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unforth · 4 years ago

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Hi there! I absolutely loooove the destiel fic collection and think that it's a genius way to expose fans to fics that might not always get as much attention on fic recs and when searching on ao3. I was thinking of trying to create a similar collection for another fandom and was wondering if you have any tips? Or if there's anything that you wish you knew when you started it? Thank you!

Hi!! Just for openers, sorry I didn’t reply to this yesterday, my mom’s basement flooded and took with it all my writing time, sigh. ANYWAY. On to the topic at hand. How to make a “faves survey” for another fandom, and have it resemble what I’ve made for Destiel? Well, here’s what I’ve done, hopefully some of it will be applicable to you...

1. This is the most important part: Do NOT let it become or be perceived as a popularity contest. Never release the raw stats (except perhaps to a small number of people who you trust to help you). Never announce a “winner.” Never share a ranked list. Never act as if more votes equals better. Never ever suggest in anyway that your purpose to find “the best.” Treat people and fics who get one vote with just as much fanfare as people and fics who get 50 votes. I do release a “top 20″ list just because so many people asked, but even then, it’s in alphabetical order, and meant more as a snapshot. Encourage people to vote for their favorites that aren’t already in whatever collection you end up making, and encourage people to vote for things they don’t usually see on rec lists. Aim for an expansive range of types of fics being voted for, and make it clear - no ship shaming (or secondary ship shaming, if yours is ship-based like mine, rather than being general to a given fandom) or kink shaming.

2. Keep the survey super simple. People don’t read complex instructions, and they’re not going to want to rank lists or anything like that. You can see the one I use here. Feel free to emulate it, copy it, modify it for your own purposes. I used to just do boxes but people would routinely put in way more than 5/10, and while I didn’t really mind the extras, it greatly increased the amount of work I had to do, and since the survey routinely gets a couple hundred replies that I go through, I decided to make it a little harder for people to go over the limits. Don’t bother asking for people’s names or trying to validate the results. I’ve tried. People don’t want to put their names, and validation encourages people not to submit...AND doesn’t prevent cheating...so is really pointless. Just keep it anonymous, after four rounds I can say...that works best.

3. And, speaking of people going over the limits, and cheating...people will cheat. No matter how clear you are that number of votes don’t matter, no matter how much you insist that whatever data you’re collecting will only be used in so-and-so a way...you will spot people “cheating,” for various definitions of the word cheating. People who vote for their own works. People will submit multiple surveys. People will “ballot box stuff” for their favorite(s). People will list more than the maximums you’ve asked them to. People will submit works from other ships, and - though it’s never happened to me - if you make it fandom-general I’ll lay heavy odds at least one dumbass will submit for some other fandom entirely. It happens in different permutations every time, some more obvious than others, but it happens. And the conclusion I reached is...so fucking what? In the end, since the idea is to highlight as many different great works as possible...screw it. Let people vote for themselves. Let people ballot box stuff. Let people submit multiple surveys, or list more than whatever maximums you’ve set. In the end, since every work is treated as equal and one vote is worth as much as a hundred...if they’re cheating to up the vote count, it’s irrelevant, and if they’re cheating to vote for more works, then yay! more works to include! and basically the only thing I’ve found that reduces cheating is to make it absolutely clear to people that I’d really rather they not but ultimately I can’t stop them, so do their thing I guess? And it does help. I got less cheating each time I do it, or at least less that I’m able to catch lol. (as a side note - the one exceptions is the “works for others ships.” Those you can see listed on the “INELIGIBLE” sheet of the spreadsheet I link below, but I don’t add them to the AO3 collection.)

4. Spreadsheets are your best friend. You’re going to want some way to organize the data you’re collecting. I’ve got a public version of the sheet I use that you can see here. It’s pretty similar to my “private” version, except the private version includes actual vote counts, separated by which time(s) I did the survey that the work in question got votes. I mostly use that data so I can do comparisons over the years (“this year X works were added to the collection that were never in it before!”) and because I like numbers. However, depending on how exactly you plan to use the data, you may not even need to tally vote counts, and you could do one that’s more similar to my public version. Also, if you make an AO3 collection, you’re going to want some way to track which works you’ve invited, which have been added, etc., cause otherwise it’s just a nightmare to keep track of. (a little more on this later).

5. Decide how and where you’re going to share your data - as an AO3 collection? As a public spreadsheet? On social media? Maybe you want to make a side Tumblr just for it? Or a Discord server? etc. etc. Like, I’ve got a pillowfort group (though I hardly use it) and a channel in a Discord server (thanks again to the PB folks for making space for me!) with the AO3 collection being the main portal. You want to make sure that it’s advertised enough that people know it exists, and also be prepared that short term you’ll hear basically no feedback on whether people use it, and even long term it’ll be once in a blue moon and suddenly eight people will be like WAIT YOU’RE THE PERSON BEHIND THAT THING I LOVE THAT THING. In that respect it can feel a little thankless but I’ve definitely found that people do use it, it’s just that there’s no real way for people to let YOU know they’re using it (and, honestly...good? This isn’t really about us, after all, it’s about all these fic writers, the goal is to bring attention to them, not ourselves, we’re just a go-between for the writers and the readers.)

6. For making an AO3 collection, you’ll have to invite every single work individually. Some people have their accounts set to auto-accept invites, but otherwise whether the work actually gets added will depend on the authors. Some people will never accept the invite. Some people won’t know how to accept the invite. Some people will accept the invite and then subsequently remove their work. Some people have left these parts completely and will never even see the invite. That’s why it’s important to track who has added and who hasn’t, and periodically double check it (I double check every six months or so). For the people who don’t accept the invites for whatever reason, you can bookmark the item to the collection. HOWEVER, if you do this with your personal account, every single one of those bookmarks will be listed under your personal AO3, which is why I ultimately made the Faves survey its own account - it’s entirely to facilitate bookmarking. You can also use the “Bookmark External Work” feature to link to works that aren’t on AO3, and to tag them to whatever extent you want to. Here’s some examples of how I chose to bookmark external works.

7. Things will inevitably get complicated. Authors will change their names. People who do the survey will use shorthand you’ve never heard of for some fic you don’t know. People will misspell things and you’ll either recognize it even with the typo...or you won’t. People will vote for things that list eight different ships and you’ll have no idea which one is endgame. People will vote for things that have been deleted, or they’ll tell you it’s definitely on AO3 when it’s not, it’s on some other platform. The list of random things I’ve had to deal with is stupidly long and I’ve probably forgotten even more. Just...roll with it. Do your best. Ask for help (“Someone nominated a fic abbreviated as ABC to the collection and didn’t give the author and I have no idea what it is, help me Tumblr!”). And in the end, if you’ve done everything you can think of and you still don’t know...let it go. It’s just not that worth worrying about. And sometimes if you step away and look again in a few days you’ll figure out another way to search and it’ll pop up. But honestly I’ve got a handful of works I still haven’t been able to track down, and that one work that someone submitted that’s only available in Finnish and is explicit and behind a log-in wall on a small independent Finnish-only fic archive...well, I spoke to the author and confirmed the work exists, but otherwise...whelp, it’s not linked, and I did my best. That’s all you can do.

