#3292. Cattoo Artist
My other sites: https://linktr.ee/piperthibodeau
@kshandra / kshandra.tumblr.com
My other sites: https://linktr.ee/piperthibodeau
got told at lunch "you feel like Tumblr Incarnate" and i had to tell them i've been here for 13 years and counting. i was here three years before dashcon happened. i saw the mishapocalypse. i survived the gigapause. i've been here longer than the shoelaces post. i've been here since it was hipsters versus fandom and i played both sides extensively by overdoing the sepia filters on everything and making my own flashing galaxy gif edits for my fandom posts. i'm every tumblr. it's all in me
Oh ancient one what wisdom do you hold?
This is some of the best social media advice (and advice for being a human among humans generally) I've ever seen.
All of this. For people asking how I've survived here for over 12 years...
At the gate for my flight home from visiting friends and there's a woman here with a service Shiba Inu. No pics because he has a Do Not Disturb vest and taking pics of strangers is illegal but I need to stress how ON DUTY this animal is. Ears up. Eyes doing Lazer scans of everything. Examining everyone who passes within 10ft like a security guard. Ass planted on her feet. I have never seen a dog with such intense chivalric guardian energy before. He has tiny eyebrows and they are FURROWED with concentration.
Man behind me having unhinged phone conversation. There is an internationally famous dairy in the area I was visiting and he was commissioned by the lady on the other end of the phone to collect specific cheeses from there. The lady is very high strung about the type and condition of the cheese.
The man does not know from cheese. The man "ain't never seen no cheese but orange before" and "I showed ya list to the cheese lady so if it's wrong it's her fault ok?"
I am 80% sure she sent him there for a really specific bleu cheese, 40% sure he does not have the very specific bleu cheese, and 100% sure he's done with her shit.
Our flight is delayed.
He does not have the cheeses in a cooler, just a regular backpack.
I need to emphasize that there is no cooler bag in the backpack. He has Jansport backpack that is jam-packed with cheeses. There is apparently $405 dollars worth of cheeses in that backpack, which I know because he has been trying to get the lady to venmo him the expense, which she has failed to do. It is unclear whether his relation to the lady is romantic, familial or what, but I'm leaning towards "what".
Two more people have joined us. One is a very elegant man with a perfect manicure in a tailored business suit, the other is a neon-haired person of indeterminate gender wearing a fox kirigumi. The Shiba Inu has been staring at the latter for three minutes now.
Uh oh.
Cheese man has been demanding payment because apparently he went like six hours out of his way and paid with his own money and between the cheese and price of gas, he is pretty sure he does not have enough money in his account for an Uber home.
The lady is FLABBERGASTED that he is demanding payment at all, as she was under the impression he was doing this for her out of the goodness of his heart.
He's not having it. He's insisting she told him she would pay him back- he would have gotten her maybe one cheese somewhere closer to his business in the area out of love, but he went out of his way because she agreed to pay him costs+ extra to cover it.
HE RECORDED THE CONVERSATION IN WHICH SHE PROMISED TO PAY FOR THE CHEESE, SHE'S THAT MUCH OF A FLAKE.
I am about to offer this man cash for some of these cheeses because our flight is now more delayed.
"YOU ALWAYS DO THIS! YOU ALWAYS DO THIS AND I FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME! NO! NO! FUCK YOU! IF YOU'RE NOT GONNA PAY ME, YOU DON'T GET FANCY CHEESE."
"OR ELSE WHAT?"
"I'm gonna-? THE BABY SHOWER? MONICA CAN'T EVEN HAVE THIS CHEESE SHE'S PREGNANT!"
"The cheese lady asked if it was for someone because the mushrooms or whatever in the cheese are dangerous for the baby or something?? You wanna poison Monica?"
"WHY WOULD I LIE ABOUT THAT?"
"YEAH OF COURSE I GOT THE CHEESE, THATS WHY I DON'T GOT MONEY FOR UBER!"
