The end of Inscrypgelion
Steve: 1
Secret Service: 0
For those who don’t know, Steve Jackson Games was raided by the Secret Service in 1990, and all copies of the then-upcoming GURPS Cyberpunk were confiscated. Though this was bad for the company financially (they were set back months on a major project, and had to do layoffs), it did lend a certain air of pizazz to their product.
They ended up suing the government, and won. This was the first high-profile case for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which successfully sued on behalf of the company, winning around $300,000 in the case.
The full story is here: http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
I knew the EFF had been around longer than I've been alive, and that they've done so much for the internet that I take for granted. I like learning about how it came into being and what they've actually done. And I love learning that it actually worked, at least some of the time, that the people didn't just get conveniently disappeared, that the EFF sued and actually won and I live in a world with a better internet because they did that.
The affidavit on which SJ Games were raided was unbelievably flimsy . . . Loyd Blankenship was suspect because he ran a technologically literate and politically irreverent BBS, because he wrote about hacking, and because he received and re-posted a copy of the /Phrack newsletter. The company was raided simply because Loyd worked there and used its (entirely different) BBS!
... and also I find it amusing that in their illegal raid they didn't bring their own lockpicks or whatever. They tried to use the office letter openers.
In their diligent search for evidence, the agents also cut off locks, forced open footlockers, tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse, and bent two of the office letter openers attempting to pick the lock on a file cabinet.
"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."
Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.
AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.
AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:
Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.
AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.
Concept: a woman is holding hands with a robot, and the woman is wearing a shirt that says "I like my women like I like my keyboards" on the front and "mechanical" on the back, over an exploded view of a cherry mx brown keyswitch.
The robot's shirt says "flesh lover" in the old recaptcha distorted text style. The back has "select all the squares with the cutest girl" and a 3x3 montage of photos of the woman currently holding her right hand.
obligatory Gee, I sure wish robots were shoving their lesbianism down MY throat!
Wait I drew this one a while ago (horribly)
That's awesome!
I think game studios should just release their character creators online. For the times when I don’t wanna play the whole game, just the lil dress up part
Full offense but sometimes fandom just totally make up the characterization of a character and then complain when that isn’t canon
Also full offense but sometimes fandom makes up characterization of a character and then guilt trips and shames any fan that doesn’t agree with that specific perspective in all fanon works.
This is why fanon is good and bad. Because some of yall truly need to see the line between fanon and canon.
It’s great to have theories, fics, headcanons, even those incorrect texts whatever. But it all snowballs from there and suddenly that character who just makes jokes to ease the room is a fucken idiot. That broody boy in the corner is now a uwu soft boi who needs all the hugs. Someone who is struggling in canon with the burden of power is now fine with it. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Fanon ships are another thing, people get so wrapped up in thinking wow this is what it should be not that canon ship instead. That when they’re ship isn’t canon because it doesn’t make sense or the Fandom flipped the view of a character they get pissed sometimes and start bullying the shippers of the canon endgames
And its 100% okay to have these ideas but some people in a fandom end up immersing themselves within the fanon side and so when the next book or season comes out and the character isnt like how they are in the fics and hcs they’ve been reading suddenly the author ruined a character the author created.
I think a huge part of the problem is how fandom has slowly been sliding from ‘fun’ into ‘right’.
Don’t get me wrong. Fandom has always had pockets of people more interested in their character/ship/etc being ‘right’ but it seems like, more and more, the emphasis in fandom has gone from
‘this is a fun idea’
to
‘this is a right idea’
and now the second is seen as the only valid response to being in fandom with a headcanon.
*cough* *cough* 👆 relevant *cough*
![ribbonstein:
“kings of games 👑
[ twitter ]
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3f80026c808ba9d48f68250370d7f3e6/3b2fe6dc890ba574-a6/s1280x1920/9c34f215eb8762636ee84ff3d2d1a9144e32f3c6.png)
I was just gonna leave this in the tags until I saw this note and had to bring my tags out to agree with them
Some questions I’ve found to help when choosing a therapist:
Do you have your own therapist?
Why did you get into this job? (“I just like helping people” is not enough and also a bit of a yellow bordering on red flag for me)
How many people do you typically see at one time and how many are you seeing now?
When can and can’t you disclose our conversation with others (also who are these ‘others’)
Where do you stand politically? (Im kinda 50/50 on this question because for me it’s really important as both a trans girl and as someone who’s issues often stem from capitalism and if I have to explain that capitalism ≠ good then that’s not gonna fly with me)
For my fellow queers, I know it can be limiting but please please try and find a queer therapist. It helps soooo much. If you can’t, ask them about their sexuality/gender regardless. Asking straight/cis people to reflect on their identities is a great way to figure out what color those flags are.
Same goes for any racialized people! I’m white so I can’t speak to it with the experience but I would bet my left AND right hand that having someone of the same culture/lived experience is gonna be such a better environment to do therapy in.
