Moon Child

This made me smile so I hope it will make you smile too.

“His first day was on location with Kylie Minogue, but all eyes, even Kylie’s, were on Bernard. He’d turned up with a suitcase full of props, just in case, including a rubber chicken. And what an actor. Oh, really though, what a wonderful actor. We once took him to the TV Choice Awards and sent him up on his own to collect the award, and the entire room stood up and cheered him. That’s a lovely memory. He’d phone up and say, ‘I’ve got an idea! What if I attack a Dalek with a paintball gun?!’ Okay, Bernard, in it went! He loved Gill with all his heart; he mentioned her in every conversation we ever had. A love story for the ages. I’m so lucky to have known him. Thanks for everything, my old soldier. A legend has left the world.”  — Russell T. Davies

I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

help.

The Fanfic Author’s Guide to Metatext (As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

And it will actually be a lot less than that because out of the 80 sales I made, 26 Amazon credits were returned within 7 days.

I want to say they were returned in good faith because the persons realized the book just wasn't for them, but a sizeable chunk probably just wanted their credit back to use on something else after they were done listening to it.

And like... yeah, thank you for everyone who did buy it on Audible that's still $290 I wouldn't have. But considering Audible made $872.05 in profit from my book and I'll be the one paying for the refunds I am... yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, here's my Payhip and a list of alternatives to Audible.

Flirting Edition. Fluff Edition.

Also, please use library lending services instead of abusing Amazon's return policy. I am outright begging at this point. I made negative money on ebook sales for the last month due to that TikTok "hack."

My ko-fi tip jar is pinned to my top post in case anyone ever wants to toss a coin my way and ensure Holly Mop gets kept in turkey chews and squeaky toys.

https://ko-fi.com/joyde

I’m uncertain if you use the subscription service if it means I get 45% of the $10 as opposed to the actual price listed on the book (I’ll look into it), but that still makes the earning through Kobo audio subscription higher than Audible, even though Audible costs more per month.

So, if you’re in the US and looking to switch from Audible, please consider Kobo a valid alternate!

They pay authors better and also don’t demand exclusivity to pay the higher royalty rate, unlike Audible, which would pay me 45% royalties if I agreed to go Exclusive and not sell anywhere else at all for seven years.

At present I am locked into a seven year contract at 25% royalties with Audible because that’s what they demand for distribution. I can alter the files if necessary, but I can’t take them down. I also can’t set the book's price or control when it goes on sale.

I’m currently toying with the idea of not using Audible in the future again just because seeing the numbers in black and white is so bleakly depressing. By contrast, this morning, I’ve sold ten copies on Payhip at the minimum price and already out-earned what I earned from eighty sales on Audible. That is quite a difference; I’m sure you’ll agree.

Again, thank you to anyone who did buy through Audible; it’s still more money in my pocket than I would have had otherwise. You didn’t do anything wrong by using Audible.

I just wanted to show how little we actually make from sales via Amazon, and why using Amazon like a library is devastating for indie authors because I feel like people don't truly get it and think authors are crying into our big wads of cash.

~I am successful in my endeavors~

don't forget that for the foreseeable future miniskirts are only available during preorders and preorders close on monday!

This is such a specific pet peeve that I know is petty but

As a linguistics major who is also trilingual and has real life experience code-switching (changing from one language to another) mid-sentence on the daily, one of the BIGGEST bothers to me in fanfics is when it happens unnaturally. 

I get that we all think ‘wow, a character suddenly speaking in another language is sexy ;)’ but the truth is, there are natural AND also really awkward and unnatural ways to codeswitch, and unless you have first-hand experience, there is a high risk that your sexy insertion of a foreign word in the middle of a sentence is actually making someone who speaks that language natively cringe just a little bit.

And - I want to make this clear - that’s not your fault! It’s a difficult thing to write well. 

