debase its crimes against humanity.

"We need restless consciences in our country, we need citizens who will say they've had enough! We've been talking about mafia for ages."

— Father Luigi Ciotti, deeply involved in the fight against illegality and organized crime, as the Mafia

"I never asked to deal with the mafia. I got involved by accident. And then I stayed because of a moral issue: people kept dying all around me."

— Judge Paolo Borsellino, killed by the Mafia in the Via D'Amelio bombing because of his investigations against the mafia and his Antimafia Pool which brought to justice 475 mafiosi

"The fight against the mafia must become a cultural movement which accustoms people to appreciate the beauty of the fragrant perfume of freedom opposed to the stink of moral compromise, indifference and therefore of complicity"

— Judge Paolo Borsellino

p. s. one of the scariest parts about the post I've written has been searching for English quotes about the mafia: the only ones you'll find are some kind of inspirational phrases & other famous quotes by world-wide known mobsters which, by the way, are in no way truthful and/or realistic. the Italian testimony has practically been erased in foreign media & is only accessible to Italian speakers. therefore I need to specify that the quotes I've used in this post have been personally translated by me from the Italian source.

"Nobody will avenge us. Our pain has no witness."

— Peppino Impastato, Italian journalist and activist who spoke up his entire life about the mafias, denouncing their crimes, assassinated by Cosa Nostra

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ask-de-writer · 4 years ago

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LOST TIME (part 2 of 3) A fantasy of Flocking Bay.

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

LOST TIME

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5556 words

written 2003 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express written consent of the author or proper copyright holder.

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of Fan Activity, fiction, art, cosplay, music or anything else is ACTIVELY encouraged!

///////////////////////

Morton Hewitt did not last. He bought the house for back taxes in 1944. He lived there for a week. He painted the hardwood floors and then hanged himself in the garage the next day.

Byron Thomas bought the house from Hewitt’s estate. He was a grave digger for Trinity Graveyard. He updated the plumbing and lived there quietly for several years. Apparently he liked his work a little too well. He buried two people who were not yet dead. One of them lived. He was adjudged sane at his trial and hanged for his crime.

Mark Altman bought the house next. He was a reclusive sort and lived there for a quite a number of years before it was discovered that he’d had some visitors who had never left. He died in prison while awaiting trial. There was an interesting hand written note attached to the autopsy report which stated that the coroner had ruled out both suicide and homicide but refused to pronounce the death natural.

Dora Greene got the place next. She was Mark’s sister. Like Mark, she lived there quietly for years. One day she walked into town and set fire to the school, killing five and maiming six more. She spent her last years in a lunatic asylum, setting three more fires and killing two more people. She herself died in her last fire.

While she was in the asylum, one Tony Fisk, age twelve, urged on by several other urchins, had thrown some stones at the windows of the Vekin place. He had missed. Becoming angry, he took careful aim and they all watched the flight of the stone. In the young malefactor’s words, “It went away without falling.”

It would not have been worthy of a news story, except for the fact that each of the children who had watched the stone had gone severely and permanently cross-eyed. In a small town like Flocking Bay, that many kids going cross-eyed at once could not be hidden.

George Abbot bought the house and rented it at a very low price to a Michael Farley. The two had been feuding, down-state, and the house was supposed to have been a peace offering. Farley stayed only a few weeks. He went out and dynamited Abbot’s automobile. Farley was quite mad and lived out his life in an asylum for the criminally insane. The county coroner ruled Abbot’s death to be suicide. After all, he had known the history of the house and had knowingly rented that house to an enemy.

Cornelius Baker took the house next. He upgraded the kitchen and installed modern wiring. He lived there quietly and apparently got on well for about five years. He was a long-haul truck driver. Bodies followed him about the country. Finally, he was caught with one in his truck. He drove his truck into a bridge abutment at over ninety miles per hour rather than be taken alive.

Now, I had the place. I mentally withdrew my blessing. He had not been a good man at all.

Lois saw that I was finished with the file and making good inroads on my sandwich. She asked, “Did you sleep there, last night?”

“Yes, I did. Most restful sleep I have had in years.”

“What is your full name?”

“Vandervekken,” I replied, getting out my driver’s license. I was used to this. “No first name or middle initial. Just Vandervekken.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know, at least seventy.”

“You don’t know how old you are? Seventy? You look like you’re in your early twenties,” she said incredulously. “I told you that things connected with the Vekin place get interesting.”

“I got a head-wound during the war. Traumatic amnesia.”

“Viet Nam wasn’t that long ago. It would only make you in your fifties.”

“Not Viet Nam, Lois. WW II. Apparently, I was helping the French Underground.” I handed her the military fingerprint record. Her eyes widened as she realized that I was serious. “The amnesia’s been permanent, so far. I have language skills . . . too many. I’m a fluent, accentless polyglot. I even speak Basque. I know how to do an amazing number of things . . . no trace of name or personal past. No ID either.”

“Couldn’t they trace you by these fingerprints or something?”

“They tried. I was found among the bodies of a wiped-out unit of the French Underground during the German withdrawal from Paris in 1944. Someone from another unit was able to say that I was an American volunteer with a name that he could neither remember nor pronounce ... something sort of Dutch. That inspired my current name. I got back with a temporary ID and that military fingerprint record, which I still carry.”

“That’s sad, and eerie, too. What’s it feel like?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot. I think the best way to describe it is like a house that’s furnished but nobody is home. Empty. Alone.”

“So, how does that relate to your choice of name? You must know what having only one name does to our systems for indexing things and people.”

“True. I want to stand out, in case somebody recognizes who I am. As for Vandervekken, he was the Flying Dutchman, who swore that he would take his ship around the Cape of Good Hope, against a gale, if it took until Judgment Day. That was in the Seventeenth Century and he is still sailing. His ghost is seen as a Dutch East India Co. galleon with all sails set, sailing into the teeth of a gale. He can’t get home either.”

“I see,” Lois said, adding to her notes. “What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“I was just passing through. I like small towns, so I avoid the main highways and big cities whenever I can. I liked the atmosphere of Flocking Bay enough to inquire about the possibility of settling here.”

“Look, we both know that small towns are dying. You could have had your pick from any of a dozen houses. Why the Vekin place?”

“I was shown fourteen places, actually. I know that it seems a bit forbidding at first, but it felt good. Like a warm glove on a cool morning. Have you ever actually been there?”

She shuddered, “No, and before you, I have never heard of anyone who said that the Vekin place felt good ... You say that you are a writer. What have you written?”

“Charles said it very well, ’Pseudonyms are great for privacy.’ My own writing aside, I do translations but you won’t find my name on most of them. Archaeologists like to take credit for their finds. I mentioned that I’m a polyglot? I sight read ancient languages as well as modern.”

I extended my hand to Lois and invited, “Would you like to come and see for yourself this house of dark history? I promise that you will find it worth your while. In all of those stories, not once was the interior of Vekin House described. Do come.”

“I have to return the file and get my camera,” she responded gamely.

“I shall await you in my auto, in front of the Voice,” I answered. As I walked her back across the street, I had the pleasure of seeing her stare at Lilitu.

“If that’s what I think its, I’ll ride with you anywhere!” she called over her shoulder as she entered the Voice’s office. True to her word, she emerged in a few minutes with a camera. Not one of those tiny little cameras that have become fashionable, but a business-like press camera. I opened the car door and gave her a hand up.

As I got into the driver’s seat, she asked, wonder in her voice, “Is this really a Packard V-12 Touring Car?”

We pulled away with the almost uncannily quiet, vibration-free ride that the car was famous for. I replied, “You bet she is. Lois, meet Lilitu. Lilitu, meet Lois. After the war, there were still quite a few of them to be had, and I liked both the ride and the durability, so I hunted one down and had it fixed up like new. I’ve kept her that way ever since. She’s only had two owners in over two-million miles. The first owner only put on about sixty-thousand of them.”

“You drive a lot,” she stated.

“I was looking for something ... I think that Flocking Bay has it. My turn for a few questions , if you don’t mind.”

“Fire away. If I don’t like the question, I won’t answer it.”

“What did you do before you took up the Voice?”

