My library of random stuff.

Okay. 

These kids go to school and have to deal with the very plausible possibility that they won’t come home, because some asshole might decide he wants his fifteen minutes of fame and chose to get it with a gun. They have to practice active shooter drills. They have to watch the news and see the faces of other kids who died just because they went to school. And many of them have already developed anxiety, depression, and PTSD because of it.

Live through a depression? 

Okay. 

The housing crisis and economic crash of 2008 has all but destroyed the middle class. These kids are looking at bleak-ass futures where the price of an education might destroy them, and where the education itself doesn’t give them any kind of guarantee of a decent job with a livable wage because billionaire-owned megacorporations would rather see their workers starve than face the thought of losing a few points in the “who has more money” race. 

These kids live with the very real fact that our planet is on fucking fire and no one with enough power to do anything about it seems willing to bother. 

They live with the fact that we’re having a resurgence of Nazi and Fascist ideals in what is supposed to be the ‘land of the free.’ They live with the fact that we are putting refugees--many of them children like they are--in cages and letting them die of things like the flu. They’re watching grown-ass adults bring back plagues rather than risk their children developing autism because some asshole faked a study and said vaccines and autism were linked. They’re watching women’s bodily autonomy and gay and trans rights being stripped away one law at a time. They’re watching black and brown people get gunned down by policemen with little to no accountability, and watching their grandparents die because they can’t afford their next insulin shot. 

These kids are literally living with the prospect of a planet that might be uninhabitable in another generation or two, an economy that might well collapse, a wage minimum that promises they’ll need 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet, an education system that is making college an elite and impossible goal, and a bunch of back-water bigoted policy making its way to the supreme court and getting upheld.

These kids are perfectly capable of seeing and understanding the fact that things are falling down around them but are powerless to do anything about it, and you’re going to freak out about them expressing their frustration at older generations with an innocuous and harmless phrase? And you’re seriously going to sit there and pretend it’s just that these kids don’t like to be told they’re wrong? 

Yeah, I’m with the kiddos on this one:

(15+15=30

Three

Five

Nine

onE

thrEE

fivE

sEvEn

          Quick one-shot. Needed to do something sort of different.

 Marinette had dreamed of the moment. The moment she would finally be brave enough to look Adrien Agreste in the eyes and tell him how she left; that she loved him. She had pictured, hoped, how would be a thousand times. It would be like fairy tale. Adrien the handsome prince. Her, the princess. He’d sweep her off her feet. And they’d go get ice cream together, ready to start her happily ever after. Like in the movies.

“I’m sorry, Marinette,” Adrien frowned, scratching his head, like he didn’t know what to say. “I just don’t think of you that way.”

“Marry me,” Katsuki says suddenly and brazenly, that it catches Izuku completely off guard.

Reeling back in shock, Izuku blinks as his mouth drops open. “W-what?! What did you just say?” Recovering for a moment to scowl Katsuki, Izuku’s face pinches up. “Also that should be a question and not a demand, sir.”

Katsuki grinds his teeth and glares at him. “Don’t make me fucking repeat myself, Deku.”

Izuku shakes his head disapprovingly. “Sir,” he points an accusatory finger at Katsuki, “let me tell you something: when a loyal and beloved employee of yours is giving you their two week notice, a proper respond is to accept it and move on. This is no time to joke around. It’s not funny.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing to you?” Katsuki frowns, narrowing his eyes at the finger in front of him. “And who the fuck said I was even joking?” he says, snatching Izuku’s forefinger in his hand. He untangles Izuku’s fingers to wrap his hand around him in a firm hold. “Marry me, Deku. You won’t find a better catch than me.”

They’re holding hands, Izuku internally screams. His boss, his terrifying demonic boss who’d threatened to fire Izuku no less than five times a month and made all the undersecretaries cried to HR for his merciless verbal lashing, is holding Izuku’s hand like they’re teenagers in love. It’s so ridiculous and absurd, Izuku wants to pinch himself to make sure it isn’t some kind of a nightmare.

“I-Is this a scare tactic?” Izuku blurts out, struggling out of Katsuki’s grip but he won’t relent even a single inch. “That won’t stop me, I’m still quitting you know.”

Katsuki brows knit together. “Are you an idiot, Deku? I’m offering to marry you and you keep rebuking me like an insane person.”

Izuku is the insane one in this situation?!

He waves their linked hands up and down in the air in a sign of obvious frustration and confusion. “I don’t–you just–oh my god, sir,” deflating, he sighs as though in pain, “why do you even want to marry me?”

Katsuki shrugs. “You’re quitting. How else am I going to replace you?”

