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wispstalk · 10 hours
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WIP Whenever
Was tagged a few times over the past week—thanks all. Been very busy, so only now able to give an update. Here's Reachtongue:
I re-did the inflections, because I wasn't entirely happy with the first versions. I could always re-do it a third time, but I'm happy for now.
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Sound changes for final consonants and vowels, when they're inflected, is pretty common. I don't have a good list/example of all of them to really show, but it's usually either a form of palatalization or adding (or removing) voice (t to d and vice versa)
I've been really working on lexicon, which is also why I did that post with a language family tree mapped out on my whiteboard. I used that to figure out what other languages in TES to borrow from (after applying sound changes that I thought were COOL 😎😎😎) to have a cool thing ig. I'm trying to have the lexicon be good/interesting, ya dig?
Here's some examples:
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All of these are WIP, not final, etc. I'm happy with a lot of them, some of them I'm just ok with (and will change if I think of better shit ig)
Here's some examples sentences:
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that's all! going to go collapse now
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wispstalk · 12 hours
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Travelling with Martin the second time is more an ordeal than it was the first.
There’s the Blades tagging along with them, now, with their elaborate plans and zealous concern; every time any one of them takes a step they rattle like tin cans, so loudly that if any of the cult is trying to track them down it’s a wonder they’re not all gutted already. Then there’s all the extra bits the Blades insist on – like tents, which Pax is by no means opposed to but slows them down ridiculously, always needing to be set up at night and taken down first thing in the morning, or the horses, which speed them up but Pax resents, all the same. (They always need breaks to rest or eat or what have you, and riding for too long sets them aching to hell, their legs and hips and stomach all quavering with exertion. Pax rides the same horse they found halfway through their first journey with Martin, and she is getting more familiar than she ever wanted to be with its little snorts and stomping gestures. Martin keeps patting it on the nose whenever they’re down on the ground again. Martin rides the paint horse, too – it’s two to a steed, plus bags, which Pax knows would be enough to snap their spines like dried-out twigs but of course the Blades have spelled saddles. Feathered, Martin says, like Pax has any idea what that means.) They all spend as much of the day riding as they can without the horses withering away and dropping dead, unable to divert at all from the roads without riding face-first into a tree branch, the Blades getting all serious and severe at any passing glimpse of another traveller, or the edge of a town, or a suspicious-looking boulder. It’s fucking exhausting. Maybe if they’d dressed Martin in something less impractically fancy, and left their glittering armour behind, they wouldn’t all be so conspicuous. Pax is the only one here with any sense.
In Blackwood, the trees don’t sprawl so low down; you can ride horses well off the road as long as you’re careful of the muck. For the first leg of the first trip with Martin, they didn’t have horses at all – they both just walked, past razed fields and empty buildings, the span of land around Kvatch near entirely abandoned, scrounging what they could and sleeping wherever they wanted. They couldn’t proper restock on supplies until they hit Skingrad – certainly didn’t have tents or armour that reflects every whisper of starlight so bright it blazes, and they were fine. It all feels unnecessary. And annoying. This close to the end, all the little extra things to pay attention to make Pax want to jump out of his skin.
Because they are close to the end. They’re in the denouement, now.
The Blades set up a watch routine, too – everyone crawls into their superfluous tents and leave one person up to keep an eye out, until they wake the next person for their turn, and so forth. Pax hasn’t done watch shifts like this since he left Blackwood. (It doesn’t really work, when you’re alone. Besides, he wakes easy, and he goes to sleep quick. Martin’s bad at it, so swapping watch back and forth when they were together just would have left him confused or lethargic the next day. Not worth the bother.) Pax gets watch shifts, most nights, set in the dark hours just before the sun rises; Martin, though he asks, doesn’t get any. Pax usually wakes him up, instead of whoever else she’s supposed to. It isn’t like he has anything he needs to be especially well-rested for – just sitting on a horse in an enchanted double saddle, same as the rest of them, his too-long hair getting in his face, careful arms loops around Pax’s middle. He won’t even take a turn to direct the bloody thing, because he still hasn’t learned how – the fact that he’s never managed to fall off is a damned miracle, honestly.
