Lots of people are mentioning this, and saying things like "Don't Like Don't Read" and "stop harassing authors."
And while those are good points...
This is probably a bot invasion, rather than any team of hostile commenters.
The key issue: People were getting comments with porn gifs embedded in them, not just the standard "this reads like chatGPT work" or "join WəɓṆøvℯḼ now!" posts.
My guess about the plans: Probably looking into turning off image embeds for guest accounts. That'll require adjustments to the code, so guest commenting will probably remain turned off while they figure out how to do that and get it activated.
It's possible that, in the long run, guest comments won't be allowed at all, because eventually the spam content will overwhelm the servers. It's not doing that yet, but AO3 is not shrinking and neither is bot activity.
...If you don't have an account, apply for an invitation. If you have an account and don't want to use it for commenting, apply for an invite with a secondary email account.
Because unless there's a nice widespread change in either law or legal rulings, the spambots will continue to grow unrestricted, and the result is going to be "sites that want an active community will need to become login only."
(About half of all emails in the world are spam. About 40% of all internet activity is bots. And so far, the regulator reaction to that has been, "well, lock down access so the bots can't get in" rather than "whoever is draining all those server resources is committing crimes.")
AO3 will figure something out. That something is likely to involve restrictions on guest activity, because that's the only way to block the bots.
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Adoption in Comics
Found family and adoption are big themes in comics. i see a lot of talk about found family, as i think that really hits home for a lot of the tumblr comics fandom and rightly so. So for this post im focusing on adoption, legal or otherwise. A guarding and ward relationship, which can be parent and child or looser terms.
Many of the most well known and beloved heroes were adopted or have adopted children of their own. It invites discussion of nature vs nurture, of dsymorphia, of choice. It can be a situation that's terrible, or it can be a salvation. It can be done for all the wrong reasons and lead to a disconnect of expectation vs reality. It can be full of love but still lead to missteps.
But before i go any further, a poll. Id like to get some background on the fandom here, so please consider reblogging.
Note for the poll: "Strangers" meaning someone who did not know your birth family prior to the adoption
I wish there were more poll options to also ask the adopted part of the fanbase if they are a different ethnicity from their adoptive family, as that usually has a huge impact on their experiences. For example, I'm Korean but my parents are white US Americans. I grew up in an area of some diversity but not a lot, in that all my closest friends were white and all of my extended family was white. And because of that, my ethnic heritage was something ive had to actively seek out and choose to make part of my identity. It also meant that i just plain did not look like my family or peers, and so stereotypes and assumptions (good and bad) have been put on me at times.
Economic status also plays a role. Im mostly pulling from past knowledge of adoption agencies, but it's not exactly inexpensive, and of course financial stability is one of the big things agencies look for. So it ends up being that a good chunk of adoptive parents are fairly well off, in the upper middle class range. And that in itself can be alienating. This wasnt my personal situation but I knew of others where it was.
I might need to make a series of posts about how all this pertains to comics. It could really be a Master's thesis topic. But for now I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on adoption in comics. What feelings do you have about it? Have you given it much thought? How do the socioeconomic statuses of the adoptive family inform the characters and their actions? Does race with respect to adopter/adoptee play a part in the dynamics of what's going on in the stories you read?
I of course have tons and tons of my own opinions on all this, but I genuinely would like to hear from others. This includes fans who arent adopted! Your readings and interpretations are valid on this subject too! Youre really the average reader, the main demographic. So it's interesting to hear opinions from that perspective as well. And if you are adopted and feel like sharing your thoughts on comics, please please do.
Oh! And one last thing, feel free to tag or list comics characters who are adopted or who have adopted someone. I'd be interested to see how many there really are!
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Hello I have a question on behalf of my friend who doesn't have tumblr. So, my friend has been working on her long story for about 2 years now when she found time after school. However, it was recently discovered that she has a tumour in her brain that she will have surgically removed within the coming months and while she told me the chances of anything happening is low, she is still worried and has expressed concern over her story. She told me that she has so much of the story planned out but not written down, so many details or plotpoints etc.... So her question is: how can one prepare for the worst case senario if you have an unfinished story? There are so many details and conversations that need to happen.