8. No matter what you do, someone somewhere will probably get upset about it. The first time I did the survey, when it got the most traction, I actually got a little hate, and I got some anons who were like “oooooo did you know that ~x~ is cheating” and I had a little “HOW DARE YOU NOT PLAY FAVORITES WHAT ABOUT MY PERSONAL FAVE?” and just...decide how you’re approaching the survey, and stick to your guns, and if anyone is a douche, hit the block button. And, related...

9. Transparency is most important imo. Not transparency for vote counts obviously, but transparency for what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and what you hope to accomplish. Make sure your goals are clear from the start (mine weren’t that first time, hence some of the problems I encountered) - if it’s to highlight as wide a range of works as possible, say that. If it IS to pick a favorite, say that too. Just be clear, and honest, and above board, and it should work out okay.

10. Side note...one of the saddest things about all this is that if you do it over an extended period you’ll see authors deleting their works. As such, I personally chose to download every work that gets a vote, that way it’s at least preserved. I then expanded that into a much larger archive that I’m still adding to all the time, trying to save as much Destiel as possible. But then, I’m an archivist at heart, whether you want to branch out in that kind of direction is up to you.

...okay, that’s everything I can think of. Hopefully I didn’t scare you too bad. I don’t know what fandom/ship you’re looking at but for perspective...first time I did the survey I got about 400 replies, and then the next two times it got about 200, and this most recent time it got about 300. I chose to do mine annually, on the assumption that gives some time for people to come and go for fandom and a lot of new works to get created, and I deliberately timed it for about a month after the biggest fandom event (the DCBB) that generates fics, to give people time to read those fics and consider them in their voting. For me, that means I happen to run the survey starting on January 1st, and I keep it limited to 15 days, since usually it tapers off anyway. But you could try experimenting with different schedules, or leaving it open all the time, etc., it just depends how much time you want to devote to monitoring and updating it. For me, I mostly want to do a big burst of work and then not have to think about it most of the rest of the time, lol.

So...questions? comments? thoughts? wanna tell me I’m dead wrong? I’m all ears, lemme know how I can help!

#destiel favs survey #unforth replies #sorry if this is a mess I've GOT to do some writing so I don't want to take the time to edit it #treatlouwithkindness

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frozines · 5 years ago

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Frozine: An Open Door

Hey all, I’m so pleased to announce that our first ever fanzine is now open for submissions! Here’s some of the main information you’ll need to know, please also take the time to read the additional information below the cut.

Theme: An Open Door

Pulling from “Love is an Open Door” this theme is very open to interpretation. It can be literal or figurative, and is meant to encourage the fact that we as a fandom, especially with the new film coming soon, are open to new fans joining us. You can follow this theme as loosely or as closely as you’d like. At the end of the day it’s just a title and an encouragement!

Deadlines and How to Submit:

First drafts of any piece should be ready by August 30th. They can be sent to [email protected] or sent to this account @frozines through a google doc link or whatever it is you prefer. Your first drafts won’t be shared with anyone beyond the volunteer editors, and we’ll be just giving your pieces a comb through for grammar, spelling, and double checking it against the standards we’ve set for appropriateness (see below). If any changes need to be made, we’ll let you know within a week or so!

Final drafts with any edits will need to be done before October 26th so that we have plenty of time to format the zine and place in everyone’s entries before the zine goes live November 16th!

Acceptable Submission Types:

I really can’t think of a format that isn’t acceptable! But here are some ideas in case you really want to make something but feel stuck!

Fanfiction (drabbles, chapters from a longer work, one-shots, fan poetry, character studies and more)

Fan art (traditional art, digital art, pixel art, collages, photo edits and manipulations, coloring pages, patterns, photos of crafts, photos of dolls or face characters or cosplay, tarot cards, paper dolls, dioramas, comics and more)

Lists (playlists, rec lists, top ten scenes lists, etc.)

Links to digital content (podcasts, podfic, fanvids, etc)

Meta, predictions,what ifs and more!

Literally anything else you can come up with that we can put in print

Content Restrictions:

To make this zine something we can share with fans young and old, especially as many of the new fans coming in will be on the younger side, we’ve decided to adopt a “PG” rating for this zine. That means, essentially you are welcome to include alcohol and tobacco use, some profanity and/ or violence, brief nudity, and indirect adult content such as innuendo. Essentially keep it appropriate for the film’s audience, include all the kissing and cuddling you want, but keep any mature content in a “fade to black” capacity. We will be doing a NSFW zine in the future if there’s enough interest.

Going along with this rating, incestuous ships are not permitted. However you are welcome to ship Elsa or any of the other characters with other Disney characters or OCs. At the moment it looks like this zine will heavily involve General works and Kristanna works, but other ships are welcome so long as they adhere to the guidelines and of course non-ship focused works are also welcome.

Content submitted may be new work or something previously posted elsewhere, but it must be your own work. If you’d like to work with something of someone else’s (i.e. a continuation of a fic, a translation of a fic, a reading of a fic, a redraw of someone else’s art, etc. You must have the permission of the original creator)

Specific Information On Expectations Associated With Different Content

Everyone:

Please include your username on any sites you would like your work to be associated with when you submit, including tumblr, AO3, ff.net, twitter, pillowfort, youtube, etsy, and more. We want people to be able to find more of your work!

Fanfiction & Other Writing:

Anything longer than 1,000 words must include a link to the rest of the piece. We will print as much of the writing as space allows and will include the provided link such that the reader can read the rest. Also note that your writing will be labeled and or placed into a section relating to it’s content. I.e. Kristanna fic, Gen fic, Jelsa fic, meta, head canon, etc. So that it’s easy for readers to locate.

Art & Photography:

When at all possible your work will be given its own full page spread, so please keep the dimensions of a standard sheet of letter paper (8.5″ x 11″ or 215.9mm x 279.4 mm) when you create your piece. All sizes and shapes of artwork are acceptable, but be aware that they will be placed to fit in the space. Double page spreads are also allowed, be sure to make note of this when submitting. If you use anyone else’s work in the creation of your own, please also include a credit to them in your submission (i.e. photomanipulations using stock images supplied by someone, photos of your fandom shelf that may include art or crafts by someone, etc. Ask if you’re unsure)

Lists:

Please include links to whatever you’ve included in your list so that it is accessible for others. For playlists you may choose to make a youtube playlist and include the link to it. For lists such as “Top five funniest moments in Frozen” or something similar you may choose to simply describe the moments/ scenes, or provide links to them on youtube, or their timestamps in the movie.