So she wakes him up, if the Blades won’t – and she doesn’t usually go back to sleep, right after, because there doesn’t seem all that much point. They both stay up, around whatever burnt-down firepit was constructed in the night, the small tents arrayed around them; the leaves of the trees rustle, flickered through by some small animal, owl or bat or squirrel living in a hollow. Crickets chirp, loud and endless.  It would probably be peaceful, if it could be, but Pax is keyed up, taut as a bowstring ready to snap, and he can’t really remember how to feel peaceful anymore. They’re getting ever-closer to the capital and the temple and the end of this whole strange, terrifying thing, and he wants it over and done with instead of lurking in this strange in-between space. They’ve all done so much to fix this and none of it will feel like any kind of accomplishment until the fires are lit and the Gates closed and sealed beyond reopening. It’s almost, almost, almost done – but it’s not the end yet, and in the quiet night all there is to do is waiting, and Pax, antsy, irritable, is very, very bad at waiting.
Martin’s better at it. Which isn’t to say he’s not nervous – he’s all nerves, even more than normal, which is really saying something – but he’s patient, and doesn’t complain, even though Pax knows he wants it over just as much as they do. Probably more. (Definitely more.) He just sits, in the dark and the dew, all quiet and watchful in just his undershirt and warm wool trousers, and even those are fancy, all fine-sewn and slippery as water to the touch. They wear oddly on him. He keeps the Amulet tucked under his clothes, cold metal setting against bare skin, and the red gleam beneath his shirt makes it look, at certain angles, like his heart is glowing.
The fire is well out; no owls call. Pax lies, in their own much less swish sleeping-things, in the dirt and grass, all of it wet so thoroughly with dew that it soaks the back of their tunic. Through the silhouettes of leaves and branches, they can just make out the lustre of the stars.
The old Emperor talked an awful lot about stars, when Pax met him; she wonders, vaguely, what he’d make of these ones.
There’s a shifting, up nearer the firepit; and, “Pax?” Martin whispers, sound half-swallowed by the still, drifting night. “Are you awake?”
“It’s sopping wet,” Pax replies. He props himself up on his elbow and turns his head; Martin’s got a lantern lit, and it’s just enough to make out his face by. “Even I’ve got my limits.”
Martin exhales; Pax knows he’s smiling because they can see the dim white gleam of his teeth. It’s not too cold a night – they’ve travelled far enough from Bruma to be clear of its sodden snow and ice and winds – but it’s not warm, and the wet fabric plastered to their back is chill enough to make them shiver. The stars, up above, shine cold and clear.
“I was wondering,” Martin says, voice still hushed; his eyes flicker up to the snatches of sky between the tree branches, too. “What will you do, when all this is done?”
It’s a perfectly reasonable question; Pax realises, quite abruptly, that doesn’t have an answer. She sits up, shuffles awkwardly over the dewy grass. “I don’t know,” she says slowly; she shrugs. “Go back to the roads, I s’pose. Get some venturing work. Join a guild, maybe, if I get bored.”
(They haven’t thought about it; they’ve been busy. A part of them – quite a large part, if they’re being honest – kind of wishes the Crisis would never end, one way or the other. Wishes it would keep on in this sort of suspended state forever. But it won’t, and it can’t, and it would be ridiculous to say as much. Just – they’ve never done anything this exciting, before. And they don’t really know anything that could measure up, once it’s done.)
(Pax has never really been one to plan for the future. Back in Blackwood, he didn’t have to; he knew he’d just run with the same crew he always had, and he learned only from them. Learned letters and archery and what dregs of mage-craft he had any aptitude for – learned to scamp on the roads and crack locks reasonably well. And then he left, and became a hero, and that’s a good occupation in itself, but it’s not going to last forever. He’s not sure what his other options are – he could try to work square, but he doesn’t think it would last. He’s not one suited to an apprenticeship, or an honest job, or much of anything, really. The only thing he really knows is this.)
In the lanternlight, the shadows are so stark that Martin’s face looks creased with ink. “Oh? What guild? Fighters? Thieves?”
“Thieves’ Guild wouldn’t take me,” Pax tells him loftily; they wriggle a bit closer, goose-pimples rising on their shins. “They don’t like independent operators, and I’ve been one since I was born.”
Martin clucks his tongue. “You can’t say things like that around me, Pax. I’ll have to have you arrested.”
“Like you could,” Pax tells him, grinning, and leans over about as far as she can reach to elbow him. She has to lever herself back up, afterwards. The watery-pale stars are winking at her.
Martin is looking up at them again. “There’s always work for a hero, I’m sure,” he says, and waves a hand. “You’ll have endless people to save and feats of derring-do to perform. Perhaps you could write an autobiography.”