“The same thing that I still do. The stock and futures markets. I’m good at it. I got out of college with a degree in the sociology of medieval witchcraft. I got a job as a waitress on the strength of my looks. I put my first fifty dollars in tips into a risky stock that kited way up. On a hunch, I dumped it three days after I bought it. It nosedived shortly after I sold out. After commissions, I had three hundred and fifty dollars. I rolled it over the same way. The rest is history. So far, my hunches have always worked for me.”

“What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“Like you, I was passing through. I was on my way to Lakeside Resort about three years ago. I got a hunch that I should stay, so I did. The Voice was failing. When a small town loses its paper, the end is in sight. I didn’t want the end to come, so I bought the paper. Here I am.”

“And here we are,” I said with a flourish as I pulled up in front of the house. We both stared. The yard was neatly trimmed, though the bushes and trees still retained a slightly forbidding aspect. Going up the path to the front door, I noticed that the flagstones had been leveled, the weeds removed and the joints and refilled with fresh sand. The iron fence and balustrades had been cleaned of rust.

“You’ve been busy,” was Lois’s comment.

“That’s just it,” I replied, puzzled. “I didn’t do it. I thought that stocking the fridge and setting out a snack last night was something that the real-estate agent arranged. Sort of a welcome wagon. This is beyond the call of duty.” Opening the front door, I felt that comfortable, welcoming feeling that had caused me to buy the house in the first place. Impulsively, I said, “Hello, house, you certainly look nice today.”

Lois looked at me quizzically and asked, “Do you talk to everything, or is this special?”

I thought for a moment before answering, “Actually I only talk to things that have personality enough to warrant a name, like Lilitu, my car, or Drachen, my typewriter.”

“Typewriter? You do like antiques, don't you? What are you going to call the house, then?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “Something good ... What does the place feel like to you?”

“The place actually looks and feels . . . well . . .” Lois groped for the right word, “I’d have to say . . . happy. Not what I expected, at all. It feels like what you see when a pup that loves its master is greeting him. No wonder you slept well, if it feels as good to you as it does to me . . .” She sort of trailed off. “I wouldn’t normally say this, but I’m getting a hunch about this place . . .” she trailed off again.

“I guess that the house was just waiting for the right kind of person,” I responded. “It was pretty rough on everyone else. I’m glad that you like it too.”

“Look at these floors,” she mused, “They were beautiful before Hewitt painted them over. You can still make out some traces of the parquetry patterns. If he hadn’t already hanged himself, I’d help you to do it.”

<==Previous Next==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

#LOST TIME #Part 2 of 3 #Flocking Bay #Written by De Writer

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onedirectionfanfics · 5 years ago

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The Shamrock Social Club by @harryonstage

Somehow you land a consultation with Harry Styles, one of the most renowned tattoo artists on the west coast. He agrees to design your first tattoo and ink it on you himself, but over the course of your sessions together, mischief ensues…

This month’s featured story, The Shamrock Social Club, brought together avid Tumblr fic readers and Twitter stans alike in excitement and anticipation for each update. It tells the story of a girl determined to get a tattoo and her wildly attractive tattoo artist, Harry—fondly known as “tattoorry” among readers. Check out our amazing interview with the brilliant author behind this masterpiece below!

***

How long have you been writing for?

God, as long as I can remember. I have memories of being in middle school, feverishly writing stories in my composition notebook when I was supposed to be paying attention to the lesson. I was conjuring up elaborate worlds and characters long before I ever planned on sharing them with anybody—before I even realized what I was doing.

Do you have certain habits or rituals you have to do while writing?

A lot of my followers joke about this, but I do a lot of writing in the bath. I turn off all my notifications and commit not to check my texts for awhile, and I cannot write without a giant warm beverage, usually coffee or rooibos tea with honey. I put rainstorm sounds on my bluetooth speaker. The thesaurus app and google dictionary are open at all times. Also, part of the creative process definitely happens long before I ever actually sit down to write—I’m constantly jotting stuff down in the notes app on my phone if I’m out and about when I think of a line to work into a scene later. I have all these sticky notes with like cryptic, half-baked ideas all over my desk at work… I’ll pick one up and all it says is like “The clicks a skateboard makes rolling down the sidewalk” or “The feeling of having an orange peel beneath your fingernails.” And I refuse to throw them away, even if I have no idea what I was thinking at the time. I think most people who write do that to some degree, though.

The ever famous question: how did you come up with this idea?

Honestly I was on tumblr and saw a collage of women with dragon and snake tattoos. I began thinking about the type of person who would want that symbol on them forever, and why. Minutes later, I wrote that “Tattoo You, 1981” blurb on my masterlist—of course named after the Rolling Stones album released that year—and then that became the preliminary blueprint for what is now The Shamrock Social Club. I literally thought it was going to be a one shot at most, but here we are nearly fifty-two thousand words later.

Throughout your writing in this fic, you show a great deal of knowledge about the process of getting a tattoo. Is this from experience or something you learned from researching?

Both! I have a few tattoos. One of them is a stick-and-poke. It’s been awhile since I got my last one though, so I had to refresh myself on the aftercare process. I called the actual Shamrock Social Club a few times to gauge what a master tattoo artist there would charge for something as large as the snake. I also wanted to be sure it was possible for an artist to fill in a tattoo as they work through the outline the way Harry does in the story. The researching process of a fic writer is so funny to me… I wish my readers could see me alone in my room at 2:00 AM eating dry cereal, deeply invested in a fifteen minute Youtube video comparing different types of tattoo inks.

When does a story go from an idea in your mind to paper? Is there a process you go through before writing it out, or do you just get straight in it?

I have so much respect for the writers who can just like, wing it. I personally need to have a story mapped out in bullet points beginning to end before I even open up a new document on my computer. That way, I get more time to sit with it and meditate on how close to reality it seems, and it helps me finagle the order of events and decide if there’s any room for improvement. Also, if I think of a detail or subplot that’s not in my original outline, it’s easier to pop it in and visualize how it synthetically fits with the story.

In all four parts (51k words), not once do you give a name for the main character or call her ‘Y/N’. Was this a difficult task? What was the reason for it?

This is a hot topic right now in the fan fiction community! Sometimes it’s difficult, but I think it helped make the prose in this story more seamless to read. As someone who has written original characters as well as self-insert fics, I think a strong enough writer can make a character feel personable and unique and real without an elaborate backstory, and I don’t feel that it takes anything integral away from the creative process for me. If you can get an audience to root for a protagonist in a couple of chapters through their choices, dialogue, hopes, and motivations alone, to me that’s a much more successful story… I deeply respect writers who are like “write for yourself, not for others!” but that notion doesn’t really keep me up at night. To me, it’s obvious that I’m writing for myself if I’m writing at all, and I’m very comfortable with that fact. Imagine that you’re in school for creative writing and your professor gives you an exercise with a few simple parameters… it’s a bit like that. I still only write about exactly what I want, but undergoing the challenge of writing for an audience has 100% made me a better, more versatile writer. To me that does not feel like a loss, or a compromise. Plus, I think it’s such an interesting way to engage with a story—you are explicitly the protagonist, actively steering your own trajectory with every choice you make.

Was the character ‘AJ’ inspired by anyone you know in real life, AJ?

Guilty as charged. I do tend to Stan Lee myself and my friends into my fics. Aijia, Iz, Steph, Ellen… all of those characters are based on my actual friends. It started out as a joke—I literally just needed a name for the roommate character, but someone suggested I name her AJ and I was like… why not? I love having fun that costs nothing and hurts nobody! Annie and I wrote ourselves into Under the Same Roof, too.

This fic very delicately tells the story of a girl who’s been sexually abused in the past in some way and is on a determined mission to self-healing. A topic not many will brave, but you did. Why?

This is such a good question. Honestly I was on the fence at first. As I was drafting the first installment, Nobody Fucks with a Snake, I knew I wanted Harry’s character to turn her away from the shop at first before he decided to take a chance on her, but I needed a reason why. Like, I needed him to see a glimmer of something in her, and simply him being attracted to her didn’t feel compelling enough to me. I thought it would be really meaningful and it would raise the stakes a little if Harry saw this like… tenacity and determination in her. One of my favorite scenes in the whole story is that pivotal moment in his office when we see Harry really start to understand the gravity of her predicament and how much this snake means to her. He’s so affected by her vulnerability, and it speaks volumes about both of them.