"YEAH, GO TELL! GO TELL MOMMA I STOPPED YOUR STUPID ASS FROM KILLING MONICA OR THE BABY! FUCK!"
*hangs up phone*
*head in hands, borderline hyperventilating*
The man in the three piece suit is in the chair next to him. He waits a moment, then reaches into his carryon and pulls out an entire bottle of wine with the TSA pre check sticker on it, and taps cheese guy on the shoulder.
"If your friend doesn't want it, would you be amenable to having it right now?"
Naturally, I have volunteered my box of wheat thins and offered to buy one of the harder cheeses which should be fine if it makes it home.
Meanwhile, Kirigumi has noticed that the Shiba Inu is staring at her and is correctly intimidated.
1. This is some fucking great Camembert. I have compensated cheese guy accordingly. So have like six other people. He's recouped like half his losses.
2. Cheese guy is crying a little about the cash and opening up about his problems. The cheese lady is his younger sister. Suit guy is being very generous with his Pinot Blanc. We are having a picnic/improv family therapy session.
3. This is apparently the latest in a long string of his sister asking for something and then flaking when he asks to be paid back. Started with paying him back only some of what he was owed, then claiming something she paid for him was of equal value when it was not, then recently telling him his memory is wrong and he said it was a gift or that he'd do it for free.
"Yeah, the specific thing of trying to convince you your memory is unreliable is called gaslighting and it's really fucked up." I say
"yeeeeah. The other stuff I forgave because she's never really had a good job so she can't pay me back all the time but at least she was making an effort y'know? But that was. That was over the line."
"If you haven't already, check on the rest of your family's finances. My brother started trying to gaslight everyone when he started stealing from our parents." Says Pinot Blanc.
4. Shiba Inu Lady has purchased a cheddar. Apparently, the dog's name is Donut, and he's her service dog because she's severely visually impaired.
"Oh, he's a guide dog?" Asks cheese guy.
"oh, no." She laughs. "He's too short, and the way my eyes are, it's easier for me to navigate with a cane. No, the problem I have is that some morally impaired people see the cane and think they can get away with stealing my bag or assaulting me because I wouldn't be able to give a description- which is wrong, but rather than deal with that I got Donut, and he helps me by howling at anyone who gets in my personal space and biting anyone who grabs me!"
"Uh." Says Kirigumi. "He's been staring at me do I need to back up or..?"
"Ohdear! No, no- He wasn't looking at you! He loves cheese but he knows he's not supposed to beg so he decided the way to deal with something he wants but can't have is to stare in the other direction."
"OKAY!" Says Kirigumi. "I'm wearing fox pajamas and thought like. He thought I was another dog or something."
"No, no- he doesn't care about dogs, and you get a warning before he goes for the calves. Very helpful, when I was living in Italy!"
"Oh what part? I have family in Tuscany." Says Pinot.
"Does he want a cheese? There is still so much cheese." Says cheese guy.
Plane may be arriving. I am paying for in flight WiFi to keep y'all updated.
1. Cheese guy has sold all but two or three cheeses that he an Pinot are going to eat on the flight.
2. I know they're planning to continue because Pinot talked to the gate agent so he and cheese guy can sit together and talk about family drama and cheese.
3. Pinot has been teaching him about different types of cheese and how to enjoy them.
4. Cheese guy apparently repairs computers and other technology devices for a living and is currently doing the software version of scraping barnacles and other crap off Pinot'macbook.
5. Pinot is now convinced that cheese guy is the smartest and most interesting man in the world.
Ok so the Wifi wasn't working on the plane (also like, nonstop turbulence) and also they got seated in a different row from me, but:
:)
Anyway, it's 2AM, I need to sleep, if you feel like supporting this kind of hard-hitting reporting, I have a Tip Jar!
