Yall See “love” And Immediately Go To “romantic Love” If You Translate “love Is The Whole Point”

Gonna add this post the the growing list of things I wish I could show my teenage self

been thinkin about how my ethics professor back in undergrad was like.

look. there’s no such thing as perfect altruism. you’ll always get something out of helping or being kind to others, whether it’s a stronger relationship or returned kindness or just the feeling of having done good. there’s nothing inherently bad about getting something from doing good either, especially since it’s completely unavoidable. people being rewarded for putting love into the world doesn’t make the world a worse place. so just do as much good as you can and don’t worry about being “selfless” while doing it, because being truly selfless is in fact impossible.

and like man did that take the pressure off of Being A Good Person!! you’re allowed to enjoy helping people! you’re allowed to be kind without worrying that you’re maybe secretly just doing it for yourself!! it’s okay if you are doing it for yourself because you’re still being kind to others!!!!!

It him!!!!

Finally made a reference for Titan from me and @jcryptid au (it’s ours now shhhhhhh) so if you want to get to know the boi a bit more here he is!!

Currently poking my brain with a stick and hoping a plot idea for one of my fics falls put

Decided to have a little fun while I lay back and accept my fate as I get dragged into the Rise Fandom, so here's my take on human designs for the Rise boys.

So this is going to sound Crazy, but part of why i've been so inactive lately has been because I was lucky enough to have been selected alongside 6 of my friends in Animation to get shipped out to Winton, Australia to spend a 2 weeks making an animated short for their Vision Splendid film festival.

Together, we got to work with locals, film students, Student composers, festival hosts and first nations elders to create a collection of Animated Haikus celebrating this wonderful town, but get to know ourselves and this country in a way we never even would have considered before.

And as if that wasn't enough to make us jump up and down, flapping out hands in joy... guys... We won the Kolperi Award! A first for animation in the entire 11 year history of the festival!

So thank you thank you thank you for everyone who made it possible for me and my friends to experience Winton. It's something i'll be treasuring for the rest of my days.

Voiced by my friend Kiwi and Music by my friends in the Conservatorium (Love, Lisa and Georgia)

Chapter 15 is up! Good Luck!

After much deliberation and manic procrastinating I now present my official list of favourite charcter archetypes:

Character who does objectively good things and is on the side of good but is still an objectively terrible person

Gruff loner parent who adopts other characters and care about them deeply in their own way and it's really heartwarmingly obvious but they will never actually say it

Absolutely feral rough and tumble fighter who is misunderstood as a troublemaker, gets mad when their friends are hurt and will sacrifice themselves at the drop of a hat but would never admit it

At some point had big protagonist energy but all their friends are dead or gone and are just trying their hardest after getting in over their head but still wanting to do good in the world

Gods who literally couldn't give two shits about your problems and what humans these days are up to

Someone who has escaped a terrible situation and hated the person they were when they were in said situation and is trying to be better but has terrible self-worth and succumbs to the power of friendship™ and a well written recovery arc

Prick "I know more than you" academics who are snarky and absolute smug little shits especially to the antagonists but have a heart of gold

Antagonist that everyone but the person they "work for" knows is the one who's really in charge

Character who can and will easily kill you in 101 ways with their bare hands but will feel bad about it afterwards (bonus points if PTSD and their personality is absolute baby) That one shapeshifter who's just here to have fun, cause some chaos and prank everyone

That one shapeshifter who can transform into one (1) thing and that one thing is an absolutely fucking terrifying beast of some kind when they go Apeshit

Flirty pretty femme boy or girl who probably doesn't care about gender at all so long as they get to look fabulous and tease people they think are cute

A group of 'orphans' who findfamily in each other (feat. Intimidating but objectively good parent who has unofficially adopted everyone, older sibling child trying to take care of everyone, the chaotic dumbass, the innocent bean, the one who's having none of their bullshit, etc.)

Amnesiacs who are just trying to move on with their lives and turn over a new leaf and are honestly terrified of finding out the truth of who they were in the past

Have to routinely stop myself from bashing myself for making characters certain races and genders bc “what if this is insanely offensive to some people?” by asking one very simple question:

Do people like this actively exist?

If the answer is yes, then maybe I can stop feeling bad about giving my beautiful, disabled, black, baby boy dnd character a love of the colour pink.

Ya know, bc art is all about translation, and people are gonna people regardless of if some random asshole on the internet decides their existence is problematic.

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!

One thing about fandom culture is that it sort of trains you to interact with and analyze media in a very specific way. Not a BAD way, just a SPECIFIC way.

And the kind of media that attracts fandoms lends itself well (normally) to those kinds of analysis. Mainly, you're supposed to LIKE and AGREE with the main characters. Themes are built around agreeing with the protagonists and condemning the antagonists, and taking the protagonists at their word.

Which is fine if you're looking at, like, 99% of popular anime and YA fiction and Marvel movies.

But it can completely fall apart with certain kinds of media. If someone who has only ever analyzed media this way is all of a sudden handed Lolita or 1984 or Gatsby, which deal in shitty unreliable narrators; or even books like Beloved or Catcher in the Rye (VERY different books) that have narrators dealing with and reacting to challenging situations- well... that's how you get some hilariously bad literary analysis.

I dont know what my point here is, really, except...like...I find it very funny when people are like "ugh. I hate Gatsby and Catcher because all the characters are shitty" which like....isnt....the point. Lololol you arent supposed to kin Gatsby.