In the drafting process, I was talking with my friend Tanvi who also writes fic, and she wanted to know if there was some reason why Harry’s character feels such a strong urge to help this young woman, and why he goes to such great lengths to respect consent throughout the story. Like, does he have a loved one who was sexually assaulted? Is this a more personal issue for him? I considered this, but truthfully, I thought this story would be so much more poignant and effective if there like, wasn’t some special reason. Consent is necessary. Sexual assault is inexcusable and wrong. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

What was it like writing on an issue that makes a lot of people uncomfortable (but is still so important)? Did you feel like you had a responsibility to fulfil?

As a writer, it’s an enormous responsibility to parse trauma and heaviness and sorrow in a way that doesn’t glorify the pain, especially if you have a younger audience. Most of my readers are in their twenties, like me. I read something recently about how it’s true that writers shouldn’t cover topics such as sexual trauma, eating disorders, or major depression as to avoid romanticizing any of these terrible, life-altering experiences, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to people who have been through these hardships and turn to art or writing as an outlet.

I have an eating disorder. It’s something I talk about openly on my blog—as an aside, you should definitely browse my recovery tag! Through fic, I’ve written about what it’s like to have an ED. I’ve also used fic to write about having a stalker, and in The Shamrock Social Club, of course I write about the complex relationship one has with sex and romance and dating in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted. I write to focus on the triumphs instead of the pain, and I always try to make these experiences awkward, ugly, and honestly gross when they need to be. Without divulging too much of myself online, I’m well equipped to know what all of those hardships feel like. In fact, I’ve read many stories, fan fiction and novels alike, that portray eating disorders, stalkers, and surviving sexual assault in a really misleading light, and I wanted to create something I felt like accurately represented how insidious and terrifying all of that actually is. Most of all, for me, writing this story was so much more about the main character overcoming her strife, and finally feeling like she has agency and control over her own body again. At its core, the Shamrock Social Club is really just the story of a fiercely determined young woman on her own path to healing, who happens to meet a boy along the way. The writing process was very, very cathartic.

Your story got popular not only on Tumblr but across Twitter as well in a short period of time—an amazing accomplishment. How did you react to your (well-deserving) popularity?

Jesus, the memes that have been born out of this story on twitter and tumblr are… beyond hilarious. And trust me, nobody lurks on twitter more than me. I don’t know if I would use the word “popular” about this story or even about myself though. To put things in perspective, suddenly being under a magnifying glass is still super strange and new to me. I literally had about 500 followers for most of the eight years I’ve been on tumblr until the end of 2018, which is when I started posting fic. I think about this all the time, I could write a dissertation on how baffling it is that people suddenly seem to give me heaps of attention and put me on this pedestal when deep down I know who I am and I know how tumblr works and I know it’s just as likely that people could be sending messages and giving praise to literally anyone else. Everybody has something to offer, I just got lucky. In the grand scheme of things, this story has only reached a very small pocket of the internet and there really isn’t anything about me that makes me more special than anyone else, I’m just a person who had a few people’s attention for a little while because I wrote a story. I’m very proud and grateful to have people reading my writing and it isn’t lost on me how fortunate I am that anyone does in the first place.

The one thing I will say though, is that it’s profoundly moving to me the amount of sexual assault survivors who have come forward in the wake of this story. Anonymously or not, people have been so open, and have shared so much of themselves with me. It’s amazing how alone you can be made to feel when you don’t have an example of someone who has been through the same struggle as you and come out the other side, even if it’s a fictional character, and I think this story ended up meaning a lot more to people than I ever expected it to. I can’t wrap my brain around how special it is that something I wrote could offer some small comfort to another person who has survived something so awful. The response this story has gotten blows me out of the water to this day.

Who came up with the name ’tattoorry’?

Honestly I don’t remember but “tattoorry” is shorthand for “tattoo artist Harry.”

Lastly, anything you’d like to say to anyone who read your fic?

Thank you for reading my writing. On principal, I think that if you find something that makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, then that’s worth celebrating. The people who have engaged with this story made into into something so much bigger and more special than I could’ve ever accomplished on my own.

Thank you very much, this was a lot of fun!

***

Thank you, AJ, for your time and dedication to these questions! Check out more of her work here!

***If you would like to send in recommendations for next months featured story, please do so here.

#1dff #one direction fanfiction #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fic rec

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justasmalltowngirl1990-blog · 5 years ago

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London calling

Hi guys so this is my first blog please dont expect perfect grammar or any of that shizz cos you know we all make mistakes and nobody's perfect. As you guessed it's about a trip to London. I'm writing it alongside my better half @bloke-interrupted as he is known on tumblr. I know him as Owen.

So this wasnt my first trip to London but I always get that sense of excitement approaching kings cross (I'm a Harry Potter fan). We were going for a weekend of culture and London always delivers big on culture. Me I love love love musicals but this time we went to see a Tennessee William's play bit more civilised but I couldn't sing along (bummer). So anyways we found a great place for breakfast a deli in golborne avocados pancetta poached eggs tomatoes cheese and pancakes it was huge and delicious. Spoiler alert I'll talk alot about food #sorrynotsorry

So then we walked through portobello road place where the riches of ages are sold (Disney fans will get the reference for you less cool people reading this bedknobs and broomsticks). It was really cool and I loved it so we headed off to Camden on the tube which I also love just cos we dont have it where I'm from (public transport is a joke). Camden was everything and more I posed with hulk antman and a moonin (seperatly) there was loads of cool stalls and the food smelt amazing. Then we went to the cube cafe which had pikachu in the window and had shakes again yummy my berry one kicked Owens banana & chai ones ass.

And that's when things went slightly pear shaped. Ladies and gentlemen we walked from Camden all the way to the British museum to then discover actually we had been there in our last trip. I was fine used to walking in cheap primark shoes however @bloke-interrupted

not so much his shoes started crumbling (moral of the story wear socks in your shoes kids). Needless to say both of us had aching feet by this point so we got an uber to Trafalgar square.

Next stop on the culture trip the national gallery where we saw some really old art by some really famous long dead dudes. Dont get me wrong they were good paintings but tbh it was totally over my head I didnt have a clue I even saw a famous horse painting which everyone else recognised. I felt like a fish out of water plus my feet were really hurting by this point . We got the tube back to our air bnb (more walking eugh) which sidenote was awesome.

Rested and ready to hit the town we got the tube back into town for the main event of the whole weekend the play about a night at the iguana. Had a fabulous line up and the noel coward theatre looked amazing. I love all the gilded decorations and the big dome in the ceiling. Somehow I'm into architecture in old buildings no idea why but I love it the grander the better in my opinion. And then it started I swear to God the first half seemed to last an eternity not helped by the ridiculously uncomfortable (seat c15 you son of a .... ) or the fact it was slow to get going. The acting was good and I could not do what they do (my memory is terrible) however Clive owen was the weakest of the main cast I'm sure he will find his groove. Round of applause to the female leads fantastic throughout. The German family ponlintless in my opinion but then there could be some deeper meaning behind them that I missed. The second act way better one of them descends into madness another dies and your left feeling sorry for one of them as well. Time went alot quicker and before I knew it the actors were bowing and we were outta there. I wish I had researched the play so I felt some connection to it I think I would have enjoyed it more.

Now for my favourite part the walk to China town and the best Chinese I have ever had. Pork dumplings, crispy duck, sweet and sour chicken crispy chilli beef and chicken fried rice just amazing my mouth is watering remembering it good job this isn't a vlog or it would be plain embarrassing 😂😂

Anyways the night ended on a high and we tumbled into bed exhausted.

Sunday we breakfasts again at the same place pancakes maple syrup and bacon for me owen had scrambled eggs bacon on ciabatta again delicious and then we were at kings cross looking at places to live in London..... we could afford a house boat 😂😂😂 and people watching always fun.

The whole point of this blog (I know we finally got to it) is to encourage people (if anyone reads it) to take your loved ones to places you have been that are special to you for a fun day/weekend out. For me having someone who knows London pretty well makes me fall in love with it even more and also reignites that persons spark for the place. Watching someone experience London for the first time is magical it's like a kid in a candy store where do you look first and your wonder and amazement is infectious and changes the whole experience for both of you. But when you've seen all the "big stuff" you start to notice the smaller things around London little bars that you never noticed cos your head was in a map or the cute little side street that has wild flowers all around it. Time shared together is never wasted and whether its London or somewhere your nan used to take you it's just so worth it to see your happiness become their happiness.