Links:

Provide a brief explanation/ synopsis and any images you would like included with the link to your work. For example if you were posting a dramatic reading of a fic you would need to provide the audio or video link, a synopsis or explanation of what the fic is and who it is by, and any picture you would like attached to it (note this must be either something you’ve created, something you found that you are allowed to use like stock images or movie stills, or something you have received permission to include which must include who the creator is).

More Questions/ Comments/ Concerns?

Email [email protected] or send a DM to @frozines or @punkpoemprose

#frozine #frozen 2 #Frozen fanzine

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firecoloredwater · 6 years ago

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Dragonflight Chapter 1 Commentary

And, after way longer than planned, I have finally gotten that commentary written for the first scene/chapter of Dragonflight. Under a cut because this is long, and both spoilers and tangents abound.

(This is also being crossposted on pillowfort here, so if you have an account please consider this encouragement to comment.)

Plot Events

Lessa wakes up with a bad feeling and tries to figure out what danger is approaching. She fails and resolves to wait. The watch wher adores her.

Worldbuilding Details

Lessa trusts the watch-wher to be very aware of/sensitive to danger, so that her sensing something it doesn’t is very strange.

The watch-wher has an “odorous lair” and is kept on a chain in the courtyard. Also: clipped wings, a scaly head, and pointed ears. It flees into the den when the sun rises.

Kitchen drudges all sleep together in the cheese room; Lessa is described as “curled into a tight knot of bones” so presumably drudges aren’t fed well (at least in Fax’s Ruatha). They have sandals and sleep on straw, but apparently do not have any means of brushing their hair (or else Lessa hasn’t been making any use of it, and this isn’t terribly unusual for a drudge).

When describing Ruatha’s deterioration, it’s referred to as “the once stone-clean Hold.”

“Hold” seems to be roughly equivalent to a castle; Lessa refers to the “paved perimeter” of the Hold, as if a Hold is a very physical thing, more a place than a culture or a city which can expand just by building houses/roads/shops.

“the craftsmen’s stony holdings at the foot of the Hold’s cliff” implies that the Hold is built into a cliff, and that craftsmen have stone houses/shops/both that are built at the foot of but outside the cliff.

Lessa’s Hold is initially referred to as “Ruath Hold,” with “Ruatha” used in a way that seems like it might be more equivalent to “America.”

There are a lot of tales and ballads about “the dawn appearance of the red star.”

“Milchbeasts” are probably milk cows, but I suppose could also be goats or other animals used for milk.

The watch wher seems to be able to understand speech, though it doesn’t speak itself.

Commentary

I had forgotten how Anne McCaffrey began every book (every chapter? From the format it looks like it’ll be every chapter, but see, I don’t remember) with an in-universe song excerpt. Not that I wouldn’t have recalled when reminded, but without prompting I wouldn’t have come up with it.

As a result of this feature, the very first words I ever read of Pern (and, of course, the first in this reread as well) were not prose, they were lyrics:

Drummer, beat, and piper, blow, Harper, strike, and soldier, go. Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes.

I like the lyrics, and I think they’re fitting for my experience of enjoying Pern. These lines are very imagistic, very emotional; it’s a remarkably martial feel, considering three of the four characters/archetypes in the lines—drummer, piper, harper, and soldier—are musicians, and only the last is, well, the soldier. It gives me the feeling of all of Pern together gathering themselves and preparing and marching to war… which is what F’lar ends up spending most of this book trying to make happen.

It’s also deeply ironic, considering that I think soldiers exist in Dragonflight and Dragonseye and… well, some of the colonists in Dragonsdawn are retired former soldiers who don’t want to talk about it. But as far as I remember, soldiers just flat out don’t exist in any Pern book other than those two three. Even guards, and the concept of guards, seems to vanish. I’ve heard that national leaders are under much tighter security now than they were a century or two ago—which makes sense, it’s a lot harder to keep an assassin with a rifle out of murder range than an assassin with a sword—but medieval leaders still had guards.

Pernese leaders, on the other hand, seem to be operating under the philosophy that if you can’t personally defend yourself from assassins, then you kinda deserved it anyway and the assassin will probably rule better than you did. You’d think that people would at least be a little concerned about what happens to Jaxom considering he’s the sole possible heir to Ruatha once Lessa and her descendants are ineligible due to dragons, and I can only guess what sort of political mess would result if Jaxom died. But off he goes, wherever he feels like at any time, with not only no guards but not even a ‘visiting my secret girlfriend on her farm, send a search party if I’m not back by the morning’ note. Which I believe of Jaxom easily, but why does no one worry? Why is there no Zazu trying to make Simba-Jaxom behave himself?

And F’lar! Okay, sure, he has a great big dragon to protect him, but on the other hand so did his father, who was assassinated. I think it’s implied that F’lar put extra effort into learning knife fighting so that he could defend himself if someone tried to murder him like F’lon, which is… something, anyway… but F’lar, have you ever considered asking any of the hundreds of men in the military organization you have absolute power over to, say, do literally anything other than stand aside and watch when someone tries to murder you?

Now, to be fair to F’lar (and to all his subordinates who never suggest such a thing) the murder attempts were usually narratively framed as duels (even though they were never initiated with the formalities that would surround dueling when it was a thing in real, Earth cultures). Between that, F’lar’s pride, and the culture just not having the concept of guards, I have no trouble believing that F’lar wouldn’t come up with the idea. But how did we get to a culture that doesn’t have a concept of guards for world leaders? And how come no one else ever tried to interfere? Stab the evil Oldtimers in the back if you must! They went through zero formalities, they just pulled out a knife and aimed for murder, this is closer to a tavern brawl that an honorable duel. The other Oldtimers who value tradition so highly are not gonna side with the guy who tried to murder his peer just because he used a weapon to do it! Hell, Lessa can just psychically smack them down and be done with it, no death needed. Have Ramoth order their dragon to yell at them until they cut it out, just do something.

…Alright, I’ve gone on for a full page and not even read an actual sentence yet. Time to move on.

…Soooo am I the only one who just kind of… forgot that Lessa can see the future?

Okay I didn’t forget forget, the explanation for it is half the plot of the book, but I don’t think it ever quite clicked for me until rereading that Lessa can see the future. The very first thing that happens in the first chapter of Dragonflight (and therefore the very first thing that ever happened in all of Pern) is: Lessa has a bad feeling. She immediately interprets this bad feeling as an indication that something dangerous is about to happen and tries to figure out what it is. The next few chapters are about F’lar and Fax arriving, both of whom are dangerous to Lessa and her plans in different ways. Fax is the usurper who killed her family and would kill (or perhaps forcibly marry, then kill) her if he knew who she was; F’lar immediately takes her away from the Hold she just won back after (I think) a decade of hiding and plotting, and ensures that neither she nor her children can ever rule it. For a good cause and all, but still: pretty dangerous for Lessa’s plans to rule Ruatha.

