Rare Symphony Angel

and one of them is the guy that you called a waste of carbon at a conference in denmark before you got kicked out of your field

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

Okay well the Eridians are patron saints of lost humanity.

(this came out of a conversation in the comments on a previous post about an author threatening to stop updating a fic because of lack of engagement)

So there’s this idea that fic writers should write for themselves and not care too much about stats or engagement,

and i totally get the sentiment behind that. if writing becomes entirely about stats and external validation, something important does get lost - creative freedom and joy, conviction in your own writing

but i also think:

“i write for myself, but i post for others.”

because posting fic is not only self-expression. it’s social. ao3 is called an archive, but emotionally it often functions as a community space.

people post for connection, for participation, for others to bear witness to their pain and trauma and grief,

and i don’t think most people are asking to be admired so much as acknowledged. there’s something deeply human about wanting another person to encounter something that mattered to you and go:

“ok, yeah, I see what you were trying to say. I see you.”

especially because fanfic is often people processing very real feelings through fictional characters at a safe distance, one step removed,

and then uploading that deeply personal thing into a shared archive and hoping somebody else might connect with it.

And i think that’s why it hurts so much when you summon up the courage and post a fic into the void and you get nothing back,

and then it’s like,

It’s particularly frustrating when you find something nice someone wrote about your fic on a completely different place and that same user name just put a kudo and didn’t write that same nice thing in the comment box on the fic. You found that nice thing entirely by accident.

Or when a popular author you used to admire tells you oh yes, they know your work. In fact they discussed it on a private discord with other authors in your fandom that you used to admire. Yeah, they all thought it was great! Except none of them could be bothered to tell you that, you had no idea they knew you wrote, never mind read your stuff!

Oh and the person telling you this only left a guest kudo, they could not possibly leave one with their actual name on it. That person told you this while also talking about all the cool art, podfic and even a bookbind they got from readers, so they know how awesome that feels but they can’t even tell you they liked your fic. They can’t even just click a button with their own name attached to it.

Those are things that happened to me.

I really wish that person had kept their “oh I’m one of your guest kudos” to themselves, because that absolutely destroyed my desire to write for months.

Don’t get me wrong, talking about stories with friends is awesome, but in the name of all that is good and holy, ALSO TELL THE AUTHOR!!!!

the Baths have been closed since 1978; I genuinely have no idea why this became a point of discourse in the year of our lord 2026, but that's TikTok for you (or, more accurately, Instagram reels, because I will never view a single TikTok in my life, I am 33 and I cannot be doing it)

and now to the meatier point: yes, the Baths themselves are Roman, but the geo-thermal spring that forms the basis of the Baths was already a sacred site for the pre-Roman Celtic people who lived in the area. Archaeological evidence is pretty firm on this. A cool, groovy fact about the Romans is that a lot of their religion (and just their imperial tactics in general) was based on the principles of syncretism. In practice, this means incorporating beliefs, practices or deities from one religion into another. The Romans figured out that, rather than suppress all local religion, it was easier to allow the people in the areas that you've conquered to continue to worship their gods, with the caveat that you're going to really highlight the similarities between their gods and yours, and strongly suggest that their gods are really just versions of yours, because Roman superiority, or something. This is called interpretatio Romana for the Latin freaks out there. Before the Romans turned up, the springs at Bath were already a worship site for the Celtic goddess, Sulis. The Romans looked at Sulis, waved their arms about a bit, and said 'cool, so Minerva, yeah?' and built the Baths on that site, dedicated to Sulis-Minerva - a version of the Celtic Sulis which was syncretised with the Roman Minerva. The Celtic people got to keep a version of their god, the Romans got their Baths, and everyone was happy, damp, and warm. In theory, anyway. That's not really how imperialism works, but y'know.

As the city train station is called Bath Spa, the city is Bath, the spa is Thermae Bath Spa, and the Roman attraction is the Roman Baths, and the spa at Bath is a famous and popular attraction where you can swim in the authentic waters of the hot springs, and they’re all on top of each other, it’s no wonder that people are constantly incredibly confused. I am genuinely sympathetic about people getting confused on the internet when grown adults from all over the planet can’t understand it, when they’re looking right at it and receiving explicit instructions about it.

As the Thermae marketing puts it, Thermae Bath Spa offers a unique opportunity to bathe in Bath’s naturally warm, mineral-rich waters just as the Celts and Romans did over 2,000 years ago.

This is because it is the same water. The water that is cleaned. Kuzco’s water.

Thermae Bath Spa draws water from the three springs – the King’s Spring (from under Stall Street), the Cross Bath (with some water rising directly to the surface of the Cross Bath in order to honour the desires of the Spring Foundation to let an unadulterated source of the water rise from Mother Earth into the atmosphere) and the Hetling Spring (a new bore hole sunk in 1998 and 2011). The water is tested weekly and has been consistently biologically hygienic.

That’s because they treat the water, because brain-eating amoeba are both a) optional and b) bad for spa marketing.

The reasons they haven’t cleaned up the Roman Baths for public swimming is because those buildings do far better as a delicate and important piece of heritage that people are perfectly happy to buy tickets to. Why the hell should a Roman cultural site also be run as a swimming pool. Like, why bother doing that. The reason you can’t swim in it is because there’s no incentives for letting you. But the amoeba aren’t a blocker. Amoeba are entirely optional. Nor is it insane to want to swim in the UK’s most famous hot spring. The same waters are right there to swim in - in a different building next door.

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