Peace out guys and dolls xoxoxo

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misslilidelaney · 7 years ago

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MASHUP! AU

Okay guys, bare with me because I am going on a writing spree and I don't even know when and where I'll be able to write something but I had the weirdest idea for a tree-way-fandom-uber-mashup-universe.

It all started with a convo with my dearest @marriedwithjosh , sharing a picture of a purple and a pink bikes, saying "I did not know Virgil and Wilford went to the University in Padova". And my lovliest @shetanibonaparte added "HC that in his basket, Wilford always have sweets for Dark, the rich student who goes to school with a retro fancy car". And that was the beginning. My mind began to race and I came up with this silly idea, which I have the time nor patience to purse.

So I'll give it to you, Tumblr, please use it well, if you want.

-The whole thing takes place in a Campus or something like that.

- Wilford Warfstache and Dark met on a day when Wil was, as always late for school. Like the best anime tropes, he has a toast in his mouth and is crying: "IMLATEIMLATEIMLATE!". A bunch of meters before the school, he is so distracted he bumps into a parked black old style Cadillac, and rumbles ungracefully on the floor, his pink bike completely destroyed. When he raises his head, the world around him stops. The driver opens the door and a magnificent specimen comes out. Black, soft hair, a chiseled chin, eyes as black as the void. "You better watch where you go." says the most soothing voice ever. The sublime vision doesn't even look at him, and enters the school. Later that day Wilford will learn that the mysterious stranger is none other than Drake "Dark" Iplier, son of the world wide famous Doctor Edoardo Iplier, and he and his brother joined the school late because they were abroad. The following day, on the spot where he used to park his bike, Wil will find a brand new pink bike, with a note: "Seriously, watch where you go." With that, he is totally in love with Dark.

- Virgil met Roman a couple of weeks later. He was on his bike to school perfectly on time, but worried nonetheless because, well, He's Virgil "Anxiety" Warfstache, and he worries always. For everything. He was so much busy being worried he almost didn't see the red and golden skateboard crossing his street. Yet, he managed to stop his lovely purple bike in time, and at the same time, trap the skateboard under one of its wheels. "Oh, hey! Thank you!" Shouted the owner of the board, and as soon as he removed his headphones and turns to the voice, he knew he is doomed. In front of him was Roman "Princey" Iplier, newcomer of the school and twin brother of the infamous "Darkiplier" to which his younger brother Wilford would NOT stop talking about. He was expecting the same cold, calcutating behavior, but the young man in front of him was the sweetest thing, worried about his welbeing, if the skateboard ruined his bike, and then asking immediately Virgil out to "excuse myself and thank you for saving my board". Virgil almost said yes, but there's something about the fact that Roman is SO SURE than he'll agree that pushed Virgil to smirk and say "Thanks but no thanks." And hops again on his bike, reaching the school. From that moment, Roman tries to have a date with Virgil on a everyday basis, to which Virgil despite being head over heels for the rich boy, always says no, just because he can.

-Wilford has two best friends to which he confides continuosly: 1) Sean "Anti" Brody, the school token rebel punk, always in the deepest of shit, always breaking stuff and always hurting himself during his outbursts of rage. Only Patton and Wilford know that he is constantly trying to hurt himself just to have the excuse to hang in the infermery, where the "So Fucking Sexy I could die" Doctor Henrik Von Schneeplestein, which actually likes the boy back but keeps their relationship a secret because he doesn’t want to risk his carreer. 2) Patton Sanders, the sweetest puffball ever. Except when it comes to HIS Professor Logan Sanders "We even have the same last name! Our marriage is meant to be, Wil, I swear!". When someone is too close to the amazing professor, that someone usually ends up very badly accidentaly injuired, with Anti, Wil and Pat always grinning in the distance. Nobody will touch his Professor. And his friends are happy to help him.

- Virgil groups with two of the Outsiders of the school, which to him are pretty cool people. 1) Jameson "J.J." Jackson, a dapper boi with a heart of gold. Always dressing as if he was the past, has a little, totally useless eyeglass, and is actually mute. He can hear perfectly but he cannot speak, so he and Virgil get along pretty well because Verge knows ASL and needs to talk A LOT. J.J. is in a relationship with Marvin, a magician that works in the theatre not far from the school, the same theatre Roman ends up working as a part time job (that he does not need, but loves it nonetheless). 2) Matt "the Host" Alpier, the second quieter guy in the school. He was J.J.'s best friend even before Virgil arrived and nobody knows how they used to communicate since the Host is completely blind since birth. Only Virgil knows that J.J. used Morse Code against the Host's hand, but pretends to know nothing when people ask, because it's funnier this way. He has a total unrequited crush for the president of the Debate Club, Bim Trimmer, because he thinks his voice is the best thing on earth. Bim barely knows of his existence.

- Roman has two bros he hangs out with, and he's witty enough to know that they actually like him for who he is, and not for his money. 1) Chase Brody, Anti's older brother, the only one in a straight relationship with his childhood love Stacey. Loves his nerf gun and does the best bmx tricks. 2) Michael Bing, an amazing skateboarder (he won a couple championships) with the heart of gold and the brain of a chicken. He is not the brightest. But MAN if he knows how to skate! He is in a relationship with the college dropout Remy “Sleeping Booty / Sleeping Bitch” Morphes, a wonderful, tall, lovely genderfluid partner, with a fondness for baseball bats and helping Patton in his quest for Logan’s heart.

- Finally, also Dark has two "minions" who follows him around, and he is just as witty as his twin and KNOWS they hang with him because of papa's money. 1) Jaques Septique, a french boy who simply loves painting, and does the best graffiti art, too bad he is a complete bitch at heart. He and his boyfriend are known to be the worst people to get on a bad side, because they can ruin you in an instant. 2) Dewey "Deceit" Seeth, Jaques boyfriend. He runs the school journal, and takes personally care of the gossip corner of the paper. He has a couple of pictures of Schneep and Anti clearly flirting and is constantly blackmailing the Good Doctor to have some drugs for him and his two friends.

Oh well, that was a handful! I hope you like my ideas, feel TOTALLY FREE to use these ideas because as I said, I probably won't have the time to write or draw anything about it, I probably add some bits and pieces, so if you want to be added, just say!

Love you all, thanks for the attention!

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beesandbooks1 · 5 years ago

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Fairy Tale Backgrounds: Swan Lake

To read this post on my book blog instead, click here.

Introduction

Swan Lake is a pretty iconic story in the breadth of fairy tales. It’s tricky, multi-faceted, and often adapted in strange ways. Most notably, Swan Lake is a famous ballet with well known musical scores and featured in almost any ballet scene or movie in some capacity. The costumes are easily recognizable, and the story is compelling to many people.

Swan Lake’s Origins

The origins of the story are actually quite mysterious, as nobody knows exactly where the story for the ballet emerged. It’s thought to be influenced by German and Russian fairy tales. A variety of men associated with the development of the ballet are theorized as having written the original story, but nothing has been confirmed. The original ballet was written, composed, and produced in the late nineteenth century and apparently featured separate dancers for Odette and Odile, who are now often portrayed by a single dancer. The ballet was not received well initially, but has since become an incredibly successful and iconic ballet.

There are some variations to the story in the ballet productions, including happy endings where the prince and Odette end up together, and variations on the dances included. In general, though, the ballet follows the story of Prince Siegfried who discovers a maiden named Odette, cursed to be a swan until evening where she and other swan maidens turn into humans again. The curse is put on them by Rothbart, whom Siegfried attempts to defeat by swearing his love to Odette. Rothbart then tricks Siegfried into swearing his love to Rothbart’s daughter Odile, transformed to look like Odette (and typically danced by the same ballerina). With this betrayal, Odette is forced to choose between death and living as a swan forever. The usual ending of the ballet is that Siegfried and Odette choose to die together and leap into the enchanted lake.

Major Adaptations and Core Canon

The music and story of Swan Lake appear in a variety of films and TV series. The song pieces are well known, and often used to great effect in storytelling. Swan Lake is often utilized as a major performance in dance themed television and movies, as well as a fairy tale retold in a variety of popular YA fairy tale retelling series. The most well known adaptation of the ballet is that in Black Swan, the movie starring Natalie Portman and MIla Kunis. In this movie, the performance of Odette and Odile being undertaken by a single ballerina is used as a point of conflict in which Portman’s character must prove her artistic ability in order to retain both parts in competition with Kunis’s character, who is better suited to the part of Odile.

