avonpyre

[avonpyre]

Oh my god I got an email from staff

[avonpyre]

Genuinely can’t stand the new favouritism towards video format. You want me to spend a whole two minutes listening to someone say out loud a paragraph I could read in 20 seconds?

(This is about tiktok. I hate tiktok.)

[avonpyre]

do they think we're only allowed to eat kraft singles or

[avonpyre]

A New History of Fandom Purges

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed

1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites

1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere

1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites

1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites

2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites

2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again

2001 - Tripod Massacre

2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN

2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks

2002 - FFN bans porn

2002 - FFN bans RPF

2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes

2004 - FFN bans script format

2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic

2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded

2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again

2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes

2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal

2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids

2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it

2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites

2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted

2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted

2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly

2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity

2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic

2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN

2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence

2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org

2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn

2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic

2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content

2014 - Quizilla shuts down

2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors

2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids

2014 - Viddler deletes vids

2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank

2016 - y!Gallery deleted

2016 - Elfwood goes offline

2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic

2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama

2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad

2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs

2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban

2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning

2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.

Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.

Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.

Fans grudge reported each other.

Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

And it’s why we need a solution for audio, visuals, and video too.

[avonpyre]

"... “I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.

“It’s the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” Kalmus continued. “World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don’t get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point.” ..."

[avonpyre]

In case anyone is wondering what real-world train drama is going on, there’s this.

The tl;dr is that Amtrak wants to run two passenger trains per day round-trip (4 runs total) between Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana, restoring a service that hasn’t been there since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. CSX and Norfolk Southern, two major freight train companies, have resisted this idea, saying it would mess up their traffic, especially since Amtrak’s passenger trains would get priority (by government decree, believe it or not).

So now Amtrak is on Twitch streaming the line to prove the line isn’t too busy for them to run passenger trains.

I’m wheezing.

[avonpyre]

After the notoriety of russian crimes committed in Bucha, I'm very afraid that in the future they will leave behind less evidence. I think they will somewhat learn from their mistakes, and many of the bodies of their tortured and raped victims we will never be able to find. If they had not left the Kyiv oblast in a hurry, perhaps all those horrible photos and videos would never have seen the light of day.

Right now as I'm typing it, other Ukrainians, just like me, but less fortunate, are being tortured and killed in god knows what twisted ways. I beg you not to forget about it, to hold russians accountable, to not underestimate the damage done to Ukraine and to not blame only putin for this.

[avonpyre]

Ao3 writers are the strongest Avengers

[avonpyre]

[avonpyre]

TO UKRAINIAN FRIENDS

If you are looking for an emergency exit from Ukraine, Poland will open EIGHT safety points on the border with Ukraine (you will get warm food, medical help and from there you will be guided to safety) in two of our voivodeships: lubuskie and podkarpackie. It is confirmed by the Polish Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Paweł Szefernaker.

SOURCES:

https://www.rp.pl/konflikty-zbrojne/art35748991-szefernaker-na-granicy-z-ukraina-powstaja-punkty-recepcyjne-dla-uchodzcow

https://www.wprost.pl/polityka/10633681/polska-reaguje-na-agresje-rosji-na-ukraine-powstana-punkty-dla-uchodzcow.html

I've marked those voivodeships on the map!

Please share because it can save lives!!!!!!

[avonpyre]

three important things to remember right now:

1. do not share ANY information about the place, the state, and the members of Ukrainian army. don't like it, don't reblog it, don't even write about it.

2. if you want to get information, do not look for carrds or twt threads. turn on your tv, read a newspaper, look for journalists and officials. do not trust random internet users and do not spread the disinformation and propaganda that is already circulating around here. double check every account you see talking about what's happening before deciding to share it further.

3. listen to Ukrainians.

[avonpyre]

[avonpyre]

I love it in the fellowship of the ring book when they’re walking through the mines of moria, and tolkien’s like ”ever since frodo was stabbed by the wraith he had noticed that his vision was better, and he could hear little noises long before everyone else could…” as if it’s some kind of spooky wraith power. Like baby that’s just called hypervigilance, and it’s one of the biggest symptoms of ptsd😩😩😩 Im sorry to have to tell u this frodo, but u don’t have wraith powers, u need to go to therapy🙏 god bless

[avonpyre]

The worst part about writing fantasy is being keenly aware that you’re writing fantasy, which means that you always have to straddle a thin three-way line between anachronism, cliche, and clunk.

Take money, for example. You can’t just have people in a fictional fantasy world walk around using Euros. You consider something generic, like ‘silver coins,’ but before you know it your world starts sounding like a shitty ren faire.

So you think about the world you’ve built and its needs and its history to come up with some unique and relevant terms. But if your terms are too unique and relevant you wind up writing “yarr, you’ll be ransomed for a hundred Trade League Silver Gyrblonks” and realize your worldbuilding is now getting in the way of basic readability.

[avonpyre]

Watch "Jessie Watters takes on the one who operates the Anti Work Group" on YouTube

The r/antiwork movement just got delegitimized so fast. Apparently the representative who did the interview is also a mod on the subreddit and is banning anyone criticizing the interview by saying they are transphobes.

[avonpyre]

Have you guys heard about the r/AntiWork drama going on right now? It's crazy.

www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/sdesxw/megathread_rantiwork_goes_private_after_fox_news

Basically, the r/AntiWork mods were approached by Fox News to do an interview and they chose the absolute worst candidate: a nonbinary AMAB person (btw, I am absolutely not throwing shade at their gender identity, but let's be real: Fox News and their audience have feeding frenzies over non-cis people) named Dorreen who lives in a filthy room, only works by walking dogs 20ish hours a week, and claims that even that is too much.

Dorreen basically did an absolutely atrocious job of representing the current form of the anti work movement, which is advocating for better conditions for workers and being against capitalist exploitation. Instead Dorreen made anti-work advocates come across as lazy bums who want to mooch off Daddy Government and never lift a finger- basically everything that makes conservatives foam at the mouth. The interview was a complete trainwreck and r/AntiWork is now private after severe blowback from the community.

It's really a shame, I doubt the momentum that r/AntiWork built up will be able to survive this. The bootlickers and capitalists at Fox News knew what they were doing and wanting to snipe down the movement before it got any further. Fuck man, this is funny but at the same time I'm bummed the mods are such fucking idiots. If they had the right person on they could have run circles around Fox's bootlicking rhetoric.

[avonpyre]

new proposition: instead of going back to using ‘lemon’ again, let’s use a different fruit this time

I’m thinking… Apple

please remember to tag all your naughty posts with ‘Apple’ from now on