TheFrogAndTheCamera

That critically examine gender roles. Ok. I'm going to be specific on that critical phrasing in that not only is there something not expected about the trio's genders but also that it is used to examine their identities within the lens of gender (i.e. Link just being a girl is not enough, but Link's being a girl being discusses as how she's then a hero is).

Changes by @folodu is a Princess and the Pauper story about Link and Zelda swapping places. It has a lot of fun exploration on gender as they take on each other's roles.

The Hand That Holds the Sword by @zarvasace features a t4t Zelink couple, their genders being very relevant to how they're treated due to the, hm, circumstances they find themselves in.

The King and the Mercenary by @ghosttcryptids calls a lot into question about gender and features some very trans conversations. Considering our hero is not the typical hero, it also asks questions on identity there.

Mark of a Hero 🌟 by @amelias-calamity-quintet explores gender a lot through the relationship of Zelda and one of her siblings, Syd. There's a lot to be said about this dynamic from both a trans and feminist lens, but I won't take over the conversation for my own work.

The Prince of Hyrule by @batrogers features a trans character, Zaal, and their relationship with Princess Zelda is one very much worth exploring.

Shattered Tomorrow by @shattered-tomorrow has a lot of gender complications, to include genderfluid Zelda and a gay Link. Their relationships with those identities are definitely related to the plot and how they engage with their titles.

Song of the Sages by @amelias-calamity-quintet has a girl Link, and considering everyone else is going to get a "how corporate feminism affects me" subarc, you bet your ass I'm gonna have one for Link about being a girl hero.

Souls of Power by @mothmanicus is early on but there's some gender things to be explored about Link. Based on set up, I will say there will be. Excited to see if I'm right.

Then I won't leave no legacy by @domoda is very gender conversational! Not a long work, but it definitely pokes holes at some things.

Trail of the Galaxy by @amelias-calamity-quintet has two Zeldas, which already calls into question a lot of their relationships with being "princesses." Add One of the Zeldas having a gender crisis, yeah, we're gonna get into it.

So, genuinely no hard feelings, I get where y'all are coming from, but that was actually kind of my entire point

The Rosetta Stone was and is real.

This is indisputable. You can go see the Rosetta Stone on display right now!! I'd say you could even it touch it, but there's museum glass in the way, so that the oils on human skin can't further degrade this 2,000-year-old stele, which is one of the most important surviving historical texts in the world.

The Tower of Babel is not real, and it never was.

The Tower of Babel is a millennia-old religious story about a mythological tower, which serves as a mythological explanation for the origin of different human languages. Yes, there are some religious historians who speculate that the myth was inspired by one or another physical tower, but no, that doesn't prove anything other than "this is how many people in this culture/time and place explained or understood that sort of event."

The Rosetta Stone, on the other hand, is an object of translation that actually exists

Photo credit: By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved from Wikipedia article "Rosetta Stone." https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3153928

That picture is of a real object. It is not of a picture of a 3,000+ year old myth.

Our attempts to understand each other will not result in us being struck down by some force from on high!

And the true path to a world where we can all understand each other does not involve us all speaking the same language. That's racist bs

Preserving and revitalizing endangered languages is a race against time. For many languages, especially Indigenous languages and languages from an oral tradition, the loss of each individual fluent speaker is a permanent loss of language

Almost half of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered! You can learn more about, and find resources and education on, the Endangered Language Project and similar organizations, especially ones that are Indigenous and respect knowledge sovereignty and traditional ownership

knowledge sovereignty: when it comes to language and traditional knowledge, knowledge sovereignty is the simple but super important principle that the speakers of a language and members of a culture should have full, independent control of their own traditional knowledge and knowledge systems. For Indigenous languages in particular, sometimes knowledge sovereignty means certain language resources are closed to those outside the tribe, Nation, and/or culture - which is absolutely fair, given what white people have historically done and are still doing when it comes to stealing, and then fucking copyrighting, Indigenous traditional knowledge. (Related: Fuck Monsanto)

But good news - you can learn more about, support, and access community resources on language preservation at The Endangered Language Project here:

may I request a Wild boy using urbosa’s fury ^^

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

This is going to look great on my “look at me I’m a pretentious twat” bookshelf.

But then… the first few sentences read:

“In 1875 delegates of the Oxford University Press proposed to me that I should undertake the compilation of a new Latin-English Lexicon, of something the same compass as the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott. I acceded to the proposal in the expectation, for which I had at the time what appeared to be good grounds, that I should obtain adequate assistance in the work. My hopes were, however, disappointed.”

Ouch.

He goes on to detail how he spent 12 years working on A all by himself. Then the university asked him to publish what he had, so he threw together the rest of the book, clearly caring less and less the further he got in the alphabet - the entire Q section has four entries - and published… this.

Obviously this is going straight onto my pretentious twat shelf as a goofy conversation starter, but it is interesting and potentially useful if obscure Latin words are your thing. (Did you know “ramen” is a hapax legomenon meaning “a small chip or shaving”?)

second rule of fandom is everything goes back to kirk/spock

third rule of fandom is everything goes back to holmes & watson

the funny thing is. I originally typed out "fifth rule of fandom is everything goes back to gilgamesh & enkidu" but then I thought 'no, I can't trust that people will be familiar with the epic of gilgamesh'

hey so. don’t do this.

“coming from a place of respect” there is nothing respectful about a comment like this. this is exactly why I say witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

I am not saying “you’re an asshole if you think a fic is ai”. I have come across fics that I believe were ai-generated. but instead of asking (accusing) the authors, I make my own decisions whether I’ll continue reading for the benefit of the doubt or quietly exit the fics and look for something else to read.

because with every accusation like this, there’s always a chance of a genuine, innocent writer getting wrongly accused.

last but not least, fanfic writers do NOT owe you anything. they write for themselves and their own enjoyment. their ao3 accounts are their houses and they were kind enough to let you in their houses. for free. (you get to read things for free.) you don’t go into other people’s houses and tell them “actually I think the way you decorate your room is sus. did you actually do it yourself or did you ask a robot to do it for you?”. THEY 👏🏻 DON’T 👏🏻 OWE 👏🏻 YOU 👏🏻 ANYTHING. and I say this as someone who is not a fan of ai fics. if you don’t like what you’re seeing, quietly leave.

Tags passing peer review, gonna share.

1. Yes this person did port most of their fic to AO3. But this fic is a sequel to one a friend of theirs wrote and that one didn’t make the jump.

2. This fic is supposed to have art but wherever they were hosting the images went under years ago.

3. One of the big fandom classics made it here but there was apparently at one point more content in the LJ comments. The link is broken.

4. Everyone keeps referencing a particular ship manifesto/influential meta. They’re referring to it by an acronym with no links. It may still be out there but it is unfindable

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)