Random Fandom Stuff and Other Things

Oh hey pals, new AO3 scam just hit!

Just like the tumblr scam where they pretend to be "the support team" this is also a scam.

I edited out the link because I GUARANTEE if you go to it you will get your computer hacked and your AO3 or discord account stolen.

I am so mad because I got this 30 seconds after posting a new fic.

DO NOT FALL FOR THESE SCAMS.

No legitimate website support will EVER contact you like this!

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

the congress president mallikarjun kharge said in parliament: "students have been beaten. the government is attempting to stifle dissent." samajwadi party mp dimple yadav said "today will be remembered as a black day for democracy." even some of the police who carried out the orders apparently looked ashamed. that's how wrong this was.

and through all of it the prime minister has not held a single open press conference in over a decade in power. not one.

what you can do right now:

if you are not going to the protests — and most of us can't — please send an email. right now. it takes two minutes.

[email protected]

[email protected]

demand the resignation of education minister dharmendra pradhan. you don't have to write anything long. "i am writing to demand the resignation of dharmendra pradhan over the NEET paper leak and the violence against peaceful protesters on july 20, 2026" is enough.

if you want to support the people on the ground: volunteers at the protest site need supplies. you can send things through blinkit to the jantar mantar / kerala house area, or get in contact with someone there and coordinate directly. the local gurudwara has been housing and feeding many of the protesters — donations there go directly to people who need it. you can also donate to

sachkhandfoundation4073@icici

students were beaten to death at a peaceful protest in delhi.

let that sit for a second.

they weren't throwing anything. they weren't rioting. they were sitting in the scorching july heat asking for one thing, accountability for a leaked exam that destroyed lakhs of futures. and the government sent in police with batons.

minors were beaten. children. women. civilians.

sonam wangchuk is on day 24 of a hunger strike. our government forcefully detained him in front of everyone.

we are not okay. india is not okay.

racism against indians is at an all time high globally. we get mocked for how we live. britain spent 200 years extracting wealth from india. our own government spent the last decade doing the same thing, we are mocked for the poverty that was built for us by the people who now look down on us for it.

our media won't cover any of this. it was bought. the ruling party owns the narrative and anyone who challenges it gets raided, jailed, or beaten.

they declared themselves gods (literally they did, their faces edited over gods). they are using violence against children to prove it.

i am asking international media to look at india right now.

Interplanetary Journal of Cultural Studies

Volume 16, Issue 3, Pages 322-340

Abstract

The recently decoded Internet Archive includes the digital artifact called “Archive of Our Own” (AO3) from early third millennium Earth.  AO3 is unusually well backed up and therefore is presumed to contain some of the most significant -- perhaps even sacred -- texts of the time.  In this paper we present our preliminary analysis of AO3 metadata, including new insights about the literature, gender and sexuality, religion, and scientific understanding of this historical era: 

I. LITERATURE. We describe the cultural centrality of figures such as the Winchesters and Reader.  We explore how they featured heavily in every dominant literature genre of the era, including Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, and Oral Sex.  

II. GENDER AND SEXUALITY. We review the overwhelming evidence that male-male relationships were the most culturally significant sexual and romantic relationships, but we also show that it was a culture with an unusually broad set of sexual and gender roles.  In particular, we highlight the unusual tripartite conceptualization of gender as including alpha, beta, and omega roles; we note the apparent prejudice against betas, illustrated in the prevalence of “no beta we die like men” and similar protest slogans. 

III. RELIGION. We describe a newly discovered religious taboo: doves were a common sacrificial animal of the time, but they were forbidden from being eaten.  

IV. SCIENCE. Finally, we present new insight about alternate universes.  While previous scholars hypothesized that the scientists of Earth may have developed a correct early theory of the multiverse by the late second millennium, our analysis of AO3 presents evidence to the contrary.  As late as the early third millennium, prevailing theories postulated highly specific universes, such as a universe in which everyone is in high school, or a universe contained within a coffee shop.  

This is the most beautiful scientific diagram I've ever seen.