I’ve gotten off track. Back to the point: Lessa can see the future. Or sense it, anyway. More interesting to me is the fact that she never questions her ability to do this. We know that she went back in time twice to give herself these feelings, to save herself from Fax as a child and to sense incoming danger at the beginning of the book, which is where these feelings come from and why they’re right. I don’t question her trusting it as a scared kid, but as an adult who’s just expecting danger and not yet in it, I’d expect a little more skepticism. Some degree of ‘hm, what if this bad feeling is in fact not world-changing prophecy, and instead is just about the way my boss seemed stressed yesterday and tends to kick me when he’s in a bad mood?’ Or, ‘what if this is just residual feelings from a nightmare, since I just woke up and the watch-wher isn’t bothered?’

Doylistically, the answer is that Lessa is right, her sense of danger establishes suspense for the first few chapters, and ‘but does the danger Lessa sensed actually exist?’ is not a subplot that fit into the rest of the story or that Anne McCaffrey had any interest in. (Presumably. Maybe there was a draft where Lessa doubts herself until Fax arrives, but I doubt it.)

I like Watsonian explanations better though, so let’s look at it that way. The degree to which Lessa trusts this sense of danger makes it seem to me like she’s experienced this before, and probably several times; one distant, panicked memory from when she was a kid is not good evidence of having a reliable, invisible ability that no one else does (or, probably, has ever even mentioned as a fictional concept, considering that Pern doesn’t seem to have fiction beyond slight inaccuracies in historical ballads and maybe room for the possibility of made up characters for love songs and similar).

It’s also fairly plausible that Lessa could have psychically sensed danger before it arrived previously. Her immediate interpretation of what happened, after all, was not ‘I traveled through time and read my own mind’ but ‘I sensed malice from someone with my telepathic powers’ which is definitely a thing she can do, since she spends the next several paragraphs psychically searching for the danger that woke her up and confirming that it’s not anywhere she checks. A handful of instances of that happening (and her actually finding the source of the menace) would give her a pretty good reason to trust her ominous feelings, and might explain why neither Fax nor any of his cronies ever found her.

Lessa has spider sense, is what I’m saying. Go forth and crossover, fandom.

Anyway, Lessa spends a few paragraphs scanning the surrounding area, which is used to give us a sketch of the setting: Ruath Hold is a place contained by walls and set into a cliff; outside it is a paved area and stone buildings where craftsmen live, and a causeway to “the valley.” Wind blows to Ruatha from the shores of Tillek, which seem to be pretty close. Further out is the Pass, which is further than Lessa has ever psychically scanned before.

Then we get a slight detour as Fax is mentioned. He’s described as “the self-styled Lord of the High Reaches” and Lessa is pleased that he’s infuriated by Ruatha’s deterioration and hasn’t been there in three turns. Turns is capitalized for some reason. Was that a thing in 60s scifi? Capitalizing words that replaced ordinary words to draw attention to how scifi the vocabulary is? I remember between always being italicized, and I think I’ve seen similar italicization of new words in fantasy series, but at least ‘between’ is a new use of a word for a new concept. Turn is just an invented synonym and capitalizing it makes no sense at all. I just… don’t know what she could possibly have been thinking, much less what her editors were. Maybe she had an editor who knew nothing about scifi and thought that was a thing? I think I’ve heard that she originally wrote romance, so maybe she just kept a romance editor who’d never read scifi before and decided that fake it til you make it was an acceptable strategy. It’s the closest I have to an explanation.

Moving on, then Lessa gets up. She finds her sandals, brushes straw out of her “matted” hair, and twists it into a knot. I… I have objections to this.

I actually can and regularly do put my hair in a knot at the base of my neck without using any hair ties or anything other than the hair itself to hold it, and doing that when my hair is badly tangled doesn’t work. It’ll go into the knot, sure, but it’ll also just come undone in a minute or less. Getting it into a knot that it will stay in for any length of time requires either something to hold it in place or getting the balance exactly right, and you can’t do the latter with tangled hair. A few small tangles, sure, but anything approaching matted is just… not going to work. If I can’t run my fingers through my hair, it won’t stay in a knot. (Also, ‘matted’ makes me think of fake “dreadlocks” and that there must be mold growing in her hair, but that’s probably more that the connotation has shifted over time. At least, I hope.)

Also, humans are primates that like grooming ourselves and each other; even if for some bizarre reason it’s illegal for drudges to own combs, the drudges should just be finger combing their own and each others’ hair. (Or cutting it all off. Or hiding illegal combs in that straw they sleep on. Whatever.) The matted hair is there to indicate that Lessa is living in a really bad, physically deprived, barely surviving situation, same as Lessa waking up on straw in a cold, smelly room full of other drudges, but that really should’ve been done by making her hair oily or something. She’s going to wash it in a few chapters anyway, at the same time as she combs it.

Granted, I don’t have much trouble imagining Lessa shunning all the other drudges’ company during hair combing time so that she can plot vengeance more, so maybe it’s just her and all the others have only slightly tangled hair.

Anyway, Lessa goes outside. She interacts fondly with the watch-wher, in a very similar way to how a person might interact with a dog, though the watch wher is probably meant to be a bit smarter than dogs are. Then she climbs up to the ramparts and we get a little bit more of the setting: the Hold has a massive gate, and the Pass is within sight.

(How close is Tillek? Technically it said that the danger ‘didn’t scent the breezes from Tillek’s cold shore’ but I refuse to interpret that literally, Lessa is not psychically smelling emotion on breezes. I can only assume that she psychically scanned a significant part of the way to Tillek’s shore, if not all the way there. That was within her ‘I’ve gone this far before’ range while the Pass wasn’t, and now she can see the Pass. Mountains can be seen a pretty good distance away, but ‘the stony breasts of the Pass rose in black relief’ sure doesn’t sound like a smudge on the horizon. How close is Tillek? I’ve been thinking of Holds as capital cities controlling small-nation-sized areas of land, even if most of the land is unpopulated, but this is making them seem more like small towns with barely any space between them. Could I walk from Ruatha to Tillek in a day?)

Lessa stares into the east, then the northeast, and notices the red star (which isn’t capitalized even though it’s clearly a proper name like the North Star, which I just googled because this made me doubt myself, and North Star is indeed supposed to be capitalized. I can’t just have a really old and unedited version, this is the omnibus, there was time to fix this, where is her editor). The sight of the Red Star makes a bunch of “incoherent fragments” of stories about the Red Star at dawn flash through her mind too quickly for her to make sense of them, which conveniently leaves us with the ominous feeling we were supposed to get and no distracting other details. On the other hand, I’m now wondering if all those Red Star story fragments were projected by future!Lessa, so maybe there’s some foreshadowing along with the narrative convenience.