The Swan Princess is an animated film from the 1990’s in which Odette, a princess at birth who knows her prince before her curse, competes instead with a magical double of her made by the sorcerer Rothbart, whose motives are given in this story unlike in the original ballet. The Barbie franchise also adapted Swan Lake into a ballet themed movie with magical elements such as faeries and unicorns. Swan Lake’s music is also featured in a variety of tense scenes from media such as the early versions of Dracula and The Mummy to the new musical Anastasia (loosely based on the movie of the same name from the 90’s) in which a scene utilizes dance and music from the ballet to emphasize the tension between four prominent characters attending a performance of Swan Lake.

In utilizing the Swan Lake music and story, most adaptations and portrayals include the major facts of Odette being cursed to take swan form, a double of her (usually Odile but not always) being deployed by Rothbart to prevent her breaking her curse, and some climactic event that either ends in death for Odette and possibly her prince, or breaking the curse with a happy ending. The dynamic between Odette and Odile is often more a focus than the prince’s role outside of reimagining the tale to have a happy ending.

Conclusion

Swan Lake is a haunting and beautiful ballet. With its tragic ending and beautiful performances, it’s one of the most well known ballets. It embodies a lot of emotion, as well, including having strange connections to history. Performances of Swan Lake were broadcast on Soviet television during major events to prevent news from spreading, and the use of the musical score in horror movies is impactful. It’s not unusual for YA fantasy fairy tale stories to adapt Swan Lake to give it a happier ending, and to explore some of the more interesting aspects of the story. Many focus on the Odette and Odile dynamic, perhaps due to the interesting choice of having a single ballerina perform both roles in most shows. More than anything, I think Swan Lake’s strange story sticks in our minds because it shows a hopeless young maiden fighting for the last chance at life she has.

#bookblr #Swan Lake #fairy tales #ballet

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adambstingus · 6 years ago

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Who on Earth Would Dox Dril, the Only Good Anonymous Person on the Internet?

For years the internet has speculated about the identity of Dril, the iconic Twitter user known for his absurdist humor and prescient tweets. No one would have guessed, however, that it would be fans of an 8,000-page comic who would get to the bottom of this notorious internet mystery.

Dril is not just another anonymous Twitter joke account. He is the public face of Weird Twitter, who’s become famous for his insane non sequiturs that speak to the core of humanity. His account has amassed nearly 900,000 followers and was declared “the single most worthwhile account on Twitter” by College Humor.

Dril’s tweets regularly amass thousands of retweets and his work has been aggregated on any mainstream viral media site you can think of.

“Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of ‘Hell’ that I was banished to upon death in my previous life,” he joked to BuzzFeed in 2013.

And since tweets by Dril’s often account served as a respite to the “sort of Hell” Twitter can often serve up to users, the reveal of his identity caused instant uproar among many of his fans on the web when it went viral on Friday.

The fear that a beloved account would be exposed and shut down reminded many users of the famous @Horse_ebooks disclosure in 2013, when it was revealed that a perceived Twitter spambot known for its accidentally timely tweets was actually run by humans.

Dril has provided nothing but joy to his legion of followers for over a decade, only asking for anonymity in return. To many on Twitter, it seemed wildly unfair that he should be doxxed and shamed off the internet by an obscure webcomic fan community.

So why did a comic with an insular, sometimes incomprehensible fanbase reveal the secret of Dril that nobody wanted to know?

Because they believe Dril may have been one of them.

***

Homestuck is a webcomic born out of another webcomic called MS Paint Adventures. The comic centers around a group of kids who potentially bring about the end of the world by installing a beta copy of a computer game. This is an overly simplistic description and doesn’t completely get what the comic is about, but there are so many nuances and plot variances that trying to untangle them in any coherent fashion is almost impossible.

A 2012 Kickstarter described the comic as, “A story about some kids who are friends over the internet. They decide to play a game together. There are major consequences. Saying anything more about the plot would probably be getting in too deep. It gets fairly complicated.”

“You can get about as far as ‘the kids get stuck in a game’ before it becomes incredibly difficult to describe what is happening to them,” Kotaku writer Gita Jackson wrote in a 2017 Homestuck retrospective. “They discover dream worlds, fight villains who can stop time, meet gray-skinned alien trolls, discover they’re all related kinda, die and are resurrected. As the comic goes on it becomes exponentially more complex, to the point that even a lot of fans don’t really understand all of it.”

The most important thing to understand about the comic is that it has a rabid online fandom. There are over 44,000 Homestuck fanfics on fanfiction website Archive of our Own and a thriving community of hundreds of blogs dedicated to the comic on Tumblr.

Because of the fact that the comic is so complex and generally inaccessible to the even novice internet lurkers, Homestuck fans are frequently mocked. A lot of characters in the Homestuck universe have various sexual identities and the comic is popular with people who like shipping, or hypothetically pairing up different characters. “The whole thing is sort of set up just for people to ship and is all about polyamory,” one Twitter user said.

That said, Homestuck fans really love Homestuck. So much so, that they were really excited when Hiveswap, a game that takes place in the Homestuck universe, was partially released in September 2017. Fans picked apart every aspect of the game on sites like Reddit and Tumblr when one particular Homestuck fan noticed a name the user believed to be Dril’s on the Hiveswap game credits screen.

The connection between that name in the credits and Dril is tenuous, but there are a few clues that Homestuck fans found telling.

***

According to Tumblr user not-terezi-pyrope, a 2014 Tumblr reblog from someone claiming to know Dril offline referred to him as “Paul,” the first name of the person in the credits.

Jacob Bakkila, a writer behind the wildly popular @Horse_ebooks Twitter account, also claimed to know Dril offline. He said Dril had hired him for a project once and the two had become friends. Bakkila also said that Dril had contributed to the Horse_ebooks sequel, an adventure game called Bear Stearns Bravo.

Sometime between 2014 and 2017 a Tumblr user unearthed the LinkedIn account of the Paul named in the credits who claimed to have contributed to Bear Stearns Bravo—presumably the same “Paul” who was listed on the Hiveswap credits screen.

And, according to the Homestuck fan sites, there’s more.

One of the only 205 accounts Dril follows on Twitter is Cohen Edenfield, Hiveswap’s lead writer.

And “there are further connections, as well, to do with old accounts and comparisons of artwork, etc. I’m not up to scratch on the precise details of that,” user not-terezi-pyrope wrote on Tumblr. “Also, I spoke to somebody who did audio effects work for Hiveswap shortly after the Act 1 release, and while they seemed to not be entirely privy to the details they also brought up a connection.”

News of the Dril-Homestuck connection spread like wildfire through the fandom community back in September and there’s an entire Reddit thread dedicated to discussing Dril’s identity and role in the game.

But since the Homestuck fandom is relatively closed off from average internet and Twitter users, Dril’s “doxxing” failed to reach the wider internet until a few subtweets on Thursday afternoon followed by Twitter user @thrdplanet tweeting about the outing Friday morning.

“I cannot believe the homestuck fandom cracked the identity of dril 2017 is truly a cursed timeline.”

ThrdPlanet’s Tweet quickly went viral, and she experienced almost immediate backlash from Dril fans.

“i dont want to know who he is i dont want to know what he looks like i will not let you guys ruin the last good thing on this website protect dril, respect dril, leave dril alone thank you,” one fan tweeted. “look just because we might have found the corporeal manifestation of dril at this point in history doesn’t mean we know who dril is… also anyone trying to find out dril’s identity is a fucking cop,” another user said.

@thrdplanet deleted her tweets, and after being bombarded with criticism tweeted again, “Y’all realize this isn’t a confirmed solid legit info on who he is right. Y’all also realize if he really never wanted to be found out he could have been credited under a pseudonym right. He wouldn’t have his work dril has been named as writing for on his LinkedIn right?”

***

The very process of “doxxing” someone’s personal identity online is fraught. At the end of the day, the connections between Dril and whoever “Paul” is are tenuous at best. And even if Dril is a graphic designer in the New York City metro area, as has been previously speculated, does any of that take away from his work?

It’s understandable that fans would feel a protective rage that Homestuck fandom sleuths were coming for what so many consider the last pure Twitter account on the internet. Dril himself has not acknowledged the controversy today or two months ago when it was revealed on Tumblr.

