Cloppers Blog

I hate doing these, at least the bad news parts. Really feels like I’m making excuses in place of stories, which I don’t like to do to the people following me, at all. But I think it’s a better alternative than going quiet and leaving everyone in the dark as to what I’m doing, especially if it’s going to span over the next few months, so here goes, first off with the bad news: 

The bad news is that four of my Zootopia stories on AO3 were deleted, apparently around Dec. 22nd, and I didn’t find out about this until the first few days into 2018 when I went to find one of the stories for a contact of mine on Discord. The four stories deleted were: 

-The Zootopia I Love -A Howling Good Time -Love Stands With Pride -I Give My All to You

I managed to send a note to the site administrators over the matter and after a bloody week of waiting, they finally responded. I’m not going to pull the exact quote from them, but basically they got deleted because some people (most likely the adult babies of Critics United) made “multiple complaints” against my stories for using those brief song excerpts during certain chapters, just as part of the background. This came as a huge surprise to me, because the FAQ for the website talks about use of song lyrics and says that it’s fine as long as it’s not the whole song. When I got a response from an admin though, they said “typically a few lines used is fine”. So basically, their initial information on their site regarding the subject was vague, and their response to me was even more vague. They told me that they’d sent me multiple warnings since November asking me to change it, but I never got any such warnings myself. It would have been a lot more convenient if AO3 had a way to contact other users directly, other than leaving a comment on their stories. I would have noticed that way faster and immediately made the necessary corrections. But because of some asshats who need to validate their existence by demanding the deletion of stories that I work my ass off for free so others can read and enjoy them for free, I’ve lost all of the views, kudos, comments and bookmarks those stories accumulated while they were up. They’re gone. Deleted. Poof. They told me that when I make the necessary corrections I can repost the stories, but the fact remains that I’m never going to get those stats back. 

So, moving forward: There’s a new website I’ve been made aware of, because I’m not the only writer who’s had their stories removed for BS reasons, and that website is Archive of Zootopia. It’s still in the beta phase, and I haven’t even created an account yet, but I’m hoping that if enough people support it, it might become for Zootopia what FimFiction is for MLP (without the terrible mod support and overall disregard for its users). I’m hoping I can start mass uploading all my old work on a weekly basis, which I’ll be posting links to for each upload. Don’t worry, you won’t see me float multiple chapter updates twice a day for stories I’ve already done; I’ll post all the chapters at once and provide one link for the day that I do it. I might repost the stories to AO3 with the revisions made, but that’s going to be far down on my to-do list. 

What this means: New stories are going to be delayed. Yup. Hate to say it, but I don’t feel good about making new stories with a huge chunk from my catalog missing (even though they’re still available on fanfiction.net, but I hate that websites format, so that knowledge does little for me). Once I get all my stories up on AoZ, then I’ll try to get around to making new stories, and I’ll make a post about that too once I’ve gotten around to it. 

So that’s the bad news; but here’s some good news: 

Those of you who saw this post already know I’ve been hired by Atrolux, an artist I’ve been a long time fan of, to write out a script for an origins comic he wants created for his snake characters Kyra and Amon, two characters he’s been drawing for at least three years now and is probably most known for them by this point. I can’t go too in depth about our update process, but I think it’s fine for me to say that the script is almost completely done, and Atro himself has begun drawing some early sketches of what the pages will look like (can’t show them here, but I can say that he did an amazing job of translating what I wrote into something visual; it’s like he pulled the images straight from my head). Even though my part is mostly done, there’s still some discussions that’ll take place between he and I as he makes more pages, and it might require some revisions on the story depending on what’s needed. So that’s potentially even more time that I’ll be taken away from me writing any new stories for a little while. 

Well, I reached my goal which was as followed:

“Actual effort on Comic pages, especially of Kyra and Amon. I will actively study and practice panel layouts, writing, etc. ”

Which means it’s time to begin! I hired your fellow patron Cloppy, your local snake family enthusiast, to help me with the writing and the script, and brainstorming. So far it’s looking super interesting, and the script is 14 pages long so far, we don’t know how many there will be, but I want to make this a good origins story, and throw in some fucking in as well.

The plan is to release chapters available to purchase in different tiers. For example, Full resolution, Full resolution + sketches and thumbnails, etc..

These chapters will be posted for free in a lower resolution at one page per day until we reach the end. (I will only start posting the pages when a certain amount of pages/chapters is reached, as to avoid any delays).

The entire progress will unfortunately not be reported, I want to focus hard on this, and if we share details, it may get confusing.

Since I’ve been recruited to take part in this exciting project, this unfortunately means my writing stuff is going to get pushed back a little bit while I’m writing the script for this comic and atro and I work out how the final renditions will look. So far its been really fun to draft out ideas and see what’s going to stay and what better alternatives can be found when we talk things out. I think at this point I can say I’ve reached the halfway point in the script, just as far as drafting it out goes. But that’s probably all the detail we can give out right now before contradicting what we just said, so I’ll leave it at that. 

Regarding the whole “someone hacked the poll and ruined the story” thing, I’ve decided what I’m gonna do. No long-winded explanation, no drama, I’m just cutting right to the chase, because I’m tired and I just want this to be over with. 

The option for the Zootopia story that was winning BEFORE the massive influx of bot-votes was It Runs In The Family, so that’s the option I’m going with. And instead of doing another vote, I’m just gonna do all four series, the one that got the most votes in each category. I feel like it’d be good for me to stretch my arms into other franchises anyway. So, the way it’s gonna work is that I’m gonna do four stories AFTER I do the story about James in middle school. These are the stories, in no particular order:

-It Runs In The Family -Love Measured In Scales(?) -Morty’s Dino Lap Dance -The Goat Trap

I MIGHT decide to do Bun in the Oven in between, but there is a very big emphasis on MIGHT. I’m a vengeful person by nature, and since I know the votes were tampered with, I might just decide to put that story off longer just to spite whoever rigged the votes to give that one an unfair advantage. I also suspect Family was tampered with too, but like I said, it was still in the lead before hundreds of votes just showed up out of nowhere. 