Izuku huffs. “That’s not how you go at it!” He slams is free hand on Katsuki’s desk. “I am thirty-seven years old and did you know when the last time I been on a proper actual adult date that last more than an hour before you blasted my cellphone and called me back for some emergency? Fifteen years! I’ve bled and gave my all to you and this company and had never even taken a single vacation or sick day for it!” Izuku shouts, all the feelings he had been containing is dumped all over Katsuki’s desk now. “It’s high time I think about myself for once. This is about me and my happiness.”

Silence, and then, Katsuki leans in close till they’re inches apart. “You just want to quit so you can get fucking hitch and have a family. Then, what’s wrong with my proposal?” he asks, entirely too serious.

“This and that are you completely different thing!” Izuku insists loudly, swinging their linked hands around. “Sir, just because you don’t want to train another person up to replace me doesn’t mean you should marry me to keep me from leaving. That’s not how the world work!”

“Why not? You’re annoying good at your job and this company is better with you in it. If you leave the then morale here would get so low that the employees would all gather together and revolt against me.” Katsuki glowers. “You like me and, at least, tolerate you on a good day and we have known each other for over two decades. That’s more I can for all the useless peons working under me.”

Izuku’s lips stretch into a sulky pout. “See what I mean?” he complains, tugging at their hands. “There’s not even a drop of romance in that! How can I consider marrying you when you give such a lackluster reason?” His sigh is palpable. “There are way better options out there for me. I don’t have to settle myself for this.”

Katsuki pushes himself forward and stands up to full height as he stares Izuku down with the full force of his wrath. “Deku, you little shit, are you actually rejecting me for some crap ass unknown out there who can’t even get on my level?!”

“Well,” Izuku says, who’d survived through several hundreds firing in just the past five years alone, and nods his head eagerly, “yes.”

"Fuck you!” Katsuki snaps, finally releasing his grip on Izuku’s hand. “Money, power, position, I don’t lose to anyone. I’ll show you exactly why I’m better!”

Izuku stares, cocking his head in thought. “Okay, then I’ll give you three months. Prove it to me and I might just even chose to stay.”

“You–you.” Katsuki’s face go red with anger at the audacity of Izuku to imply he only ‘might’ stay around even after all the effort and work put in.

Izuku shrugs, edging backward. “You don’t have to do it, I’m not forcing you into anything, but I thought you don’t lose right, sir?”

Katsuki’s lips twist into a sneer. “Just watch me, Deku. I fucking woo you off your feet that you never look at any other person again. You’ll be so fucking smitten with me that you’ll go to sleep with my name on your lips and I’ll be the only thing you think from now on!”

Dear AO3 users,

We would like to bring your attention to an ugly situation with unauthorized copying of works posted on AO3.

A lot of works from AO3 have been copied to fanfics.me (we’ll call this site FFM for brevity’s sake) and are still being copied right now, either:

— automatically by a code specifically created by FFM’s owner for this purpose, or

— by unaware or unscrupulous FFM’s users via semi-automatic method (by inserting a link to a work from AO3 into a web-worm on FFM).

All works from AO3 — with a few exceptions (I’ll elaborate on this below) — can end up on FFM without authors even noticing. Even fanarts or podfics.

FFM doesn’t comply with DMCA which means that such reposts endanger fanworks’ creators in case the copyright holder demands to delete the fanwork.

Authors of the copied works do not have any control over them; if the work is edited it won’t be updated on FFM until someone manually updates it.

Additionally FFM’s owner makes money out of reposted free fanworks from numerous Google and Yandex ads on each and every FFM’s page by having people go to this site when searching for fics on Google etc. So we recommend using an Ads Blocker when visiting this site in order to prevent the owner from earning more. Ghostery or Adblock Plus work just fine, but you can use any other Ads Blocker that is convenient to you.

Oftentimes FFM even shows up before the original post with the work on Google search results.

The owner’s e-mail: [email protected].

The owner at AO3.

We are trying to bring AO3’s users attention to this situation and help authors with taking their works down from FFM.

Briefly about the website and its owner

Let me start from the very beginning as it will bring into the light the nature of FFM and give a good example of its owner characteristic behavior.

At first, some person with nickname Refery created FFM as a web archive where authors — mostly from Harry Potter fandom — could publish their fanworks.

Time passed, the site grew and added some features (blogs, pre-moderation and etc.), and all was good and well up till the moment when Refery decided that it would be a great idea to copy to FFM fanworks published on other Russian fanfiction archives — among them from the biggest and most known site ficbook — without asking authors for permission. Even those works that had “Ask me before posting the story somewhere else” mentioned in its text or summary were copied.