“Ha.” Martin’s received their letters, sent on longer stretches away from Cloud Ruler; he’s read their writing, their chicken-scratch hand and the less than delicate way they pick their words. Pax is fine enough as a communicator; they get to the point quickly and clearly. But metaphor and flowery prose is rather beyond them. And they’ve seen the speech Martin gave in Bruma, the endless editing of his drafts, debate over this word or that. “You know you’re the better writer of the two of us, Martin Priest. Reckon you should pen our book.”
Martin tips his head further back. “I wasn’t even there for most of the interesting parts,” he points out, “and I’m sure to be far too busy, besides.” His eyes are closed. Pax shunts themself another bit across the grass.
“Oh, I’m sure you can take a half-hour every evening to scribble out a few paragraphs in your four-poster bed and your kingliest pyjamas,” he says, unsympathetic, and flicks him in the shoulder. “With a silk canopy, and duckling-down blankets, and a pen nib of solid gold.”
“All right, all right.” Martin opens his eyes; they look grey, in the dim light, the orange lanternlight flickering off their whites. He reaches out an arm, and Pax rolls his eyes but shuffles damply into it all the same. “I suppose I have no choice.”
His arm, settled around their shoulders, is heavy-warm. Pax leans their shoulder into his ribs, under his armpit. This close, they can see the faint gleam of the Amulet through his undershirt. Quiet, they ask, “Still nervous?”
Without missing a beat, Martin replies, “Excruciatingly.”
He’s always nervous. But on this, Pax can’t even really make fun of him for it – if someone told her that she was the heir to the whole Empire, and tried to thrust her into court to take it all over, she’d tell them to eat shit. If the fate of the world depended on it, though, that wouldn’t really be an option anymore. And Martin’s too nice, most of the time, to tell anyone to eat shit. And Martin’s too nervous not to take every bit of it so painfully seriously. Not just the world-ending bit, but all the etiquette and legalese, too. Jauffre gave him some books to read to try to acquaint himself with it all; none of them seemed to help much.
“You’ll be fine,” Pax says, and leans their head on his shoulder, the post of their earring jabbing into the skin behind their ear. They gesture out at the silhouetted tents. “You’ve got all this lot, and the Elder Council – they’ll help you out. If they won’t let you take a piss by yourself they’ll definitely be there to assist with the stuff that’s actually important.” Martin exhales; it’s almost a laugh. The earring is beginning to hurt quite badly, so Pax lifts their head. “Besides, you’re trying. You want to get it all right. That’s more than some would do.”
“Thank you, Pax,” Martin says, and then they’re both quiet.
The stars above look watery-dim. The silhouettes of trees have slightly more dimension. Martin is pressing his palm, fingers splayed, to the smooth-cut bump of the Amulet under his shirt. Pax is still shivering, a bit – lying her whole back down in the dew was a bad idea. Now she’ll have to wear her one other tunic and hope this one dries out in time not to wet everything else in the bags.
“I hope,” Martin says, voice silver-soft in the dark, “that when you’re out roaming, shocking everyone with your valour and intrepidity, you’ll come to visit a great deal. You won’t have the excuse of being out saving the world anymore.”
Pax leans her shoulder harder into his ribs. “Only if you’re not boring when I’m there,” she replies. “You won’t have the excuse of saving the world either.”
“No,” Martin says. “I’ll be running it instead.”
Already, the stars are beginning to snuff themselves out, like candle-lights; in half an hour or so, the sky will start to lighten properly. The Blades will all wake, springing up like little clockwork puppets, and the tents will be packed up, and the horses saddled – they’re tied on slack ropes to trees down the other end of the clearing, and now, if Pax squints, he can just make them out – and then the day will begin, the timer trickling down.
Pax wets his lips. “Three more days,” he says. “Thereabouts.”
Then they’ll reach the city.
Martin breathes out, slow. “Then I’ll really be Martin Septim.”
The Amulet glows under his shirt, royal-red, rising and dimming like a heartbeat. If Pax hadn’t been arrested, that day – by chance, for one of the few robberies they actually didn’t commit – then they wouldn’t have been taken to the gaol, dribbling blood all over the floors, antagonising the guards trying to mark them down in the records, and they wouldn’t have ended up in that dust-coated cell with the shitty neighbour across the way, and the old Emperor would never have glanced at them twice, and the door never would have opened, and they wouldn’t be here.
Pax is not one for gratitude, generally, but they have never been so thankful to be falsely imprisoned in their life.
“My census name’s Camilla Patesco,” he says.
