I Wanted To Hope On Board The #CursedCatAlastor Wagon Over On Twitter, Even If I Was A Bit Late. It's

jesus fuck, gonna repost this because who the actual fuck thinks it's okay + for those who might need it for reference

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.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

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!

Loid: Touch her and you're dead.

Person after cat calling Yor: What are you going to do, kill me?

Loid: I never said I'd be the one killing you.

Yor: *Pulls out a knife*

A few notes on trigger discipline, with examples from Spy x Family

One of the first things you learn when learning how to use a gun is that you absolutely do NOT put your finger on the trigger unless you're 100% ready and willing to shoot (and deal with whatever the consequences may be).

Accidental fire is extremely easy to occur. If your finger is touching the trigger, a simple spasm of the hand, a sudden sound or movement in the environment, or jostling from moving can cause the finger to pull the trigger. If you haven't aimed correctly at something that you want to shoot at, you'll very likely shoot something you don't want to shoot, including your own body parts. That's not even counting the fact that you may not properly control the recoil.

So normally, you need to train your discipline so that your first instinct when picking up a gun - especially during a stressful moment - will be for the finger to not go on the trigger until the gun is properly aimed at who/what you want to shoot.

I only trained with air guns some years ago, but discipline was still important; you wrap your hand around the handle with the index finger away from the trigger, make sure you have a good grip on it, raise the gun from the counter, aim, align the sights, and then you put the finger on the trigger and shoot. The one (1) time I accidentally put my finger on it before raising the gun, I shot at the wall while raising it and got a very angry look from my instructor. I was lucky that's all I got.

Since then, I've been noticing trigger discipline in media, and a lot of those get it very wrong.

To his big credit, Tatsuya Endo gets it right.

Twilight's finger is resting parallel to the barrel of the gun, away from the trigger. While this entire pose is more artistic than realistic, it was still important to Endo to portray correct discipline. You don't do that if you don't know about it.

Similarly with Nightfall in the cover of the sixth volume.

Again, artistic, not realistic pose. Still correct discipline.

More examples of artistic depictions with correct discipline:

And then! An action pose!

Twilight has a clear ready-to-shoot pose; he has a target, so finger goes on the trigger. (Normally the gun should be a little higher so he can properly align the sights but he's TwilightTM so I give it a pass)

Even Bondman has good discipline!

Seeing correct discipline in those pictures piques my interest a lot, because it shows that the artist is consciously choosing when he'll show a finger on a trigger, making such a moment more impactful.

Twilight aims his gun right on Edgar's head, his finger on the trigger. Again, you don't put your finger on the trigger unless you're about to shoot. If you're only threatening someone, it should still be off because one single unintentional fire can kill your target when you didn't mean to. Now, I can suspend my disbelief and say Twilight has super duper control over his body to the point of not being jostled or his hand not spasming suddenly because he's TwilightTM. So I instead focus on how serious Twilight was here about killing Edgar. Should Edgar do any movement, he's dead.

Again, it's about the knowledge of trigger discipline itself. When you portray a character not touching the trigger when they don't need to, showing the opposite hits harder.

The Handler prepares the gun ominously, her finger off the trigger.

But when she aims it at the student's head...

She's serious. She's made sure the students heard her prepare the gun, so when she threatens the student, he knows what he's facing despite wearing a blindfold.

Again, in a realistic scenario, in both cases their fingers would rest away from the trigger, because their intention is not to kill their targets unless absolutely necessary. But that might have confused the readers who don't know about trigger discipline, and might have made for less impactful moments. So I give that a pass, especially since Endo is shown to be aware of correct discipline.

The anime is also aware of this.

Twilight is assessing the situation; finger is off the trigger.

The Handler prepares the gun; finger off.

She threatens the student; finger on.

(Of course, there have been moments both in manga and anime with incorrect depictions. But I can let those pass cause I know there's a lot of people involved in creating the art and things can get complicated)

A few more examples, from the Imperial Scholars meeting:

Those are very short moments, but someone drew those stills and intentionally had the guards' index fingers extended and not around the trigger.

As I said above, those examples pique my interest because they are conscious, deliberate choices... and good use of that can make for an impactful scene... say, identity reveal happens, Twilight is aiming his gun at the Thorn Princess, but his finger is off the trigger. He urges himself to put the finger on it, but the damn thing won't move... she also cannot bring herself to stab him even though her dagger is right at his throat, and she notices his hesitation... Endo-sensei I am begging...

(don't spoil me if it happens in the manga, let me live in ignorance)

Kaito: heyyy can you pikc me up? I’m tok drnuk

Kaito: nvm, u don’t hve too. I’m hoome nowww

MC: Yes, I was aware of that after I dropped you off.

looks like twilight has met the thorn princess...

The brothers have 99 problems and MC is like 90 of them

Bruce: What happened to you two?

Steve and Bucky both extremely out of breath, Steve having claw marks all over his face and neck.