I want to make chicken chili. I'm a lazy bitch so I bought the pre-chopped veg: (carrot celery onion), and there will be chicken thighs and there will be beans. Dump in slow cooker. Delicious magic to happen
In the grocery line, cashier notices the pre-chop veg and asks "what are you making?" I answer "chicken chili" and she seems taken aback, saying hesitantly "I hadn't thought to include *Carrot* in that..." I quietly panic, my brain immediately babbling "Oh shit now I gotta defend my choice to use mirepoix (carrot/celery/onion) instead of holy trinity (celery/green pepper/onion) coz it was easy to grab off the shelf and I DO NOT want to have a conversation about this" so I open my mouth to say something non-committal about trying something new and what comes out is
"I obey no man's rule but my own."
Great, this blog is a teenager now.
what... what is threshold day?
Hoo boy.
Threshold Day is the anniversary of the airing of Threshold, one of the, if not THE, most batshit episodes of Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek in its entirety. (Spoilers for Threshold below.)
In it, Lt. Tom Paris decides that, due to his enormous daddy issues, he will only be redeemed if he lives up to his potential by making it into the history books. In this case, it’s by breaking the transwarp barrier, which does not mean being trans and going into warp, a barrier which I’m sure was broken way before this, but going Warp 10 (in the new scale). Because apparently exploring basically a new section of the galaxy at the helm of the only Starfleet starship to be there is just garbage in terms of history-making, I guess.
So they find out there’s a 2% chance his personal brain will explode if he does this, and they’re going to let Harry Kim do it instead, but Tom is like, “no, Captain. You don’t understand. I have MASSIVE daddy issues. Also, you’d probably have to promote Harry if he succeeded, and nobody wants that.”
And Janeway is like, “Oh shit, I really don’t want to promote Harry. Also, I have some pretty big daddy issues of my own, so I getchu; have at it. Hope your brains stay unexploded.”
So he successfully does his thing, and he’s like, EVERYWHERE AT ONCE, MAN. He sees everything. Past, present, Harry in the shower - I mean, future - in all places at once. Which is why it’s odd that he’s so surprised when he collapses in the Mess Hall after drinking one of Neelix’s truly noxious brews. He should have known how gross it was going to be.
Anyway, the next twenty minutes or so are the EMH trying to stop Tom from turning into a weird gross scaly creature, with limited success. He stops being able to breathe oxygen. He gets super paranoid and rants a lot. He yells about pepperoni (I am not kidding). He asks for a dying kiss from Kes, which leads to a truly marvelous turn-down line: “I’m sorry, Tom. If we let down the forcefield, you’ll suffocate,” which I will now use for any unwanted come-ons. He legit DIES, then comes back to life a pretty long time later. He yells at Janeway, and then, like anyone who dares yell at Janeway would expect, his tongue literally falls out of his mouth.
Finally, he’s getting pretty close to salamander territory, when the last 15 minutes give up on making ANY sense. He busts out of Medbay, kidnaps Janeway, goes to Warp 10 again, turns them both into complete salamanders (I guess the EMH literally did nothing to help Tom, because apparently Janeway makes it through the transformation just fine without medical attention), and then HAS LIZARD BABIES with her.
Which we know, because the Voyager crew manages to find them three days later, and in that time apparently Janeway has changed over and already had the babies. Also, they were able to find a shuttle that literally could have gone anywhere in the entire universe. Chakotay then shoots the salamanders and they take them back, leaving the babies to…I don’t know, sala-meander around or something. Why is Chakotay’s first reaction to phaser the largely-sedentary salamanders? I have no idea.
Cut immediately to the EMH having been able to just roll back their DNA or something and make them entirely human again as if nothing had happened (If this were possible, why didn’t they just Warp 10 home to Earth and then fix everyone while they evolved? It sounds like it would suck, but so would being lost for 70 years). Janeway insinuates she may have initiated the salamating. (Tom should have said salami instead of pepperoni, in salamander solidarity). They laugh off something that should require about 50 years of counseling. Tom says, “cool, I think I have slightly less daddy issues now.”