It’s worth noting that his “doxxing” didn’t appear to be malicious.

“I’m posting this here,” Reddit user Fraven wrote after “revealing” Dril’s identity on the platform, “with the benign purpose of getting some special appreciation for the game’s (Hiveswap) great staff of writers and the talent within it.”

Other Twitter users remained resilient in the face of potentially losing one of their most beloved comrades.

One user suggested that over the weekend all Dril supporters change their Twitter name to “I am dril” in solidarity. Another said, “its the weekend baby. You know what that means. its time to drink precisely one beer and not dox dril.”

“Who is john dril?” joked someone else.

“I’m about to dox dril,” another tweeted, “okay here goes: the real dril is all the friends we made along the way.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/who-on-earth-would-dox-dril-the-only-good-anonymous-person-on-the-internet/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184070098192

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samanthasroberts · 6 years ago

Text

Who on Earth Would Dox Dril, the Only Good Anonymous Person on the Internet?

Dril’s tweets regularly amass thousands of retweets and his work has been aggregated on any mainstream viral media site you can think of.

“Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of ‘Hell’ that I was banished to upon death in my previous life,” he joked to BuzzFeed in 2013.

So why did a comic with an insular, sometimes incomprehensible fanbase reveal the secret of Dril that nobody wanted to know?

Because they believe Dril may have been one of them.

***

The connection between that name in the credits and Dril is tenuous, but there are a few clues that Homestuck fans found telling.

***

According to Tumblr user not-terezi-pyrope, a 2014 Tumblr reblog from someone claiming to know Dril offline referred to him as “Paul,” the first name of the person in the credits.

And, according to the Homestuck fan sites, there’s more.

One of the only 205 accounts Dril follows on Twitter is Cohen Edenfield, Hiveswap’s lead writer.

“I cannot believe the homestuck fandom cracked the identity of dril 2017 is truly a cursed timeline.”

ThrdPlanet’s Tweet quickly went viral, and she experienced almost immediate backlash from Dril fans.

***

It’s worth noting that his “doxxing” didn’t appear to be malicious.

Other Twitter users remained resilient in the face of potentially losing one of their most beloved comrades.

“Who is john dril?” joked someone else.

“I’m about to dox dril,” another tweeted, “okay here goes: the real dril is all the friends we made along the way.”

Source: http://allofbeer.com/who-on-earth-would-dox-dril-the-only-good-anonymous-person-on-the-internet/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/who-on-earth-would-dox-dril-the-only-good-anonymous-person-on-the-internet/

0 notes

allofbeercom · 6 years ago

Text

Who on Earth Would Dox Dril, the Only Good Anonymous Person on the Internet?

Dril’s tweets regularly amass thousands of retweets and his work has been aggregated on any mainstream viral media site you can think of.

“Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of ‘Hell’ that I was banished to upon death in my previous life,” he joked to BuzzFeed in 2013.

So why did a comic with an insular, sometimes incomprehensible fanbase reveal the secret of Dril that nobody wanted to know?

Because they believe Dril may have been one of them.

***

The connection between that name in the credits and Dril is tenuous, but there are a few clues that Homestuck fans found telling.

***

According to Tumblr user not-terezi-pyrope, a 2014 Tumblr reblog from someone claiming to know Dril offline referred to him as “Paul,” the first name of the person in the credits.

And, according to the Homestuck fan sites, there’s more.

One of the only 205 accounts Dril follows on Twitter is Cohen Edenfield, Hiveswap’s lead writer.

“I cannot believe the homestuck fandom cracked the identity of dril 2017 is truly a cursed timeline.”

ThrdPlanet’s Tweet quickly went viral, and she experienced almost immediate backlash from Dril fans.

***

It’s worth noting that his “doxxing” didn’t appear to be malicious.

Other Twitter users remained resilient in the face of potentially losing one of their most beloved comrades.

“Who is john dril?” joked someone else.

“I’m about to dox dril,” another tweeted, “okay here goes: the real dril is all the friends we made along the way.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/who-on-earth-would-dox-dril-the-only-good-anonymous-person-on-the-internet/

0 notes

seoulfulcity · 6 years ago

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June 10, 2018: Take Me to Beijing, China

你好,

I actually finished my Beijing blog during my long 12-hour layover in Seoul. I exited the Tumblr app on my phone for a moment and Tumblr decided to just delete everything. So, here I am, in Osaka, re-writing my Beijing blog. Sigh.

Saturday, June 9, 2018: Beijing did not start off great, let me tell you that.

We arrived in Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU) at around 5 PM for our 9 PM flight to Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK). Little did I know, Wu Lei was also departing CTU that same time. He actually starred in a few famous Chinese dramas such as The Whirlwind Girl (Both the first and second one - shout out to Yang Yang and Ji Changwook) and Nirvana in Fire. Great way to start our Beijing adventures, right?

We went through security fairly quickly and had three hours to explore CTU after. Closer to our departure time, our flight was delayed to 10:10 PM with a new arrival time of 1:05 AM.

Just an hour of delay - nothing to worry about. Give or take an hour or two for transportation between PEK to our hotel by the Forbidden City, and we're looking at arriving around 3 AM.

Fact: We're only in Beijing the entire day of June 10 and we were flying out of the city the next day; so here's where the problem begins. We were supposed to go to the Great Wall at 7 AM and stay there until noon.

I saved two hours for the ride going back to the city and from 2-4 PM should have been the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. Then we visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in the evening and call it a successful day in Beijing. Spoiler alert - none of that happened. This is an introduction to what is known as The Murphy's Law.

It all started with the flight delay.

After announcing the one-hour delay, they later changed it to "indefinite delay" due to bad weather in a nearby airport. Great. Indefinite delay. Not even the people in the receptionist in front of the airplane entrance had an estimate when we were gonna board.

Just "indefinite".

Luckily (well, no), we boarded the plane half an hour past midnight for a three-hour flight to Beijing. We were estimated to arrive around 4 AM. So, that 7 AM trip to the Great Wall needed to be changed, I suppose. To make it more interesting: after we landed in PEK at 4 in the morning, we were greeted by this beautiful marquee:

A 50-minute wait for a taxi at 4 in the morning. This was unbelievable. We only had one day to spend in Beijing and Murphy seemed to be keeping himself busy with us.

Sunday, June 10, 2018: We did not arrive to our hotel until 5:30 AM; we quickly agreed to hike up the Great Wall around noon instead. It might be a little sunny and crowded, but at least we would get enough rest. We cut the times for the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City in half to accommodate with our extra hours of sleep.

Once again. Murphy was very busy that day and had plans on his own for us.

That morning, we talked to the receptionist regarding the best ways to travel to the Great Wall and she said that taxis can't access the walls and public transportation will take about two hours each way.

We did not have the time to have four hours just for transportation. What about a private driver? 900 yuan. Nope. Too expensive. Group tours? Last one that picked tourists up in front of our hotel left at 7 AM. Great. Now what?

We planned to take a taxi from the hotel to Deshengmen Station, which would take us directly to the most popular tourist spot of the Great Wall - Badaling.

We hailed the taxi, who told us that since it was a Sunday, the last bus from Deshengmen to Badaling was at 10 AM.

Okay, mister. Come up with a better lie.

So, he offered to drive us to a nearby station (I don't remember what it was called since he used a translation app during the entire ride - Wufanglian? Wufangyin? Wangfingyin?) where a group tour can drive us to Badaling, see some Ming tombs, and a Chinese garden with entrance tickets and lunch included for only 210 yuan.

Not bad since the driver said they would drop us back to the station, which was very close to our hotel anyway. The group tour would save us the time and the stress with finding transportation. We naively agreed to it.

Now, let us cut to the chase - this was a scam trip.

The bus was filled with middle-aged Chinese locals, a family with two children, and a young couple in their mid-20s, so I didn't feel very uncomfortable. We arrived in a suspiciously-empty side of Badaling, with no security checking for tickets, whatsoever after an hour of driving.

Anyways, we were on the Great Wall and that was all that mattered. I could skip out on the Ming tombs and the rest and just spend my time marveling the beauty of one of the wonders of the world.

We stayed for one hour and went back to the bus. I estimated our time of arrival to be 3 PM so we had a few hours to fit the rest of the Beijing attractions.

I was wrong.

We were driven to a remote area where they had a terrible map of the Ming tombs on the wall.

