Would You Say Maladaptive Daydreaming About Interacting With The Gods Would Be Disrespectful?

Do you want to hear my story?

Reading Vlog #1 - Holy Shit...

I’m reading a novel that was written in 1915 and has a whole paragraph just casually discussing sexism, objectification, asexuality and the impermanence of love. I don’t care if the characters are supposedly ‘despicable’, Ford Madox Ford was onto something.

‘The Good Soldier’ by Ford Madox Ford, on page 84 of 179.

On my departure from Discord

I’ve been having a rough few weeks of doubts and strife in my online and fandom life, and I’ve decided to step down from Discord in an interactive sense for the time being. Saying that the decision was painless or easy on my part would be an understatement. The realization of this need for escape came on with sudden clarity, and took even me off guard.  That’s why I wanted to explain a few factors that led me to making this drastic decision.

Discord has been a social beacon for me in the time of Covid and lockdown and instrumental in getting me back in the writing groove since early 2019. I’m immensely grateful for the people I got to meet and the conversations I had, but as life reopened its doors for me, I started to become more aware of all the ways in which the platform chafed at my being and mental health.

Gradually, over time, Discord had turned from a convenient safe space into a dependency that fostered a constant need to interact, to be aware, and to perform to stay relevant. It’s all the things I hated about high school but ten times worse because I actually like the people I interacted with. To make matters worse, I noticed that this constant need to stay relevant was interfering with what truly mattered to me: building my future and fulfilling a duty I feel I owe to myself and the world.

As my resentment with the platform grew, I became more hard-line and less compromising in my communication. I’m not saying that Discord is a toxic platform, but simply that it can cause negative or toxic behaviours towards yourself and those around you. I did not like who I’d become under Discord’s influence, so I decided to step away and re-examine which values and activities I wanted to hold onto for my personal development and mental health journey. Maintaining a presence in the Discord fandom did not fit into that, so I decided to cut myself off in the most drastic way possible.

As soon as the next day, I began to feel better, like a weight of responsibility had dropped off my shoulders. Suddenly, I had mental room to breathe again, to explore the world around me, and to put words down on the page. I felt freer and more independent than I had in months, and I knew I had made the right decision.

Still, as I’m closing the metaphorical ledger, I feel somewhat obliged to apologize to those I might have hurt with my sudden departure, but I felt that putting myself first was absolutely the correct thing to do in that moment. (If only to spare everyone from my inevitable downward spiral.) I don’t know if the space is healthier or better without me there, but at least I’m taking care of myself and others by removing myself from it. It was the right decision, even if it’s still hard.

To all the people that I have known: I wish you well. Maybe our paths will cross again.

Judy The Dreamer

(Boy, does it feel good to have this off my chest.)

A Bingo’s Coming!

Do you like Steve, Tony, and/or Bucky in all four of their particular combinations? Then do we have an event for you. Starting on Nov 1, you’ll be able to order cards for a four-way bingo - Stuckony, Stucky, WinterIron, Stony. Any of the squares can be filled by any of those four ships! 

Fills open Dec 1 and close June 30, 2021 - so plenty of time to get the creative juices flowing. Badges will be awarded for the traditional reasons (participation, bingo, blackout) but also for some special surprise reasons as well. 

Excited? Us too! Spread the word and we’ll see you back here on Nov 1 with further information. 

Feedback culture is dead, long live feedback culture!

AO3, fanfiction, and comments: the system isn’t working. 

Fic authors have a problem with feedback – or rather, with the lack of it. Fanfiction has a notoriously low ratio of comments to hits, and many of us have expressed our frustration that we can get a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, even a thousand views on our stories, but only a handful of readers will leave kudos, let alone comments.   

Unfortunately, this only gets worse for long, multi-chapter stories (aka, the longfics we know, love, and would sell our souls in a second if it meant an update), which also happen to be the stories that authors need the most support to continue and complete. Law of diminishing returns, y’all, and it sucks. 

We’re not here to guilt you into leaving comments. We want to address the problem by changing the format, and we need your help to do it. 

The goal is to increase the amount of feedback authors get from readers, especially on stories with multiple chapters, and to make it easier for everyone to show how much we love fics. We’re opening a discussion with ao3 to figure out how/if any of these options can be implemented, but first we need options to present! 

Some of our current ideas: 

Ability to leave a form of kudos on every chapter, instead of only once on the entire story: this lets authors know that you’re here and you’re reading their updates, so their hard work isn’t getting tossed into the internet void. 

Comment templates: suggested comments that can be customized or posted as-is. Many of us draw a blank or get nervous when we try to think of a comment, so having pre-made options will both increase the total level of feedback and serve as practice, making it easier to leave more in-depth comments in the future. 

Upvoting/leaving kudos on comments themselves: positive reinforcement makes giving feedback more fun and rewarding, and it lets the author know that readers are present and agreeing with other comments, even if they don’t leave one themselves. 

We’ll contact AO3 to discuss the possibility of adding any of these as native features, and if that won’t work, we’re looking into creating and sharing a user script. 

 What you can do to help: 

 As a reader, what would you like to have? What would you be most likely to use? New ideas, opinions on ideas that are listed here, they’re all good. 

As a creator, how would you feel about each of these options? Can you think of other ways of receiving or encouraging feedback? 

Pros and cons of these (note: our thoughts on this are discussed in this google doc) 

GET THE WORD OUT! Reblog this post, send it to your friends, link to it from your stories. We need as much input and support as possible to get this off the ground. 

Feedback makes for happy authors. Happy authors make for more stories. Let’s keep this part of fandom alive! 

More details about our thoughts, discussions, and ideas can be found in this google doc.

Red Avadat, Red Munia or strawberry finch. 🐦🍓

The Theoi are meant to be worshipped. And that means by anyone. If you feel so inclined to worship a deity, do it! Worshipping the gods isn’t like an exclusive club, they were worshipped historically by a vast array of people as just a part of life. So give them some offerings and some prayers and just go from there. We were meant to worship them, so don’t feel insecure about wanting to! The gods are already part of your life whether you know it or not, so just reach out!