you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
Chinese fandoms are currently experiencing an actual Purge right now. Every fandom. Accounts are getting banned, all shipping wars has been put on hold. Everyone’s hiding their porn and moving them to ao3.
There’s reward money involved. A recent update to censorship law raised the maximum reward for reporting illicit online materials to 50k yuan (7000 USD), so some people are reporting porn like crazy right now, and apparently, BL fandoms have been especially targeted, where some even more tame things got maliciously misreported.
Anyway, it’s a mess. Content creators are just disappearing off the face of the internet left and right. Expect an influx of Chinese porn fics on AO3.
Well… if there’s one thing out of this mess… nothing bands warring ships/fandoms like censorship…
Hey guys, if some awesome person in China translated your fic into Chinese or created fan art, you really should spread the word! This could affect someone you know!
This is also a call out to all you fuckwits that repost art on Tumblr, twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Your negligence hurts people.
^^^
This is literally shitty and it has become worse and worse
Hopefully it will stop before long but just take care of how yiou take your stances on ao3 or what’s happening with Tumblr
A chinese homoerotic novel writer is sentenced to 10 years to prison because of “illegal publication”* and “spread of obscene materials”. After that, China government set up bounty for reporting “illegal publication”. Everyone on weibo, lofter etc. is deleting thier posts.
China is using this act as a way of controling the freedom of speech, it’s not just a matter of “no homo”. They just use the fandom content creators as an easy target and a way to scare people off from writing and publishing things the government doesn’t like.
China is living the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel. Please don’t post chinese fan works, especially not with their original chinese artists/writers right now. You could literally ruin their life.
* in China every book has to be approved by the government before
publication. Anything against the government or with “the wrong idea” will be banned. Their government didn’t pay too much attention to fan books before, but in recent years, they are tightening their grip on their people. Fandom and their activities as a whole has become a target because 1) fandom and their creative community make self-publishing a thing and China doesn’t like that the people know it’s easy to print stuffs (to spread unwanted information/ideas etc. 2) fandom and their creative community is the easiest and obvious target because of the general anti LBGT+ envirnment, general public will support the gornment for “cleansing the society from obscenity” withouth thingking about 1)
honestly a big indicator of a good game for me is the ability to just chill in it. if you can enjoy yourself just stopping to take in the scenery and listen to the music and ambience, or hanging out on the title screen, or ignoring the main gameplay to go off and screw around picking flowers, or even just mousing over all the menu options for the tactile feedback, chances are it’s a good fucking game
You may have heard about the efforts in Europe to reform copyright law. The debate has been ongoing in the European Parliament for months. If approved next week, these new regulations would require us to automatically filter and block content that you upload without meaningful consideration of your right to free expression.
We respect the copyrights and trademarks of others, and we take all reports seriously to ensure that your creative expression is protected. We make this clear in our Community Guidelines. There’s already a legal framework that works and is fair: Todaywe take down posts and media that contain allegedly infringing content when we receive a valid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request. We also provide clear-cut ways for people to fight back if they believe their removed content was not a true violation. These instances are monitored and reported and live in our biannual transparency report.
The suggestion to use automated filters for issues of copyright is short-sighted at best and harmful at worst. Automated filters are unable to determine whether a use should be considered “fair use” under the law and are unable to determine whether a use is authorized by a license agreement. They are unable to distinguish legitimate parody, satire, or even your own personal pictures that could be matched with similar photographs that have been protected by someone else. We don’t believe that technology should replace human judgment.
Tumblr is and always has been a place for creative expression, and these new regulations would only make it harder for you to express yourself with the freedom and clarity you do so now.
If you access Tumblr from Europe and want to act, you can find more information on saveyourinternet.eu.
Please reblog this as much as you reblogged the posts about Net Neutrality.
If Article 13 is approved, European People might be basically banned from uploading any fan content.
You won’t get new fanfics from people in Europe.
You won’t get new gifs from people in Europe.
You won’t get new fanart from people in Europe.
Because they’ll be automatically filtered and blocked!
We might leave Tumblr and other fandom pages.
And if we’re getting all our content blocked?
You might lose some of your favourite followers/mutuals.
You might not get to read the rest of that fic you’re dying to read – simply because the writer lives in the wrong country.
So do whatever you can to help us stop this.
Reblog this.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO TELL THEM YOU DON’T WANT ARTICLE 13 TO BE APPROVED IF YOU’RE EUROPEAN! DO IT VIA THE HOMEPAGE
funeral-biscuit 