That was the Ming tombs tour. Just a map.

We were brought in to a huge room where they sold expensive jewelries and we had stayed there for an entire hour before getting lunch of just appetizers, such as cucumbers. That was it.

That was then when I knew this was the type of tourist scams I've read about online.

We stopped at another spot nearby where they sold Chinese chips and we were there for another good hour.

Another stop was with a garden where the tour guide had us walk around to talk about different rooms in a temple, and another map of where some antique Buddha statues were located around China - all in Chinese. Once again, we were there for another hour where they tried to sell jewelries to us.

At this point, Simi and I were just upset and ready to pay a ridiculous amount of taxi fare to go back to our hotel since we were really far away from the city.

We were dropped off in front of the Olympic Stadium - I hated everyone part of that scam. They told us they were dropping us back to where we departed, now we had to figure out where we were and how to get back home.

Time stamp: 8:44 PM. Our day was gone. We were robbed 8 hours of our day with that damn scam of a group tour. I was very upset. We took a taxi to the Silk Market, since our Nursing family were staying in a hotel close to the market so we planned on surprising them before they leave Beijing back to Los Angeles.

After exploring the Silk Market, which was surprisingly a very fancy mall of six floors where you get to practice your haggling skills, we walked to the hotel where our Nursing family was staying.

We stayed for an hour until we had access to Wi-Fi and saw on Snapchat that they departed Beijing at 11 in the morning.

Bummer. All our plans went down the drain.

We arrived back to our hotel close to midnight and agreed to visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City early morning before our 1 PM flight to Hong Kong. Our hotel was situated just a 10-minute walk to the Forbidden City, so we spent the first part of our morning exploring the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

So, what did I think about my experience in China? Let's go back to the 10 fears mentioned in my Macau and Guangzhou blog.

China is filled with scammers and you have to constantly be wary of your surroundings - I only had this experience in Beijing, so I can't generalized the entire country based on that one incident, but yes. Scammers are ubiquitous in China and you need to be aware and educate yourself on the different schemes they use prior to visiting the country to avoid being placed in that situation.

Language barrier is the most terrifying thing - nobody will be able to help you since English is not widely taught; and apparently people are too impatient to even bother with a translator - Yes, language barrier is the biggest problem you'll have on a day-to-day basis but a lot of apps are available to help you navigate through China. I used Translate Offline and Pleco and got through just fine. Although, the Chinese have this great app that translate spoken Chinese into really well-written academic English sentences and I was very impressed. I still wonder what app that was.

The Great Firewall. Enough said - Okay, no. I made myself believe that all these apps would not open in China, but that's wrong. They're just very slow. If you use your data, you have access to all the Western apps, but if you use the Wi-Fi, then you wouldn't be able to even use them with how slow they are; but I used ExpressVPN during my entire trip in China.

China has a history of tracking its citizens, and visitors need to buy things that could prevent identity theft - I never really had an experience with this but I was told that WeChat is used by the government to track its people - and WeChat is everywhere. China is almost cashless because of WeChat - it's crazy. You can't survive the country if you don't have this app installed on your phone. This is a link to Mamahuhu’s video on how important WeChat is to the daily lives of the Chinese population if you want to find out more about it: China is Beyond Cashless As a review, WeChat and a VPN are the two most important apps you need installed prior to visiting the country.

Pollution. The internet needed me to buy a thick face mask to protect my respiratory system - Yup. The air was mean to my throat which gave me dry cough throughout my stay in China. You can see me wearing a black face mask in most of my pictures in the country. Even a few weeks after leaving Beijing, my throat is still somewhat irritated. It was so much worse in Beijing since you could not even see the buildings with how bad the pollution was. I will attach a picture towards the end of the blog.

The hot and humid weather is unbearable. You won't be able to do a lot with how much energy you're wasting by just sweating - Beijing had one of the most beautiful weathers I had ever experienced. It was cloudy with a nice cool breeze. We hiked up the Great Wall and did not even break a sweat.

Wild dogs carrying rabies everywhere, children pooping in street corners, squat toilets, and basically the complete opposite of the magnificent America. Apparently the whole country is rabid and unsanitary - No. This is just no. China is very civilized most of the time. The only time they aren't is in line where everybody feels the need to overtake. They even have quotes in the men’s urinals saying that stepping closer to the urinal is a step closer to a civilized China. Like, how communal is that? Haha. Other than that, Americans are actually meaner than the Chinese - at least in my experience in Los Angeles.

The food and water are very dirty. They apparently boil sewage water for consumption and the oil they use for street foods are months old. I was suggested to bring different medications for diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, and all kinds of drugs for future stomach problems - I never had the chance to take any of the medications, thankfully; but for future reference, there are pharmacies in China and you are more than capable on buying Pepto Bismol when you need it. Bringing the whole pharmacy in your luggage is a little too much. I was scared for this to happen, so I only ate in actual restaurants and avoided suspicious places and streetfoods.

The people are mean and unforgiving. They will yell, hit, and shove as an instinct - Only in line!!! Beijingers are the worst during rush hour, and I've used the New York subways!

Overall, China is going to be a scary place for a first-time solo traveler - It is a very intimidating place, especially for someone whose Chinese knowledge is limited to ni hao and xiexie. But, embrace the independence if China is the first country you're traveling to as a first-time solo traveler. It has so much to offer, such as history, culture, food, and night life. I could not have asked for any other country to dive into as a solo traveler other than this one. The country matures you faster and you become more aware of which travel habits you need to change that only worked when traveling with other people and family.

My phone is acting weird like it's not typing the word I want it to type and the cursor jumps everywhere. It rained today in Osaka, so I guess it got wet? Or maybe the screen is just oily from my fingers?

Anyways, I don't plan on writing a blog on my layover in Hong Kong or Seoul before heading to Tokyo since they were very uneventful.

Although, I stayed in HKG for 31 hours, which was definitely a first.

Just a heads-up, I expect my Tokyo blog to be very lengthy so I plan to divide it into four different blogs, so keep an eye out for that one (or those four, I guess). Until then!

谢谢, Chris 「克里斯」

#summer #abroad #beijing #china

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years ago

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Spend 10 minutes on Facebook or 5 minutes on Tumblr and you’re bound to see a spelling mistake. They’re an unavoidable fact of life born from a combination of laziness and more laziness. However, some spelling mistakes and typos are more curious than others. Here are 10 of the best we could find.

#1 Jesus’ name misspelled, on a coin released by the Vatican. We’re going to go out on a limb here and guess that the people involved directly with the Vatican encounter the word “Jesus” a little more than the average person on the street. We wouldn’t be surprised if half of the people working there could write it in their sleep. So when the Vatican released an official medal to commemorate Pope Francis being elected to the prestigious position of Pope, on which they spelled the word Jesus wrong, it was a huge source of embarrassment for them. The medals, which stylised Jesus as “Lesus” were quickly recalled to be destroyed, though not before savvy collectors managed to snag a few. Ironically, by destroying the medals, the ones that survived became even rarer, catapulting the value of each on to astronomical levels. Now we could understand a normal person making this mistake, but these were people working for the Vatican, we genuinely can’t fathom how nobody working there noticed this mistake. We mean, seriously, surely the lack of the letter J at least tipped somebody off that something was slightly amiss.

#2 Jack the Ripper’s spelling mistakes makes it easier for people to send hoax letters. Jack the Ripper is known by criminologists and and laypersons alike as one of the most sinister serial killers in all of history. Even today, over a century after he stalked the streets of London, people are still fervently arguing over his identity and motives. One of the things that made Jack so infamous amongst the public was his annoying habit of supposedly taunting the police through letters. We say “supposedly” only because it has never been conclusively proven that the letters were from the killer. But we digress. The three messages commonly attributed to the killer himself are the “Dear Boss” letter, the “Saucy Jacky” postcard and the “From Hell” letter. All of them shared stylistic similarities, knowledge of the crimes scenes and an abundance of spelling mistakes. As noted here, after the police received the second postcard, in a fit of frustration they posted copies of both letters for the public to see outside of the station, hoping that someone would recognize the handwriting and turn Jack in. As an example of how bad Jack’s handwriting and spelling supposedly was, try and spot the mistakes in this quote from one the “Openshaw letter”: “Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny I was goin to hopperate agin close to your ospitle just as I was goin to dror mi nife along of er bloomin throte then cusses of coppers spoilt the game” Because the public is mainly composed of d-bags, almost as soon as the letters were printed in the press and made available for the public to view the police were flooded with hundreds of copycat letters. Many were made to look authentic without sparing use of Jack’s common spelling mistakes and the other stylistic features present in his letters. Because the case was still open, the police had to waste hundreds of precious man-hours investigating the sources of these various hoax letters. You know, instead of spending it actually looking for the guy stabbing everyone. Gee, thanks, Victorian era British public.