Friend Concerned About Surgery/Not Finishing Story
It's very nice of you to ask on her behalf. Just to clarify, though, I'm not a legal expert, so I can't give you or your friend legal advice. Just some ideas based on personal experience.
As much as I wish this would be an easy thing for your friend to address, it isn't. Our stories are copyrighted the moment they are written down in a tangible form, and if something happens to us, that manuscript and all of the pertinent documents and notes become part of our estate. That said, it would be up to the executor of the estate to determine what is done with the story based on the person's wishes as outlined in their will. If someone wanted another person to finish the story for them, they would be designated as this person in their will and the executor would contact them and give them any documents and instructions that were needed. But, ideally, this will have been arranged between the writer and other person long before. If there isn't time for those conversations, your friend could put as much of the detail and instructions as they can in a document and have it kept with their important documents.
If your friend doesn't have a will or an estate (if they're a minor, for example), this is just something that will have to be arranged between them and the person they want to finish their story, but they should also make sure to notify their parents/guardians that this permission has been given, and may even want to give the person a notarized document stating that they give the person permission to finish the story. Otherwise, the friend's family could potentially file for copyright infringement.
I worry a little because I remember getting a similar ask a while back about someone who had been reading a story in progress, and it looked like the writer had passed, and this person wanted to know if they could just finish the story since they'd talked to this person and knew where the story was going. And I'm hoping this ask isn't coming from the same person looking for some loophole that would allow them to go ahead and do this. So, just in case and to clarify: you can't finish someone else's story without their express written permission. It doesn't matter whether that story was posted online and abandoned, or whether they told you what was going to happen and you're the only one who can finish it, or even if you had a verbal agreement. The best anyone could do in that scenario would be to contact the family (who either hold the copyright or have a right to contest infringement) and ask for permission.
And, in the case of this ask specifically, if the friend wants you or someone else to finish their story if the worst happens, they need to make sure they have granted you written permission that is notarized or otherwise legally commissioned.
Ultimately, your friend probably will want to talk to a lawyer. Though, I am deeply hoping that they come through their surgery safely and successfully so they don't have to worry about it. ♥
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Hello hello again! It's good to have you back for a little while! Unfortunately there is a lot of infighting in the critical sphere right now and it's not very fun to follow. And worse still Lily is as smug as ever. People are too invested in who ripped off what, who's disrespecting this or that, they should just be having fun at Lily's expense. That's what Saiscribbles has done, and you can tell how effective it is because Lily has tried every strategy in the book to prove how not mad she is.
You know what?
I think I would like to poke fun at the whole thing. I mean, it's sounds like she's gotten a bit ridiculous since I've been gone. (Ridiculous sounds like an understatement, thought.)
I've done serious and it's exhausting. You can only take her serious for so long before you realize she doesn't really even know or believe what she's saying.
As for the fighting, well... It's a shame, but let's try to focus on what's at the core of this blog: Gossiping about Lily.
...But I do have one thing I want to get off my chest, so I will mention it here and then move on. It is under the read bar just so those who don't care can ignore it.
I do have one thing to say about the drama, and that's about Ethel.
They are a liar liar pants on fire.
Seriously, I watched Evangeline Skovs video, which was one of the better coverages on the subject and there was no plagiarism. Not even of me, and I was a source!
Never mind that fact that Ethel legit lied about my blog in their rebuttal, claiming that Levi couldn't find anything on my blog about their video, or glade, so Evangeline was lying.
Their proof? Levi used the search bar, used the word minor and glade, and nothing came up except one post...
Fun fact: I'm bad at tagging things, and my search bar is kind of useless because of that.
(Side note: why would I use glade's name? Why would I want to draw attention to someone who I assumed wanted to be left alone? I'm pretty sure that was made clear in the video.)
Anyway, if you used my archive you could easily find TONES of posts from me talking about the video in question with details.
Here's one that Ethel conveniently left out:
And you know what's hilarious about that? They reblogged this take to try and rebuke it on their tumblr. (That they have long since abandoned.)
I decided to ignore it, because obviously I'm not going to try and get in a fight with them, and Ethel was so mad by that they messaged me directly to try and threaten me with legal jargon.
So I blocked them.
