ItCanBePalped

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Progress.

Environmental advocacy and the LGBTQ+ rights movement share a common purpose: protecting vulnerable communities, caring for the spaces we all call home, and creating a world where we all can flourish. Our world is brightest when people can live authentically, love freely, and be embraced for who they are. From rainbow reefs to shimmering tides, diversity makes our blue planet stronger, healthier, and more inspiring.

I was checking some of your fics in this link https:// www.trickster(.)org/speranza/stories(.)html and next to the titles there is a number like for example Eight Sessions (270K) -my favorite dS fic ever- and I was wondering what is the number? I thought it was the number of words but I didn't remember that fic being so long so I checked ao3 and yeah it says 34,432 words. Then, I checked other fics' word count in both pages and at least some of them don't match. What is that number then?

LOL - I love this question, even though it makes me feel OLD AS DIRT.

In the olden times of the dial up internet, the number you put next to a story was NOT the word count but the FILE SIZE - it was 240k in size, this is to say, a quarter of a mb--and this told the reader how long it would take to LOAD in your BROWSER. Now of course 240k is not very much, but understand me when I say that my first computer/word processor was an Atari 130, which had as its total system memory, 130k!! (Which was double my dad's computer, which was an Atari 65, which had--yes--65k total memory!)

Anyway Eight Sessions was written in--hm, looks it up, May 2002! Which means that only 20% of people had broadband internet at that time - so 80% would have had dialup and have to get the story through a modem. I posted the story to the F/K email list in parts, and then when it was only you wanted to make sure people knew how big it was so that they could anticipate the loading.

Dunk ties off the line he’s been working on at the directing shout from a sailor and gladly accepts the drink of water being passed to him. “Getting your sea-legs just fine,” Ser Lyonel says conversationally from his shoulder and Dunk manages to not spill the water down his front. Drinking water is a precious commodity and doesn’t get wasted. “Ser,” he stutters and slouches. Their naked shoulders are almost touching, arms nearly brushing. Dunk drinks, hands the ladle back and Ser Lyonel drops it back into the bucket of water. “And Torren was worried you’d fall off board.” “Well. I can’t swim.” “Most of these men can’t, not really,” Ser Lyonel says with a shrug and hands the bucket to a passing sailor, who takes it with a sigh and shake of his head. “If I’m thrown a line I don’t think I’d die.” “Hmm, hard to kill, you. I can swim, though, so depending on how choppy the water I might come get you myself. As soon as we wind up somewhere where it’s safe enough I’ll teach you how to tread water at least.” Ser Lyonel slaps Dunk’s naked back with a flat hand, sweat on sweat and Dunk tingles all over. His toes curl against the scrubbed deck. “Every man of Storm’s End should know that, just in case the gods try to pull the keep down again and, you know, fucking water gets in.” “That’s a bit far fetched, respectfully, ser,” Beron says, coming up on Ser Lyonel’s other side. He winks at Dunk behind his back and Dunk grins at him, glad he doesn't have to say anything. “Fuck off, that didn’t sound very respectful.” “Apologies, my lord.” Beron sounds perfectly sincere, but his pink face is near split in two by his grin. Ser Lyonel ruffles his sunbleached hair roughly and Beron squawks. Which he will deny later, when Dunk repeats the noise at him. He always does.

read the chapter in full on ao3 now and let me know your thoughts, please!