#there was also someone who sent me pages and pages of their original work

[llycaons]

those posts about having boundaries with internet strangers rly resonate not because anything serious has ever happened to me but bc several years ago someone who followed me DM'd me a picture of a mildly homophobic hxh youtube screenshot and made it into a different and equally unfunny joke and expected me to laugh along and I didn't know how to politely extricate myself from that situation while communicating 'please do not contact me in this way again' so I typed back something like 'haha' and then immediately set my DM's to allow only people I follow to message me where it has been ever since. perhaps not the ideal way to handle the situation in hindsight but I really cannot communicate how uninterested I am in being contacted by complete strangers in this way. I am simply not equipped for any of that and would prefer to entirely avoid it

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if i wrote a psa about people who broke my tos

✏️⚖️ (< for identification)

i make character adopts on toyhou.se and deviantart. i like designing characters but i rarely ever use them so i put them up for adoption so they can go to good homes. i have a tos for adopting my characters, which everyone is required to read before i go through with the adopt. the tos has rules about giving the character to someone else, which is that the current owner of the oc has to ask me first. there s a few reasons for this:

1 i dont want anyone reselling my character for more money than they bought them for unless they add value to the character by commissioning art or writing because its unfair to me who created the character if someone upsells them without adding value. having people ask first let's me make sure theyre not upcharging my work unfairly

2 i dont want certain people owning my characters. i have trauma surrounding certain people adopting my characters and using them problematically. for example someone ill call A once made my black characters skin lighter even though my tos says you cant change my characters race or body types. someone else, B, put my character into a proship relationship which is TOTALLY BANNED in my tos. i have a public list of people who are NOT allowed to own my characters and the idea of them owning them makes me super uncomfortable because i know theyll use my characters for bad things

3 it lets me make sure that the new owner has read my tos

a couple months ago someone (ill call them C) adopted a character of mine named lupin. a couple of days ago i was looking at my designs and i saw that lupin was now owned by D. i checked the ownership log which said that C traded lupin with D but i dont know what character C got in return. i sent C a message asking why they traded lupin without my permission and they said they didnt think they had to because it was a trade and not a sale. i told them that i have trauma around people giving my characters to others without permission and C said that i should talk to D instead because they (C) no longer owned the character.

i went to Ds profile and on their user page i saw a blocked comment so i unhid the comment and saw that it was B thanking D for following B. this set off alarm bells because i know that B is proship which is why i blocked them in the first place! so i decide to look into D, i find their tumblr and i find out that theyre also proship, they ship incest and they reblog irredeemable media like the coffin of andy and leyley

D wasnt on my blacklist specifically but its against my tos for proshippers to own my characters under any circumstances and its grounds for revocation. i message D to tell them that im revoking the character because theyre breaking my tos but D refused to transfer lupin back to me and blocked me.

i reuploaded lupins profile to my account and reported the original profile to th for being a violation of my tos, and i added C and D to my blacklist.

WIBTA if i wrote a psa about C and D to warn other people about them? i just dont want anyone else to go through this

What are these acronyms?

[dianamoth]

Project Copy-Knight

Hi tumblr,

I woke up this morning to a new AO3 comment on my most liked Naruto fic, but this comment was unlike any other I ever got before. It will interest fanfic writers around, especially anime fanfic, so allow me to share it:

Hello, Unfortunately, your work may have been stolen by content farms to create YouTube videos here: (link removed by dianamoth) If you have granted permission for this uploader, you can safely ignore this comment. If not, you should report these videos here: DMCA Complaint Form. You should re-confirm the video contents before you file the report. Note that only the original creator for this work can submit a complaint. When filing the complaint, do not select the "Scheduled: Send a 7-day notice" option, or they won't get a copyright strike from you. We recommend that you do not negotiate with the channel before-hand. Remember to include a link to your work in the 'Title' section of the complaint form. Channels like this have stolen many more works from other writers as well, so your efforts in reporting this channel will also help other writers. See full list of stolen works here: Google sheets Your authorship was identified a while ago by an automated detector under Project Copy-Knight, but for anti-spam reasons we could not inform you until we have manually confirmed each case. If you would like us to notify you as soon as possible, please include this text in your profile page to grant us permission. To prevent a build-up of our notification comments on inactive accounts, we will only send you a maximum of 3 messages before you grant us permission. This is message 1 out of 3. This message was sent automatically, but your case was manually confirmed, and replies to this comment are monitored. If you need additional guidance on how to take the video down, just reply to this comment. To learn more about what we do, please read this article or join our Discord server. From Project Copy-Knight, EsquireBot

I did not give consent for my fic to be used on youtube, ofc.

I was skeptical at first (for context, I write OC Naruto fanfics, who the hell would be interested in that on youtube, I thought?), but this is a well-crafted message with all the ways to verify this claim, so verified it I did!

And hello and behold, this is all true! I'm Amazed. This Project Copy-Knight is quite impressive, it seems well organized and everything, so I thought I would share the word about their existence so that people are aware that this is a problem that exists, that someone is working on it, that it's not spam, and how you can participate, etc... I recommend checking the article they mentioned and the Discord server if you have time to help.

Also, for those who might be in the same case as I and want to report a youtube video (because obviously I'm going to, can you believe this? Just read further to see what a mess it is), let it be known that the link above only works if you have a channel. If not, you have to send your complaint to copyright@youtube.com

Now, if you're interested in seeing what a MessTM this is, continue reading about this video that stole my work.

Guys, this is the presentation of the video:

The title (and the pictures) has absolutely NO link whatsoever to the plot of my fic, to be clear.

The pictures inside of the slideshow are about DragonBall Z! XD

But yes, it is indeed a generated "podfic" of my OC fic (but only part of it? it cuts in the middle of a scene at around half of the story)!

When you click on the description of the video, there is a link that actually contains a list of links on fanfiction.net. So they actually didn't steal it from AO3 but ff.net. Writers from ff.net, be aware!

The video has 1,4k views and 37 likes in 2 months. What the heck.

But the comments, guys!

I find this frankly hilarious. I mean, there is so much confusion here. Obviously the basic Naruto fans that would hate on (female) OCs are expected, but someone listened to it long enough to realize it was not the complete story. Respect to them.

Can you believe that with such a mess this channel has 5,37k subscribers? Please people, have some self-respect.

[ovaryacted]

I saw the messages I got sent in my inbox, thank you guys for letting me know about the plagiarism, I appreciate it really.

Obviously I feel for the OP and I truly do hope that they feel comforted in knowing that there are people who believe them. I genuinely can’t imagine what it’s like to have 20k words worth of something you made stolen like that. I’m heartbroken and angry for them and the fact that it happened twice is so…

At least on my end, I’m angry because Fae (@/kennedyswhore, @/hoeromi) is someone I interacted with frequently, and not only was she someone that inspired me artistically, but she was also someone I considered a friend. I’m just angry about it, and it pisses me off more that people who put so much energy and time into creating something gets stolen from them and gets claimed as someone else’s work with more viability. It’s sick. Please block those pages, she has a few other ones too she uses to stalk other accounts so be on the lookout for things that may be copied over too.

Don’t fucking steal from other people. Just don’t fucking do it seriously. It’s cruel, it’s awful, and you’re a low-life good for nothing bitch if you’re willing to sit down in front of your computer to copy and paste someone else’s work and call it your own. It’s things like that that only result in writers leaving this hellsite and stop posting their writing all together. Fuck you if you do this. If you lack the creative ability to make your own shit, at least live in your truth, cause doing stuff like this is just pathetic.

And of course, if anyone ever EVER finds something that sounds remotely like my stuff, either on here or on any ai chatbot spaces, please let me know. Writers and creators work so damn hard to put out original stuff others want to enjoy for free, so much energy into their work just to have it stolen from them. If you plagiarize, I hope you jump headfirst into fucking traffic.

[genericpuff]

On today's episode of "Rachel exaggerates things to make herself sound cooler-"

Soooo this is a lie.

