cedarwhisp

[cedarwhisp]

how?? just how?

[cedarwhisp]

Quick PSA, if you get one of those "Work scanned, AI use detected" comments on AO3, just mark them as spam.

Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.

There is no scanning process, your work doesn't actually resemble AI writing, it's all bullshit. Mark the comment as spam (on AO3, not the email notification you got about the comment!) and don't let it get to you.

[cedarwhisp]

[cedarwhisp]

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

[cedarwhisp]

I came up with a new saying:

"You wouldn't bake a cat just because it jumped into the oven."

It means that just having a really, really good opportunity to do something awful is not an excuse to do it. That it isn't enough that you never go out of your way to do evil, you're also supposed to go out of your way to do the right thing, even in situations where the wrong thing to do would be extremely easy and profitable, and passively allowing it to happen would be easier than going out of your way to do better than that.

[cedarwhisp]

Gotham city memes once again

Happy pride month everyone!!!❤️🌈❤️🌈❤️🐈‍⬛

[cedarwhisp]

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

[cedarwhisp]

Dracula: Hm, that human mother is being super annoying about her dead kid at the gate. How do I fix that? Wolves? I’ll say wolves.

Dracula: What’s that? My good friend Jonathan Harker wants to leave ahead of schedule? Think I’ll do some wolves about that.

Dracula: Damn, seems that old Dutchman has blocked off one (1) single window with garlic blossoms and now this one (1) specific girl in all of England is barred from me. Maybe I should use my title and/or some invented pretense to cajole the girl’s mother into letting me in. Or maybe I could just move on to a different victim out of the nigh endless blood buffet I specifically moved here to enjoy, none of whom have a small legion of blood donors and vampire-proofing scholars on their side.

Dracula:

Dracula, about to slam dunk a wolf through the window: Or,

[cedarwhisp]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

[cedarwhisp]

I know "60s housewives who invented slash fanfiction" has taken on a life of its own as a phrase, but Kirk/Spock didn't really exist until the 70s and THOSE WOMEN HAD JOBS. They were teachers and librarians and bookkeepers and scientists and they damn well spent their own money going to conventions, printing zines, buying fanart and making fandom happen. Put some respect on their names.

[cedarwhisp]

This may be an urban legend and I will preface this by saying that I don't even remember where I heard it, but going to bigger cities in Finland always reminds me of it nonetheless, so I'm telling you now.

There was a student group from either China or Korea - I can't recall which one, but Asian nonetheless - who were in student exchange to Finland, in Helsinki. The finnish hosts did their best to make them feel welcome, touring them around the city on the first day out and about, but they noticed the asian students seeming uneased by something. Not in a way of just being timid about being in a foreign country, but glancing at each other like something was off, and looking at each other with this air of "you're seeing it too, right?" but none of them wanted to be the first to bring it up to their finnish hosts. Both cultures are the high-context type, so they had clearly concluded that since the finns didn't point out the obvious unpromptedly, the subject might be too sensitive to talk about.

Eventually one of the exchange students decided to brave against this potential taboo, and delicately asked: "has something... Happened here?" And there was mutual surprise when the finns had no clue what they were talking about. This was pre-covid, nothing bad had happened there. And one of the exchange students - who still weren't sure whether they're breaching a taboo of something One Does Not Talk About - bravely elaborated. The streets are empty. It's eerie. They're in the central of the capital city and the streets are almost deserted. Has there been some calamity? A plague, an earthquake, have the people fled or been evacuated somewhere? Is it safe to even be here?

And they were just as baffled when the finnish hosts confirmed that no, this is a normal amount of people to see on the street on a normal day. Finland just looks like this. And for the sake of clarity, this is what Helsinki city centre looks like on a normal saturday morning at 10 am:

Both pictures taken by me, this morning.

[cedarwhisp]

Now Hispanic Velvette

It's the sweet-toothed dolly diva who's a strict shot on both camera and gun, and also a vampire with a blood kink for some reason! Everyone give it up for the worst boss and best porn film director of hell 👏

POV you're Velvette meeting other overlords for the first time

[cedarwhisp]

miscellaneous zelda art over the last month

… or something ☕️

[cedarwhisp]

for ages i thought i didnt like drag because of internalized homophobia but it turned out i just don't like bright lights and loud music and really visually complicated things

spd is homophobic i guess is what im saying

[cedarwhisp]

Me meeting a genie: Okay, so my first wish is for 1000 dollars a day, deposited to my bank account without any way of tracing it to anything illegal. I want this money to come from the ten richest people in America (100 dollars each), withdrawn under the guise of nebulous, random purchases and surcharges. It would probably be best to split the money into a myriad of smaller fees, though, to reduce the likelihood of anyone noticing. Got all that?

Genie: um

Me, continuing on without a care: For my SECOND wish, I want you to give me the ability to learn any given phoneme, so that I can learn to pronounce new languages perfectly. If you're willing, it'd be nice if it were a little easier to memorize new languages too, but if that's not cool, I'm perfectly fine doing all the legwork myself I mostly just want to be capable of pronouncing things correctly.

Genie, now staring at me like I'm insane: ......okaaayyy?....

Me: For my third wish. I want to always have great ideas for gifts for people. Every birthday, every holiday, I want to be able to come up with something they'd really like, with enough time to actually get it for them.

Genie, just staring at me

Me: I can provide you with a written document if that would help.

[cedarwhisp]

fascinating to me how quickly we forget that the cycles repeat. people treating 5-15 year olds like this breed of superchild created to do evil and taint the world. that was all of us. "they're wrecking sephoras" you would not survive a 2015 hot topic with this mindset. "they're falling for the stanley cup thing" buying on trend overly robust camping gear for every day use is like. a middle class tradition in this country. our glorious kånken backpack vs their wicked stanley cup.

[cedarwhisp]

You know what? Fuck it.

The amount of notes that this post gets by the end of April is the amount of words I'll write for one of my books.