He’s looking at the first watery dregs of dawn in the sky, not at Martin’s face; but he can hear the smile in his voice when he replies, “I won’t tell anyone.”
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wispstalk · 14 hours
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Of course it goes without saying that I am hopelessly dependent on the ingot
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wispstalk · 14 hours
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wispstalk · 17 hours
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The rats of Cyrodiil are much larger than normal rats because they go to the gym.
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wispstalk · 19 hours
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nerevarine
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wispstalk · 19 hours
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If we're allowed to mention dreams Tanis has appeared in, here's a few roles he's taken in mine:
Disgruntled Onion Farmer
Really Bad Magisrate
Owner of Incredibly Seedy Bar
Llama Herder (with big hat)
Couldn't tell you what it is about Tanis, but he's apparently rather multitalented in my dreams.
this is now his post 4th era resumé in chronological order. I think he'd settle on llama farming and like it especially because of the big hat
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wispstalk · 1 day
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tesvi should bring back being able to see your character in your inventory screen like in oblivion
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wispstalk · 1 day
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what do you think little aduri’s first impression of avrusa and sinderion was…
"And this," says Sinderion, leaning with a grin across the shoulder-carriage bench, "is Asplenium regelliam."
The toddler on Avrusa's copious lap stares, cross-eyed and scholarly, at the sprig of green tickling her nose. Then she squishes her face with a thoughtful gurgle.
"Yes, indeed," says Sinderion with utmost solemnity, "it's named for the estimable Chivius Regelliam, whose work has proven invaluable to we who crawl through hedgerows in his wake. Very good."
"Don't listen to him, sprout," says Avrusa, raising her eyebrows. "Never crawled through a hedgerow in his life. I did all the field work." She bounces her new charge, winning a giggle, then peers with mock severity into her face. "What's A. regelliam in the vernacular?"
Little Aduri gives her a rapt look. Then she reaches up to pull Avrusa's lip.
"Ouch," says Avrusa, amused. "Nirnroot, that's right—ouch."
The shoulder-carriage jostles through the City of Gems on bright and crowded streets, bobbing around traffic like a boat. It has windows. Avrusa tries not to look at them. Outside, the city brims with light and noise: the rattle of pushcarts, the sizzle of frying scrib, the shouts of the chairmen bearing them from her father's squalid palace to the rooms they've rented over the market-square. Not cheap. Nor is the chairmen's fee—but the child can't walk, Avrusa reasons, and Sinderion will be two hundred and ninety next week.
And her father, she thinks, bitter as wormwood, has willed the sprout some pocket-change.
Sinderion, replacing the nirnroot in his bottomless bag, looks sidelong at her. Then—with that awkward, punctilious insight of his—he takes her hand.
"I'm all right," Avrusa rasps, then clears her throat. "Will be." She shakes her head, struck with amazed grief—how suddenly it comes and goes, like the gusts of ash that had once rolled through Ald'ruhn. "He used to keep such a clean house. More than clean."
Her mentor's hands had been lively, once: scribbling notes, sketching lectures in the air, flicking her fingers when she held a pestle wrong. Now they tremble with the simple strain of squeezing her hand. "Orderly?"
"Yes." She looks with bewilderment at the toddler—her half-sister, for gods' sake, two hundred years younger than herself. "And he—n'chow, Sinderion, he was older than you. I just don't understand—"
The shoulder-carriage bucks. Avrusa finds herself doing several things at once: clutching the toddler to her chest, cursing, kicking out a leg to keep Sinderion's bag from flying into him. It crunches. The ungrateful old twig cries out and swats her knee. "You harridan, my retort!"
"Bother your retort—"
"My flasks!"
"Were you planning to brew elixirs," demands Avrusa, righting herself, "here in the sedan—"
Aduri giggles again. Sinderion's grin reappears, as it always does, like an ancient light sputtering on. "Funny, are we?"
Avrusa sets the squirming toddler on her knee. The sprout is scrawny, she thinks with a frown. She smells sour, milky; she'd screamed and kicked the maid who, an hour or so ago, had shoved her at Avrusa with a desperate smile. Avrusa had understood them both. Part of her, she thinks, had wanted to kick something, too—had wanted it ever since she set out, across countless leagues and second-guesses, to fetch home a child she hadn't known existed—
The toddler puts her hand in her mouth. "Bah."
"That's right," says Sinderion, the old cellar-dweller. "Species Plantarum is our art's most inviolable text."
Their new pupil takes her hand from her mouth, studies it academically, then puts it back. Something in Avrusa's chest moves.