Lessa’s instincts tell her that while there is danger coming from the northeast, the danger from the east is more important, so she goes back to staring that way. But then the warning feeling fades away, presumably because future!Lessa finally figured out what was going on and went back to her own time. Present Lessa accepts that she’s been warned, and just has to wait to see what she was warned about.

Then she looks over the valley a bit and muses about how Fax gets no profit from Ruatha, never will while Lessa lives, and has no idea that she’s the source of this. She smiles and stretches, then panics when a rooster crows and she worries someone might have woken up and seen her with uncharacteristically confident body language, so she lets her hair back down and reassumes “the sloppy posture she affected.”

Okay, I have several questions. First: if she’s that worried about being seen acting uncharacteristically, wouldn’t it make more sense to just return to her normal pose and not whirl around like she has secrets? Yes, she was startled, but she’s been doing this for years. I’m sure she’s had moments where she thought she almost got caught before, she’s had a chance to practice subtlety.

Second, are there really so few drudges that Fax’s cronies can recognize individual drudges and their usual behavior, or does Lessa think some other drudge would tell Fax who she is because they saw her standing up straight with her hair pulled back?

Third, why were there no guards to see her? Fax slaughtered her family at this same time of the morning several years ago, and I remember a specific mention of the guard who had been paid to not sound an alarm. Why does Fax not have a guard now that he rules the place? Lessa was on the ramparts over the gate, she should’ve been easy for a guard to see. She should have been standing next to a guard.

Fourth, I’m pretty sure that after years and years of “affecting” a sloppy posture, that would just be her normal posture. I can accept the “princess is forced to work as a servant, is eventually revealed to be a princess by how her skin is just as pale and her hands are just as soft and her dancing is just as graceful and her singing is just as sweet as if she had grown up with nothing to do her entire life but perfect those things, because it’s just the inherent nature of princesses to be naturally perfect in those ways” conceit in a fairytale, but this is a novel and it bothers me. Both because there are whole worlds of classism going on in that concept which I may not be qualified to analyze but can sure side-eye with a double dose of irritation, and also because it makes no sense.

Lessa is Cinderella (with spider sense and dragons) but she’s supposed to be more plausible, and she’s also singlehandedly sabotaging an entire Hold (however much ‘a Hold’ actually is) while maintaining a cover as an overworked and underfed servant. Her posture is not her priority, and there are no perfect posture genes to be passed down royal lines. Lessa slouches. Probably she gets in a bunch of passive aggressive battles with R’gul and then F’lar over it. That is the only reasonable option.

…Moving on from that rant.

Lessa hugs and pets the watch wher, which is at least as ecstatic about this attention as a dog would be after being left alone for a week. Lessa thinks about how the watch wher is the only living creature that knows who she is, and also the only one she’s ever trusted since her family was killed and she survived by hiding in its den. She reminds it to be vicious to her if anyone else is nearby, it’s reluctant but promises to obey. The sun rises, the watch wher runs back into its den, and Lessa sneaks back to the cheese room. End of Chapter 1.

So, uh, another question: why didn’t Fax just kill the watch wher and replace it with a watch wher bound to him? I can’t imagine there were none available in however many years it’s been, even if watch whers were originally conceived as nighttime guards for Holds and nothing else. I also can’t see Fax being inclined to spare it out of pity or similar. Did all the watch wher breeders refuse to let him have an egg? Couldn’t he have made a breeding pair out of all the watch whers from all the Holds he rules and used eggs from that to replace the watch whers bound to families he’s usurped? Is this another example of ‘Fax doesn’t even want to think about Ruatha’?

Anyway, now I’m going to go even deeper into English major mode.

I really wish I could give this to one of my old English professors and see how they critiqued it. This chapter is a bit under two and a half pages long in the book I have, I’d guess no more than five pages in a regular sized paperback format. There’s no dialogue and very little action. There are several points where the phrasing seems like it’s trying too hard to me, though I suspect that that is due to changes in what’s considered standard in the last fifty years. I kind of suspect that if I had turned in something similar to this for a class, it would’ve been ripped to shreds, mostly on the basis of having lots of exposition with no dialogue and little action.

Despite that, this chapter does a lot of things in a very short time. It introduces us to the setting: we have a decent idea what a Hold is and that a properly maintained Hold is supposed to be clear of grasses, and we have a decent idea of what drudges are and how they’re treated, and we have a sketch of the surrounding landscape and significant nearby locations. We have a pretty good idea of Lessa’s character and motivation, and we know that Fax is an enemy of Lessa’s and that he goes around conquering Holds to add to the one he rightfully inherited. We know the Red Star is ominous. We have pretty good foreshadowing for the discovery of time travel. We know that watch whers have scales and wings, live in dens, and are vicious to most people but adoring of a few, which sets us up pretty well for the dragons that appear next (who might not be strange to us now, but which would have been a lot stranger when this was published). We know that Lessa has psychic abilities, and a broad range in which she can apply them. That’s pretty good for a few pages.

We also have an established tone, and Lessa acting in contrast to it. The scene puts a lot of emphasis on how cold everything is, and how much stone is around, and generally works to make the reader feel how chilled and oppressive and deteriorated everything is. For the first half of the chapter Lessa fits into this: she’s bony, she’s huddled on the floor, her hair is matted and full of straw.

Almost exactly halfway through Lessa starts moving, and she glides.

There have been indications that Lessa rules Ruatha already; she’s psychically tracking everything, to start with. But that is the moment where Lessa breaks out of the general cold-decay-oppression and is shown as a ruler, in secret or otherwise. Starving, oppressed servants don’t glide. Queens do.

The rest of the scene continues to present Lessa as powerful; she stands above the gate and muses about how Fax will never get any profit from Ruatha, and will never know that Lessa is behind it. She tells the watch wher what to do and it promises to obey even though it doesn’t want to. And then she vanishes back into hiding, biding her time. The next chapter will be F’lar’s POV, and this one does very well at establishing Lessa as someone lurking in Ruatha, ready and motivated and able to screw up F’lar’s plans. F’lar doesn’t know she’s there, but we do and are waiting for the collision.

I’ve seen people call Anne McCaffrey a bad or even a terrible writer, and… I suppose it’s possible this chapter is an anomaly, but I’d call this pretty good. Old fashioned in some ways that make it seem pretentious or overdone by modern standards, but we can hardly blame her because styles changed over time. I certainly have objections to her characterization of many characters, and I’d say that her worldbuilding consists of cool ideas which were warped by various prejudices, and there are several details which were glossed over for narrative ease that I wanted more realism on (which I think is partly an example of shifts in what’s considered standard over time).