But hey, since I'll probably never bother with this again, here are the messages. Enjoy old drama from like...2 years ago:
Image text here:
[Okay, I've put this off for as long as possible, but please, read this case study as right now you are parroting harmful legal advice. Victim testimony not only constitutes evidence, but can be sufficient evidence to convict, a fact that was tested in Commonwealth v Gustavo Gonzalez Santos in Massachusetts.
I’ll highlight two relevant sections in case you don’t have the time to read the entire thing: “The defendant's sole argument on appeal is that the evidence was not sufficient to support his convictions. The defendant asserts that "there were no witnesses to the alleged assaults," "no physical evidence," "no medical or forensic evidence," and "no expert testimony." He argues that "there was absolutely no conclusive evidence presented at trial that suggested the [d]efendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."” And: “Here, the victim testified to facts that constituted each element of the charged offenses. Her testimony, which the jury found to be credible, was sufficient, standing alone, to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt as to each of the convictions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lawrence, 68 Mass. App. Ct. 103, 104 (2007)
("The victim's testimony was sufficient evidence of [indecent assault and battery on a child under age fourteen]"); Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 23 Mass. App. Ct. 184, 185 (1986) ("The victim's account of what the defendant did to him in the apartment was sufficient to overcome the defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty of rape"). The idea that long infected our legal system that the victim's testimony in sexual assault and rape cases is less credible than the testimony of victims in cases involving other types of crimes -- an idea that reflected nothing more than sexism and an unwillingness on the part of our courts to treat sexual crimes as the gravely serious matter that they are -- has been rejected both by statute and by common law.”
When you and others continue to parrot the myth that victim testimony does not constitute as valid evidence, you are harming victims of rape and abuse. This is straight up rape culture and, since I’m pushing back any video coverage on the matter until I’ve finished dealing with Lily because I don’t want to muddle things, I need you to stop promoting falsehoods. We have legal members on our team who have passed the bar, Patchie does not, Opal does not, and neither does You Can Eat Hearts. You are causing unnecessary harm to victims by breathing life into myths constructed by rape culture. To be clear, I am not asking for your denouncement of certain people, just for you to please, stop publishing bad legal takes.
This is also the case in Canada, if you're wondering - https://www.accused.ca/evidence.htm
Sorry, I just realized I didn't give you the US case study. Here it is - http://masscases.com/cases/app/100/100massappct1.html#:~:text=The%20jury%20found%20the%20defendant,We%20affirm. ]
Oct 30, 2022 9:16 AM
Whew, you have no idea how long I wanted to spill this tea.
Alright, I've said what I've wanted to say on this topic. I'm now going to focus on laughing at Lily and her horrible incest stories.
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Me work-shopping my fanfic idea: What if Nina went though the portal at the end of season two, and instead of season three, grief stricken Sibuna gets messages from her in their dreams asking for their help to return to the land of the living? And they're not sure if it's even her or not. Yes, I am a genius for coming up with this totally original idea that's never been done before, at least in this fandom.
The heartbeats of my abandoned and published WIPs: Trapped in a Dream by artsoccer on fanfiction.net. Summary is, and I quote:
"On the way over to England the plane Nina and Eddie are riding on explodes. No one on board survives. Upon finding out, Sibuna has to struggle through the four stages of grief. Amber, Fabian, and Patricia start getting strange dreams detailing Nina and Eddie. Are these just grief spawned dreams, or something more?"
Me with my fingers in my ears: LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!
The heartbeats of my abandoned and published WIPs/My Inner Critic: I wonder who that artsoccer is? I mean, your original tumblr url was artsoccer, and it's still the title of your blog... Such a mystery.
Are you sure this isn't just Trapped in a Dream 2.0? But with eight years improvement in writing skill?
Me who can't drown them out anymore: They have different plots! For one thing, this one is just Nina, and not both Nina and Eddie. For another thing this is less exploration of grief, and more taking a lot of inspiration from the "Song of Dreams"
My Inner Critic: Ah, so this is less original, got it.
Me who's getting fed up at this point: Shut up and let me write the damn thing. It's been years since I wrote anything other than a one-shot. Let me have this.
The asshole inside my head: It's been a year since your last proper one-shot, too. And if you're that determined to write this, why aren't you writing the fanfic instead of this text post?
Me who thought writing this out would be funny: shut up
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