"Excelsior," she says gruffly, and tickles her sister's skinny ribs. "I'll read you some."
Aduri laughs. The sound is bright and sweet as a nirnroot's chime.
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wispstalk · 2 days
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Had a dream Tanis rolled up to the barn party I was throwing down at. Everyone wanted him. He hid in the bathroom. Come time for the square dancing and he pretended he didn't like it, but I witnessed the small flicker of joy in his eyes. He did not like being perceived this way and promptly departed with the keg, unannounced.
That is all.
I'm speechless. this is canon. *bangs gavel*
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wispstalk · 2 days
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Happy TES 30th! I will share a drawing soon but for now, I have questions.
One day, while bothering mudcrabs for alchemy writs in ESO I thought "wait I had this guy with chili garlic sauce what's he doing in Skyrim" and have not looked back since.
I'm sure someone has already explored crab biology in TES but I constantly wonder why the dominant crab of Skyrim and the whole of Tamriel is the humble mudcrab, beloved Southeast Asian food mascot, alimango of mangroves in warm Indo-Pacific waters. In general, these are crabs belonging to the Scylla genus, with Scylla serrata in the picture beside an ESO mudcrab.
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(Picture: Pincer, Old Salty, and the Mudcrab guardian spirit, some of Skyrim's named mudcrabs. Images from UESP)
I don't know what's going on with Old Salty's shell, but there was a still a deliberate choice to include a mudcrab with big claws, small legs, and a wide, domed shell in both Skyrim and ESO. I suspect the mudcrab holds some semi-terrestrial charm along with the impressive claws that leggy crabs don’t really have, and I am tickled at the abundant SEasian representation in TES. I am also delighted that, like my family members around a crab, the citizens of Skyrim are able to devour abundant mouthfuls of meat from mudcrab claws.
Do you see your local crab in Tamriel? Feel free to share crab and mudcrab thoughts! Happy TES day!
...
Addendum: I am not a crab expert and do not know what Oblivion's and Morrowind's mudcrabs are. These are entirely different genera of crab. I suspect Oblivion's is some pelagic crab and Morrowind's is some box crab (Calappa) with the claws oriented strangely.
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(id: Oblivion mudcrab, Morrowind mudcrab)
Crabs also get very diverse with the special crabs, including Clatterclaw, Titanclaw, and other named crab bosses. Also, there can be no discussion of crabs without Skar. RIP Skar, you are an icon and I have no idea what you are supposed to be.
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(id: Skar in ESO, Skar in Morrowind)
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wispstalk · 2 days
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Happy 30th anniversary to The Elder Scrolls! Tamriel has been in my heart for a long, long time, as I'm sure is evident from this blog. Heres to many more years of adventures!
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wispstalk · 2 days
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u know how the villagers in stardew valley will send random items to u like "oh I just had this laying around and thought you could use it" well kent, the soldier who returns home from the war (??????) sent me a bomb in the mail........BRO
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wispstalk · 2 days
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IM WEEPING AGAHAHAHAHAGAHA
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wispstalk · 3 days
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I’m gonna start a new oil pastel piece tomorrow but in the meantime I drew Frieda today
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wispstalk · 3 days
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Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Indoril Almalexia/Female Nerevarine Characters: Indoril Almalexia, Nerevarine (Elder Scrolls), Female Nerevarine (Elder Scrolls) Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Ideation, Enemies to It’s Complicated, toxic yuri, I can save her/I can make her worse, Devotion, Manipulation, Tribunal DLC (Elder Scrolls), Religious Guilt, religious trauma, Codependency Summary:
The Heart of Lorkhan is destroyed and Dagoth Ur defeated. The Nerevarine, despite her best efforts, is alive. Facing down the emptiness of returning to a life with no divine guidance, Meri finds solace in the service of the Goddess Almalexia. Ayem is happy to use Meri as an effective pawn- at first. But as time wears on and her power continues to fade she finds herself depending on the woman who took it from her it in the first place. They both know nothing good can come of this. But walking away from what they have, however twisted, is not an option.
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wispstalk · 3 days
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im sorry but i literally feel insane trying to explain how copyright and ip are bad for anyone who is not a large powerful corporation. i dont even own the rights to my own paper that i wrote because it's published in a springer journal. my own master's thesis that it's based on legally belongs to my university. these laws do not exist to protect small time artisans or writers or musicians and we have seen over and over and over again how corporations with the money to win legal battles are able to use them as a cudgel against creators of all stripes. like wtf are people on about lmao
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