For some time nobody noticed, but when finally and inevitably this came out the authors were outraged. It took a lot of time to finally persuade Refery to at least not to copy fanworks bearing a special tag “Уточнять у автора” (Ask the author first).

But after some time Refery — without giving any notice — violated his own promise and resumed copying to FFM fanworks that had the agreed upon tag. The authors complained again, so very reluctantly and after many painful discussions this feature was reinstalled.

So FFM has been notoriously known, mostly amongst Russian fandom, for claims on re-posting fanworks without the consent of the authors.

We’re mentioning this situation just to give you a detailed portrait of a person we are dealing with here.

Not only fanworks are copied to this website, but original works, too. Even those which were already published. There were all 7 of Harry Potter novels (both original text and translation), The Hobbit: There and Back Again (translation) and Vorkosigan Saga (translation) available for everybody to read and download. They were taken down only recently due to the attention this whole situation had drawn, but nothing ever goes away once it’s posted online and you can access the proof via Internet Wayback machine. We know for a fact there are other books on FFM and some actions have been taken in this regard, but still it takes time to find published books on this site.

Recently Refery decided that Russian archives are not enough for him and started copying all fanworks into FFM without any permission from the authors from numerous sites, like AO3, fanfiction.net, fictionpress.com, fanfiktion.de and likely other web-archives.

Moreover, the authors of these works can not delete their works from FFM and/or manage them. The site is in Russian only and, hence, we strongly believe that non-Russian speaking authors even do not know that their works are reposted somewhere else.

As a Russian fan-community, we have tried to stop such activity of FFM many times; however, we have not been successful in achieving our goal completely. Our most recent achievement is that the FFM’s owner implemented the “Don’t copy to another site” tag created specifically for AO3 (here is the link to FFM’s owner post on his personal blog regarding this tag. Please use Ads Blocker!). This tag should be added to each work presented on AO3 in case the author does not want their works to be copied to FFM.

We are of the opinion that no work should be taken without permission in the first place, but this tag is all we’ve got.

Please note that it seems that some time ago there was similar case of unauthorized copying with other site. Please check this link, they give useful advice.

How to prevent copying from AO3

If you check AO3 you may notice that “Don’t copy to another site” tag has hugely emerged in the recent weeks, but mostly amongst Russian users and there is a good reason for this: the owner of FFM announced this tag only in Russian and only on his private blog, so naturally there is no way for non-Russian speaking AO3 users to know about this — albeit non-satisfactory — solution.

There are no guaranties that the FFM’s owner won’t change the rules again as has already happened numerous times before (few examples we described above) and that works with this tag won’t be reposted in the future, but for now it’s the only quick and working solution besides making your works visible only to registered users, which is not ideal. 

This situation is highly unpleasant, but we ask you not to delete your works from AO3, because if the work is deleted from AO3 it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM: we won’t be able to refresh it manually and remove the text.

Please note that adding this tag won’t work for texts that have already been copied. Only users who have accounts at FFM will be able to delete them. Each work needs to be deleted manually.

However, the Russian fandom — except for the owner of FFM — strongly condemns reposts without the consent of the author, so feel free to contact our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing the links to the works stolen from AO3, so we could delete them for you.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to cover all authors and works manually. So, we contacted AO3’ Technical Team with the aim to bring their attention to this situation and inform about it all AO3 users, and hope that AO3 team will find a general solution to resolve this problem, possibly, in collaboration with the AO3 lawyers.

We are trying to warn as many authors as possible and recently started spreading this information via comments on AO3; but considering the number of works copied to FFM informing all authors will take considerable time, and we can easily miss someone, especially since the copying is still in progress and new works from AO3 are appearing on FFM every day.

Please help us spread the word!

We tried to make a comprehensive FAQ about this. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear!

FAQ

Q: Can I check if my work was copied to FFM?

A: Yes, you can.

FFM makes money on Google and Yandex ads, so we recommend turning on the Ads Blocker of your choice before visiting this site.

Please follow this link, insert the title of your work or your AO3/other web-archive nickname into the field containing the words “insert-title-nickname” and hit “Искать” (Search).

For works rated Mature or Explicit you will be able to see only the caption “Текст произведения доступен только зарегистрированным пользователям старше 18 лет” (“The text of the work is available only to registered users over 18 years old”), but FFM users are able to read and download the story.

Q: My work from AO3 was copied. How can I take it down?

A: First of all add the tag “Don’t copy to another site” (without “ “) to the stories you want to be taken down.

Actually we would recommend adding this tag to all the works you don’t want to be copied.

Contact one of our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing links to your works or send an e-mail with your deletion request directly to the FFM owner at [email protected] or at AO3. 