Steve:

Steve: Bucky has nightmares

Bruce: You were in Bucky’s room?

i can't imagine twiyor still having a "no entering our room policy" with anya after the reveals because like... she's their baby and they want to be open with her. so twiyor talk it over a bit, trying to figure out how to balance letting anya come into their room without risking her getting into their spy/assassin gear. they decide the best course of action is to just teach her and be honest with her. they sit her down, emphasizing that this is a serious conversation, and they basically just walk her through the various weapons they keep in their room, explaining what they do and why they aren't safe for a certain 6 year old to go play with. at first she's a little silly, reaching out for the silenced pistol when loid shows it to her, but they quickly tell her that if she won't take it seriously then their room is going to be off limits. they hate being strict with her, but this isn’t something they can be lenient on. anya looks so guilty and murmurs, "okay. i'm sorry." loid gives her head a little pat, smiling at her and says, "it's alright, peanut. i know you're excited, but we just want to make sure you stay safe. mama and i don't want anything to happen to you, okay?" and anya nods, smiling when yor gives her cheek a gentle stroke of affection.

the first week or two after their conversation with her, anya is so hesitant any time she tries to go in their room. there's one morning where loid is awake making breakfast, but yor is still in bed. anya grabs the doorknob, but hesitates, turning back to loid. he just smiles at her widely and asks, "going to snuggle mama?" and she nods, but stays still with her hand on the doorknob, just waiting. loid tells her, "you don't need to ask me, sweetheart, you can go right in. you know what not to touch right?" "no silenced pistols and no gold spikey things." and loid nods, replying, "very good. breakfast will be ready shortly. you can cuddle with yor in our bed until then." and anya grins as she slips into twiyor's room and climbs straight into yor's arms

twiyor just love not having to lie to her. they love the honesty between them after so long of lying. it’s nice getting to have that trust with each other, but also with anya

Things about Greece you're (probably) getting wrong

When you say "Greece" or "Greek", that's automatically referring to Modern Greece and Modern Greek. It's an existing country with a population of around 10 million people. The Modern Greek language is spoken natively by those 10 million along with 1 million people in Cyprus and around 2 more million in diaspora. If you want to refer to Ancient Greece or its history/culture, just add the word "ancient" to it.

The Greek name for the country is "Hellas". "Hellenic" is an adjective used for non-human nouns. Don't call yourself "hellenic" even if you have Greek roots, you're basically calling yourself "Greek thing".

There is no one correct way of pronouncing Ancient Greek as a whole. That language spanned over a thousand years and across places that didn't communicate easily or were outright hostile to each other. It's like claiming that Shakespeare's works should be pronounced with an Australian accent.

Along with the famous 300 Spartans, in the battle of Thermopylae there were also 700 Thespians (not actors, people from the town Thespiae) and according to some sources, also 900 helots (slaves) and 400 Thebans.

The town of Sparta exists in modern day. However, if you visit Greece, unless you actually are from Sparta, do NOT call yourself a Spartan, no matter what school/university you went to. "Spartans" is the name of a far-right, outright neo-nazi political party, so calling yourself that here equals to associating yourself with that.

Greek houses in American campuses sound weird. Do those letters (some of which are wildly mispronounced, btw) even mean anything

Democracy in Ancient Athens was not fair by today's standards. It was mostly a glorified, expanded aristocracy. The "demos" that had the authority to vote only consisted of land-owning Athenian men. If you were a woman, a slave, poor, an immigrant, or a child of immigrants, along with other descriptions I might be forgetting right now, you didn't have the right to participate in the ruling.

Oh yeah, the "birthplace of democracy" very much did have slaves. Some whom were prisoners of war.

Greece is on the southern end of the Balkan peninsula, located in South-Eastern Europe. However, many Greeks are wildly racist and will not admit we're part of the Balkans or Eastern Europe. There are cultural differences due to Greek not belonging in the Slavic languages (the most common language family in Eastern Europe) and for political reasons, but the main reason this distinction happens is very much racism. They prefer to be called a "Mediterranean country" (because then we're associated with countries like Italy and Spain, you know?)

Greece never recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, and has only been going downhill since then. However, the war reparations that Germany never paid Greece for the damages and the deaths it caused in WW2 is estimated to be over 200 billion euros. The German government considers this matter "to be in the past" (since they never paid them, I guess, we can forget about it!), yet is one of the countries that most strongly demands Greece to keep paying back the loans it took over the years from the EU. This is a very painful matter for all of us (especially considering there are people still alive who witnessed the destruction and death the nazis brought to the country, and now they along with their descendants are paying taxes that'll eventually reach German pockets), yet racism centers around hate for other Balkan countries and Turkey. Divide and conquer I guess.

please work i need to finish my mando fanfic that's probs gonna be at least 30000 words long TwT

Reblog the writers’ fortune cookie for luck!