#3 There’s a mistake in Newton’s Principia that went unnoticed for 3 centuries. Okay so this isn’t a spelling mistake, per se, but considering all of the letters Newton used in his mathematical equations, we think it’s close enough to be featured here. Principia is Newton’s most famous piece of work, and it effectively laid the groundwork for everything we currently understand about gravity and the laws of motion today. The impact this book made on science is so great that when Newton dropped the first copy on his publisher’s desk, it immediately caught fire (probably) and it has been studied by eggheads and people with more Ph.D’s than you could shake a stick at for centuries. With that in mind, the fact that there is a mistake in this book that went unnoticed for hundreds of years is not only surprising, it’s technically a statistical impossibility. Unbelievably though, there totally was a mistake in the book that went unnoticed until 1987. Newton accidentally put the wrong number into an equation and getting the number 11 instead of 10.5, which as we all know may as well be a million in the world of math equations. What’s even more unbelievable is that the mistake was noticed by a student, not an expert or one of the literally thousands of people who’ve studied the book before. The student, unsurprisingly, got an A+ on the paper in which he noticed the mistake.

#4 The various misprinted Bibles. The Bible has been reprinted more times than Batman’s origin story, and the stories behind some of them are almost as brutal and unfair. For example, perhaps the most most infamous example is the so-called “Wicked Bible” in which the famous commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was accidentally printed as “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Almost immediately after the mistake was noticed, the people who published it were fined the equivalent of about $40,000 before being stripped of their printing license. The church then attempted to burn every copy of the Bible they could find, though a few survived because of course they did. Weirdly, that’s not even the most peculiar mistake found in a Bible, or even the biggest fine issued for one, though it is arguably the most offensive. For example, there’s “Lion Bible” which features the quote, “thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions,” instead of “loins” and there’s even a copy of the Bible in which Jesus’ name is written as Judas instead. We’re actually more annoyed that more books don’t have mistakes like: “Blessed are the placemakers” (instead of peacemakers) “Printers have persecuted me without a cause” – Instead of princes. “And Rebecca arose, and her camels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebecca and went his way.” (It’s supposed to say damsels) Hell, we’d kill for a copy of Harry Potter where a Snake kills Dumbledore.

#5 The Koran misprint that sparked a crisis. Like the Bible, mistakes in the Koran are a really big deal. Though they’re not as well documented, they have happened and like with the Wicked Bible, it caused someone a lot of trouble. In this case that someone was Ahmad al-Kulaib, who oversaw the production of a state-published version of the Koran that featured a bunch of missing sections. The mistake was effectively political suicide for al-Kulaib, who was serving Kuwait as their Minister for Islamic Affairs when the mistake was noticed. Less than a week afterwards, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved the entire parliament. If you’re thinking a tiny mistake like that couldn’t have caused the Sheikh to dissolve parliament, we though that too. Until we saw this article by the BBC basically confirming it.

#6 Shakespeare couldn’t spell his own name. The name William Shakespeare is intrinsically linked with the English language, and he’s widely regarded as one of the single greatest and most influential writers in all of history. He also couldn’t spell his own name. Now as you’re probably aware, back in Shakespeare’s day, the rules of spelling were a little more lax than they are today. However, it still doesn’t change the fact that one of the most famous writers of all time couldn’t even agree on how to spell his own name. As noted here, of the six total remaining examples of Shakespeare’s signature, he uses a different spelling of his own name in all but two of them, thereby making the actual spelling of his name impossible to discern. The spellings Shakespeare used are as follows: Shaksper Shakspere Shakspeare In fact, Shakespeare’s penmanship was so terrible that the actual spellings he used are still being debated. If that wasn’t confusing enough, his contemporaries were even worse at spelling his name with his name being stylized as everything from “Shakysper” to “Shakp.” We mean, come on, that last one isn’t even trying.

#7 Jane Austen couldn’t spell either. It’s almost possible to forgive Schakespeire for his inability to spell because he grew up in a time when there was no universally accepted way of spelling things (including names apparently). However, we’re less forgiving of a writer like Jane Austen who, like Shexpere, is known as one of the best writers to have ever lived. As an example of Austen’s mastery over the written word, consider the story she wrote as a child simply titled, “Love and Freindship.” You can read it in its entirety via Wikipedia if you’re so inclined. But she was a kid when she wrote that; it’s not like she continued to make stupid, easily avoidable mistakes like that well into adulthood is it? Oh right, she totally did. In fact, a bunch of famous authors are infamous for making childish errors in some of their most famous pieces of work, including man’s man, Earnest Hemingway, who famously told his editor that correcting his spelling was his job. Then again, who’d argue with a guy who used to hunt sharks with a machine gun. Then again, Hemingway also spelled moving as “moveing”. Think that’s bad? Agatha Christia once misspelled the name of one of her own characters, writing Colonel Cadbury as “Colonel Carbery,” and President Andrew Jackson, a man famous for his oratory skills spelled development as “devilopment.” Then again, when he was later insulted about his poor spelling Jackson’s response was: “It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.” So we think he has the upper hand here.

#8 Google is the result of a typo. Google is such a popular search engine that the word “google” is now considered an honest-to-goodness verb meaning “to search for something.” If you’re wondering why we didn’t use a capital letter for the word Google just then, it’s because Google (the company) will send people pissy cease and desist letters if they capitalize it. They even tried to stop it being included in the dictionary. As a result, the term “to google something” is only technically correct if you use a lowercase G. It’s kind of odd because the word “google” itself is a misspelling of the word “googol,” the name given to the number 10^100 (10 with a hundred extra zeroes) which we’re sure you all already knew because everyone here should have already seen Back To The Future. As recounted here, when the inventors of Google were trying to think of a name for their company, one of the originally proposed names was, “googolplex,” which is 10, times a googol. However, Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) didn’t like the word Googolplex and instead suggested just “googol.” However, when the guy he asked to check if the domain “googol.com” was available accidentally typed in “google.com” instead, Larry apparently liked this new spelling better and the name stuck.

#9 The typo that would have never been noticed if it wasn’t for the Oscars. Go check the comment section of any article on the internet, we can guarantee you that there is about a 40% chance that there will be at least one comment pointing out either a factual inaccuracy or a spelling/grammar mistake somewhere it its comment section. If you think that this is a recent trend, you’re right, which still hasn’t stopped it reaching into the past to correct the mistakes of people who died before we were all born. Just ask the author of the New York Times article that was trolled for spelling mistakes 161 years after it was published. According to this article, the paper corrected a typo noticed by an eagle-eyed reader viewing their archives that misspelled the name of the Solomon Northup, the author of the book “12 years a slave.” The NYT mistakenly identified Northup as both “Northrop” and “Northrup” throughout the 1853 article, a mistake they apologized for a cool 16 decades later (something we want you to keep in mind if you notice a mistake in this piece).

#10 A bunch of cities in the States are misspellings of way cooler names. It’s a crying shame how few cities have awesome names these days, but we guess it’s fair that not everyone can live in Sparta or Batman. If they did, it’d be impossible to send letters because postboxes would keep catching fire. As you can see from this article, a lot of cities in America used to have cool names until an idiot somewhere along the line misspelled it. For example, Novi in Michigan was originally just called No VI, which is very vogue, but people kept thinking the Roman numerals were letters. Similarly, Frankfort, Kentucky was originally just called, Frank’s Ford, after a guy who was stabbed to death in a river bed. Weirdly, a lot of the cities were renamed purely because settlers didn’t like (or couldn’t spell) the word the Indian Natives used. Hackensack used to be “Ackinchesacky” before the white man arrived and Muncie used to be “Munsee” but no one knew how to spell it so we just guessed and never bothered to check if it was correct. This is a lesson for everyone reading this: if something is too difficult, just do it your own way and hope it catches on.

Source: TopTenz

#IoTRecords

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