But when it comes to the actual, literal, technical writing? Anne McCaffrey knew what she was doing. There were a lot of things that she had to accomplish in this scene, and I think she did them all pretty well, and for the most part pretty subtly. She knew how to communicate what she wanted to; just because we would’ve liked her to communicate something else doesn’t mean she was bad at communicating. There’s a reason this series created a fandom which is still going a full half a century later.

#Pern #commentaries #Dragonflight #chapter 1 #commentaries by Para

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magitek · 6 years ago

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KH Pillowfort Communities

Okay, if you’re a KH fan, you have or want a Pillowfort account, and you want to know where to find KH fans/content once you’re in, I’ve got your back. Most of us are still active primarily here or on Twitter, but here are some spaces that you can check out depending on your particular interest:

General

KingdomHearts - A general KH space, and easily the biggest and most active as of right now!

KH_Creators - Another one that’s hopefully self-explanatory ;]

Destiny Trio - I just made this one! Gen content, Sokai, Soriku, Rikai, and Sorikai are all welcome bc in my house we multiship like keyblade masters and just want these kids to get home safe

Specific ships

sorikai - Note that the admin would prefer content that’s just romantic Sora/Riku/Kairi, i.e. not Soriku+Kairi platonically

Soriku - Note that the admin would prefer content that’s just Sora/Riku, without side pairings

AkuRoku - Nothing special in the description here

I don’t know if tunglr.hell is really gonna crash and burn in the next few weeks, but if it does, I hope to see some of you guys over at Pillowfort! I kinda hope to see you over there anyway, to be honest, also i’m @ tifalockhart over there

#kingdom hearts #kh #sorikai #soriku #sokai #akuroku

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bonesofether · 6 years ago

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EDIT (29/12/2018): Just adding in my Pillowfort link. NSFW blog and creations blog both have been deactivated. There’s only this blog on Tumblr now.

TL;DR VERSION: I’m distancing myself from Tumblr for the time being. I’ll still be around and I’m not deleting this blog, but it looks like things are going to be wrecked beyond repair come December 17th.

As such, you can find me at...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/punkerbones Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/punkerbones/ Pillowfort: https://www.pillowfort.io/punkerbones AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkerbones DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/punkerbones

PLEASE NOTE: After some thought, I’m going to be putting my SFW and NSFW together under singular AO3 and DeviantArt accounts. The only reason I ever started doing separate accounts was because of Tumblr. But it is an incredible headache, content goes unpublished and/or missed, and, quite frankly, I don’t think it’s necessary because there are methods and means for me to properly warn viewers and/or readers that the content is NSFW. Everything will come with proper warnings and tags if it’s NSFW, of course. So...there.

I know my blog is a relatively small one, but I adore my friends and followers and have made some amazing friends here.

I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do come December 17th when Tumblr enacts their asinine policies. On an individual level, I think I’m in the clear. Most of the NSFW content that I’ve created is written, however I reblog a lot of NSFW art.

This is all completely side-stepping the fact that completely SFW content is getting flagged. I think that that is utter rubbish, too, mind you.

Mostly, I’m just tired of how Tumblr has managed things.

It nauseates me to have porn bot blogs follow me 1-5 times a day, and the Block & Report feature does nothing. If anything, it really seems like this “burn it all down” approach is going to affect the people that played by the rules, tagged their content and/or blog appropriately, and do nothing about the actual, vile trash that’s floating around.

Secondly, I’d heard that custom themes were going to be disabled. If that’s the case, then there goes all of my blogs. I created a blog specifically for promoting my creative works, but I needed a custom theme in order to make it work. Otherwise, it’s a jumbled mess and I’ll have to delete at least one blog because it’d be pointless to keep it.

(On a small, personal side note...this is absolutely infuriating because now I have to come up with a new THIRD design for business cards. Ugh. I’m just leaving Tumblr off the cards from now on.)

I’ve already seen blogs that I like, follow, and enjoy the content (and yes, some of it is NSFW) get flagged. I’ve seen some of the blogs that I follow make posts about how they’re leaving Tumblr or distancing themselves from the website.

Ultimately, I think I’m going to be falling into the latter... I don’t want to lose contact with the friends I have on this website, but I hope that those that would like to stay in contact with me will use the above links.

Now to get to work on updating my accounts...

#personal #reblog ltr

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vairyamusing-moving · 6 years ago

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I think that I'm going to stick to tumblr for now. Am I happy about the censorship? No. But does it heavily impact the way I write my characters? No, not really. As long as the community is there, I don't see a reason to change platforms, especially when there doesn't seem to be a better alternative out there.

If a better alternative presents itself, I'll check it out. I might start a new profile on a few different websites, poke around and see if I find a supportive community out there. But for now, tumblr is still where I'll turn for my writing.

Side note, platforms I’ve investigated and my opinions. Please note that I haven’t created an account on any of these, so this is my analysis based on what a non-user can see.

Pillowfort. I don’t think it’s prepared for a large influx of users. The site currently doesn’t allow new users to register, and even using the demo log in, it’s very slow. It does boast the most familiarity, though.

Dreamwidth. This seems to be one of the best alternatives so far, but I’ve never had a journal-type blog, so this platform is really unfamiliar to me. I’m sure I could learn it if the community made a massive exodus there, but I don’t see that happening, so I haven’t really tried.

Roleplayer.me. It gives me awful MySpace flashbacks, but since it’s geared specifically to role players, it does seem like it would be easy to find people to write with?

InsaneJournal. I’ve read good things about it from role players who have migrated over there, but without a user account, I can’t see anything resembling a dashboard or posts or anything, which makes it kind of hard to get a read on.

Those are just the ones I’m considering. LiveJournal blew up for the same reasons tumblr might be, TypePad isn’t geared towards writers (and costs money), and Mastodon has a 500 character limit. Those are all the suggestions I’ve seen, but if you have any more, send them my way!

#the narrator speaks #psa

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blackbellybella · 3 years ago

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Gab- I'm going to look more into it but on first glance the only down side I see is that it has a character count like twitter but it looks like the main users rn are older people who like boomers vs Liberals/millennial memes (I guess you can call them meme's). if we start moving there it will definitely cause some kind of platform war basically. you can also create your own plat form using their servers like mastodon and and you can connect with people who just have a simple account or those who made their own platform. its supposed to be uncensored and not permitted for those under 18 without parental consent . 17 for California. which I know is a lot of sites but i like that they have that in their policy. I'm reading the terms and services it doesn't look like theirs much post or content protection which kind of seems counter intuitive to their mission statement for creating non cooperate/non advertisement ruled platform idk if that changes if you make your own server. but they have the right to use anything post for their own

not good for adult content I just read their guidelines so im still looking. I was just informed that its mainly filled with racists

