Some dragon age sketches from my sketchbook 2021

Suzanne Collins gripping my face with her hands: listen listen the first step to evil is dehumanisation, always, the second you start to see people as less than people no matter what they've done to you that's when you start heading down a path of selfish destruction and violence

Terry Pratchett nodding emphatically behind her: people as things. That's where it starts.

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

HERE'S THAT BITCH IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR

dumping str AND int is so funny to me

+ super high willpower = a overly confident bully with no rizz

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

pls reblog for sample size etc

Out of Touch

Yes

WIP WEDNESDAY

Chapter 7: Cast into darkness The light we had won.

Nearly the entirety Part One (if not the fic) revolved around this one scene where Lanil FINALLY meets Alistair. Fantastic set up (imo) for the subplot they'll embark on after this.

So…how was ur day ?

The ring might’ve switched owners :D

"But helping poor people should be voluntary."

And even when it is, people still have a problem with it.

I went back and did some digging, because it occured to me that I didn't know the date reference of this story and, sadly, there are way too many stories about school lunch debt that they're easy to mix up.

This particular story was from July 2019 (I reblogged it Sept 2022).

There was a relevant update within a week of the scandal: public outrage was swift, the embarrassed school board redacted the outrageous allusions to indebted students ending up in foster care, and it accepted the CEO's $20k donation.

It doesnt change the fact that the very concept of "school lunch debt" is disturbing and inhumane (and there are still stories about children...with lunch debt...). And clearly, the district changed it's tone because it didn't like the bad PR. But figured it was helpful to have more info and context.

Here are some of the relevant sources; each offer bits of info unique to each specific source:

1) "Pennsylvania school district turns down local businessman’s offer to pay off student lunch debts"

2) "Pennsylvania district sorry it warned that lunch debt could lead to foster care, accepts $22K donation"

3) "Pa. School District Reverses Course And Will Now Accept Donations To Cover Lunch Debt"

4) "Pennsylvania school lunch debt furor ends with an apology and an announcement: free lunch for all"

Remember: Public outrage can and does solve problems.

The last character you drew/wrote about is now stuck in the last game you played. How screwed are they?

Fantasy books stop having arctic kingdoms of all blond hair blue eyed white people.

"Skin and hair as white as the snow and eyes as blue as the ice" stabbing and killing you

did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”

This is especially funny because they aren’t even right. Foxes *ARE* dogs.

No they aren’t.

yes they are. because they are fluffye.

OK yes they are.

Dog

Dog

Different family, but same order as @pictures-of-dogs

No, they are the same family. They are the same kingdom, phylum, order and family. They separate at the genus.

They’re a dog.

yeah they’re fluffye

theyre literally not dogs theyre not even fluffy. can we get science tumblr over hear or what!?

checkmate athiests

fluffye

okay but they literally are dogs, for those who are confused

If foxes are dogs, then so are wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, and several other extant and extinct species.

Behold! A dog.

of course it’s a dog you buffoon. it’s fluffye.

Why on earth would someone think “BUT IF THEY’RE DOGS SO AR -”

Like yes of course wolves are dogs, where have you been. Jackals are excellent doggies! So are coyotes. Why is this confusing.

I love that this is literally two completely different arguments running simultaneously.

That guy up there who said they’re not even fluffy was thinking of sharks

sharks are also dogs. ravenous water dogs, but still dogs

Sharks can NOT be dogs they are SMOOTH

Tags via @jenroses

sharks are smooth dogs

BEHOLD, a SHARK