You’re a genie, and you were recently found by a Cyclops, of all things. His first wish was simple, “I Wish I had eyes like humans.” It’s not often you meet a Cyclops, so you decide to do him one better.
Medusa laughs, having just turned a hapless intruder into stone, exited to have another statue for her lair. She scans the room, looking for the perfect place to put it. As she turns back to it, the statue seems…. closer than it was before…..
There's a new post up on the Yuletide Admin comm regarding
(Less Than) 48 Hours to Deadline. Please note that there
may have been a delay between that post and this crosspost.
If you have follow-up questions, they can be asked in the
DW comment section using a DW login, OpenID with another login, or a signed
anonymous comment.
You realize you’re dreaming, so you turn to your best friend and ask, ‘I’m dreaming, right?’ The whole scene freezes, and everyone around you stares in complete silence. Then your best friend — who’s been dead for a year — says, ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Run!’ And that’s when you wake up.
A naked eye 3D pterosaur installation at Shanghai Natural History Museum
(The guide is describing the exhibit and talking about the various “flying dinosaurs” and their appearance through history as they emerge from the fossil displays)
So by now most of you have probably heard that my account was suddenly terminated (aka banned) on Saturday afternoon. I’m back now, and since I had to do some digging into this on my own, I figured I’d make a post for others to reference.
How to tell if you’ve been wrongfully terminated
You will find yourself suddenly locked out of your account. For me, I had just made a post when I got kicked to the login screen. My password wouldn’t work, so I tried to reset it, at which point I got this screen:
Now, if Tumblr legitimately terminated your account - meaning, you broke a rule and they banned you for it - they should send you an email telling you why. So, immediately check your email. If you don’t get anything, it was probably a glitch. These happen shockingly often, so there’s a whole process to it.
How to get your account back
First, submit a support ticket. Tumblr’s support email does NOT work, you MUST go through their site. Select ‘Terminated account’. Write a POLITE message explaining the situation. Describe what you were doing when you suddenly got kicked off, and state that to the best of your knowledge, you haven’t broken any rules, or that if you did, you would be willing to delete the offending posts. Include your url and email.
Check your email. You should immediately get an automatic message saying they’re looking into the problem. If you don’t that means that Tumblr marked your email as spam (because they banned you). If you need to, resend the ticket using a different email address at the bottom. Explain that your account email doesn’t seem to be going through and that’s why you’re using a different one.
Wait. Tumblr Support’s hours of operation are 9-5 EST, Monday through Friday. If, like me, you submitted your ticket on a weekend, you may be in for a wait. If you don’t get a response within 24 hours, DO NOT SEND ANOTHER TICKET, but instead reply to the email they sent you. I’ve seen it advised that you should send another ticket only if the problem isn’t fixed within the week.
Check you url often. Tumblr will likely never respond to your email letting you know what happened or that you’ve been reinstated. Check your url every so often, and if it finally loads as your blog (instead of the ‘There’s nothing here’ screen) you are free to log back in.
And that’s it! If it was a glitch, they SHOULD reinstate your account, but you MUST submit a support ticket letting them know what’s going on.
5 YEAR OLD POST SORTA KINDA SAVES ME FROM ETERNAL CONFUSION YAAAAAHHHH
Okay, so, in the years since writing this guide, I’ve both seen some discussion as well as made my own observations that lead me to believe this is not just a glitch with Tumblr’s code.
More likely, if you’re reading this because you got termed, your blog was caught up in a bot dragnet.
Tumblr, like all social media, has bots. And Tumblr also does regular bot purges. It’s strikingly clear to me when these purges happen, because this post will gain a ton of notes in the span of a day. Occasionally, but not always, this will happen shortly after I notice an influx of bot followers.
That means that, for most people experiencing this problem, you are doing something that triggers Tumblr’s automated bot removal process. I cannot say what it is. Social media tends to keep their bot removal criteria vague, so that people scripting bots can’t evade capture.
Which sucks for the innocent human bloggers caught up in the purges, but it also means that if you can get someone to double check your blog, you should be reinstated pretty swiftly.
My blog has not been termed again, but if you check the notes of this post, you will see plenty of people who got their blog back using this process, many of them in the last few months. So these steps should still work.
When we made first contact, we unsuccessfully tried to hide our shameful past from the aliens. But when they uncovered it they were relieved, saying “Thank goodness it’s just war. We feared you were hiding a history of Xylok.”
If you haven’t heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…
Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.
Including (sigh) the em dash.
There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.
A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.
No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.
You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.
Defend the em dash.
(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)
i’m not gonna name names but i recently started playing an online squad shooter with one of my beautiful mutuals and after TWO FULL DAYS of playing humble while clutching SITUATION after SITUATION in pvp she decides to CASUALLY let slip that she has over SEVEN HUNDRED HOURS logged in a fucking AIM TRAINER. she is clicking on the fucking worry crease on these dudes’ foreheads 100 shots out of 100 and the only person more mind-blown than them is me. i’m literally just there to provide a second target and maybe some covering fire while she just BEAMS dudes in the CORTEX i am WEAK WITH ARDOR
do you know how good you have to be at a video game to solo two dudes, say “gg” in a girl voice, and have them say back “yeah that was clean gg” DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD YOU HAVE TO SON A MAN TO HAVE HIM RESPECT YOU ON CHAT
before she told me it was just two days of me like, spotting a guy and tagging him with my first shot and she, facing the OTHER DIRECTION, whEELS around and puts EVERY SHOT DIRECTLY ON HIS SCALP like she’s giving him fucking HAIR PLUGS and me going “jesus christ that’s jason bourne”
Torn between the need to write hard scifi intimately grounded in reality, and the need to have the Aesthetic on point
me: so, the character who is Tortured In The Science Facility–
hard scifi side of brain: yes, continue
me: its about the ambiguity of the distinction between his body and the equipment that is used to maintain it. the human body is separate from the surrounding world, but when there is machinery and technology intruding into the body, and when the various fluids and biological functions typically inside the body are being taken outside of it and processed by devices
aesthetic side of brain: YEAHHHH
hard scifi side of brain: sounds great. to what extent is the supportive medical technology distinct from the user’s body? a fascinating topic for sure
me: so. what are our ideas.