Remember, you’re paying the therapist! I know there are some situations where people can be required to be in therapy but even then you aren’t stuck with any one of them.
Listen to your instincts, if things feel not 100% tell them that if you’re comfortable and otherwise finish the session and get outta there!
Therapy is a tool, you wouldn’t use a tool that hurt you so don’t think you have to keep seeing the same therapist just because you’ve been with them this far.
i'm at the intersection of being overtired and on adderall where i can feel myself being annoying & i'm making and deleting a bunch of posts so i'm going to limit myself to one more controversial (funny, low stakes) post and then go do dishes. brace yourselves
truly i dislike it so much when people try to make enemies-to-lovers into some poignant heartfelt bullshit about "oooo you want someone to see you at your worst and still love you despite thaaat" fuck outta here that's not enemies-to-lovers that's just plain ol' lovers. like maybe it's just because i'm in multiple extremely stable and long-lasting life partnerships right now but like. i don't need to be fuckin' enemies with someone for them to see my worst side. all of my partners have seen me at my worst. NOBODY will see you at your worst like the partner who weathers your sobbing rants about vengeance and how badly you want to torture people to death in the middle of the night, or the partner who hears you snap in irritation when you're scared and hurt and don't trust anybody else. nobody gets you at your most vulnerable like the lover who literally cleans your puke out of the clogged sink while you're sick and then hugs you while you cry about not being able to take care of yourself. like fuck off you DON'T want an enemy you just want to be loved you are being a completely normal person who wants a completely normal lover and that is AWESOME for real life (as i can attest) but PAINFULLY BORING in fiction. THIS IS NOT ENEMIES TO LOVERS
enemies-to-lovers is about thinking it would be hot for someone to no-holds-barred honest-to-fucking-god try to end your entire fucking life and pin you to the ground with a knife to your throat snarling with fiery malice in their eyes, and for you to smile through bloody teeth and rasp a laugh and choke on your breath and say, "do it, i need you to," and for their hand to suddenly tremble so hard around the knife that the blade just barely slices and a single bead of blood slides down your throat. THAT'S the point. that's the appeal of enemies to lovers. "you want someone to see you vulnerableeee" FUCK OUTTA HEREEEE JUST GET A NORMAL BOYFRIEND. FOR FUCK'S SAKE MAN. JUST GET A NORMAL BOYFRIEND AND DIE IN HIS ARMS ON THE BATTLEFIELD LIKE EVERYONE ELSE???
i think so many people are so scared of their own power. they limit themselves. they make nice, and they think nice is what you get when you cut off everything that sticks out too far.
enemies to lovers kicks ass because the people themselves are kicking ass. if i was going to throw myself into a beloved enemies fantasy it would be because i want someone to see me at my most magnificent, my most deadly and powerful, my most destructive, my most unstoppable, and i want them to be so furiously horny about how cool and bad and scary i am that they throw themselves at me claws out, ready for anything.
like. i don’t care for someone to see my vulnerability. or my backstory. or when i hit rock bottom. or that im sad a lot of the time. or that i have a good heart. i want someone to see a monster and get a boner. i want to be so terrifying and so compelling someone would risk death just to get in my way. so im a monster, so my agenda is horrifying, so i’m here to shoot a laser gun at the mayor and howl at the moon--so come stop me. not because it’s your duty. not because it makes you the good guy. but because fighting me is more fun than kissing anyone else.
i want to be the kind of inspiration that makes someone go down swinging and then sexily spit some blood on my boot when i have my heel on their throat. i want to get someone on their knees with my knife on their throat and see them so goddamn angry and horny and disgusted at their own weakness that i won again that they spend the next month at the gym throwing their back out, dreaming of a rematch. then i want to knock them over again. i want them to come back. i want the fight to be fun. i want them to see everything they’ve ever been taught to fear and hate when i show up to crash their party and scare all their friends and i want them to kiss me for it.
enemies to lover is about power and addiction and having your enemy be afraid of what you can do to them but more afraid of what if you didn’t care to try. to know that if you chase someone you’ll catch them because they won’t even run. to know that if you ran they’d come after you.
aren’t you tired of being nice? don’t you want to go ape shit???
the fact that emily gwen lives in poverty while i can walk into target and buy unauthorized reproductions of their work is fucking disgusting frankly. corporations deserve to be hanged en masse but until we can do that for the love of g-d PLEASE keep queer money in the queer community. buy directly from queer artisans like emily, make your own pride merch if you have to, but we need to stop giving our money to rainbow capitalists who are literally, openly stealing from us already. i love target's pride section but i would rather spend $75 on a handmade flag someone actually sat and sewed out of real strips of coloured fabric so they could pay rent than $5 on a strip of screen-printed polyester that nobody got compensated for making at all.