YOU KNOW WHO HAS MORE DADDY ISSUES NOW? MAYBE YOUR ABANDONED SALAMANDER BABIES.
AND NONE OF THIS IS EVER MENTIONED AGAIN. OR HAS ANY IMPACT ON THE SERIES. EVER.
And so, we commemorate this weird atrocity (which actually has some nice character development and Emmy-winning makeup, but AT WHAT COST) with a day of commiseration and celebration, largely spearheaded by @captaincrusher. Join us next year…posts are already being prepared.
cc: @petermorwood (just in case you were wondering)
This sounds like the classic “fukket we all know we’re getting cancelled let’s do this” episode.
(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:
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:
First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.
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.
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!
UPDATE: Plush Books still exists on Amazon and on Goodreads under the pseudonym "J.D. Geraghty" where the fanfics are also listed. They also have a list of cookbooks that are without a doubt AI written (the descriptions for the books are repetitive nonsense so god forbid what exists inside).
From what I can see on Amazon, most of the stolen fanfics have become "Unavailable." This entity likely operates under more than one name, so it isn't safe to assume crisis averted. Numerous bad actors are posting AI written works to Amazon, which just means plagiarism slurry with a side of potential danger (like the autogenerated mushroom identification books).
oh ffs. shared.
"You see Perry the platypus"
-you're not going to like the short answer
-you're not going to understand the short answer
-you didn't ask the right question
-there is no short answer
-there's a dozen short answers and i think that's neat
-there's a much more interesting question you could have asked, buckle up
-this is going to be really funny in five minutes, hold on
-last time i said no you got mad but the answer is still no
-last time i said no you got sad and i can't take that again
-i've been thinking about neolithic bedbugs all day and you cracked the seal
-this reminds me of something more important than whatever you just said
-i just remembered what i meant to tell you last time you asked something sort of like this
-i don't like you so we're gonna talk about my thing instead of your thing
-i love you so here's the coolest thing i learned lately
-im not hungry so i forgot to do the part of the conversation where i tell you i dont want dinner when you asked what i wanted for dinner because i don't want anything so the question is returning a null integer. did you know bed bugs might have originated in neolithic caves and switched from infesting bat fur to infesting human furs when humans started inhabiting caves and driving all the bats out, and they've lived in our beds for a hundred thousand years. did you know that cellar spiders are almost always the descendants of cave spiders, carried from quarry to foundation and left to flourish for decades, centuries. did you know that a possible origin for the american house cockroach was probably a bark-dwelling species that kept getting transferred into the walls and roofs of new houses and then found an endless wealth of crumbs in their new big square tree. can you feel some kind of love and reverence for these strange neighbors of ours that we built into our homes over and over and to whom humans are an endless and eternal blessing. isn't it nice to think that to a few precious, annoying little critters, we're home.
-yeah i think you should get bangs. life is short and you'd look cute.
genuinely, honestly, I wish fandom could move past "depiction isn't endorsement".
because it's really meant to be sort of the baby beginner step to media literacy but in fandom spaces it usually acts like a trump card to shut down critical discussions. it's one of the thought terminating cliches of fandom that discourages learning how to interrogate the text beyond "fiction isn't reality, dummy".
yes, the popular whump fic in your fandom isn't endorsing torture, but also, can you tell when the canon for your fandom is endorsing a message? how do you then choose to interact with that canon, and do you get defensive when people are critical of the source material?
depiction isn't endorsement, but can you tell when fandom trends are misogynistic or racist? can you see how killing off a black female character to "punish" her in fanfiction with the framing that she deserves it, and the popular narrative in a certain fandom that a heroic black man is a possessive liar and a white villain is a good man deserving redemption, is endorsing a message in fanfic? do you argue that it's "just fiction" when people get very understandably upset at misogyny and racism in fandom spaces?
yeah, depiction isn't endorsement, but do you think this is where it starts and stops as the only thing you really need to know? do you think people who are critical of things aren't engaging with it properly, or being mean, because they've forgotten the golden fandom rule of "fiction isn't reality"?
nbc hannibal isn't endorsing cannibalism as a dietary choice, but top gun maverick and call of duty: modern warfare were quite literally sponsored by the us military as propaganda for recruitment.