aesthetic side of brain: so obviously he has a bunch of metal and shit in him like metal bolts and pins and exoskeleton looking pieces
me: yes
aesthetic side of brain: you know, so he looks like human flesh implanted onto a metal frame that kind of protrudes painfully through the human facade
me: awesome.
hard scifi side of brain: so i assume the metal stuff is like making his skeleton stronger and protecting his organs or something?
me: yeah I guess
hard scifi brain: so is it implanted inside him or is it visible on the surface somehow
aesthetic brain: its both, he has like rivets or something sticking out of him so it looks like he’s been bolted together underneath
hard scifi brain: so the metal stuff is like sticking out of his skin?
aesthetic brain: yes and theres gnarly scarring like his body has tried to reject it but he’s had to heal and re-form around it
me: okay this sounds great but let’s go a little deeper into the whole ambiguity between the human body and technology thing
hard scifi brain: if he needs external support systems that suggests the implantations either damaged his bodily functions or that his organs can’t keep up with the demands of his new body. so we have to figure out what is being supplemented technologically and why
aesthetic brain: you know what’s sick? tubes
me: i’m listening
hard scifi brain: they could use a feeding tube but you’ve already established that this character cooks for himself, so, why
aesthetic brain: MORE TUBES
aesthetic brain: they plug into him like that one scene in the matrix where Neo is in the goo
hard scifi brain: they probably used mechanical ventilation sometimes but also, why
me: so did they give him a bunch of, like, HDMI ports or something
aesthetic brain: okay hear me out
aesthetic brain: you know those portholes they install in cows to study the cow’s digestive system
me: i love where you’re going with this
goblin brain: MORE HOLES GIVE THIS MAN MORE HOLES
me: as i was saying
aesthetic brain: RIGHT!!! anyway the tubes have green fluids in them probably
hard scifi brain: okay and what is the green fluid? and what does that do? what organ system is it connecting to? if its delivering a drug, why would they install a permanent cannula in him instead of give it by any normal way
aesthetic brain: its evil science fluid. it doesn’t have to be green we can try other colors
me: okay there’s some technology they have to heal injuries super fast, maybe it has something to do with that
hard scifi brain: but how does the evil science fluid actually get delivered to the part of the body its supposed to affect
aesthetic brain: does he collapse when they unplug him? that would be sick
aesthetic brain: i mean obviously they have him strapped to a scary table by default with super strong handcuffs and restraints and shit
aesthetic brain: and the room looks like an OR and there’s like tubes going everywhere and wires and monitors attached to him so it’s like aesthetically mirroring nerves and blood vessels and intestines etc so it looks like a body being opened up during surgery and everything is taken out and sprawling all over the room but its like technology and machines. ordinarily being in surgery with your organs taken out is transient, but he is trapped in this liminal state
hard scifi brain: but what are the tubes FOR
aesthetic brain: SYMBOLISM
blorbo torture specialists what are your takes. how can i disassemble this man with maximum symbolic and thematic impact
me: so im really interested in endosymbiotic relationships like mycorrhizae and fungal endophytes
me: fungal endophytes of plants extend their survival capabilities
me: so what if you did it with humans
hard scifi brain: you said it yourself, mammalian cells don’t tolerate non-self material and the merging of plant and fungus depends on a 500 million year evolutionary history
aesthetic brain: GREEN SCIENCE JUICE IS SYMBIOTIC ALGAE, THEY NEED A PHOTOSYNTHESIZER TO FEED THE ENDOSYMBIONT.
aesthetic brain: There are those appalachian salamanders that have symbiotic algae inside their eggs right? so maybe they put salamander DNA in him
me: well he’s not going to be laying any eggs so
goblin brain: HE COULD IF YOU WEREN’T A COWARD
me: okay but there are a lot of natural examples here. what about endosymbiotic bacteria? like what happened with mitochondria and our archaean ancestors
hard scifi brain: the best existing examples of endosymbiosis we have in humans are with internal parasites of humans. parasitism is differentiated from mutualism and commensalism in that the host’s fitness is reduced, but the scientists aren’t concerned with this guy’s fitness, evidenced by the fact that they sterilized him
aesthetic brain: awesome so you just have to figure out how a parasite would give you superhuman abilities. seems easy enough
me: what kind of parasite is it though
goblin brain: TOE FUNGUS
me: my best friend in highschool had toe fungus… I wonder how she’s doing
goblin brain: I WONDER HOW HER TOE FUNGUS IS DOING
I do always find it just a little bit annoying when people joke about Superman being “allergic to a rock from his own planet” as though it’s a meaningful criticism of the writing. Like, first of all this is comic books, there are so many superhero weaknesses that aren’t remotely as thematically interesting as being made killable by the very home that led to your strengths. And secondly, there are, in fact, Several rocks here on this planet that can kill You just by being too close to them
“a rock from his home planet kills him” i throw uranium at you
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