There is a third option: to register on FFM and delete the work yourself by hitting the refresh button, but considering that the site is in Russian we do not think it will be very convenient to those who do not speak Russian language.

Q: I got the message that my work has been deleted. How can I check if it is true?

A: You can go to FFM, search for you work, click on its title and scroll down.

After the summary there is a field that should look like this for those fics that have been deleted.

Basically it says that the author of this particular work has forbidden its copying and that only the information on its title, author’s nickname, rating, pairings, summary and the link to original post on AO3 are available. 

For works that are still available on FFM this field looks like this (if the work is open for non-registered users).

Q: My work copied from AO3 was deleted, but FFM still shows some information on it. Can it be deleted?

A: Even though the text of the fic is not going to be on FFM anymore after it has been deleted, the fic’s title, author’s name, rating, pairings, summary and link to original post on AO3 will remain there.

The deletion of this leftover information can be done only by the site owner himself.

Some Russian authors tried to make him to delete it, but in most cases the FFM’s owner refused them mentioning that publication of such information is in line with fair use concept and doesn’t violate authors’ rights.

We are yet unsure how to delete this leftover information. In case you need it as well, try contacting the FFM owner at [email protected] or at AO3. Maybe e-mails of a large number of authors will work, but unfortunately we can’t guarantee anything. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Q: My work from fanfiction.net/fictionpress.com/fanfiktion.de/other web-archives was copied to FFM. How can I take it down?

A: Unfortunately, there is no possible way for us to delete from FFM the fanworks that are copied from web-archives other then AO3. Only FFM’s owner can delete these works, please try contacting him at [email protected] or at AO3. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Please do not delete your works from the web-archive it was stolen from, because if the work is deleted it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM.

Kacchan’s Promise

Feeling Forgotten

There are 3 main types, but from my research, this looks to be American Gregg Shorthand.

As you can see, there are set symbols for every letter.

Let’s break one of the words down:

Using the Gregg Alphabet as reference, we can see most of the letters in “atrophied” are present. But why no “o” vowel, and why is “ph” written as “f”?

Simple. In shorthand, you cut out all vowels in a word when writing it down, with the exception of words that BEGIN or END with a vowel (hence the “a” at the start being present), or like in the “i” in “atrophied”, to make it more readable when the sound could be harder to distinguish if it isn’t written. In “atrophied” if the the “i” isn’t written, it could be hard to tell if the writer meant a “fud”, “fad”, “fod” or “fid” sound, for example.

Also, since Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, you are encouraged to write down the phonetic sounds of words rather than the actual letter blends - in this case, write an “f” instead of a “ph”.

So in actuality, these aren’t just meaningless scribbles - it’s Gregg Shorthand, a writing system developed to take down notes more quickly than when written out in full, which is very useful in a medical or journalistic environment.

Some people can even write over 100 words in a minute! And, it’s been in use since John Robert Gregg invented it in 1888! Wow! So old!

Cat winced as she registered the throbbing pain in her head. Dear Arceus, what time was it and just what did she do last night to have this dreadful headache…? Karen better have not snuck some of the Adult Berries into her food… really, Karen should know better, but sometimes Captain and Blitz just encouraged her despite the fact that they shouldn’t and then things just spiraled out of control, especially when Mischief got included.

A sharp, decidedly not friendly poke to the underside of her arm forced her consciousness up even more, and she opened her eyes to see a blank grey ceiling which was not where she went to sleep last night.

“Mmnghmph,” she mumbled disgruntledly, wondering who decided to try and kidnap her this time for her Pokémon. As she tried to turn her head to the side, she realized that her arms were tied down with metal restraints on a medical table. Waking up significantly more, she kicked her legs futilely, only to discover that they had the same treatment as her arms. Well… this was a difference from being tied down with rope. “Th’ fuck?”

A sharp light shined directly into her eyes immediately in response to her somewhat coherent words. “The subject seems to be an intelligent lifeform, Boss. Maybe we just happened to open a portal under some unfortunate kid?”

“Have you ever seen any kid with these weird contraptions, though?” another voice piped up from somewhere to Cat’s left. “Like this backpack, dude. I keep pulling and pulling things out and they just keep coming, man. This is at least like, the fiftieth bottle I’ve come across.”

“Careful, your American is coming through,” the first voice replied dryly.

“Get back to work and take those blood tests!” a new voice barked harshly. Probably this Boss person the first one was talking to. “And open one of those… strangely colored balls for experimentation.”

Cat barely had a second to protest before the familiar sound of a Pokéballs being opened and one of her partners jumping out with a loud growl occurred. By the feel of the wet nose against her arm and the screaming and teeth gnashing threateningly and the angry barking, it was definitely her Houndoom—Brigadier.