No seriously, this has to be a lie. I don't make these kinds of accusations willy-nilly. This has to be a lie.

First of all, if her file sizes are truly 11GB for each episode, that would mean her file resolutions would have to be stupid high, and I just ain't buying that when so much of her art comes out looking like fried chicken.

But again, look at the backgrounds. Crystal clear. Which supports my theory that Rachel has her assistants draw the characters flat and exports them as PNG's so that she (or another one of her assistants) can slap the backgrounds in afterwards which is why when they pinch and zoom, the backgrounds look fine (as they're added in afterwards) and the characters look like they've been drawn with chalk. The shading itself isn't deep fried though, which is, again, because Rachel adds in the shading in post after her assistants have sent her all the flats.

Anyways, moving on from that, if her file sizes are actually 11GB per episode, that would mean her resolution would have to be STUPID high and that would mean there's no excuse for panels to look like this. This is not a Webtoons compression problem, Webtoons does compress images for you if you don't do it yourself but they don't result in specifically deep fried textures like this, that's ALL happening on Rachel's side. If it were a Webtoons' problem, the entire comic would look like that, not just select panels.

This is also what the panels tend to look like in book form. The book art is clearly very compressed and blurred from being too low of a resolution for print, which means either the editor is not being provided the root files, or the root files weren't ever that crisp to begin with. Either one is plausible and either one isn't good.

But of course, I'm not going to make these claims without my own proof. So here's the file sizes for Episode 12 of Rekindled, the longest episode in the series so far by panel count and page length, clocking in at 42 panels and an average of 25 layers per page (and that's including the text layers which adds a good chunk on its own, the actual art layers are like, half of that).

Also, here's what a pinch and zoom panel in Rekindled comes out looking like:

You can still pick up on some fuzziness, but the lineart doesn't look straight up chunky like it does in LO.

Meanwhile, one of my longest episodes of TIME GATE: [AFTERBIRTH] has a file size that honestly shocked me with how small it was.

Guess how many panels that episode had?

Go on, guess. Take a second. Compare it to the file size of Episode 12 of Rekindled, take your best educated guess. Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] is also a full color webtoon with full shading and rendering that I used to upload once a week. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Ninety-seven.

Ninety. Seven.

Not only is that more panels than what LO dishes out on a weekly basis, but its overall file size doesn't even come out to be 10% of what Rachel is claiming LO's file sizes to be.

This is what Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] looks like, by the way:

(don't mind the blurriness that's working against my point, that's Tumblr, not me LMAO)

But, let's face it, I didn't want to just use my own examples as a comparison, because that seems unfair. I'm not an Originals creator, I just put myself under similar pressures as one because I'm an idiot who tries too hard.

So I asked one of my Originals pals. I will not disclose their name, but they are someone who works for Webtoons Originals and has similar panel requirements and deadlines. They also work with a similar flatting + shade workflow as LO, they have cel-shaded colors and bold flat coloring.

When I asked them how big their file sizes were, they said that at 2500px width - similar to what I draw at, 2400px width - and 200-300k pixel length (again, they're drawing an entire episode on one canvas) their episode file sizes come out to roughly one gigabyte, very rarely much bigger than that.

Rachel is full of shit. This is some Tommy Tallarico level shit, exaggerating stupid things that don't matter to try and make herself seem impressive. It isn't impressive. It makes her look like an unorganized dunderhead at best, and at worst, makes her look like a flat out liar who needs to prop herself up on the dumbest shit to make herself look good. File gigabyte size isn't impressive or indicative of anything, you can achieve high quality art without your file size amounting to 11 GB, and let's face it, Lore Olympus is not high quality art. You're telling me art like this:

amounts to 11 GB?

Now the only way I can see this happening is if maybe, maybe she had like, a bajillion layers full of garbage-

Oh. Oh no. Lore Olympus. Is a sprite comic.*

(*edit for clarification: I've had people confused over what I mean by sprite comic because LO clearly isn't made with 16/8 bit sprites. Sprite comic was a term universally used back in the day for comics that reused the same body parts, heads, expressions, etc. much like how sprites are designed, often keeping an entire file full of different layers made up of these assets to make for easier development. This technique was utilized in comics like CTRL + ALT + DEL. LO is definitely not literally a sprite comic but the way its layers are designed feel very much like something that's being cobbled together like 'sprite' comics were. I'm old.)

Even with these pics for proof, with 600+ layers on one canvas, if there's barely anything on those layers, then it still wouldn't make up that 11GB file size because the amount of layers doesn't necessarily add to file size on its own, at least not by that much, unless they're actually filled with stuff. And again, Rachel's art in LO doesn't scream "highly detailed with many layers". It only had many layers because for some reason she insists on working that way even to its own detriment.

From the looks of it, Rachel's importing all of her assistants' PNG's as separate layers and adding all the shading and the extra details on their own separate layers and basically dividing everything up into tiny bite sized pieces. That's the only clear explanation I can come up with. But if so, that means she's being INCREDIBLY inefficient with her workflow that it's amounting to SIX HUNDRED+ LAYERS AT 11 GB PER EPISODE. THAT IS ABSURD. THIS COMIC IS WAY TOO LOW QUALITY TO JUSTIFY THESE FILE SIZES AND LAYER COUNTS. RACHEL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK SHE'S DOING-

She's also very clearly using the cloud as a way to backup her work and work with her assistants. God knows how much she's spending on cloud space because of her own incompetency.

Honestly, at this point, as I sit here playing the Photoshop equivalent of Cookie Clicker, clicking the 'new layer' button over and over and over again with my mouse to truly understand what it would feel like to operate at 600+ layers per episode of a webtoon, I'm more inclined to believe she's just lying. Capping. Pulling shit out of her ass. Straight up making shit up. It wouldn't be the first time she's done that. But also because the alternative is a lot more grim - the #1 best selling webtoon on the platform is being operated like the world's worst group project and still coming out on the other side looking like deep fried garbage despite its stupid high file size.

[poledancingdinos]

Hostile Territory - Chapter 25

Pairing: Captain Syverson x OFC (Leah Coleman)

Word count: 2.4K

Warnings: none for this chapter

Catch up: Series Masterlist

Taglist: @amberangel112 @utterlyhopeful-fics @marantha @kebabgirl67 @littleone65 @omgkatinka @luclittlepond @athenepromachos @enchantedbytomandhenry @narnianaos @geralts-yenn @peaches1958 @avengersfan25 @sillyrabbit81 @summersong69 @identity2212 @liecastillo @lena-banena @mrsevans90 @confessionbrain-writings @eclecticfashionbookszipper @happydistraction @hannah9921 @valacircareads @toooldforobsessions @kingliam2019 @rosecentury

Masterlist

Day 221

The entire duration of his flight to Iraq, Sy attempted to entertain himself with a book. Of course, immersing yourself in a fictional fantasy universe was a little harder when you were sitting in a C-130 surrounded by a bunch of fellow soldiers who carry guns rather than riding through a forest on horseback and wielding a sword. And no fantasy world was exciting enough to distract from the pain of being torn away from the person you love.

Okay, maybe ‘torn away’ was a bit dramatic but that was how it felt. Sy had a newfound understanding of why his sisters had been so insufferable after their first heartbreaks back in high school. He did not have the emotional intelligence to deal with his current predicament.

And it had only been five days.

Closing the book, Sy dug the newly purchased hardcover journal from his pack instead. It wasn’t always possible to have their phones when they were out on ops, for obvious reasons, so he’d decided he would use the journal to write down the things he would want to say to Leah. On the inside of the front cover, he had taped a copy of the drawing Leah had given him. The original he’d left safely back in the States where it wouldn’t risk getting blown up.

Turning the page, he read over the first entry in the journal. 

Dear L,

I know I already sent you a message thanking you for the drawing but a text doesn’t feel good enough for the amount of work you no doubt put into making it. It feels even more inadequate with how we parted ways. Letting you walk away, knowing I was the one who put that look on your face, was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I can only hope you’ll allow me to spend my life making up for it.

