zemkzone

[zemkzone]

Tl;dr how you can personally make Neil Gaiman lose money (and not be a jerk to others.)

I see a lot of folks upset that NG will financially benefit from residuals and other compensation surrounding his involvement in the adaptation of Sandman and Good Omens (and he will.) But the answer isn’t “rage at the fans who are so emotionally attached to their blorbos because they grieve differently, and then somehow NG will be financially punished.” That’s lower-class/middle-class thinking. NG is too rich and financially diversified to really be hurt by little boycott or a couple of show cancellations (though said cancellations can cause life-changing poverty to the little guys who signed contracts and turned down other opportunities before all of this came out. Boy does NG love women in poverty 🤮)

So if you want to substantially reduce the wealth of someone at NG’s financial level—you need to do it with professional services fees.

Details below the cut:

The firm that NG has apparently engaged for online reputation management (ORM), called edendale, was once paid for their professional testimony in an unrelated slander lawsuit, which was delivered in the form of a report (2) outlining the strategy ORM firms use and (2) just how ludicrously expensive those professional services cost. (Credit to horrornobody77 for digging up the report.) We’re talking hundred of thousands of dollars for a small potatoes case, where NG’s could easily get into the millions for ORM and associated legal fees.

It’s not that long of a read, but to summarize the key action items you can take:

📆 -ORMs wait for the discourse to die down, because active discourse is much more expensive to counter. Wanna cost NG money? Talk about the accusations over time. Set a quarterly calendar event in your phone to remind yourself to post (and otherwise engage on other people’s posts) about the Vulture article. This needs to happens for years, so that NG has to pay for more comprehensive ORM and for longer.

✅-Make discourse that is Google-friendly. Use the words edendale will find concerning (they’re already running fluff pieces with the terms Neil Gaiman Uncovered to try and bury the similarly named subreddit.) If you just post a link without much comment, it’s not gonna be prioritized by search engines. Similarly, if you make a low effort post and then no one else engages with it—it’s not going to make it to the top ten search results. Engage with each other, for heaven’s sake!

🦾-Don’t let the fluff sit unaddressed. If you see random bot posts sharing NG quotes captioning random fantasy art (possibly AI or misattributed /stolen) with the comments turned on? Respond! Make it hard for the bots to understand your comment but easy for humans. “Nice quote! Mega bummer about what NG did, I used to really like him,” is hard for a bot to auto-delete. “Fuck NG,” is practically doing the bot’s autodelete command for it.

✍️ -If/when you post fan works for properties strongly related to Neil Gaiman, leave a lil callout in the author’s notes. Nothing that will get you sued, just a few words like: “I would definitely personally choose to not ever meet Neil Gaiman at a comic con.” Maybe throw in a link to your fav tumblr summary.

Anyway, to the person being paid hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour by Neil Gaiman for professional services—you’re welcome for the extra billable hours 😘

Also Edendale sounds like a law firm in a Good Omens legal AU fic, and I can’t believe it’s real.

[zemkzone]

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.

[zemkzone]

I woke up today to Instagram getting shittier than it already had been getting. My grid is no longer made up of neat squares, but annoying rectangles. Half my photos on there look bad now. Guess this is a result of all the reels... which have their own tab. So, IDK. THIS hellsite seems to be the only one worth visiting anymore.

[zemkzone]

You've been randomly selected by the government to fight space aliens. Spin this wheel twice to see the two weird/niche superpowers assigned to you!

Interpret your results any way you like!

Inspiration from @miggylol

[zemkzone]

Can't believe a LEGO movie sequence is the most pointed reference I can find that Barry is technically so fast that he's gotta be LETTING Len freeze him on the Arrowverse. //snooorts

Also, that is PEaK punnage up there. XD

Barry learns from the best.

[zemkzone]

in 2025 let’s bring back being enthusiastic on ao3. leave a comment on every chapter. leave kudos and, if necessary, leave “double kudos” in the comments. tags and notes on bookmarks. the whole nine yards. let’s show fanfic authors how much we love them.

[zemkzone]

I'm stuck on a train, so I have a few min to weigh in.

There is NO SUCH THING as a perfect length for a chapter. A single sentence or word can be a chapter, the same way 10k or 5k can be a chapter. What really decides this for writers is the type of story they're writing. Thrillers TEND to have shorter chapters because of their rapid pacing. SFF tends to go long because sometimes you really just have to take a couple paragraphs to explain an intricate piece of world-building. If we're talking fanfiction.... all bets are off. Sometimes the general rule of one character perspective per chapter doesn't quite cut it for the pacing and subject matter you wanna discuss in fics.

So yeah, my end take is, as a writer, the genre and feel of what I'm trying to create matter more than a word count. (In trad-pub, the bargaining about total length comes later, haha.) As a reader, well, I've never taken issue with longer chapters to read--as long as I can follow a sensible thread of subject or thought, of course!

