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AND FUCK DRYER SHEETS LITERALLY NOBODY EVER HAS ENOUGH OF A PROBLEM WITH STATIC TO WARRANT PAYING OUT THE ASS FOR THAT SHIT

DO YOU WANT CLEAN CLOTHES? YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO BUY FUCKING DETERGENT JUST MAKE YOUR OWN* IT’S SO GODDAMN EASY AND 80X CHEAPER

FUCK THE ENTIRE LAUNDRY INDUSTRY *Fuck The Entire Laundry Industry Recipe

1 cup Washing Soda (not Baking Soda. Different things.)

1 cup Borax (not Boric Acid. Also a different thing.)

Step one: acquire $5 bag of baking soda from Costco.

Step two: lay that motherfucking baking soda out on a baking tray.

Step three: bake the baking soda on a tray in an oven at 400° for 1 hour (to make the moisture evaporate, leaving washing soda)

If someone had walked up to me while I was working at JoAnn and asked me to take a half hour or more out of my shift to try and fail in making some kind of tight yarn laundry contraption I probably would have burst into tears. And if my manager had come out and found me trying and failing to wind yarn when I was supposed to be running go backs I would have gotten a talking to. Craft store employees aren’t allowed, able, or willing to do your crafts for you. That’s why it’s a craft store.

Don’t hurt retail workers in your quest for overriding the capitalist system. For the love of everything beautiful please just look it up.

You can’t see it from the other side, either. It also cost about $20, and I can’t recommend it enough. Easy to travel with, too! Great for Air BnBs!

Once I got out of grad-school and started working, at exactly age 25, I figured it was time to get serious because I was “too old for this stuff” and frankly I was afraid of being judged. 

I sold all my comics, I stopped reading fanfiction, I stopped playing video games. All of it. It’s not that I never, ever watched anything “geeky” or spent a weekend binge-reading a kink-meme, but when I did, it was rare and I’d feel guilty about it like it was time wasted. I’d keep it all to myself, you know? And without any kind of inspiration, I eventually stopped drawing. After all, I didn’t need it for my “serious job,” so why bother? Unfortunately, my former skill is so atrophied now it’s nearly lost, but worse than that, it’s stressful now instead of the thing I loved to do for most of my life.

What was I doing instead? Well, I’d work my miserable, toxic job, come home and worry about how far behind everyone else I was, and how weird I was compared to all my colleagues. I’d go out with people and do the things they liked doing, but I only pretended to. But I’m not great at that and pretending to be someone else ate me alive. Unsurprisingly, by 31, my anxiety and depression was not in a great place, and I fuckin’ snapped. Not just because of this stuff, of course, but it honestly contributed. I quit my job and left town.

Suddenly I was completely alone, no job, no friends, and no reason to pretend to be someone else. So, I started doing all the things I’d given up. I read all the fanfiction I wanted, I bought a Playstation and an SNES and played them for hours. I bought back every comic book I loved, watched every Marvel movie I missed, and caught up on my favorite characters. I started traveling around just going to cons for the first time (NYCC, GeekGirlCon, DragonCon, etc). In fact, at @geekgirlcon and DragonCon especially, I saw groups of women who were 60+, just fucking enjoying things, and it made me feel so much better about my future. I’m not even joking, I literally cry every time I think about it, because I never realized how scared I was about aging in a world that thinks I’m already a decade too old for the things I love. Suddenly, that wasn’t so scary. 

And then I just stopped pretending that I wasn’t into this stuff. I mean all of it, even the stuff no one understand, even the stuff people openly make fun of, even smutty fanfiction. 

And look, I’m not saying this cured my depression, or that everything is perfect. For one, I picked a city that’s awful for geeks and I’m trying to figure out where to move and how. For another, I lost six years of making like-minded friends, and it’s hard to find them now because we’re all so worried about being judged and online – the space that was always a refuge for me as a loner weirdo growing up – is now apparently a Children of the Corn. But I’m happier here, actually fucking liking things, than being the unobjectionable robot woman I’m apparently supposed to be. 