It felt like yet another betrayal not to call her by her full name but it was too risky. If something happened and someone tried to return his belongings they might start asking questions. It was also the reason he hadn’t already made Leah his phone background.

She’d grumbled every time he tried to take pictures of her but he’d managed to sneak in a few shots while she wasn’t looking. He did notice that she was much less likely to protest if he was in the shot with her so he’d taken more pictures of himself in ten days than he had in ten years.

Soon, they were landing in Iraq and Sy was in the front seat of a humvee on his way back to Warhorse. This time however, it was only a short stay. He was meeting with the captain who had taken over during his leave to do a more formal handoff of the tasks and responsibilities now that he knew it was a permanent change of command.

“Welcome back, Major Syverson.”

“Thank you.” The handshake the other man offered was pointlessly strong, even just shy of painful. Sy didn’t have the patience for intimidation games, he just wanted to do what he needed to do and get the hell out. “Is there any particular reason the locals are out there yellin’ at us?” 

“You know them hajis, they’re never happy.”

Sy bristled at the choice of words. “They may not be particularly happy to have Americans in their country but when I left the locals were not demandin’ our heads on a stake.”

The man shrugged him off, turning to walk back inside.

“They’re just mad at us for dealing with a couple of troublemakers. God forbid they show a hint of gratitude to us for cleaning up this shit stain on a map. That would be a betrayal of their beliefs.”

The bullshit coming out of Captain Dickhead’s mouth didn’t wane once the entire time they spoke in Sy’s office. Well, Captain Dickhead’s office. He made it very clear that he thought Sy had been too soft on the locals and too hard on his soldiers. How dare he write them up for innocent teasing.

Sy was relieved when they finally called it a day and went out to chow. Looking around the mess hall, Sy noticed something missing.

“Where’s Aika?”

Captain Dickhead fell heavily into his chair. “Who?”

“Aika. You know, the green german shepherd that roams around the base.”

“That mutt had a name? All I know is that I checked and there were no K9 units out here so I told one of the boys to put it outside the gates where it belonged. Told him that if he put it out of its misery while he was at it, there would be no skin off my nose.”

Sy felt the blood drain from his face. As furious as he was, he couldn’t say a thing. He technically didn’t do anything wrong.

Aside from being a supreme asshole.

Aika was a stray and keeping her on base gave the extra burden of another mouth to feed—although she usually survived by taking a single bite of food from each soldier on base—but her presence was like a small flame in a dark, windowless room.

It might have been best that Sy hadn’t been the one to put her out or leave her behind but… He wished he had at least been able to give her a final goodbye.

The sound of the chopper was loud even through the earplugs Leah wore. She kept her eyes on Benjie as she waited for his signal while running through her mental safety checklist. On Benjie’s go ahead, she lept backwards and fell.

Once her feet hit the roof below, she unclipped herself and followed the others towards the door leading into the building. They fired at the stand-ins holding guns and ‘rescued’ the ones playing friendlies. By the time they had cleared the building, Leah was panting hard.

The adrenaline was still pumping through her veins as the team clapped each other on the back and waited for their score. The exercise had been made to test speed over strategy so Leah was ninety-nine point nine percent sure they had passed but it was impossible to judge time when you were in the thick of it.

In their first runs of the course, Ethan had taken to humming the S.W.A.T. theme song under his breath which gave a vague sense of how much time had passed but he’d stopped when someone pointed out that they were supposed to be in stealth mode. To Leah’s great dismay, it had actually caught on during exercises where they weren’t required to be silent and now people kept pointing out all the ways she and Michelle Rodriguez’s character from the 2003 movie were alike. Which led to them pointing out the similarities between Leah and all the other characters Michelle Rodriguez had played. It was possible they meant it as a compliment but considering half her characters died horrible, violent deaths, she wasn’t inclined to take it that way. 

The past few days in Arizona had been dedicated to what Jer affectionately referred to as ‘voluntarily falling out of flying objects’. Though he’d agreed to participate in the MFF course, this was far from his favorite part of the job. For now at least. He did a good job of keeping his nerves invisible to the outside eye so perhaps it would eventually grow on him.

Leah, on the other hand, one would think she had a death wish by the way excitement built in her body every single time she prepared for a jump.

Whenever they were doing a drill, Leah had total focus but, when they had gone through the refresher course, her mind had wandered to a certain set of piercing blue eyes. She could prepare the ropes and harness in her sleep so it hadn’t caused any catastrophic accidents but she would need to get her head on straight before they moved on to actually parachuting out of a plane.

Now that she and the guys were taking their gear off for the day, Leah got lost in thought again, only giving a hum of acknowledgement here or there as the others chatted.

After spending the morning in the wind tunnels and the afternoon doing drills, she was exhausted and ready for some food, sleep and a much needed shower. Not necessarily in that order. 

“I can’t remember the last time my muscles ached this much,” Ethan said as she joined them in the mess hall after cleaning up in her room.

“I know, I never skip leg day but no one prepared me for the amount of effort it would take to keep that arch.” Jer stretched his back with a wince.

“Maybe next time you make a girl stick her ass out while you’re backshotting her, you’ll have the decency to make her cum as a thank you,” Leah deadpanned, taking a giant bite out of her burger.

The boys guffawed while Jer tossed a fry which hit Leah square in the chest. “You spend a lot of time getting backshotted, Coleman? Is that why you’re the only one not complaining?”

“Nope”. She swallowed, washing down her bite with some water. “I’m just used to having to hold all sorts of bendy positions. Usually while dangling upside down and spinning in circles.”

While it was true that her experience with aerial arts helped her hold the position in the tunnels, it didn’t mean she wasn’t sore all over like the rest of them. She simply didn’t dare give the slightest hint that she found their training challenging. Even if the guys wouldn’t hold it against her, it didn’t mean any of the others never would.

More than once she’d been called on to answer questions or be the first to try one of the training exercises. Luckily, she’d managed not to make a complete fool of herself in the short time they’d been there. She just hoped it would stay that way as things continued to get more difficult because she really wanted to succeed.

Day 206

Leah couldn’t spend two weeks doing cutesy couple’s stuff. Cooking together and making a giant mess, ordering takeout instead, hand-feeding one another said takeout food. Okay, maybe those things only happened in movies but the idea of spending their time cooped up in honeymoon phase isolation made her skin itch.

It wasn’t that Sy minded going out, he just didn’t want Leah to feel obligated to come up with activities to fill their days. He wanted to get to know the real Leah, not the version of her where she attempted to act like the perfect host.

When she offered to take Sy out on her favorite hiking trails, there was no way he was going to say no. Leah had spent her childhood on the trails, what better way to get to know the real her?

She’d also managed to convince him to do some rock-climbing while they were there. Actually, she convinced him to hike up a section of the mountain, rappel down the side using a fixed anchor in the rock, then climb back up again. Sy had only trained in how to rappel off the sides of buildings, not climb rock faces, but he managed not to embarrass himself. Much.

He’d panicked the first time he’d slipped and caused Leah to lift off the ground but she’d just laughed it off as if being yanked six feet in the air was part of the fun. To be fair, to her, it probably was. Luckily, some other climbers had come along and were able to belay her so she could take a turn. He remembered the basics but he hadn’t done it in years and he was not going to take chances with Leah’s safety.

As he watched her gracefully scale the wall—yes, he’d just called her climbing graceful—he determined that it was the right thing to do. Leah wore leggings that fit like a second skin and the harness framed her ass in a way that made Sy want to blindfold the two other witnesses. He would definitely not have trusted himself with Leah’s safety with that much of a distraction right in front of him.

“Okay, this is obviously way too easy for you,” one of the climbers said as Leah came down. She’d finished the climb in one go, barely breaking a sweat. “Why don’t you guys come out and do some of the harder pitches?”

“That’s okay.” Leah unclipped herself from the harness and proceeded to pull her rope down. “I haven’t been out here in forever, I’m not shooting for a personal record. I was just showing my boyfriend what I love about Colorado.”