I'm not saying don't enjoy the ip that's making you happy or calling for moral purity in your media habits or whatever. just saying that there's a lot to media literacy beyond the feel good affirmations that periodically circulate fandom, and those affirmation posts both lack necessary nuance and discourage people from engaging with said nuance.
kat, don't mind me but i'mma add a note here and endorse (lol) your tags on this post
Come here, baby gays, and let me tell you the story about how James Somerton made me so fucking angry with a single line that I had to make this post.
As I now know, most of his audience is young queers and there are things we NEED you to know.
The fight for marriage equality was a massive fucking deal and I will tell you why with a very personal story.
My mom was a nurse during the AIDS crisis. And I mean she started working as a nurse out of school in 85. My mom was on the front lines. She worked with so many AIDS patients that it genuinely altered her brain chemistry. My mother was a homophobe before her nursing career. She was a massive supporter of gay rights until she died in July because of what she saw during her career.
And what did she see?
She saw people who had been abandoned by their families dying with their partners at their side.
And then suddenly…the family would materialize, ban the partner from the room, kick them out of their homes they had lived in with their dying partners for decades, and then watched them ban their partners from even attending the funerals or visiting the graves. Imagine being denied your right to grieve.
And why was this possible? Oh simple. They weren’t married. They weren’t legally bound, the partners weren’t considered next of kin because they weren’t fucking married.
I watched my mom pass. It was horrible and painful and traumatic and terrifying. But it was closure. And I wouldn’t have it any other way because I know…that who my mom wanted by her when she passed was my dad. Because she was scared, she wanted her partner by her side and she was terrified she was going to die. My dad couldn’t be there. He had to work, which sounds cold but understand he had been off work for a month by that point and he was the only one who had health insurance. He wanted to be there, we had made plans to take her off the life support when he came back (we were 4 hours from him) but there was a freak accident and she passed the night after he left to return to work.
Why am I telling you this? Because I need you to understand how important this is to some people. So you can understand how big a slap to the face it is to have people say “marriage equality isn’t that important”. You can understand why someone like James Somerton rolling his eyes at marriage equality and implying we weren’t focused on job equality and discrimination (information that is WHOLEY untrue) would make me see red.
It’s not trivial. It’s not meaningless. It wasn’t about “assimilating” or “appearing normal” (we’re already normal).
It’s about people who had their children taken from them because they weren’t the biological parent. It’s about people who never got to comfort their loved ones in their final days. It’s about people who weren’t able to comforted by their partners in their final days.
So the next time you think “why waste your time on something as trivial as marriage?” Remember my mother. Look up testimony from victims of the AIDS crisis. Remember the people who advocated for marriage equality were the survivors who were torn from the love of their life.
Remember that we advocated so damn hard to give you the right to grieve.
Like this post if you’ve ever accidentally tripped and crashed into the Forbidden Greenhouse inside the Punishment Zone and were promptly arrested by two shapely twinks dressed in linen thongs and harnesses who immediately gave you the Death Penalty
I am the only person on this planet who can legitimately like this post. All you fakers GTFO.
[[ I've always said that Strega's relationship with Copia was half Gomez and Morticia, half Georg and Maria. For fairly obvious reasons, the latter couple don't get as much airtime here, and while it's been ages since this blog was active regularly, I saw this video tonight and had to share it.
I never knew that Christopher Plummer's singing vocals had been dubbed for both the film and the original soundtrack. I can't put into words how happy it makes me to have them restored. ]]
Yes, I posted this video to my long-dormant RP blog before I postedit here. No, I don't care.
For those wondering why their dash is suddenly crab raves
Little friends.
The penguin figurines are out of stock right now but they'll come back soon. You can add yourself to a waitlist and get an email whenever they're in stock :)