AI also more often avoids subplots and fails to play with time jumps and flashbacks. The systems overwrite passages about the body and senses. “Where a human author might write that a character ‘felt afraid,’ AI renders fear as a tightening chest, cold sweat, and dimming lamplight,” the study said. Humans also spin more complicated narratives involving more characters and locations than AI can handle. Humans also reference other works of fiction, specific people and places in a way that AI struggles with.

David was way politer than I would have been. But then he has a few years on me.

I'm adding a break here. Seriously, I have to take a breath every time I read the (absolutely breathtaking) insolence of this shit. (And it makes me want to take a brickbat to anybody who says "Warm regards" to me in the immediate future. [mutter])

...Doubtless I'll get past that. But JEEEEEZ. :/ (TL:DR for those interested: "Hi there! Your work is fabulous! You should have an award! Send us money to be part of the process.")

("The entry fee for the Discovery Awards is $150 USD for the primary book entry. If you would like the book considered in additional categories, each additional category entry is $100 USD.")

Beware this shit, my cousins. If they have the absolute baldfaced GALL (or utter ignorance, who knows which) to send David mails like these, they won't mind coming after the rest of us. :/

Just say "elemental construct" or something.

Magic caster created golem? That's a magical construct.

Naturally occurring golem? That's an elemental.

-

A setting without Jews by definition cannot have golems.

In the present the reader is introduced to Alice Cohen as she receives her inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother. This inheritance consists of a lone house in an area of Brooklyn where all the other buildings have been torn down. One of the first things that Alice discovers is a walled off section in the basement from which a voice calls to her to read stories. Alice's first choice for this is her grandmother's diary.

^ small excerpt

It just fucking fits. It’s so easy. I’m not remotely Jewish by any definition of the word, so I cannot speak for anybody, but instead I offer you this very practical taken on “golem.”

Let’s say you hear conflicting takes by Jewish folk on whether or not you can use “golem.” Some say you can, some say you can’t.

Rather than making it a moral matter — consider, some folks asked you not to and said it sucks, and you know they’ve got a fair argument even if you don’t agree with it. Since it’s so easy to not do, why not just, not be a dick?

If you want to look at it not as a moral matter, but look in purely practical terms, by refusing the request to call it anything else, it’s bein’ a bit of a dick.

Not because I have anything against Judaism in particular.

Not because I'm particularly attached to "golem" as a term.

No, it's because this is a stupid hill to die on.

Fantasy steals. It appropriates. It uses familiar terms so that people don't have to check a glossary to keep track of a bunch of terms that they won't remember because every piece of media out there is suddenly making up their own words for shit. And you know what? Fantasy steals from everyone, without prejudice. The only qualifier is that the word be well enough known that people will know what you're talking about.

So, if anything, having your word used as a general fantasy term means that your myth was considered recognizable enough to be used for clarity.

"you'll be neither the first nor the last to find a fantasy work sacrilegious."

I see it as potentially one-directional. It's okay if it's a marginalized culture using myths and folklore from the marginalizing cultures -- you wanted me to assimilate, buddy! But the other way is just ... no.

It's not that I think it's sacrilegious, I think it's cultural appropriation! Those are different!

The golem in particular is deeply rooted in Jewish persecution and fantasies of escape from that, and erasing that context and making it into some vague Thing is...not cool. The golem is fundamentally a Jewish fantasy that Jews told about people hating Jews. You cannot remove it from this context. There are no golems without Jews. Not fantasy knockoff Jews, but Jews.

People don't actually WANT Jews in the 'melting pot' nor do they actually believe in the melting pot. They want what Jews create and build but the only "melting pot" they really want Jews to get into is a crematorium after they take everything we made that they like, because they are entitled to it by virtue of THEM being human and us being... Not/and/or directly comparable to christian hegemony. Exotic enough to fetishize, then inhuman enough to throw on the garbage heap of history and then fear like a boogeyman after not all of us die. It's deeply ironic that 10 years ago people pretended to care about Golems in D&D and Goblins in harry potter being antisemetic while remaining silent about the venomous rising Jew-Hate in progressive and also fandom spaces as they expanded along the fandom-cult model. Now they don't even have to pretend about their hobbies with Jews! It's THEIR colonized space! They Took These Things. It's theirs.