“Why not?” Sy asked, drawing the others’ attention. “We’re here now and we won’t be back in the country for a while. Might as well have fun while we can.”

Leah gave him a bright smile, skipping over to plant a kiss on his cheek. They spent another few hours in the park after hiking over to the other rock face which had harder pitches. Sy managed to muscle his way up one that had larger holds while Leah swapped her running shoes for talon-shaped ‘torture devices’—her words—to climb some of the sections where she had to clip the rope as she went. Once they were both tired, they said goodbye to the other pair and found a quiet spot to settle down and have a late lunch. 

While Leah was looking out at the horizon, a contented look on her face, Sy pulled out his phone and took a picture of her from over her shoulder. The sun was hitting her just right and the scenery behind her was incredible but as soon as she saw him taking pictures, she angled her face down and away.

“No you don’t, come here.”

Sliding a hand under her legs, he pulled her onto his lap and wrapped an arm around her front. Sy lifted his phone once again, this time taking a series of selfies of the both of them. Leah rolled her eyes but stopped protesting, instead leaning back into Sy’s embrace.

She submitted to a few more pictures before turning around and diverting his attention with a kiss. After one final picture, Sy abandoned the phone in favor of wrapping Leah’s ponytail around his fist and deepening the kiss.

As much as he wanted something to remember that moment by, the taste of Leah’s lips would win out every time.

Chapter 26

[everlasting-rainfall]

Hi again👋🥰 I'm the one who sent Figarland Garling's request for PAGES AU and after Reading your Headcanons about the Figarland Family I came up with another idea for our dear Red Crescent 🌛❤️ Like what if the reader was sentenced to death for some reason (perhaps she was an escaped slave or a member of the revolutionaries) She proposed a duel to escape the execution, and of course she lost, but somehow it aroused Garling's interest, and he decided that instead of completing the execution, she now belonged to him alone, and no one could look or talk to her except him I bet his superiority complex will make him see his girlfriend as a perfect goddess whose attention no one deserves but him (I really don't mind if he decides to kidnap me or protest at his house. I will actually tie myself up and hand him over and I might turn into a simp or bimbo for him 🤤🤤)

I hope things get better and you are well 💋 (no matter what problems you are facing)

Hey! Sorry that it took me so long to get to this as like I’ve said, I’ve been dealing with some personal issues that I’d rather not go into detail about but I’m working on it now and I sincerely hope that you enjoy this!

Here’s hoping that I hear more from you in the future so before I get too distracted, let’s get right into it!

!-MINORS DO NOT INTERACT AT ALL-!

!-POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS-!

Celestial Dragon Bullshit, Slavery, Execution, Violence, Isolation, Implied Noncon, Delusions, Kidnapping

!-POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS-!

!-MINORS DO NOT INTERACT AT ALL-!

Also Keep in Mind that I do not support or condone the actions of any Celestial Dragon, they are disgusting creatures who are barely even human and don’t deserve the time of day

So as you said, you are someone whose about to be judged and executed but of course there needs to be a reason so let’s imagine that you were like someone who had ties to the revolutionary army like you weren’t a full on revolutionary yourself but you did provide aid to them

Now of course, this is dangerous like in the eyes of the world government. You might as well have just stepped all over their flag and let’s say that you got into some serious trouble as a result of this, you were originally going to be killed outright but lucky you! Or rather unlucky you in a bad way, a celestial dragon just so happened to spot you and what do you know? You’re kinda cute… 🤢

Narrowly escaping execution, you’re now a slave to a random ass celestial dragon which in all honesty? Probably way better to have been killed in all honesty as bitchass celestial dragon gonna be a bitchass celestial dragon and they’re awful to you

You’re moreso treated like some kind of doll or pet to be commanded than an actual person like legitimately, they’ve tried to show you off to fellow dragons like you’re some kind of cool toy they got, not even a trophy

Anyways with the constant dealing with the bitchass celestial dragon who has you like the daily abuse and the fact that they never see you as human like legitimately they probably see an actual bug as more human, something was bound to happen

And suddenly you’re on trial for trying to kill the person who was your “master”, whether you succeeded or just severely injured the fucker is completely up to you but either way. Let’s say you practically butchered the fucker

As you’re standing there before the judge, the red haired man reads off the crimes that you committed and the evidence against you is damning to the point where it’s clear the death sentence is coming

You can’t let this be where you perish though so just before Garling sentences you to a very painful execution befitting of someone like you (His words, not mine), you interrupt him much to the pearl clutching gasps of the dragons and shout out that you want to duel

Duel for your freedom against Figarland Garling himself? It sounds absolutely crazy but he’s clearly interested so he rises from his chair and tells you the rules that if you can beat him then you go free but if he wins then the sentence continues

No sort of armor is provided to you but luckily, you’re at least given a weapon although it’s not one of your choosing and he doesn’t seem to be wearing armor either so maybe you can do this?

The duel is begun via a starting pistol from one of the holy knights and you barely have enough time to dodge Garling’s first strike as he moves so fast that it’s terrifying

While you’re scrambling to get to a safe distance away, Garling is pleasantly surprised as not many dodge his first strike but no matter. Probably an accident so he strikes again and wouldn’t you know it? Another narrow dodge!

Man’s honestly starting to have fun as you can’t hit him and your attacks can’t even be called attacks so much as they’re desperate swings of a weapon but somehow, you’re dodging his attacks quite well (although they’re all just based on luck) and by the time that the duel has finally ended

You’re lying on the ground with a deep slash across your chest and his sword in your face, you’ve lost but Garling doesn’t intend to get rid of you as you’re quite interesting. Not only did you dodge his attacks but with those dodges, you became the person whose last against him the longest

Honestly you’re too good to execute so once he’s declared the winner and the applause has died down, he sheaths his sword and reads out your sentence as it’s no longer death but you will be taken to his home and serve him

Some dragons probably are murmuring as what is he thinking? But Garling doesn’t care as he demands you to be taken away and have your wounds treated, there’s a little bit of hesitation but soon you find yourself passing out as you’re carried off

When you wake up, you’re now living in Garling’s home as one of his servants which is probably like a “God fucking dammit” moment for you but oddly enough. Garling doesn’t treat you as poorly as the other guy did

Like yes, you are still a servant but Garling never really has much for you to do for him and most of the time. He simply wants to speak with you as you work on whatever small thing that he’s making you do or have you accompany him on a walk around the property

It’s so weird to you especially as you’ve never seen another servant around Garling’s home like you’re aware that they exist but you’ve never seen them and when you decide to ask him? He tells you that when you’re stuck in your quarters is when they’re in the house

You might try to ask why you’re not out then as you’re just like them but he’d more than likely tell you to not compare yourself to them, it’s so weird

Part of you thinks that Garling simply keeps you in this position because he wants to be able to show you and specifically you off like you’re a toy or trophy later but when the day does come that he meets up with other nobles, he goes alone like he doesn’t even indicate that he wants to bring you with him

So you aren’t being treated different for the purpose of being shown off but could it possibly be for then?