There is no singular ‘right’ way to do this! Even people who speak the same language will speak differently. Dialects, personal verbal habits, etc, all exist! So naturally this can be stretched. 

However, there are typically more ‘natural’ patterns of when people codeswitch - flip from one language to another. 

✪ Mutual bilingualism ✪

Situation: Two or more people both share a second language, aside from the ‘lingua franca’ 

Most of the time, if you are both speaking, you will pick a language and stick to it. Not because it’s impossible - just because it’s easier. In most cases, it takes more braincells to switch between languages than it does to continue in the same language. (*Remember this later, this is important.)

However, a common thing that happens is that one person will speak one language, and another will use the second one. 

If they both mutually understand one another, this is not an issue, and a comfortable way to converse. This happens often with bilingual kids who talk to their parents. They may speak in English to their parent, who will respond in another language. 

For example, conversations between my mother and I frequently take this format:

Text: A conversation between two people. The one on the left side of the screen is speaking in Russian. The right side is answering in English.

However:

When code-switching does happen, it happens most often:

at a paragraph level (starting a new topic in a different language)

at the sentence level (starting a new sentence in a different language)

at the clause level (switching mid-sentence, but after a comma)

at a word level (BUT only in specific cases! More on this below.)

in that order of frequency. 

For example, THIS type of codeswitching:

Text: (In English:) “There’s no snow, so we’re all good! I’m ready whenever you are” (New line, in Japanese:) “When you’re finished, I’ll be on the left side right outside that same exit.”

is proportionately more common than THIS:

Text: (In Japanese, except the bolded parts) “Does that sort of meme exist?” “Huh? Oh… no, wait. Why ‘Amazing Grace’?”

“But wait! What about words? Don’t people constantly insert words from foreign languages into their speech?”

Sure, they do. This happens all the time. 

Under the right circumstances. 

For example:

When you are trying to name a specific place or location which would not have an immediate translation

When you are a using a cultural word specific to a certain language (such as an artifact that only exists for one culture, or a specific holiday which doesn’t have an immediate translation into Common). 

When you are swearing, and you have a strong preference for a swearword in one language

When you are specifically teaching someone a word, or explaining a word from one language

Example: If I want to tell my mom I’m playing DnD with friends, so I can’t call her right now, I will say ‘DnD’ in English, because there isn’t any other way to say it.

Text: “(In Russian) Can I call in 5 minutes?” “Can we do it tomorrow? I’m playing (in English) DnD (in Russian) right now.” “Gotcha.”

HOWEVER, of course weirder examples exist. 

The prime ones are when you can’t remember a specific word in one language, and HAVE to dip into the reserves of the other. This happens to me constantly. 

Text: In russian, this says “I dunno, it just seemed very….. sudden. lol” - the word ‘sudden’ is not the Russian word for ‘sudden’. It’s just the English word ‘sudden’ transliterated into cyrillic, because I blanked for a moment and forgot how to speak.

OR when a you just pepper in a specific word because the ones in English will not convey the message properly:

Text: “How’s [NAME REDACTED]?” Reply: “(In Japanese) Otsukaresama!” which translates loosely to ‘hey, you worked hard, you deserve a break, etc’ but doesn’t have a direct translation into English. “He’s good. Seems (in Japanese) genki.” Again, the ‘genki’ here is a specific mood that I associate with that word, and felt couldn’t be replaced with the English equivalent.

Of course, this is somewhat terrible in showing you SPEECH patterns, because texting and speech are quite different. 

But the points you need to take away is: 

Very few people will codeswitch in the middle of the sentence without a good reason to do so. If you have a character who is trying to confess their love, unfortunately it IS unrealistic to have them go

“And I…. must confess that… Я люблю тебя.”

It looks cool, but it’s not actually intuitive. Of course, anyone CAN do it. But it has to be a very conscious choice. No one would do that on accident. It’s not actually easier than simply staying in one language and continuing to finish “I love you.” 

Similarly, most people DON’T drop in and out of languages several times in one sentence. 