That’s the opposite of a golem. In fact, if you read a story about the Golem of Prague where the Golem goes mad and kills too many people leading to its unmaking - that’s a Christian telling of the Golem story (“those crafty jooos protected themselves too much!” -Christians, probably)

Golems are protectors, exclusively.

It should surprise nobody that said author was Terry "people as things, that's where it starts" Pratchett.

In the first of his golem stories, Feet of Clay, we see a golem named Dorfl (interesting how that's not a real name but does look so similar to Yiddish) go "no, actually, I will not be your mindless slave, I have my own thoughts and feelings thank you" and then like...basically brute-force his way into freedom.

Oh look--it's Jews.

Later we see various factions in Ankh-Morpork arguing over golems--should they have full rights? No rights? Some rights? Are they people?

Oh look--it's Jews.

The denouement is in Making Money, when Moist Von Lipwig's girlfriend Adora Belle "Spike" Dearheart makes contact with what she believes to be ancient golden golems, only to discover the sacred text she translated included a word that can be translated as either "gold" or "thousands." These golems turn up in Ankh-Morpork, still following their ancient "defend" command. Neighboring cities get very upset about Ankh-Morpork harboring Je--I mean, ancient golems. In fact, in spite of the fact that the golems are just sitting there being a defensive wall and minding their own business, other cities are declaring them an act of war. (Gee, where have I heard this before?)

And so Moist (funny how much that sounds like "Moshe," isn't it?) figures out the ritual of the ancient priests who made them and commands them to go to a land of their own, underground.

OH LOOK--

There are no actual Jews in Discworld, which is (imo) fine because it is a flat world on the back of four elephants riding on a giant turtle through space and there aren't any people from any other actual religions either.

Except there kind of are Jews. They're golems, and their entire storyline mirrors actual real-world Jewish oppression and problems, right down to a neat little twist where Moist declares that the Ankh-Morpork dollar will be based on a golem standard instead of a gold standard because [okay his explanation is actually kind of word salad but it's pretty clear the intention is "labor is worth more than a chunk of random metal"]. Why is that cool? Because it turns the "Jews are greedy bankers" stereotype on its head. The golems Moist is basing this on are the original golems, the ones whose entire job is "protect." They get no benefit from the dollar. They don't know what a dollar is. They speak an extinct language known only to scholars (oh so you mean like Aramaic, an ancient language of the--). They literally could not care less about the Ankh-Morpork economy. They exist outside of it. And yet, the whole thing is made to rest on them--much as Jews became bankers and tax collectors centuries ago because they got no benefit from the king, but had to do his bidding or risk pogroms and death. Which is what these golems were facing.

Pterry used a Jewish creature to tell a Jewish story--not as set dressing. And he very clearly understood what he was doing and did it with respect--not perfectly, but pretty damn solidly.

when fantasy authors look to real world (western) occult/esoteric/magical ideas, they are overwhelmingly going to find appropriated and distorted jewish ideas. from its foundations in antiquity, the major streams of western esoteric thought appropriate heavily from judaism, jewish mysticism, and (once it was established as a distinct practise in later centuries) kabbalah.

perhaps there could be room for some discussion of syncretism when you consider ancient philosophers and esotericists held jewish mystics in some kind of esteem as men of wisdom and education, but that argument kinda falls apart because

i) jewish orthopraxy (i.e. the tangible practise of a religion) has always placed a strong emphasis on confining certain behaviours to their appropriate sacred contexts (time/space/situation) and to pull pieces of that out of those practises is, at best, incorrect and disrespectful

ii) jewish mysticism and kabbalah require extensive grounding in jewish theology which is achieved by rabbinical study, which i know these western esotericists were/are not doing. if you are not going through the proper channels, it's not kabbalah, it's appropriation

iii) the same people who appropriate jewish ideas or perpetuate appropriated ideas are functioning within societies that disdain and oppress jews. it isn't cultures coming together, it's appropriation

i often have to remind myself that most people are unaware of how deep the history of antisemitism and appropriation of judaism goes. the roots are as old as judaism itself, and maybe older if you want to quibble about terminology. (e.g. at what point can the ancient canaanite followers of yhwh be considered jews? food for academic discussion)