It seems like the answer comes when he wants to take you to meet the guard dogs one day, those giant Tibetan Mastiff’s that you’ve heard about having ripped any intruder or enemy to shreds if they so much as feel like the Figarland Family is threatened

Maybe you were being well cared for so you could be fed to them? Possibly… But that answer quickly dies when you’re taken to them only to not be fed to them but to be introduced to them as Garling makes you hold out your hand to be sniffed by them

Honestly the worst thing that they all do is lick your hand once, the Pomeranian Leader of the Guard Dogs doesn’t even touch you and simply yips at you like some kind of greeting

After this, Garling’s odd behavior is taken up a few notches as he barely asks you to do anything for him now and rarely gets mad at you like seriously… You once broke a vase just to see how he would react and he simply told you to be more careful… He didn’t even tell you to clean it up when he’s told you that he’s made other servants clean up broken objects only to execute them afterwards…

When the day comes that Garling starts to buy you outfits and refer to you as “Dearest one” and “Star” alongside touch you just a little bit too long, that’s when you start to realize what might be happening as he appears to be trying to ease you into a life as his partner

It all makes sense now to you… This is the only reason that he would be treating you differently…

You need to get out of here…

Avoiding Garling while you make a plan of escape isn’t easy as this man can read you like a book and it’s not like you can just stay in your room all day as the man will come and let himself in when he lets you out of your quarters

It takes such a long time of careful planning and on a night where he told you that starting tomorrow night, you would be sharing beds with him. You put your plan into action as you left your room and walked silently through the halls once you were sure that he went to sleep

You snuck outside and only made it halfway across the property before the loud howls of the guard dogs started to ring out, you started to slap yourself internally as you didn’t account for the possibility that he would get up to check on you or to make it so that you would start sharing beds that night

Running across the property hoping to find a wall that you could vault yourself over or an exit that you could rush through and escape the red haired man through was pointless as within minutes, you had the guard dogs rushing at you from the darkness

Their teeth sunk into your ankles causing you to scream as you were dragged back to the main house where Garling is waiting for you dressed in his pajamas sitting in a chair looking less than pleased

It kind of feels like you’re back at what was supposed to be your execution in all honesty and when Garling speaks, his voice is cold to the point where it sends a chill down your spine like you’ve seen the reaper in the flesh

He’s angry and he demands to know why you’ve run away from him after all that he’s done for you and when you hesitate to speak, he impatiently slams his fist against the arm of the chair and commands you to respond

“I… I just want to go home! I want to go home and forget about all of this! I want to go back to my old life!”

“Why on earth would you want something like that? I can make you so much more happier here with me… I can make all of your troubles go away if you’d just embrace me instead of leaning away…”

“Please… You’ve done so many nice things for me but I don’t want this… I want my life back, I want to live in my old town with all the people…”

“You want them instead of me? When they don’t even deserve to lay eyes on you, let alone stand in your presence? Disgusting… Don’t you realize how perfect you are?”

It’s after this that Garling winds up going into a long speech about how you’re some kind of goddess and beautiful thing that no one deserves to lay eyes on except him, you are the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen and clearly he must keep you away from those who are unworthy

The entire thing freaks you out so much more than the thought of him killing you does especially when he starts to talk about the life that he has all planned out for the two of you that apparently he’s been planning since the very moment that you somehow managed to last as long against him as you did back at your execution

Which now in hindsight to him was just an awful, awful thing that never should have happened as clearly the bastard who you attacked had it coming but not because he was a Disgusting Celestial Dragon but because he kept you from meeting him

He pulls you into his lap at some point during this and although you try to struggle briefly against him, you know that there’s no escape when you hear a low growl from the guard dogs that threatens you to try to run and Garling’s arms tighten around you in his embrace

Once you’re in his arms, he tells you about his desire to come home to you after a long day, he would find you untainted by the gaze of those who are unworthy and you would greet him with a beaming smile

Your outfit would look absolutely lovely on you and hug you in all the right places to show off every inch of your perfect body no matter what sort of body type you may have, he would approach and you would welcome him home with a kiss as he caressed you

The two of you would enjoy your dinner together and retire to your bedroom for the night where he would slip your outfit from your shoulders and make love to you as you moaned out his name and begged for him to impregnate you

Garling almost looks happy as he describes all of this like it’s his dream come true that he’s telling you about, he looks into your scared eyes and chuckles just a little

He pulls you ever so closer to him to where you can feel his nice smelling breath fanning across your face…

“You look so scared, darling… But don’t be afraid and don’t run either… I’d find you anywhere that you ran from me and drag you home even if a million eyes had been laid upon you… This is where you belong now…”

“I…”

“Shhhh… No need for words… Just lean into me and allow me to bind us together…”

And with that, Garling leaned in and pressed his lips onto yours in a kiss that felt as cold as ice… You wanted to run, you wanted to scream and push him away, you wanted to get far away from here…

But none of that was going to happen and as you felt one of his hands starting to slip underneath your clothing…

You knew that you weren’t going anywhere…

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

Happy Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day 2023! Or as we've been calling it, FFWAD.

I participated again this year in @renegadepublishing's FFWAD challenge, to make and send a book to an author as a gesture of love and appreciation.

Last year, it was the very first bound fic I'd shared publicly. This year, I combined FFWAD with Renegade's Tiny Book Bang event, and sent tiny books to an author! How tin, you ask? A few more pics for scale are coming.

For the Tiny Book Bang, I typeset three fic, and signed up to bind one typeset for someone else. Hilariously, the book I bound for the typesetter AND one of my own typesets were both MDZS fic by the same author, so Nirejseki got a copy of Tigers, a collection of short about "what if what the Nies meant by qi deviation was... turning into a tiger?" typeset by the fantastic @kulapti, and I also snuck in a tiny copy of Good Neighbors, a fic about the Nie clan's relationship with the Fae.

Onwards to pictures!

I really loved the chance to riff hard on the tiger theme. Three copies, one for me, one for the typesetter, one for the author. The covers are Duo book cloth in Eruption, some Japanese paper of indeterminate origin (I keep saying that because I have a scrap pack I bought years before I started binding and don't remember what any of it is), and marbled paper from @aetherseer, who is exceedingly generous with her hand-marbled scraps.

The inside is gorgeous too! This is @kulapti's work, and I love the title page SO very much.

You can see where I'm holding it open here that it's pretty small. But not as tiny as...

This one is JUST LITTLE. Book cloth scraps and chiyogami paper for the cover, and stencilling the spine involved a lot more swearing than usual. I did the cover lettering on both books with a Cricut stencil and paint. Still can't believe the tiny letters turned out on Good Neighbors! Some progress pics to show the scale...

Happy Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day, Nirejseki! Keep doing what you do!

[kytsuine-blog]

Ok so I'm going to do a better, Tumblr-focused writeup soon and also track down those blogs to talk about them more specifically, but I fell for a misinformation scheme today and want to talk about how and why. Here's an email I sent my little cousin about it.

This morning, I encountered a Tumblr post talking about the TikTok ban and the government's attempt to severely curtail digital privacy rights as part of it.

I had heard that the TikTok ban was currently up for debate in the Senate, after passing the House with strong bipartisan support. I was not surprised by the information in the screenshots; it matched with things I knew the government had tried to do often in the past, and often under similar circumstances. I looked up the bill linked to verify, and yeah, it was an active bill that had been introduced in the Senate. (I should have realized then that there was an issue with what I was reading, but in my defense it was about 6:00 AM, and I was just glancing over things in the parking lot before going in to work.)

Concerned for the digital privacy and security of my family, and especially the ones I can't just drive to, I drafted the following message to you:

"I haven't had time to read all the way through the RESTRICT act that the Senate proposed, but summaries I've seen indicate that as written it's a massive overreach. It's better known as the TikTok ban; the news has been focusing on that part as it passes through Congress so far.

I always sign my emails to you with my public key. Both of you should look up how to use PGP to send me encrypted emails with that. It may become even more important soon to normalize secure encryption in Internet communications, and there may also be things that we wish to discuss that state or federal laws may frown on in the future.

I planned to introduce topics related to computer and information security more gradually, but making sure that talking about those is possible at all is an important part of that.

Congress.gov page on the bill

Tweet thread"

(As an aside, I do still think that normalizing encryption is a very worthwhile thing to do; it makes the web a safer place for activists and informants needing a way to communicate without surveillance, without being singled out as enemies of the surveillance state.)

I then checked through the notes of the Tumblr post to see if there was more context I wanted to share, and noticed people who called out a detail that I missed. That post was first posted in March of 2023, a little over a year ago. It refers to an entirely different bill than the TikTok ban which is currently going through the Senate, one which activists successfully stalled (and likely killed) last year. This year's bill is much more targeted (though, as implemented, I still have issues with it); its text can be found here.