It’s just not useful, and it actually takes more brainpower to do so. 

(To those of you yelling: But I do that! - I ask - but how OFTEN? Sure, I’ve also weirded up my language. Sometimes, my mom and I make Frankenstein sentences which are REALLY weird. But it’s not a constant thing. It’s usually a one-off.)

Sorry, these are a a real bitch to transcribe, but suffice it to say that this is an English-Russian soup.)

….

These are prime examples. They absolutely DO happen— (

….

wait for it…

…

….

WHEN BOTH SPEAKERS NATIVELY SPEAK THE SAME TWO LANGUAGES.

This brings me to a very important point:

If your character, who is bilingual, is speaking to another character, who would NOT understand them…………….. there’s a good chance they’re being a bit of an asshole.

Look, here’s the thing.

I live with my partner, who speaks Japanese and English fluently. I also speak Japanese at a conversational level, and English fluently. 

I also speak Russian at a native level. He barely knows much of it at all.

The amount of times I insert random Russian phrases into my conversations with my partner?

Once a month. Tops. 

(Once, I tried to teach him how to say ‘I love you’ - [ Я тебя люблю ] in Russian, and he mispronounced it as [ Я тебя убью ] ‘I’ll kill you’ and it has been a meme in our household ever since. Shadowgast fans who write Essek speaking Russian, I give you this anecdote freely. Do with it what you will. It’s yours.)

It’s not actually conducive to conversations, and it’s not as natural as some fanfics might have you believe. And even in the throws of passion, it’s not really that easy. If you and your partner both know a common language, you won’t actually deviate from it unless you have a good reason. Such as, if you want to teach someone to say something in that language! 

…..and their pronunciation will likely be silly! (Nothing wrong with that.)

I have a complicated answer to this:

The truth is, this greatly depends on the person. 

So I know that as soon as I say my own opinion, I will have 50 people descend on me in rage, protesting the opposite. 

BUT - personally, I think petnames in a foreign language have to do the following things:

they have to be short enough to be usable. Long-ass nicknames in a foreign language will be clunky in the middle of the sentence, even more so than native-language nicknames

they have to make sense for the age/relationship/culture of the characters. 

Russian, for example, has thousands of petnames. But there are some that scream ‘I’m your grandmother!’ and some which have very romantic connotations. You have to actually ask native Russians if it works or not. 

Also - keep in mind that OVERUSING a petname is a thing! If you’re constantly using that word, every other sentence, it might become tedious to go back and forth between the pronunciation of one language and then back into another. If I call my Japanese partner a petname which has a specific set of sounds unique to Russian, my brain has to do the legwork of switching gears back into Japanese or English pronunciation. That takes braincells! Which I do not have!

However, that’s a problem that’s more unique to languages which are completely dissimilar in grammar and phonology. I’ve heard that it’s easier between languages which are more closely related, such as German and English, or Spanish and English. 

BUT for that I turn it over to you, fellow bye-linguals and try-linguals. 

My native language is English, I’m semi-conversant in Spanish. HOWEVER. An important thing you need to know is that I live in Arizona, and for the last seven years worked in an industry that put me in frequent daily contact with people who spoke mostly or only Spanish. So while my vocabulary is limited, I’m pretty good at switching back and forth.

I'm aware that in some ways I'm a weird luddite but this is one of the major, major problems that I have with so much of the modern technology landscape existing as tools that allow you to access your data rather than tools which allow you to store your data.

Look at the data that you have. Look at what you are storing. Ask yourself "if the internet stopped working tomorrow, would I be able to access this information?"

If the answer is "no" you have 2 problems:

1 - You don't actually have that information and can easily lose access to it.

2 - You may not know who DOES have access to that information. If it's encrypted storage you're probably somewhat secure, but IS it encrypted storage? Or is it stored in plaintext on someone else's server?