PillowFort- SOOO I kind of like this one! IT ALLOWS ADULT CONTENT! there's also a demo profile you can use before making in commitments. I'm going to read the guidelines a bit more to see what exactly do they allow as far as adult content goes. its also in a similar shade of blue. you can mark your post as nsfw before you post, and you have the option to make your posts "rebloggable" ha it uses the same language too and in the demo it has mentions of only fans and other explicit wording here and there so far leaning toward sexworker friendly. You can choose who view certain post and there's a demarcation between followers and mutuals. you can also make post for mutuals only so there's room to kind of monetize thru like banking apps that way. I like that its very compartmentalized so all your interests and fandoms can be separated if you want.

from their guidelines- "NSFW Content - Easily mark your post as NSFW and it will be automatically filtered so only users who choose to see NSFW can see it. Note: The ability to view NSFW content is set to ‘off’ as the default with every new account. You must turn on the ‘View NSFW posts’ toggle from the Filters & Blacklist setting located in the sidebar. If you are under the age of 18, you will not be able to toggle the view NSFW content to “on.”"

they also responded to tumblr's ban. A big plus you can actually contact an actual person from their staff if there's anything wrong with your blog. they seemed to also be based here in Austin too, they do have content protection. there, also protection against revenge porn and sexual harassments via porn. SO FAR THIS IS IT! and there seems to be several tumblr users already using the platform.

now for the down sides: its still considered to be in its beta form also its not free I think its a $5 dollar fee but I'm still reading. You can however you an account with out the fee by being invited by an established member. I do kind like that there is a fee because that's one more barrier to keep kids off of the site. I thing its a member ship but its a lil unclear. I looked on other sites and it says its just a donations, think they're looking to do away with the donations starting next year but there's not much information on it.

I’m gonna be looking for tumblr alternatives but that carry the same setup and I’ll post them here along with how similar they are.

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6ix-dragons · 5 years ago

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How’s everyone doing? Happy New Year to all of you (even though it’s only a week late, but whatever xD)!

I hope all of you had a great holiday...because I sure had one, too!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing the new Modern Warfare, ever since I bought it on Black Friday (which—in hindsight—wasn’t a good idea, considering the regular edition went further on discount, at the beginning of December...wups). The single-player campaign was an interesting experience—although, I somehow managed to die multiple times on normal difficulty lol.

On the multiplayer side, ‘though, my experience with it was way more extraordinary than expected. I’ve had some games where I did decently well, sometimes quite well enough to place higher on my team, scoreboard-wise. There were even a few times when I dominated the top of my team, in terms of both points, and K/D ratio. However, there were other times, when I had terrible games...whether that’s because: a) I get matched up with those way lower than my rank, b) I get matched up against those who have a rank way higher than me, or c) BOTH. It’s both fun, and frustrating, at the same time—but, given that it’s my very first foray into CoD’s multiplayer, my experience has been pretty decent, overall.

Speaking of which...as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I was still in the search to replace my old laptop, and having to make a decision by Black Friday. While I did not make the action to buy a new laptop on that day, it was only weeks after that, when I finally made my decision. I purchased my new gaming laptop from Amazon, on Boxing Day, and it actually arrived at the door, just a week later!

Also, I have decided to make a new gaming channel on YouTube. It’s not fully set up yet—but, I do plan on putting out videos of gameplay highlights, soon. I’ll put up another post that details this, later on, after when everything’s all put together.

Furthermore, I’ve made a recent decision to go back to school...for at least a year, or two. Starting in about a week, for the next few months, I will be taking courses on web design. I also plan on taking UX design courses, as well...although, I haven’t thought out when to do so, yet. At the same time, I still have a part-time job (even if it’s the same retail one I’ve worked for a year), which is still okay—but a personal goal of mine is to have an actual full-time job that I find fulfilling for me.

On a final note, I’m still waiting on Pillowfort to make their account registrations fully open to the public. However, if there’s anyone out there who has an invite key to give away (especially from those in the Fairy Tail and Edens Zero fandoms)...feel free to DM me! :)

...And that’s pretty much it for how I’m doing, lately! Of course, I’m still active in the FT and EZ fandoms around here, and I do plan on putting out more fanart, and fanfics for this year, too!

Until then, stay tuned for more updates!

#the personal latest #6ix-dragons #fairy tail #edens zero #call of duty #modern warfare (2019)#pillowfort #pillowfort.social

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luxus4me · 6 years ago

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Webmonkey http://j.mp/2EpUYt8

Julia Baritz is having quite a week. The Austin, Texas based developer is the founder and lead architect of Pillowfort.io, a community-oriented social media blogging platform that's quietly amassed around 20,000 users in its first two and a half years. Since Monday, however, Baritz has been inundated with more than 8,000 requests from people clamoring to join her site. Traffic to Pillowfort’s homepage has been 10 times higher than average, she says.

Baritz has porn to thank for this interest. On Monday, Tumblr announced a ban on all “adult content”, and creators have been frantically searching for a new place to migrate their NSFW art and porn blogs ever since. Pillowfort emerged as a potential safe harbor via word of mouth on social media. The site allows NSFW content to be posted with few restrictions, as long as it doesn't break any laws.

“It’s funny that adult and sexual content has become the linchpin and turning point of our popularity in a way, but I’m not surprised,” says Baritz.

Sexual content has always been a part of fandom communities online, from LiveJournal to Tumblr. And communities have a history of abandoning platforms that don’t support the free expression of adult material. It was LiveJournal’s crackdown on NSFW material back in 2007 that broke community trust in the site and initiated the mass migration to Tumblr, along with the creation of fandom sites like An Archive of Our Own. Now Tumblr’s facing its own porn-related exodus, because NSFW content appears to be at odds with its business goals.

For Baritz, the experience has been head-spinning. Pillowfort is still in beta, and this kind of spotlight is a huge test for the site.

If anyone understands what Baritz has been going through, it’s Denise Paolucci. As the co-founder of Dreamwidth, a web 1.0-style blogging platform that shares Pillowfort's user-first philosophy, she has seen a similar spike on her site this week. Dreamwidth is more established—it has existed since 2008 and has 53,595 active users (and 3,453,932 total accounts)—but traffic to the site has also surged to 10 times its typical amount, she says. Many Tumblr users are tweeting about their plans to migrate to both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.

Both sites adhere to an anti-advertising, anti-VC funding, anti-corporate model that centers user privacy, control, and freedom. That's what makes them such appealing options to many disaffected Tumblr bloggers, but the challenges they face underscore why the dream of an independent web is so hard to achieve, even when there's demand.

Microblogging Like It's 2009

Dreamwidth began as a side project after Paolucci and her co-founder Mark Smith felt that LiveJournal, their former employer, had lost its way. Paolucci worked there as a community manager, Smith as a developer. They built Dreamwidth on LiveJournal’s open source code, which was already 10 years old at the time. A decade later, they still co-run the site. “The other day I realized I’ve been working on this code base for about 20 years and I had to go lie down for a minute,” Paolucci says.