This is a classic example of how misinformation spreads. I did not have bad intent when I went to share that commentary on last year's bill with you, and I did not find it from someone with bad intent (in fact, she subsequently shared a commentary I posted on the actual bill, in reply to her original incorrect post.) From what I can tell, on March 14, a number of mostly inactive politically-focused blogs all shared that post directly from the original poster (not from someone who had it in their feed, like a normal Tumblr interaction). Each of these was tagged with fairly popular political tags. None of these blogs has posted since, keeping it at the top of their page to get more eyes on it.

Misinformation is spread deliberately, and it takes caution and checking of your biases to combat it. I almost fell for this one because I expected it to be true. I should have checked on it before sharing anything at all. Looking at it now, I ask: who benefits from this?

Most directly, proponents of the current TikTok ban benefit from activist efforts being directed towards a functionally dead bill. This, apparently, includes the strong majority of the House, on both sides of the aisle; it may be assumed that it also includes the government's surveillance agencies (as it is easier to compel data from American companies than from foreign ones, particularly Chinese ones). It could also include other social media sites, especially those like YouTube and Instagram that compete directly with TikTok in the realm of algorithmically driven short videos.

More abstractly, though, this misinformation benefits the status quo, and conservatism as a whole. By causing people who are invested in the TikTok ban (mostly left-leaning people) to engage with more stringent and concerning bills, stress is increased on activists and burnout becomes more likely. Targeting the mental health of left-leaning activists is a tactic we've seen multiple times recently in misinformation campaigns; another example is the "the Guardian is doing a story on DIY HRT" hoax that recently circulated among my trans friends. This type of stressful lie misinformation serves the dual purpose of causing activists to burn out and decreasing trust among communities that share it.

This is a new specific strategy to me, but the solution is the same as ever. Check your sources when you speak publicly, check how your biases affect what ideas seem "clearly correct", and aim for your statements to maximize quality, rather than quantity. That's a discipline I still need to refine, but it's not hard. Just requires a bit of diligence.

[soliloquent-stark]

10 questions for writers

i was tagged by @robertdowneyjjr, @fohatic and @mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea 🫶🏻

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

13 :)

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

100,285! <3

3. what fandoms do you write for?

mcu only, so far. i might dip my toes in some marvel comics fic eventually but that's about it.

4. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

i do! sometimes after a long while, but i always do. i appreciate readers' thoughts, i value interaction, and i want to encourage the already small group of people who leave comments. writing is so difficult and lonesome sometimes, and what comes after publishing is what makes it worth it, for me personally.

5. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of. though this reminds me of when i was like 11 writing original murder mystery stories on my weirdly popular anonymous facebook page — i abandoned a story at some point, and someone decided to write a (pretty terrible, both plot-wise and spag-wise) ending to it but they did so by first copying and pasting the entire existing story (around 70k words) under their own name, and THEN writing a rushed ending that, no joke, included the 'it was an evil twin all along' trope. luckily i found it after a while and my best friend sent them a pretty scary message that made them take it down, but yeah. oh, and it turned out the person was an online friend/loyal reader of mine. the drama! the betrayal!

6. have you ever co-written a fic before?

not yet, but i have a few projects in very early development stages with some people 🤭 but they might never see the light of day...

7. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

stevetony! i am a big multishipper but i would never replace them. ❤️

8. what are your writing strengths?

introspection, i guess? i can take a little idea and turn it into 5k of inner monologue — if that's a strength or not, that's up for debate. professional yapper right here, but getting to know characters deeply and intimately is my jam. i'm also good at not writing anything for a long time and then producing a fic in a few hours, as long as i'm in deep focus mode.

9. what are your writing weaknesses?

i struggle with fast-paced scenes sometimes (see: professional yapper mentioned above) and with describing actions. i also get stuck on one thought or idea which frequently hinders my progress. oh and i edit as i go way too much, and often fail to advance the story.

10. first fandom you wrote for?

one direction. it was... a time. no other comments there. :D

tagging anyone who hasn't done it yet! feel free to say i tagged you. :)

[goodluckclove]

ok ok ok Clove i need to know: who are some of the best writers here in your opinion ? who do i need to follow if i want to follow the next generation of great writers ? i need new blogs to follow

oh shit let's party.

first off i can't say that i know all the best writers here. i'm still learning! also, maybe i like things you don't. the usual disclaimer. but i'll still take the chance to rave about some of the immense brilliance of some of my colleagues on here!

first of is @ivaspinoza, who is the first person to send me her writing the very first time i asked. she writes the most beautiful, almost prophetic word pieces. not quiet prose, not entirely poetry. it's language you can really seep yourself in like a heated milk bath. she's working on a longform vampire novel in the same style which i have seen snippets of and it is truly incredible. love her dearly.

i'm actually in the middle of Song of the Heartless by @rkmoon, because he was hesitating to post it and i harassed him into sending it to me. and oh man, it's great. really solid premise and a world that feels vibrant and expansive and also shit because it's kind of dystopian and the vibes are not great. obviously as another aspec writer i love the representation. it's great to read yourself on the page and still see your struggles draped in thematic excitement. i can't say any more without spoiling it but i really want to. this could easily be a fucking great movie adaptation.

i feel insane pointing you towards @godsmostfuckedupgoblin because he doesn't really post his writing as far as i know but he's got some of the best mastery of dialogue i've seen in non-published writing and his excerpts are always so exciting and fun to read. maybe if enough people him to share more he will but until then his memes are lit as a child has once said before.

@stajorathefallen is working on a longform Lord of the Rings fic that is truly beautiful. I would rather read this finished product than the actual Lord of the Rings. I don't know if she'll find that a compliment or a war crime, but it's just nicer. It feels warm and cozy to read. I actually don't even know if it's referenced the original canon at all since I saw the movies but didn't pay attention. I was not qualified to look at this fic but I got to anyway and it's great.

@cssnder is someone else who doesn't post enough writing, but my hope is with enough confidence she'll branch more into sharing. Literally every time she drops a line everyone's like huh?? wow!! and then she whispers a thanks and disappears back into the catacombs. if you like dark academia based on tiktok you should follow her to see what those tiktoks wish they could capture.

this is obviously not everyone. these are not even all the people that sent me writing to look at. i have two separate emails that i still need to marry, some people are still in the egg-cracking stage of being a writer, and my adderal can only do so much. if you aren't one of these people just know that you are amazing and you need to post more of your work so i can point people to your page please thank you i love you.

[jeanbie]

hi !! as someone who’s been hyperfixated on avatar for years, i really feel like the way you write for it is just.. phenomenal. It feels like you really captured Jake’s personality and also made me feel like I was actually in Pandora. and the way you write for reader, feels like exactly how or just similarly to how i would act in that setting. not many of the avatar writers I’ve come across have been able to simultaneously do that.

I keep rereading both parts of fantasize, but I especially keep going back to the first one, not sure why. I also look forward to checking out your other works. Either way, I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your writing with us and I can’t wait for part 3 !

hey!

thank you so much for saying that! with life coming at me at full force after april, i feel really terrible that i slipped away into nothing and haven't delivered any new content at all. i have 3 fics on the go (avatar ones) but just haven't found the motivation to finish, but i always feel particularly inspired when i get such lovely messages like this!!!

i am so so so flattered and touched that you feel that way about my work, especially since i was so nervous to step into avatar after writing for aot for so long! i'm just relieved that people can relate to the way i write jake and also that the reader is relatable too.

i tend to forget that "reader" needs to be accessible and therefore she is always just me (i've only this year become better at making reader feel more inclusive as a white writer with small boobs and a small frame) and i'm just relieved that she's fun to read and that she's not too outlandish. i'd understand if some people didn't get her or like her, it's hard to create someone who everyone can relate to, though i try really hard to make it happen.

i definitely hope to release fantasize 3 by the end of the year, i just honestly forgot how i originally intended for norm to find out and whatnot and i feel a lot of pressure to get it perfect now that fantasize has such an enormous response (more than i ever expected or hoped for). so, i'm genuinely sorry for the wait and i really hope that you all love part 3 when it rolls around. these days i have more time and more mental control so i hope it can escape the confines of Pages and that you can all read it.

once again, i am so so so grateful and honoured to have been sent such a lovely and thoughtful message. part 1 has such a special place in my heart, too, i think the climax of it being their first is just really exciting and sexy. i'm so glad you like it so much!!! i love you!!!!