So my deal with the EARN IT Act is that I don't super duper trust any of our government systems to do fuck all. I think it's worthwhile to contact your representatives, but I don't know that it will actually DO anything.

However YOU can do something.

If you don't want your data accessible to companies that will scan it and test it and pass it on to the government, don't give those companies your data.

Store things locally. Learn how to send and share encrypted files. If you have to store things online, store them with encryption that *you* have set up.

Honestly I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad. I'm pretty sure there are going to be significant security compromises as a result of the EARN IT Act and that we're going to get so buried in breached data that it's going to fundamentally alter how we have to identify ourselves in ways that will be more difficult to use while making people easier to track.

It's shit, and I hate it, and the internet is getting smaller and more fenced in and the big fun platforms that were easy to use and that let people of all technical skill levels share and collaborate that we had a couple decades to explore are now things that will just be a means of exploitation.

It fuckin' blows, friends.

But it also means that NOW is the time to fundamentally re-think how you interact with the internet. Ask yourself how you send data, and where you keep it. Ask yourself who has your information and how it is secured. Ask yourself what would happen if someone who hated you had access to your primary email account for a day, and ask yourself how you would try to fix what they fucked up.

EARN IT sucks, but this is NOT one of those instances in which you are helpless if it passes. Right now, before it passes, talk to the non-internet people in your life about why it is bad:

- It will mean that the government can see all your stored files - It will mean the websites you store files on will not be allowed to encrypt those files - It will mean that any asshole hacker who can access those systems can access all that data that will now be unencrypted.

This shitty act will make EVERYONE who uses the websites that are subject to the EARN IT act more vulnerable to data breaches, ID theft, and exploitation from hackers while ALSO enabling effortless surveillance by our own government.

This is bad, so tell your relatives and friends and co-workers to tell their representatives WHY it is bad by using this site: https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

The site is very easy to use and literally you do not even have to navigate to a separate page to contact your representatives.

It sucks trying to use a site like Tumblr or Twitter through a VPN or on TOR. It's slow and terrible because they are BIG sites moving a lot of data.

It's maybe time to start setting up email lists and forums for the people you want to be in touch with. Make sure that you don't only know your online friends through their social media profiles, but have other ways of contacting the people you care about.

If tumblr went down *today*, right now, who would you be able to find elsewhere on the internet and who would you lose forever? If discord got taken down tomorrow, is there somewhere else online that you'd be able to tell a friend who you are?

If you want to take action here are some things that you can do TODAY that will make you less vulnerable to these sorts of harms:

Create an account on Cryptpad.Fr - Cryptpad is an open-source, zero knowledge collaboration tool that is an excellent browser-based replacement for Gsuite. It doesn't have app support, but it is a really fantastic tool to work on shared documents in a secure way. You don't even have to have an account to access and work on a document. Free accounts come with 1GB of personal storage; this is actually a LOT of storage if you're keeping in good practice of storing your important files locally rather than online. It's also a great free, non-google, non-microsoft office suite that is more portable than Libre Office. If you do have the funds to support them as well as creating an account, please consider it.

Create a ProtonMail account. Protonmail is an end-to-end encrypted email service based in Switzerland that allows you to create free accounts with a limited amount of storage. Please note: while ProtonMail has zero-knowledge storage, they can be compelled to produce the user information that they have access to, including login and IP address data. If you need to make sure that no one knows you're logging in to protonmail you need to log in through an anonymizer like TOR.

Learn how to use TOR - which is very easy; it's pretty much like just using any other browser. Download it, install it, poke around a bit, and do some light-weight browsing. People think it's scary because it's something that hackers use and that governments yell about; it's not. It's also not ideal for day-to-day use, but it's good to already have it running when you need it instead of scrambling to use it in a panic if the EARN IT act passes.