Also, on Scales: I will TRY to write a few more chapters if I can muster up the will to figure out where I wanted to take the story past the point where I left off, but I need people to understand that since I haven’t touched it in years, that is asking a lot of me. There’s a very big chance I might dust off that one draft I had of the next chapter, stare at it for several minutes and say “Goddamn it, I just don’t feel like doing this story anymore.” And if that happens, I’ll do two things:

1. I’ll make a blog post on FimFiction basically explaining how I would have taken the story if I had decided to continue it, so everyone will at least know how it ends even if I don’t flesh it out and make it all eloquent.  2. I’ll do the runner up story, which is basically Sunset Shimmer having sex with that horse in the music video she was in years ago. I know that trend is long since dead, but I still want to take my crack at the idea just because I love the imagery of such a thing. 

Oh cute, somebody got mad and decided to use my taste in porn against me, I’m so offended. 

Reminder:

I’m seriously at an impasse here. I mean, I’ve got two options in mind on how to move forward with what story to select, but I’m having trouble figuring out what’s “fair” in the context of what’s happened. 

Part of me wants to pick one of the Zootopia options and proceed with having it run against the other series winners (since those vote counts were so low it’s obvious they weren’t tampered with), but this time I WON’T be using Strawpoll. I’ll probably just have it be a Tumblr exclusive thing, where you just reblog and write down your choice and I’ll consider that a vote. But even then someone could just make bot accounts to duplicate their vote and fuck it all up again. 

The other part of me just wants to choose a story from each category that I want to do, and then save the two Zootopia choices that I’m certain were tampered with for last, but then I’m wondering if the cheater(s) actually wanted that to be the case; to make it obvious that cheating happened so I would not choose a certain option. 

I care about net neutrality a lot, yet I haven’t reblogged any posts about it yet. You may be wondering why and simply put, the misinformation on this site is pissing me off.

Many of you may have seen posts going around with pictures like these:

They’re very scary and compelling. They illustrate a dystopian future where websites are sold like cable packages.

The problem is they have jack shit to do with net neutrality and what the FCC is trying to do, and frankly it makes those of us trying to protect net neutrality look completely ignorant.

So, what’s actually going on? Sorry, but it’s not as interesting as the pictures convey. If you don’t read between the lines it’s going to seem like boring shit. Sorry, guys, but the way that scary as fuck legislation gets passed in this country is by hiding it in a mundane, boring package that no one cares about or pays attention to.

So, what is the net neutrality that’s in jeopardy? Back in 2015, broadband providers became reclassified as common carriers under Title II. The FCC actually pushed for this Title II reclassification at the time so they could come up with stronger Net Neutrality rules. Basically, the FCC has legal authority to keep companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from interfering with web traffic in any way under Title II.

So what’s happening now? Trump’s FCC chairman and Verizon’s bitch, Ajit Pai, wants to reclassify broadband providers as Title I, and let the internet providers, companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, do whatever they want to control web traffic. This includes slowing down service by means of bandwidth throttling.

What does this mean for the internet and how we use it?

1. Companies will have to pay extra money to the internet providers, so their web traffic isn’t interfered with. This will seriously harm up and coming websites. If Google was invented post net neutrality they never would have been able to flourish in the way they have. They likely never would have gotten off the ground which is why even big companies like Google and Facebook support net neutrality.

2. The internet could turn into an oligopoly with only the big companies like Google able to pay enough to keep web traffic flowing. If broadband providers are able to interfere with web traffic to smaller sites there will be no competition on the internet as a marketplace. Oh, you’d love a version of Amazon that doesn’t treat it’s workers like shit and actually cares about mitigating its environmental impact. Too bad, the website is slow as shit if it even loads at all.

3. Any websites the internet providers disagree with will have their web traffic interfered with. This includes important social justice movements like BLM, LGBTQ pride websites, antifa and so on.

Guys, the votes for the Zootpia strawpoll jumped up like crazy. As in, 374 votes total, when it was only at like, 50 or so a week ago. I’m also getting a private message that someone was monitoring the results and saw that one story was winning by about 30 votes, until the last 30 minutes of the cutoff and then another option got 80+ votes out of nowhere. 

If that’s true, somebody used a proxy or some method to rig the votes. I hope whoever did this realizes that they may have jeopardized the poll so I might not end up picking any of the top votes. So if you were hoping that I’d see a landslide vote for one story and think that many people really voted it, then it’s kind of counter productive. Now I might not end up picking the first two at all just to be on the safe side; I might end up going for the 3rd place winner, just because that’ll be the safest option to make sure whoever cheated doesn’t get their way. 

Just when I said I was taking a break, BOOM. Another story. Short one though, focusing on the cute little ball of wool that I really really wish hadn’t been the villain, but it’s a done deal now, so w/e. Anyway, have some Bellwether drama. 

Ten years have passed since Dawn Bellwether’s incarceration. After a decade spent behind bars, the sheep has reached the end of her sentence and is released back into society. Upon picking up her old possessions, she receives an anonymous letter to go to another location, an apartment complex by the name of Grand Pangolin Arms. What could this mean for Bellwether? Who sent the letter, and what are their intentions? Could Bellwether be walking into a trap, or will she perhaps find a way to start a new life for herself after so much of it has passed her by?