[pettyrevenge-base]

Post someone else’s personal information online? Get fired from your law firm!

I’m a college student.

I was heading between classes early this week and got a call from my state’s unemployment office asking me to finish my claim. I didn’t file a claim. It turns out the claim was for someone else, so I took the name down and ended the call.

I live in one of the larger cities in my state, and we have a community Facebook group where we share questions about events, hours for businesses, and general memes and jokes about nonsense that happens in our city.

I decided to post an inquiry asking if anyone knew someone by that name who had applied for unemployment. I wanted them to get their claim finished so they could get paid as soon as possible, and with only their name, which was a really common name, Facebook search and the yellow pages did nothing for me.

Enter Karen.

Karen comments relatively quickly on my post, bragging that at her job she has access to tons of people’s personal information and she pasted some guy’s information in the comments. She ended her comment by bragging about being able to use their system outside of work and on personal time for personal reasons, and that she hadn’t been caught.

She posted this on a public Facebook group.

Right away people replied to her and said she shouldn’t be bragging about essentially misusing their system for personal use, and that information security breaches could be a huge problem if she does it on her home network.

As someone with an IT background, I sprang into action.

Cue petty revenge.

I screenshotted everything she said and my original post for safe keeping. I then looked up her name on LinkedIn. Turns out, she works for the most powerful law firm in my city as an office manager.

The American Bar Association has VERY strict rules regarding safeguarding client information. The entire firm could use its license to practice law if anyone in their office misuses their access to client information or shares client information publicly.

I gathered all my information and screenshots and even a screenshot from the Bar Association website and sent it through the contact form on their website. I also sent the same information to the head counsel and the president of the law firm.

Not ten minutes later I get a Facebook message from Karen with A SCREENSHOT OF MY CONTACT FORM, saying “nice try”. She then blocked me on Facebook.

But then.

The next day I get a message from a legal assistant at the law firm. She is very concerned and wants to find out what happened. I explain everything and that she was bragging about this publicly.

She thanked me for my time and said that an internal investigation would happen immediately and that they handle any information security complaints like this very seriously.

I never got an update from the law firm and it’s been about five days, but when I went to Google Karen’s LinkedIn page again…it was gone. I think it’s safe to say that Karen will no longer be using her access to client information for personal use anymore.

To the random guy who needed to finish his unemployment claim, I hope you got paid!

Source: reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge

[rosewind2007]

Ha!

Some people have asked in the last 48 hours:

“Like why the hell would anyone ship Murderbot and Gurathin?”

(I like to imagine them like ART clutching its function in Artificial Condition—“Ship Gurathin and Murderbot? That is irrational!”)

So, let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me make a few points:

This really starts out by asking the question: why did Gurathin want to know how the PresAux SecUnit was spending its time? Which is a really odd thing for him to want to know if you think about it.

The SecUnit is, as they have been told, merely a tool: it’s an adjunct to the SecSystem and HubSystem of the habitat, it’s a company device, a tool, a product of corporate surveillance capitalism and authoritarian enforcement. Up until the worm incident some of the PresAux team didn’t even now it had a face. Mensah didn’t want to rent it as part of the bond guarantee agreement, and called it (basically) a “hellish compromise.”

So, the rest of PresAux are in varying states of awareness about what Murderbot is.

In Future of Work Compulsory we get some insight into common knowledge of SecUnits: the workers are unaware they can speak, in fact adamant they cannot:

Asa took her arm gently. “They can’t talk,” he told her.

She [Sekai] shook her head as her friends steered her toward the access bridge. “No, it talked. I heard it.”

The PresAux team know their SecUnit can talk, it gives them a security briefing. Do most of them think this is the equivalent of a recorded message, delivered rote?

Surely Mensah, having seen its face and knowing of its intelligence (that hellish compromise) can’t think it’s anything less than a slave? But that aside: I am talking about Gurathin. And what what Volescu says Gurathin wanted to know:

Then Volescu said, “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

Funny thing to want to know, like do you want to know how your roomba spends its time? Okay, this is Tumblr, possibly the wrong place for this question.

So Gurathin is suspicious, apparently right from the start of the book since on page 33 he first asks it a question:

“What about your systems?”

I would note that Gurathin asks MB two questions about how it is functioning, both just after it does something that goes against its governor module:

The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company. “They’re supposed to be able to, but equipment failures aren’t unknown.”

Next thing anyone says is:

Then Gurathin said, “What about your systems?”

Later:

It was one of those impulses that comes from my organic parts that the governor is supposed to squash. I said, “As the only one here with experience in these situations, I’m your best resource.”

Gurathin said, “What situations?”

This looks to me like someone who either detects that MB is acting unlike a SecUnit should, or even that he can tell a governor module is being defied.

HOW does Gurathin do this/know this? He is after all augmented, perhaps he is detecting something in the feed? In Rogue Protocol when MB is spying on Miki via a drone it has taken over, Miki realises something is up:

Miki didn’t move, still staring into the dark with the opaque surface of its eyes. The feed was clear, it couldn’t know I was here.

Then Miki sent a directionless ping

I think Miki does know (Miki stares at the drone); and I think somehow Gurathin also knows.

This seems to indicate that Gurathin may know more about SecUnits than he’s giving away—but whatever: this is someone who has been closely watching Murderbot.

Like, really closely.

I think an absolutely reasonable reading of ASR is that Gurathin has a bit of a fixation on this SecUnit, and it’s a fixation that started before the worm incident.

He’s watching this piece of company equipment with unusual intensity.

I am happy to headcanon that this started with the security briefing, that Murderbot couldn’t keep its feelings out of its voice. I mean, can you imagine Murderbot doing the in-flight safety announcement on the plane? It brings to mind project mayhem’s replacement safety handouts…

Did Gurathin hear Murderbot’s real voice bleed through? Cynicism and sarcasm, a dose of irony?

It’s a thought. He never seems to doubt it’s a person. The fact that Rathhi says: “This is no more a machine than Gurathin is—”perhaps says something about how he sees Gurathin too.

I would note that Gurathin and Ratthi aren’t friends in All Systems Red—something which surprised me a little (I didn’t think they got along as well as they do in later books, but when I looked into it I was surprised!

Gurrathi Meta

So when the team heads off to DeltFall Gurathin is very suspicious and watching SecUnit, which it reports upon but doesn’t seem to spot the significance of—which is rather unlike our paranoid Murderbot.

Gurathin is the only member of the team not to express enthusiasm for MB going on the trip.

Gurathin was the only one staying behind who didn’t say anything

MB is actually about to start poking around to figure out what Guarthin is up to when the feed drops out (probably trying to figure out what’s wrong with it).

If anything I think Gurathin acts oddly about his rogue SecUnit suspicions.

If he knows SecUnits he will probably have heard the propaganda, which MB believes:

To quote MB: “I sure as hell would have reported me. Rogue SecUnits are fucking dangerous, trust me on that.”

I wrote a little essay on how Gurathin is right about a lot of things when it comes to Murderbot:

Gurathin was right

(It’s called that because he is)

Perhaps the strangest thing is that he just tries to immobilize it, and then makes his case. He doesn’t try and have it shut down whilst “unconscious”, and doesn’t even mention the (fairly critical information) until pushed. Gurathin’s expression was stiffer than usual. “This Unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation.”

At this point MB believe this is true, and it lies to the diary about it, by omission at any rate: “What I told you before, about how I hacked my governor module but didn’t become a mass murderer? That was only sort of true. I was already a mass murderer.”