Anyway, to everyone in this trainwreck of a thread except BA and Foss:

This happens. It is not hard to find examples. It is actively difficult to find proper information on the concept of chakras because white westerners picked what they wanted and made up a lot of new shit based on the stuff they liked, and now a lot of english sources are based on western woowoo bullshit instead of original practices and beliefs. and people in India are being misinformed by white people who have 0 stake in anything about THEIR OWN SHIT. This is actively detrimental to our understanding of other cultures, and to many Indians’ understanding of their own.

Cultural appropriation can lead to deeply rotten, bigoted understanding of other cultures. Now that isn’t necessarily inevitable, but it happens often enough that it is VERY worth avoiding with marginalized cultures. Sharing a culture and learning about them is fine! Nobody said you couldn’t do that! But ripping things out of their original context, especially a context that few people outside of that culture knows and is vulnerable to bigotry, is quite bad. That’s literally just it.

I know that you know what "blood and soil" means.

Cultural appropriation is not real. It's a fake thing made up by racists and only makes sense under a racist worldview. It is still not real even when you say you are upset that other people aren't respecting your blood's claim to intellectual property. Your belief that your culture is being "stripped of its substance and importance" only makes sense in a racist worldview that believes blood has inherent right to certain property and that culture is harmed by interaction with other cultures. It is not. That's an incoherent idea.

You either being intentionally obtuse or obliviously thick headed shouldn't be anybody else's problem, but alas you are incapable of shutting your howling screamer.

A great deal of it is that he was, truly and simply, a good man. But given how much pride we claim our Jewish geniuses with, I feel like it's only appropriate to give the atheists a W here, because their atheism is often given as a prime source of Why They Are Bad when they do shitty stuff and gets delicately ignored when their work is praised, and I do think his atheism was very much a driving force in his portrayal of golems for a lot of reasons.

And THAT is how--just to bring this full circle--we ended up with an extremely good Jewish story out of a goyische man. Because he never looked at us as "a religion that isn't like my own and doesn't make sense to me because it doesn't neatly map onto a culturally-Christian understanding of the world, and I have to do some mental gymnastics about that before I can do anything else." He looked at us as "people who don't believe the same thing I do, but that's fine, most people don't."

"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

Step 1: Remove filters in Reflecting Pool because Obama put them in.

Step 2: Give your criminal neighbor who runs "Greenwater Services" a $20 million no-bid contract to paint the pool.

Step 3: Fill the pool with water from the Potomac River, the phosphates from which cause algae blooms.

Step 4: Freshly sealed pool and extreme heat result in a super scum event

Step 5: Direct National Park Service to dump hydrogen peroxide into the pool which causes the paint to peel.

Twilight is such a good example. First, when something is that popular, it’s automatically a bit sticky not only because of its ubiquity, but also because there is the question of why it’s so popular, especially if it’s not that good. Like what is this saying about the culture at that moment.

I have been wanting to do this for a while, because there is a lot that irks me. And this ranges across board from big budget period dramas to how people write royalty AUs, which means this isn't one specific thing I'm pointing at. And if it is helpful on a writing tips level, I'll be happy with that.

Long post under the cut:

Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*

Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]

Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.

Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.

Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-

Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.

Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?

Gandalf: No, no.

Gandalf: Bilbo stole it.

Elrond: *wordless sputtering*

Gandalf: @Galadriel [information packet: BilboBagginsoftheShire.pdf]

Galadriel: Oh yes, Belladonna’s boy, you were telling me about him last winter. 

Galadriel: Btw, orc+warg army probably coming your way. Spotted it in the mirror last night. Thank goodness we dealt with Dol Goldur at least, huh?

Gandalf: [thisfuckingrockagain.jpg]

Gandalf: [oncomingorcwargarmy.jpg]

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.