This is gonna sound weird to you guys, but when I first started writing fanfic and sending stories to fanzines to be published back in 1991, in my first fandom all of the fans and writers and editors and readers I met were shocked that I was 17 because they were all in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was the outlier. I was an aberration.

Wanna know when young people started discovering fandom en masse? In the mid 1990s, when AOL got their internet gateway.

All the folks who ran fannish mailing lists and conventions and published ‘zines and posted fanfic online were over 18, because email and IRC and Usenet and FTP sites and listservs were primarily used by adults because they were almost exclusively college students, government employees, and academics. And the users of gated communities like BBS, GEnie, Compuserv, and AOL all skewed older. Only Prodigy was actually aimed at kids, because prior to the mid-to-late 1990s, children weren’t getting online until they went to university.

And what kids found was the fandom that adults had built online, after being a part of it offline for decades.

Even when FFN was launched, the people who initially posted there were the same people who had been posting fanfic to the internet for a decade: THE GROWN-UPS.

I was 26.

I didn’t even know I liked tech; for my first fic, I needed a webpage, it was ugly, so I opened it to look at the code, saw my first html, and fell in love.  Now I’m an analyst who tests programs for statewide and even national use.

I didn’t know I liked people; I thought something was wrong with me, that I seemed to always say the wrong thing, that I seemed to think wrong.  Instead, it just turns out how I think is just fine; there are so many people like me and I still meet them to this day.  

I didn’t know I could make and maintain friendships, short or long term; as it turns out, not a huge problem.  I make and maintain friendships of almost two decades and still made new friends as of this year.

When my son came out to me as gay, I was ready for the question he wouldn’t ask that I had to answer right then; I love you.  Of course it’s okay. And why the fuck are you awake and messaging me at three in the goddamn morning?  YOU HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW.  Without all the friends who told me what they needed that day for themselves, I’m not sure I would have known that was something he needed to hear.  Without my friends, I wouldn’t have known to even expect–much less how to answer–a thousand questions (at least) he had, and where to have him look for more.

(Also didn’t hurt fandom was the one place I could be sure was all the happy ending gay love stories any gay child would need to read and knew exactly where to send him.  Fuck knows the pro version still isn’t exactly thick on the ground though it’s getting better.)

When I first started, I was mentored by an older woman in her forties-fifties, and on her webpage she had a log of all this shit she’d done just in the last year; traveled to hang out with fan friends, all the fic she wrote that year, all these people she met, this wonderful life.  She posted to all these sites, and she posted to mailing lists her opinion and argued without fear or self-consciousness.

All I could think is I want to be her.

You think men just somehow magically get powerful as they pass into adulthood?  No.  They are mentored by, they get given chances to move up from, they learn from older men in their social networks, including in predominantly male “fannish” space.  Power, knowledge, opportunities move through those networks–and don’t kid yourself, they are primarily masculine networks.  By narrowing your networks to women within one or two years of your age, the “lol thirty-year-olds” rhetoric cuts you off from resources you might use to get stronger.  That’s a feature, not a bug.

The old girls’ network started the first media conventions.

The old girls’ network redefined fanfiction to be stories about characters (as opposed to stories about fans themselves, which was what Fan Fiction was prior to Devra Langsam and Spockanalia.)

“Who is this for? Full Cart is perfect for hard working individuals and families looking for a way to extend their grocery budget.

Why is there no charge for the groceries? Full Cart partners with generous companies and organizations you know and love to cover the cost of your meals. All you pay is shipping.“

ʙɪᴄᴏʟᴏʀᴇᴅ ᴘᴇᴀᴄᴏᴄᴋ

ᴋɪɴɢ ᴄʜᴇᴇᴛᴀʜ

sᴘᴏᴛʟᴇss ᴄʜᴇᴇᴛᴀʜ

ᴘɪᴇʙᴀʟᴅ ᴄʀᴏᴡ

ʙʀᴏᴡɴ ᴢᴇʙʀᴀ

sᴘᴏᴛᴛᴇᴅ ᴢᴇʙʀᴀ

ɢᴏʟᴅᴇɴ ᴢᴇʙʀᴀ

ɢᴏʟᴅᴇɴ ᴛᴀʙʙʏ ᴛɪɢᴇʀ (sᴛʀᴀᴡʙᴇʀʀʏ ᴛɪɢᴇʀ)