So: I honestly don’t think Gurathin’s behaviour here makes a whole lot of sense if you read it in a lot of ways—the way I think it makes more sense is that he is fixated. This could be sexual: perhaps when:

[Gurathin] said, “Why don’t you want us to look at you?”

My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”

Well—perhaps MB is picking up something about the way Gurathin looks at it?

My personal reading is that Gurathin has become obsessed, an obsession perhaps sparked by MB’s anomalous behaviors? He is watching it intensely. It doesn’t have to be sexual, humans can get fixated without sexual attraction.

And then he so quickly accepts the rogue unit into his team! It holds him up against the wall by his neck (I mean, wow—one of the most intense bits of physical contact in the book). But Gurathin is rapidly team SecUnit: and he never sees it as “not a person” he isn’t kidding when he says.

(“I do think of it as a person,” Gurathin said. “An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.”

“Then stop being mean to it,” “Ratthi told him. “That might help.”)

Gurathin and SecUnit work together to overcome GrayCris, Murderbot even grudgingly admitting Gurathin’s help:

“Gurathin had figured out how to use the hack from their HubSystem into our HubSystem to get access, but he needed to be close to their habitat to actually trigger their beacon. ”

“(Last night Gurathin had said this was a weak point, that this was where the plan would fall apart. It was irritating that he was right.)”

So: that’s some of the reasons from the first book, All Systems Red

[the-briny-bulletin]

(warning: long rambling about the bathysphere and cryptid fish ahead)

Map of Bermuda showing the areas of the Bathysphere dives as shown in William Beebe's 1934 book "Half a Mile Down". you can find the PDF of the book for free here. I've only read a few pages (20 i think) as of yet but what I've read so far is really interesting!

William Beebe was one of the two men aboard the Bathysphere, an unpowered deep sea submersible used between 1930-34 (we will get to that later). He was a naturalist mainly known for ornithology but was also an early pioneer of deep sea exploration. During the late 20s he started formulating a way to explore the deep sea, something that was unimaginable as even military submarines with no windows could only go about 117 Metres (383 ft) deep at the time. He was also pretty progressive as he often hired women to do scientific work (pretty scandalous for the 1930s).

The other man, Otis Barton, was an engineer who actually designed the Bathysphere itself! William Beebe was originally planning on using a cylindrical shape for the submersible, which he then published to the New York Times. Otis saw this and sent William a few letters explaining that this was a shit ass design and how a spherical shape would be better. (William ignored this because he was getting a lot of letters from folks asking to join his efforts. but eventually a mutual friend introduced them). He then went on to design the Benthoscope, another deep sea submersible, and write his own book "The World Beneath the Sea" which I have also yet to read (mainly bc i cant find a free PDF).

Now, the Bathysphere itself:

I would try to describe how it functions but unfortunately i am not smart enough to do so, and i feel too weirdly guilty to copy and pasting from Wikipedia. If you are an engineer nerd, please feel free to nerd about the design in the reblogs! But what I do understand is that this fucking thing was STUPIDLY DANGEROUS.

It is a literal ball of steel that they lowered into the ocean using a cable connected to a boat. a hollow one, sure. But when they first cast this thing it was too heavy to be lifted so they had to recast it. even in its lighter form, it was clunky and difficult. When it was submerged it would violently swing like a pendulum which would cause Barton and Beebe to hit their heads on the steel walls. they would often leave the Bathysphere bruised and bleeding. Once, Otis Barton threw up due to sea sickness while in it and they just shrugged and kept descending anyway.

Also, due to the high amount of pressure exerted on the sphere (deepest dive being 923 metres/3,028 ft which would be around 90 ish atmospheres which is 90 times more than on the surface(i think idk maths someone fact check me)) they probably most very likely would have experienced some form of nitrogen narcosis, which is basically when some people who reach below a certain depth in the sea start to experience temporary mental impairments kinda like if you were on anesthesia. That, as well as the fact that - despite their best efforts - the air circulation in the sphere was bad, meaning there was probably a high amount of Co2 in the air.

This ^ may be an explanation for the 5 cryptids described by Barton and Beebe during the "Untouchable Bathysphere" Incident and I'm vaguely aware these things probably have been spoken about before on this site (probably with better dictation and analysis) but i wish to speak about them again because they HAUNT ME I think about them OFTEN and I wanna TALK ABOUT IT!!

Fish themselves as Illustrated by Else Bostalmann:

The Five-Lined Constellation Fish

(Bathysidus pentagrammus)

The Pallid Sailfin

(Bathyembryx istiophasma)

The Giant Dragonfish

(Bathysphaera intacta)

The Abyssal Rainbow Gar

(No scientific name given lmao)

The Three-Starred Anglerfish

(Bathyceratias trilynchus)

I really suggest reading up about the untouchable bathysphere incident because there's something so haunting about how they describe these fish that have never been seen since. Imagine being the first person in the world to see such sights, only to be the last. An elusive ghost story.

There's a bunch of theories about what these fish are, if they are real and if so are still alive. The general consensus I've seen is that "they definitely saw something but their perception of reality was fucked up" and I whole heartedly agree.

For example: this "Five-lined constellation fish" has very similar patterns to a comb jelly

And the pallid sailfin's large dorsal and anal fins look an awful lot like cephalopod fins (?)

And when I was rambling about this with someone, they point out that the lures of the three-starred angler fish could potentially be caused by double vision and like

Yeah

Another post on tumblr I saw a while ago (which i cannot find please lmk if you know what I'm talking about) talked about how its very difficult to tell the size of things underwater if you don't have another object for a frame of reference, and also that objects tends to seem bigger underwater (23% i think?). Considering the pitch blackness of the deep sea, its very likely that they could've miscalculated the size of the giant dragon fish.

I dont know how to end this. this has been in my drafts for months. if you wanna add something please feel free to do so!!

[ladyinbooks]

Ok, so a little while I reblogged the work of the phenomenally talented @dashka12, who had created the most stunning binding of Icarus, Burning. It is seriously gorgeous, and if you haven't seen @dashka12's original post, go and shout some well deserved praise on it now, because oh my word is the binding fantastic.

Afterwards, Dashka got in touch and very kindly offered to send me a copy as well. The binding arrived yesterday evening (and no, I am not going to be normal about this now, so you're warned).

OH. MY. GOSH.

So, firstly I had a meltdown and a little cry when I opened the parcel (it really is stunning - I'm not exaggerating, it's stunning).

The richness of the cover, the gold leaf and the wonderful, dreamlike galactic interior. I said it to @dashka12 - it feels so very Samiel to me somehow. Dashka's combined that sci-fi feel with something that is far more mythological, and created utter beauty. (And I forgot to take a picture of the mask on the back cover, but IT'S PERFECT.)

But then:

I realised that not only was there a copy of IB, there was also another wrapped parcel that had been sent as well. I initially assumed perhaps IB had been split into two volumes, but... no. I'll give you a clue what the other parcel was:

YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING, RIGHT?!

Look at it. Look. It's sheer and total and wondrous perfection.

There is something so very, very Hess about this binding, and @dashka12 has captured it beautifully. That heavenly, stunning angelic exterior; the demonic interior leaf pages. The beautiful gilded pages and the biblical feel of the whole binding - I just. I can't. I don't have words to describe it, or do it proper justice, because I'm actually speechless with how much I love it. All I can say is it's been twenty-four hours, and I still can't stop looking at it (or IB, either).

Look, I'm going to be completely honest: when I saw what @dashka12 had created I really did cry. For someone to create such beautiful work - such art - from something I wrote, means so much to me. To be able to hold books - actual books - that sprang from my fics honestly just blew me away. For the first time, something I'd written felt oddly real, in a way I can't really explain (possibly my olde schoole brain still equates physical books with being a Genuine Author somehow).

So thank you, @dashka12. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Your creativity and your talent are phenomenal; your kindness even more so. You've given me something priceless with these, and I can never thank you enough.

(And yes, both books are now sitting in pride of place on my bookshelf - right next to my 18th C. copy of the Iliad. Take that, Homer - you only wish you looked this good.)