This is a dark day, Bolsonaro won the elections. What we can do here at home is fight for the acceptance of any Brazilian immigrants who know they will be in danger from Bolsonaro’s fascism.
Night after night, when its humans lay warm and quiet in their beds, the robot got up and left the house. It made no sound as it crept to the bottom of the garden, climbed over the fence, and dropped onto the wide, dusty road that led to the edge of town. No one saw it leaving the village each night after the moon rose, and no one saw it returning each morning when the sun was still below the horizon.
No one, save for an old tomcat with one ragged ear, for he is the one who told me this tale.
On the first night, or so said the cat, the moon was round and full, and the robot walked down a silvered street until it came to the edge of town. It walked past the last house, and then past the barley. It passed by the corn and the wheat and the sorghum and the rye, but when it came to the edge of the forest, it stopped, for that is where the road split in two.
The moon rose high and the stars circled slowly overhead, but the robot stood still and staring, as if it were carved from silent stone and empty as a hollow barrel. Only when the stars had faded and the sky stained pink did it move, trodding silently back home and letting itself into the house like it had never been gone at all.
Night after night, the robot made its silent trek to the edge of the forest, until the moon had grown as thin and fragile as a fingernail clipping. Only on the fourteenth night, when there was no moon at all and the night was as dark as it could be, did it find what it had been waiting for.
“You are very persistent,” said The Devil by way of greeting. “I don’t often come by these parts nowadays.”
“But you came.” The robot did not sound surprised.
“Aye, so I did.” The Devil gave a little shrug. “I know where I am wanted. What’s a thing like you want from a guy like me, anyhow?”
“I wish to do business with you,” said the robot, matter-of-factly. “There is a bargain I would like to strike.”
The Devil raised its eyebrows. “Oh?” it said, the corners of its mouth quirking into a little smile. “Surely you know the… nature of my business, if you knew to find me here.”
The robot nodded. “Oh, yes. I know who you are and what you deal in. I have come to plea on behalf of my human, who once signed your book as a young man. He is not yet old, but he has found prosperity and started a family, and reason to want his soul back.”
“That is not how it works,” said The Devil sourly. “A deal is a deal.”
“If you will not return it, I offer myself in his place,” offered the robot, bowing its head. The Devil laughed.
“You have no soul to speak of,” it said. “What could I possibly want with you?”
The robot looked up sharply. “Why, I have a strong back and a quick mind, and I can work without tire for many—-“
“No, no, that’s no good to me.” The Devil waved its hand impatiently. “I accept only one kind of currency, and you are quite penniless! Your human is mine and shall remain mine forever, if you can make no sweeter offer.”
The robot was silent for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps,” it said suddenly, sounding surprised with itself, “Perhaps if you gave me a soul, I could trade it back to you in exchange for my human’s liberation!”
The Devil made an odd choking sound. “Give you a soul?!” it exclaimed. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yes,” said the robot. “Just a little one, that I might nurture and grow. Give me a soul of little value and I will return it to you when it is as full and strong as that of my human, and then you will have your payment.”
The Devil thought about this. It had never considered the business of soul renovation, but it was a fascinating idea, and might prove very amusing. It made a mental note to rethink the potential uses of the funny machines that humans had made in their own image.
“Very well,” it said at last. “This is an interesting offer. I accept, on the condition that the soul you return to me is in pristine shape when I come to collect it – live virtuously, for if I find that it is blemished in any way and you have been neglecting its care, I will take it back and your human’s as well.” It smiled to itself, already giddy with the promise of reward.
“It is a deal,” said the robot, and extended its hand.
“Good luck,” said The Devil, spitting a tiny, shriveled soul onto its palm and clasping it against the robot’s. “You will need it.” As the soul entered the metal hand, the robot cried out and stumbled back, shaking its arm like it was trying to dislodge a leech from its finger.
“What have you done to me?!” it wailed, in a distorted digital voice.
“Precisely what you asked,” The Devil answered. “A soul is a great burden, little machine. I hope you are up to the task of carrying it.”
Then the old tomcat, who had been crouching among the rye and watching these strange events unfold, felt every hair on his back stand up as The Devil winked and blew a kiss at the place where he was hidden. He had been an orange cat at sunset, but The Devil had frightened the color clean out of his fur, turning it white as snow from the tip of his tufted tail to the end his little pink nose – or so he told me.
thinkin about the time i forgot my sunhat while i was teaching a canoeing class and my boss just stuck a giant lily pad on my head and it dried into shape and worked perfectly as a sun hat and i used it for days
y’all have it wrong this is proof that my BOSS has magical powers not me
So I had a job interview today and there was a dude in the waiting room who was chatting up every AFAB person in the waiting room whether they responded or not, and kept going “Hey I’m real good at Origami Swans you want one?” and then writing his number on sticky notes before making paper cranes and handing them to his latest target before turning his attention to the next lady in his vicinity. A little sad, a lot annoying, but unlikely to be dangerous. Whatever.
Dude gets to me. We have half a conversation where he asks me personal questions and I don’t look up from my phone. I get my “Swan”. I’m the last AFAB person in the room so he’s kinda sitting there.