ʙɪᴄᴏʟᴏʀᴇᴅ ᴄᴀʀᴅɪɴᴀʟ

ʙʀᴏᴡɴ ᴘᴀɴᴅᴀ

ʙʟᴏɴᴅᴇ ᴇʟᴋ

ɢᴏʟᴅᴇɴ ᴍᴏɴɢᴏᴏsᴇ

ᴇʀʏᴛʜʀɪsᴛɪᴄ ʙᴀᴅɢᴇʀ

ᴇʀʏᴛʜʀɪsᴛɪᴄ ʀᴀᴄᴏᴏɴ

ᴏʀᴀɴɢᴇ ᴀʟɪɢᴀᴛᴏʀ

ᴘɪᴇʙᴀʟᴅ ᴍᴏᴏsᴇ

ᴘɪɴᴋ ᴅᴏʟᴘʜɪɴ

ᴘɪᴇʙᴀʟᴅ sǫᴜɪʀʀᴇʟ

ᴘɪᴇʙᴀʟᴅ ᴅᴇᴇʀ

sᴛʀᴀᴡʙᴇʀʀʏ ʟᴇᴏᴘᴀʀᴅ

ᴇʀʏᴛʜʀɪsᴛɪᴄ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ʙᴀᴄᴋᴇᴅ ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴀʟ

My mom threw a fit at me for not answering my phone while i was at my friends place. Kinda hypocritical too, given how much she complains that “youth these days spend to much time on their phones”

My boss was very CLEARLY not satisfied that i only got back to his text hours after he sent it. My friend didnt speak to me for weeks once bc she thought we were having a FIGHT??? bc i didnt reply to her message on facebook? till the day after she sent it??

i HAVE a phone, that doesnt mean i HAVE TO BE availiable whenever ANYONE decides they want me to be???

what the fuck

both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature  [Hamlet Act III, Sc II]

To hold “the mirror up to nature.” Hamlet echoes classical authors, insisted that drama be a form of truth, not mere entertainment. Playwrights and players should strive to present action in the most verisimilar manner, without exaggeration or distortion, without bombast or excessive sentimentality. 

Hello, Vampire Chronicles fans.

Sit down. We need to have a chat.

You see, while some people are very much excited for a new show about our pompous king of the assholes (and I say this as a term of endearment, having loved Lestat since I was a depressed teenager living in New York, shuffling through my mom’s fiction section) we need to pause and remember this:

Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.

Read it again, slowly.

Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.

This is difficult for younger fans to understand, but let’s take a walk down memory lane.

She has threatened to sue writers in the past. She is one of the most prolific writers of our generation, and she does not support people using her characters for their own work.

In fact, in 2000 she went on a binge-attack against her fans. She threatened legal action against fans who wrote or drew her characters, but especially those who wrote with them. She sent them weeks of harassing letters and doxxed them on the internet.

Let me repeat that.

She doxxed people who wrote fan fiction.

She harassed them online and threatened to contact employers.

She used her fans to outright attack other fans.

This isn’t even something she can just shake off now, with the comment of “It was so long ago” because she did this to a writer who wrote commentary on her story in 2013.

In 2013.

While it was not that she wrote fan fiction, she still shows that she has no respect for people who are in fandom.

Remember those disclaimers used in fan fics, at the beginning? “I do not own …. ”? Yeah, a lot of that has to do with the fact that Anne Rice and others like her would attack fandoms and threaten them, and was in hopes that they would just leave us alone. She didn’t.

In short: Do not trust Anne Rice. I love her writing, I have read every book she has even written, but I do not trust her.

However, according to copyright law fanfiction is considered a transformative work, and therefore is considered fair use.

For real. She told them that.

I’m such a fandom old I remember Wendi and Richard Pini going out of their way to make their characters accessible to fans, but still telling them they had to slap three paragraphs of carefully written disclaimers all over everything. Like, even for fanart. You wanted to draw Cutter and Skywise doing the do? You had to put that disclaimer on it somehow.

AO3 and the current creator-reactions to fanfic are so, so very new. Don’t ever forget how privileged we are to be here.