Start using a password manager. If there is nothing else from this list that you do today, this is the one thing you should do. The other stuff can wait until later, but if the internet may soon be less secure as a result of EARN IT, the very least that you can do is secure your logins. Bitwarden is a free, portable, exceptionally functional Open Source password manager that has wonderful resources on its website that teach people at all skill levels how to effectively use the product. Please, Please, Please, PLEASE as the random ass hacker-type person in your life I am *BEGGING* you to use a password manager. And Bitwarden is free, but if you get the paid version for $10 a year you can get encrypted file storage and sending tools as a part of the package. Learning how to create and send encrypted files can be confusing and frightening for people who haven't done it before. It is VERY easy with Bitwarden and they have a lot of accessible info teaching you how to use that tool.

Protonmail was compelled to release IP addresses and metadata.

This fell into a really frustrating category of problems.

So the deal is that PM was forced to hand over this data, which they had never *announced* was collected, and didn't *advertise* was collected, but their privacy policy made it very clear that this data was collected.

People got very upset because they thought that there was no way to get tracked back to a protonmail account, and seemed to interpret this as false advertising or something.

I think this was a result of a mismatch between how much people understand about how the internet and email work and what they had been told about Protonmail as an end-to-end-encrypted provider.

I'm going to say this very clearly:

Email is not secure.

It is important that you know, and everyone reading this knows, that email is not secure. Security is not baked into the protocol, it wasn't planned for in development, and it's not something that is really fixable with email as it exists without tearing the whole thing apart.

If you send an email - even through a service with end-to-end encryption - there are portions of that email (sender address, recipient address, subject line, time sent, mail size) that are going to be impossible to hide because of how SMTP works.

Think of it like mailing a letter.

If you mail a normal email without end-to-end encryption, that's like sending a postcard. It's not at all protected, anyone who picks it up can see all of the writing on it. It would be pretty easy to reach into someone else's mailbox and pick up a postcard and see what it says.

If you mail an email with end-to-end encryption it's like sending a letter with a key that only you and the recipient have, but the post office still has to know where it is going and how big the envelope is.

And if you walk into the post office and pay for a stamp with a credit card then put that on your end-to-end encrypted letter before you stick it in the box, the post office will know that you are the one who sent it.

Anonymization with end to end encryption is like if you buy a stamp and put it in two envelopes with your letter and then hand that envelope to a guy on the street, telling him to hand it to another guy, then the other guy opens it and finds instructions to hand it to another guy, he hands it to another guy half a block down who opens it and sees that he's supposed to stick this stamp on it and drop it off at the post office. The guy who drops it off at the end of the chain doesn't know who it came from, the guy who took it from you doesn't know where it's going, and the guy in the middle doesn't know either of those things, but if anyone steals the envelope in the middle of that they *still need to have a key to open the letter.*

There is a big, big difference between encrypted communication and anonymous communication; email is not really capable of anonymous communication because the protocols that govern it mean that SOME part of the communication - time, date, recipient, size - will always be visible to the email provider. However, it is possible to anonymously *send* email if you can make sure no one connects you to the email account, which you do by using an anonymizing service.

The solution to this problem is to log in to protonmail with an anonymizer like Tor if you are attempting to keep your use of an account secret instead of simply protecting the contents of your message.

I understand why people panicked and reacted by backing away from Protonmail, but honestly I think that it was an overreaction that was an outgrowth of people not really understanding how the internet works.

If you need to make sure that nobody ever connects you with a particular email address, it is not enough to keep that email address secret, you need to anonymize your contact with that email address.

The same is true for logging in to *any* service that you need to ensure people don't know your connection to.

Any time your computer connects to ANYTHING on the internet, there is a record of it. Every time you log into your email, there is a record. Every time you connect to Signal, there is a record. Every time you log in to Telegram, there is a record.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

A decade later, at the Opening Night of the Coraline musical, I was sitting next to Morgan, Merilee’s youngest daughter, and told her how her not being scared had made the book happen. And she said “I was terrified. But I needed to find out what happened next. So nobody knew.”