I'm currently writing and trying to figure out what could be a possible middle ground for chapter lengths and just want some general feedback on what the (heavy on quotation) "perfect" length is. But I kind of want to hear why some of these lengths are better than others, or if you're someone who doesn't pay attention to length but the quality what are some things that normally keep you interested in longer chapters (or even shorter chapters) I have my own opinions as a reader but as a writer I'm very interested in what the 'general' opinion is. (I don't think I'll personally cater to the majority, but I really enjoy conversations that revolve around topics like this and its been a while since Ive had a deep conversation with other readers/writers and wanted to start one if anyone wants to discuss :)

[zemkzone]

Hey, so. It seems several of us in coldflash seem to miss exchanges.

That obvs brings me to a poll!

[zemkzone]

Hold up, you took the time to count how many words of my current longfic I managed to post last year alone??? You bloody amazing human, you! XDDD Now let's see what I can get done in 2025, yeah? (Maybe finish TRAT?)

coldflash fics 2024 wrap up!

I spend too much time hanging around in the coldflash tag on ao3 so here's some data I gathered on the fics published this year!

a total of 171 works published/updated by 87 writers (+orphaned and anonymous authors). it brings the total fics in the tag up to 4991 fics, we're almost at 5000! this is a total of approximately 2,924,914 words, which is over 1.5 times the entire ASOIAF series lol (technically this is an overestimate because I didn't bother excluding word counts of longfic chapters published before 2024 whoops)

34 people published a coldflash fic for the first time this year! welcome, we are very happy to have you :)

14 people published fics in a language other than English (5 Russian, 2 French, 2 Spanish, 2 Chinese, 1 Hungarian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Czech)

16-ish cross over fics (obviously this ship has way more crossovers than usual because len goes over to the legends so I didn't count those, but I DID count those highschool/college/groupchat/watch the show au's where every arrowverse/dcu character is chucked into one fic as a crossover) (my post my rules lmao)

1 podfic, 1 fic set in someone else's fic, and 2 translated fics! the transformative works are getting transformed :D

8 gifted works. much generosity, very wow

most fics: 🥇Lady_Meg_666 with 20 fics 🥈SoftBoyDepot with 10 fics🥉BeauregardsTaxicab with 7 fics

highest word count: 🥇 BeauregardsTaxicab with a total of 519,382 words 🥈alex_jude with a total of 155,458 words🥉MK_Morreaux with a total of 95,957 words

longest fic (began prior to 2024): 🥇Arrowverse watching arrowverse with 381,534 words 🥈That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm with 233,199 words🥉Just for a Second with 118,757 words

longest fic (began 2024):🥇Mr. Blue Sky with 268,722 words 🥈There Are Some Strings on Me with 124,404 words 🥉 This Is What You Came For with 107,485 words

oldest fic writers: 🥇 moriavis first published 25 December 2015 and published 07 February this year 🥈coldflasher first published 28 September 2016 and published 17 December this year 🥉n_a_feathers first published 02 October 2016 and updated 12 May this year

funniest tags goes to "Canon is an Ecclesiastical term and I am a heretic," "Slow Burn but just the feelings part they're having sex the whole time," and "Barry Keeps Learning Things About Himself"

least funny tag goes to "no beta we die like Leonard snart" WHY WERE THERE TWO FICS WITH THIS STOP I'LL CRY

most use of taylor swift lyrics as titles goes to alex_jude with three fics. literally no one else is competing in this category lol

thank you to all the fic writers who kept me well fed this year love you <3

[zemkzone]

Absolutely nothing better than people who read my fics and comment on every chapter. I love seeing people’s live reaction to every plot twist and character arc it is like cocaine to me

[zemkzone]

i love how there's the genre of fix-it fic where the author goes into great granular detail of how our heroes manage to avoid or undo whatever character death or other unpopular choice occurred, in a way that abides by the laws of the fictional universe and definitely required a substantial plot outline, and then there are fix-it fics where the author just went "that's bullshit and didn't happen," and we as readers all go "agreed. carry on."

[zemkzone]

[zemkzone]

😈

battle couples has gotta be one of my favorite tropes though. The “you got me?” “Yeah, I got you.” The kiss for good luck. Fighting alongside each other for so long they know every strength and weakness. The dichotomy of being fucking terrifying to their enemies, but so soft with each other. When one is in danger and the other goes feral, protects them at any cost. When everything is over and done, it’s all “let me see where you’re hurt,” and washing off the dirt and blood.

[zemkzone]

Le gasp, an update! Sliding this one last chapter in before the end of the year. Grab your emotional support plushies and tissue, you might need em. At least for a little while. 😈

[zemkzone]

Eeeeeeeeee~ Barry, such a sucker for love, especially when he is in love.

Commission piece for @zemkzone from That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm, chapter 14. I’m so not complaining about having to read that scene multiple times to make sure I got the details right 🥰

This was so fun to work on - I’ve never gotten so intense about backgrounds before XD

[zemkzone]

Le gasp, an update! Sliding this one last chapter in before the end of the year. Grab your emotional support plushies and tissue, you might need em. At least for a little while. 😈

[zemkzone]

Puppy!

This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote with their own Blorbos in minds