The benefit of code that old is it’s incredibly stable, has been fully patched and security-audited, and it’s efficient. This week it has handled 10 times its normal traffic smoothly. “We have designed Dreamwidth to be very expandable,” she says. “We did have a big increase in traffic when Tumblr made its announcement and no one noticed because we set up the site so it can scale in an instant.”

But what it gains in stability, it lacks in new features. Dreamwidth can barely handle images, as some Tumblr exiles have noted on Twitter, and currently has no option to upload video. GIFs should work, Paolucci says, but users get only 500 megabytes of image hosting on their accounts, at least for right now.

“Unlimited image hosting is one of those features that people have gotten used to that are VC-subsidized on most websites,” she says. “We can’t afford to offer that same kind of unlimited, endless image hosting.”

Instead, Dreamwidth is a text-based community, full of everything from fanfic to erotica to you name it. Tumblr's new ban, however, focuses on visuals, like NSFW photos, video, and GIFs; the company says written content like erotica is still allowed.

Paolucci understands that Dreamwidth may not be right for all Tumblr exiles. “We are definitely thinking of this as an opportunity for users who are fleeing Tumblr to discover our philosophy and business ethics,” she says, “but there is also a certain level of people who are used to Tumblr and Tumblr's features [and Dreamwidth] may not be what they are looking for.”

Dreamwidth has been “a good lifeboat service for a lot of people,” Paolucci says—a landing place for people who have had to leave other platforms for some reason. When beloved services are shut down or change their terms, people can lose their communities and work. “Even those who have their primary hangout elsewhere use us as a permanent redirect to wherever they're socializing most," she says, "because after ten years, people are beginning to trust that we mean it when we say we're planning to be around for the long haul.”

Not Ready for Primetime

Pillowfort, on the other hand, looks a lot like Tumblr, but it can’t yet handle the traffic that comes along with popularity.

Baritz created Pillowfort in 2016 to be exactly what disaffected Tumblr bloggers are now in search of: an open-minded site that can host images and videos; allows reblogging, commenting, and community building; encourages a strong artistic bent; and doesn’t censor NSFW content. It improves on Tumblr, in some bloggers’ opinion, by offering nimble privacy features—like allowing you to make certain posts private to certain followers, while leaving other posts public—and focusing on customization. Pillowfort's terms of service also currently prohibit posts that target or harass other users, which some bloggers may crave in a new community.

It is meant to look like Tumblr but harken back to the original LiveJournal era, a simpler time on the web, when people could create small, cohesive, and specific communities without worrying too much about arbitrary censorship or ads. Baritz says she fell in love with LiveJournal when she was in middle school, and longed for a way to combine its creative, independent ethos with more modern features.

When Tumblr bloggers looking for a new home came to Pillowfort on Monday, though, they found a site that had been offline for ten days for security maintenance after a Tumblr user posted that they had found a bug in the site’s code. Baritz and her two developers got the site up and running by the afternoon, but then the surge in traffic overloaded the servers. The site is still unstable, and Pillowfort doesn’t have the money in the coffers to just add server capacity overnight. For some Tumblr users, the experience has been frustrating.

Baritz is facing a very tricky challenge: make the most of this opportunity without bankrupting her company or betraying her conscience in the process.

“If our server costs increase by 10 times the way our overall site traffic has, then we won’t be immediately bankrupted, certainly, but it’s more expenditure than I planned for,” Baritz says.

Her plan is to approve new requests to the site in batches so that she doesn’t overload server capacity, and so that she has time to take in the money from each new user in order to pay for the server capacity to host them.

Money, Money, Money?

Both Pillowfort and Dreamwidth embrace a business model that charges users directly and aims for relatively small profits—a radical idea in a web dominated by ad revenue and data sales.

Like LiveJournal did when it first launched, Dreamwidth makes money by charging users for premium accounts, at annual rates of $35 or $50. With the paid subscriptions, you get more Dreamwidth tokens, which can be used to access perks like user icons or the ability to rename blogs.

“We’re not making a whole ton of money but we're not losing money and we have enough people who really value what we are trying to do from a business ethics standpoint that they will support us,” says Paolucci. Aside from her and Smith, the site is run by volunteers.

Premium accounts is the same business model Baritz is planning for Pillowfort. She and the team are about six months away, she estimates, from launching that pay functionality. She’s currently crowdsourcing suggestions from users about what features they want and are willing to pay for.

Until then, Pillowfort keeps the lights on by charging new users a one-time $5 sign-up fee. Baritz has also turned to crowdfunding campaigns. She raised a little more than $5,000 on Indiegogo to launch the site in 2016. This year, she quit her job as a developer at a software company to focus on Pillowfort full time, and raised around $60,000 from a successful Kickstarter in August. That money is earmarked to pay her two contractors, and to hire another full-time developer to work on scaling the company up.

“What’s central to how Pillowfort’s being planned is we’re going to be getting our money from our users. We won’t be beholden to anyone but our users, so we won’t have to worry about third parties or outside forces,” Baritz says.

Those are laudable future goals. But they don’t help right now, when suddenly 8,000 people are “knocking down my door,” as Baritz put it, and Baritz doesn’t have the money to go out and buy extra server hosting immediately.

“We have to make some sacrifices, like keeping the site relatively small right now. If we did go a corporate route then I would be nervous then we’d be under a lot more pressure to turn a profit and inevitably it would influence the way we build the site, and I don’t want to compromise on user privacy and user control,” she says.

Even without taking VC money, however, sites and platforms can still be vulnerable to outside forces, including the services they rely on to function. A number of internet infrastructure companies have taken action against users this year, from PayPal, Stripe, Joyent, and GoDaddy all kicking off Gab to PayPal cracking down on the ASMR community. Dreamwidth has had trouble with PayPal, too, when the payment processor wanted it to censor some NSFW material in 2010. And Pillowfort tweeted earlier this week that it plans to change domain names, after learning that .io domains don't support NSFW content.

And even if Baritz were willing to go the VC route, it's not a sure recipe for success. Small social media companies have raised millions from Silicon Valley in the past, only to crash and burn. Take IMZY, a site founded by ex-Redditors who wanted to create a nicer, gentler, safer version of Reddit. In 2015 IMZY raised $11 million dollars from VC firms, but after generating lots of excitement and getting thousands of users, it shuttered after less than a year. The reason the founders gave was that they couldn’t find a place in the market, but with the money they had raised they were under pressure to not just find a small niche, but to actually compete on profit with bigger companies.

IMZY was a great example, Paolucci says, of the old “underpants gnomes” business plan, a reference to a Southpark episode about the concept. (Step 1: Collect users. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit.)

She admires what Baritz is doing with Pillowfort, and hopes that the site can handle the sudden surge of interest. “I think that the web needs a lot more of the kind of sites and communities that are created with motives other than profit in mind,” says Paolucci.