The positives of ‘putting yourself out there’ are worth it. Having a great conversation with a stranger will be worth the awkwardness of starting that exact conversation. Joining a small community of people you will see regularly is worth having to get through a scary first day. Getting your dream job is worth the scariness of chasing it. Don’t pick and choose experiences based on the level of ease now, but choose them based on how you want to come out of them.
see 0 note flop posts aren't that bad when they're personal but 0 note fandom posts feel literally so bad. like if you don't wanna play toys with me anymore just say that. i'll pack up my super cool awesome things and go and i'll sit on the other side of the playground by myself and i won't even look at you. fuck
April 12, 2024. Source: Quds News Network. "Despite the loss of lives, the devastation and the displacement, the children of Gaza make sure to have little room for joy at Eid al-Fitr."
About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning
If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:
These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:
But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.
Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.
If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.
Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.
Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.
Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.
If you need further proof the U.S. and Israel do not want to actually take Hamas to trial, it's the veto against Palestinian statehood. If Palestine were to become a state then its governing body can be taken to trial, including for that genocide charge they constantly accuse Hamas of. They don't care though and they never did.
13 year old Clark Kent learning about brood parasitism in middle school biology class and barely touching his dinner that night.
When both Ma and Pa are asleep he climbs out onto the roof, shuddering in the dark, because the teacher said some species' biological parents will secretly come by night to teach their young how to be a proper cuckoo or cowbird even as they're still steadily starving their foster nest. Maybe he can just convince whoever left him here to just take him away again--find a different nest. He doesn't want to hurt anyone here.