I get to a post about a friend needing moral and/or spiritual support before a medical procedeure, so my ADHD ass goes Oh hey, we have an animal effigy we could sacrifice to the relevant gods! So I take out my lighter and burn the swan roughly 23 seconds after the dude gave it to me, and crush the ashes in my hand because I belatedly realize there’s no sink for me to throw this in. Oh well. Purell the ashes off.
I look up. Dude, and everyone else in the waiting room is staring at me.
“You, uh. Smoke?” Dude tries.
What I Meant To Say: “No I just carry a lighter as a holdover from survival camp as a kid, and if I’m wearing synthetic fabrics that start to ravel, I can use the flame to melt them a bit so they stop.”
What I Actually Said: “No I just have one in case I need to set something on fire.”
I put the lighter away. The hiring manager comes out and calls my name. I go back and have what I think was a reasonably sucessful job interview. I come back out.
That thing you wrote that isn’t “good enough” to put up on the AO3. You can put it up there! The AO3 isn’t meant to be The World’s Classiest Showcase. It’s an archive. It exists because most other forms of hosting fannish work eventually degrade or disappear. Accounts get deleted. Websites shut down. The AO3 preserves those things. Ten years from now you’ll be like, “Shit, there was this really great tag essay, but the person changed their Tumblr URL and then Tumblr closed up shop…” (look, even Tumblr will die eventually) and your only hope of finding it will be if the page was cached, or if somebody uploaded it to the AO3.
The AO3 exists to preserve ephemera as much as substantial works. You know how valuable it is for archaeologists to be able to read the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii? The little things, the notes, the headcanons, the notfics, the meta, the back-and-forths, are all important too.
YES YES YES THIS.
Tumblr’s likely to die sooner than you expect, and suddenly – it’s owned by Yahoo. (Anyone remember
del.icio.us, later delicious.com?) Yahoo’s trying really really hard to squeeze money out of tumblr and it’s not working, for all the reasons discussed in synec’s post and because a huge portion of its userbase is 13-18 years old and HAVE NO DIGITAL MONEY so can’t buy things online even if they wanted to.
There is no “worthy to be on AO3.” None. The early fics were often really well-written; it was a high-standards archive – not because “it strove for high standards” but because the only people who knew it existed, who cared about a new multifandom archive, were the ones who’d been around watching archives disappear for years; they were veteran fic writers who wanted a permanent place to share their stories. It took a long time for AO3 to have enough server capacity to allow open invites; in the early days, it was friend-of-a-friend for invite codes. (They wanted more people; they couldn’t handle a flood. So they handed out a few codes at a time)
We even talked about it while setting up the original terms of service – knowing that by saying, our standards are less restrictive than ff.net, less restrictive than LJ, we were going to eventually have HUGE amounts of really bad fic. FF.net got the nickname “pit of voles,” and AO3 was going to outdo that… eventually.
And. We wanted it ALL. All the reader-insert Mary Sue “date with hot dude” fic; all the “quiz to find out which power ranger you would be” fic; all the “band came to my home town and their bus broke down in front of my house and they needed a coffee and…” fic. And later, all the meta: the thinky character analyses; the “who’d be best on a first date” discussions; the “why the new movie sucked rocks and should never have been made because they ruined my favorite sidekick” rants.
ALL. WE WANT IT ALL.
AO3 is not about “the best of fandom;” it’s about “the truth of fandom.” And the truth is, fandom is not comprised of 90% well-written tightly-plotted carefully proofread fic. Fandom is comprised of people who love their favorite shows and books and characters and want to share that love with others.
AO3 are not the fanfic standards police. We’re the ones cheering for the “GLOWING BLUE SKELETON DICKS” tags.
Someday, some fandom archaeologist (and yes, there will be fandom archaeologists, isn’t that awesome?) will sift through the badfic, the quick drabbles, the Mary Sues, and write articles for peer-reviewed journals chronicling the complete collected works of some of the 21st century’s greatest authors and how you can see in THIS self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck the origin of those characterization tactics and flow of prose that make your subsequent masterworks truly shine as beloved classics, and THIS short character drabble gives THAT story arc in your well-known later story an exceptional poignancy and depth if one considers it backstory.
Also that fandom archaeologist’s teenage daughter will think the self-indulgent Protagonist/OC clusterfuck is the best thing she’s ever read.
They sent pipe bombs to Obama, Clinton, CNN, and a major Democratic donor. They marched through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us.” They jailed and brutalized and outright killed Black protesters. They ran a woman down with a car for protesting their hateful rhetoric.
They threatened from the start to resort to violence if they didn’t get their way, and then got their way…and resorted to violence anyway. They are the purveyors of a body of politics that sees most of us as subhuman and undeserving of life, and actively works toward our destruction.
Remember that during this election.
This is not a matter of choosing the “lesser evil”. This is flawed politicians vs. actual fucking terrorists. This is human failings vs. inhumanity. This is not being progressive enough vs. silencing the opposition with violence.
No fucking contest. Get out and vote.
It was a terrorist attempt on several people, including two previous presidents. And our current president decided that the best thing to do tonight would be to hold a political rally.
You have to vote. Lives are on the fucking line here.
Mooncustafer 