a Mess™️

This is your semi frequent reminder that there is no official AO3 app

All those are unofficial and available on the Google play store as of August 13th 2025. They mirror AO3's content and insert ads, for which the developer gets paid by page impression (that's every time the ad appears in the fic you're reading) not just clicks.

No money goes to AO3, nor to the fic writer. It goes to the person who did the bare minimum.

Many of these apps have poorly worded or non existent privacy policies, so they may also be mining as much data as possible and selling that on to unknown third parties.

Trans activist Jamison Green's passport photos before and after HRT. Left he's age 32 (1980) Right age 41 (1989) after being on testosterone for one year (x)

Like I need people to understand the mental image here of a multimillionaire internet creator personally overseeing DVD production in his own house like he’s running an underground bootleg operation out of a basement in 2007.

It’s weirdly charming because there’s something very “old internet” about it, this energy of “I made a thing, and now I will physically hand it to people myself like an artisan at a craft fair.”

The man really said: “The future of cinema is me standing next to a humming disc burner at 2am”

A) Yes, he does seem to have gotten these specifically for Iron Lung.

B) DVD and CD burners are not devices that exist exclusively for bootlegging. You can go buy one yourself right now. If you make a movie, an album, a game, you are entirely free to burn copies and distribute them.

When I say "I can't help but believe he's onto something," that's what I'm talking about.

Not that everyone should suddenly start mass-producing DVDs in their basement.

I mean the underlying idea.

That we've become so accustomed to everything existing at the mercy of platforms, storefronts, algorithms, licensing agreements, and corporate infrastructure that we've almost forgotten creators can just... put things out into the world themselves.

There is something appealing about physical media as an act of ownership and preservation.

And I think we've collectively become a little too comfortable treating the continued existence of creative work as something that should be outsourced to social media platforms and streaming services.

There's value in remembering that if you make something, you can put it on a physical object and hand it directly to another human being.

Just a thing that came from your mind, made with your hands, existing in the world because you decided it should.

I think we should be doing more of that.

Even if you're not a fan of Markiplier, even if you have absolutely zero interest in Iron Lung, I think there's something genuinely inspiring about what he's doing here.

The willingness to look at the modern content ecosystem and go, "No, actually, I'd like to put this thing on a physical object and hand it directly to people."

That creative work can exist as a thing in the world, sitting on a shelf, surviving platform changes, algorithm shifts, licensing disputes, and whatever fresh catastrophe the internet invents next week.

Maybe it's the preservationist bug in my brain.

Maybe I'm just old enough to find comfort in media that continues existing after somebody forgets to renew a contract.

But regardless of if you're a fan of Iron Lung or not, I think that's an idea worth being inspired by.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad would make Christmas mixes and a series of playlists he called "Eclectic Seizure" by mixing and matching tracks from CDs he'd bought and burning them onto custom CDs. You can buy them for incredibly cheap; a stack of 100 medium-quality CDs cab go for like $30, and you can get a bunch of cheap cases called "Jewel Cases" to store them in. You write the title in marker on the label side.

One of my dream projects is to modify one of these guys to have a CD-RW instead of an audio reader and store my important memories on CDs there, or maybe use it to mass-produce CDs for my friends:

technically it found our friends, but they a) have a 60lb dog who has only been around full grown cats, b) are expecting their first child later this year, and c) are getting the keys to their new house today less than 24 hours after finding this little man, so it was decidedly not sickly little kitten time for them

thankfully they were able to take him to the vet last night after finding him since we were out of town, so we picked him up at almost 11 last night and gave him his second Dawn flea bath of the day (poor guy was absolutely covered despite our friend's earlier efforts) and got his eye meds and dewormer meds in him. he can't meet our other cats for a week due to the conjunctivitis, but he is already looking so much better than he did yesterday