Happy birthday Rose and Roxy Lalonde!

this tweet is incredibly powerful. It shifted something in me

I wonder why game freak removed this feature…

Spotted Seal Brooch available at my Etsy shop

…honk?

your own. personal. blorbo

someone who’s in your shows. someone who knows

reach out and touch screen

[Opens my email] We’ve updated our privacy policy!

[Launches videogame] We’ve updated our privacy policy!

[Walks outside] We’ve updated our privacy policy!

[Opens bag of chips] We’ve updated our privacy policy!

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

Sometimes the cost of science is terribly cruel for example this ribbon seal who will probably never get laid again

mormons are the dumbest fucking people of all like there’s literal proof that your shit was written by a weirdo in the 1800s but no…. these writings someone supposedly dug up in Wayne County, New York are divine and sacred

Love to be on a website where I can join such hit 2022 fandoms as "century old public domain novel being read very slowly" and "half-century old mafia film that does not actually exist."

“Why do you have opinions about Homestuck, aren’t you like 40″ I mean, not to get deep about the dick joke comic, but a big part of what Homestuck is doing as a text is interrogating 1990s nostalgia as a cultural institution, with a particular emphasis on the apparent contradiction of being sincerely nostalgic for a body of popular culture that was so terminally irony-poisoned.

You know what age bracket is likely to have suffered most keenly from unexamined 1990s nostalgia?

People who were like 30 circa 2012.

I regret to inform you that people who are like 40 in the year 2022 are in fact one of the comic’s primary target audiences!

i’ve never touched homestuck before but based off the phrase “dick joke comic” you’re telling me the entire crux of the thing is a joke about dicks?

I am speaking 100% literally when I say that the principal villain’s ontological immortality derives from the fact that he has his species’ equivalent of a permanent boner.

I may not 100% remember cherub biology but wouldn’t that make Lord English a huge crocodile headed snake instead of a big muscular skeleton if he was in a state of permanent bonertude?

Probably, yes, but Lord English isn’t a pure cherub – he’s a cherub/troll/sprite hybrid. His “adult” form is still pushing the phallic imagery pretty damn hard in spite of not actually being a giant snake!

(More seriously, the energy that makes Lord English immortal is explicitly identified in the text as something that cherubs are naturally capable of channelling only while in their reproductive state. The prize Caliborn wins for completing the null session is the ability to channel that energy at will; as Lord English, the visual language with which he’s depicted seems to indicate that he’s mainlining it 24/7 at that point. Put that together with all the other visual language surrounding Lord English – i.e., a hulking hypermasculine caricature of bulging muscles and throbbing veins who kills people by vomiting nuclear fire at them – and the whole phallic thing is not at all subtle.)

also: He can’t take on the snake-form cuz that’s an adult cherub thing and Caliborn can’t ever become an adult.

Caliborn killed Calliope in her dreams to avoid a predomination struggle, and so he can never absorb her, and so he can never go through puberty. He chose violence against women, to reject his own feminine aspect, and so he’s doomed himself to being a permanent, eternal kid. Caliborn is Peter Pan if he’d killed Wendy to preserve his power over the lost boys, rather than letting them leave.

Like: Caliborn is a very direct commentary on misogyny, the worship of masculinity, and how deeply stupid, hypocritical, and (self)destructive cis- and heteronormativity are, and giving him the snake-form would undermine that. He’s in the form he’s in because a Big Huge Hardbodied Pimp with a machinegun is what patriarchy teaches boys a man IS. Caliborn learned that from a Clown, who learned those ideas from his religion, which Caliborn started Himself to worship HIMSELF.

Caliborn wanted to be the biggest baddest toughest boy in all existence with all the bitches, and all that ever made him was an angry little boy covering himself in phallic imagery and spending his free time creeping on young girls because he literally can’t get it up, and never will. THIS is what Hussie made the cancer at the heart of reality. All of it: the egotism, how it’s always Already Here, how it recruits other boys, like Gamzee, through the false promise of sharing in that godhood, and makes them voiceless sacrificial tools, puppets!, instead. THIS is what Hussie thinks of patriarchy.

Mm. I’d be cautious about concluding “this is what the author thinks” in this particular case. About three-quarters of Caliborn’s personality and motivations are reportedly a not-terribly-subtle parody of a particular violently misogynistic shitposter who used to creep around the old MS Paint Adventures forums during the period that the comic was being written; it’s a fair question how much of the result is Hussie consciously doing political commentary, and how much of it is just him taking the piss out of one specific guy.

(Questions of authorial intent aside, it’s definitely a reading that’s well supported by the text!)

cybercatholic

@dwarfnoodles