The Iranian Regime is going to execute rapper Toomaj Salehi for supporting protests of Jina Amini’s murder by the regime in his songs.
Iranian activist Elica Le Bon says, “Iranians in the diaspora picked up on the fact that the regime tends not to execute people who become known to the international community. We have seen many examples of prisoners that were either released on bail or had their sentences commuted through our “say their names to save their lives” campaign on social media, using hashtags to garner attention for their causes, and even before social media existed, through getting the stories of political prisoners to international media outlets. Once reported on, and once the eyes shift to the regime and the reality of its pending brutality, realizing that the action is not worth the repercussions, we have seen them back down and not execute. For that reason, this is part of an urgent campaign for readers to talk about Toomaj as much as you can, using the hashtag #FreeToomaj or #ToomajSalehi. Every comment makes a difference, and if we were wrong, what did we lose by trying?”
Out of curiosity and also guilt over my own coffee intake. I wanna ask:
Now I'm not talking about when you're studying and so you drink 3x the usual amount or something like that. This isn't me asking what your record is. I'm talking about the most basic, average day, how many coffees you drink?
So today I got a rather unkind comment on AO3 (one could call it hate), but I believe it to be a bot for several reasons:
Guest account, but username attached
Said username exists but person is unlikely to be reading Tolkien fic (according to their Tumblr and AO3, they are in other fandoms)
Two grammatically correct sentences
Super generic text that could apply to any fic:
"I've seen better fanfiction written by a toddler. Get it together!"
I'm curious, did anyone else get comments like this? Let me know.
And to those who have gotten rude comments and are now worried/upset: Maybe it was just a bot too. Either way: You're awesome for putting your writing out there for others to enjoy and you don't deserve to get rude comments for it. If you want feel free to message me to compare cases and discuss details :)
Obviously you shouldn't write in library books or books that you otherwise don't own, but I never understood the "oh my god, don't write in, highlight, fold, or dog-ear any pages in your books, ever, or you're defacing them" mindset.
One of my favorite things in the world is borrowing paperbacks from my wife's collection and seeing all her little annotations. Notes in the margins of used university textbooks have helped me understand complex passages, and given me a connection to students struggling to understand the same things I did. Highlights in novels from the used bookstore have made me stop and really appreciate a passage I might have otherwise glossed right over. Marginalia and annotations in historical texts are a goldmine of information and humanity.
What people prefer for their personal collection is totally valid, but I hate how writing in books gets treated like inherent vandalism. It's just another one of those ways the physical paper of the book gets held as more sacred than the information and the connections made with the book's contents.
You know how there's a subset of martial arts Tiktok where people post short vids of them doing a quick routine/choreography?
People in Gotham post blurry clips of the Bats, and a few martial artists challenge each other to reproduce the moves. One vid goes viral and more people start to give it a try, including non martial artists, who just meme with the choreography/try to imitate some moves just in good fun (and whoa some dancers and gymnasts do surprisingly well)
It naturally gets back to the Wayne brood, except, of course, the real challenge for them is to fail in a believable way.
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Tim, on camera: "I was nearly good enough for the Olympics, surely I can do that...? Let's find out."
[cue footage of him falling down, cartoon-style, right as Damian was walking by and getting both of them drenched in Dami's smoothie]
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Jason sees the compilation someone made of Bruce's ridiculous attempts at reproducing the moves (Tim and Steph roped him into their shenanigans.)
Two days later, a video of Red Hood goes viral: it's him condescendingly explaining how to throw a punch and challenging Bruce Wayne to do it properly because "no Gothamite should be so shit at fighting"
Bruce is verklempt when he watches it, because some of it is word-for-word how he taught baby!Jay
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Tim gives Damian blurry, grainy footage of Black Bat to imitate. After that, Dami spends days hounding Cass for training because he nearly broke his nose tripping over his own feet.
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Dick flawlessly lands a flip in front of all the others with "ASSERTING DOMINANCE" written on screen before winking at the camera.
Right before the video cuts, Tim's voice can be heard saying, "Whatever, your ass is still flat compared to Nightw—"