as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you're nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can't use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.
i will never be over the fact that during first contact a human offered their hand to a vulcan and the vulcan was just like “wow humans are fucking wild” and took it
“sir…these…these humans…they greet each other by…” *glances around before furtively whispering* “by clasping hands…”
*prolonged silence* “oh my…”
“sir…sir how will we make first contact with them? surely we…we cannot refuse this handclasping ritual, they will take it as an insult, but what vulcan would agree to such a distasteful and uncomfortable ritual??”
*several pensive moments later* “contact the vulcan high command and tell them to send us kuvak. i once saw that crazy son of a bitch arm wrestle a klingon, he’ll put his hands on anything”
I swear Vulcans only come in two types and they are “distant xenophobes” or “horny on main for humanity”. Also apparently this guy is Spock’s great-grandfather and frankly that explains everything.
Hey so I looked into this at one point and that handshake literally created a lifelong telepathic bond between the two of them, and basically all of Solkar’s descendants were later obsessed with humans, including freaking SPOCK, so I’m not saying that handshake was so gay and good that it created an intergenerational telepathic bond between Solkar’s descendants and humans, but I’m also not….not….saying that.
The slow deliberation with which Solkar takes Cockrane’s–I’m sorry, Cochrane’s–hand… The sheer sensuality witch which Solkar infuses an otherwise borderline impersonal social ritual… It clearly shows a very conscious knowledge, on Solkar’s part, of what the significance of the handshake is in Vulcan terms and of how affected he is by it.
That’s why he’s so slow in doing it, and so sensual. A part of Solkar can’t believe this is happening, despite it being a perfectly logical thing to expect from a human, and the rest of him can’t believe how good it is.
I bet that if the camera zoomed in any further we would see the dilation of Solkar’s pupils and a quickly-repressed shiver of delight. Cochrane’s firm, businesslike clasp is probably (in sexual terms) being perceived as a deliciously carnal display of dominance.
No wonder Solkar is all like, “TAKE ME, YOU WILD-MANNERED BARBARIAN WITH ENTICINGLY ROUGH CALLUSES.”
We take bugs bunny's "what's up doc?" for granted by now but walking up behind the guy who's aiming a gun at your front door and asking "hey what's going on bro what's all this" through a mouthful of Cheetos you're still loudly eating is still a funny as hell concept
So last week I posted abut the importance of downloading your fic. And then three days later AO3 went down for 24 hours. No one was more weirded out by this than I was. But while y’all were acting like the library at Alexandria was on fire I was reading my download fic and editing chapter eight of Buck, Rogers, and the 21st Century. And also thinking about what I could do to be helpful when the crisis was actually over.
So first off, I’m going to repeat that if you’re going to bookmark a fic, you really need to also download the fic and back it up in a safe place. I just do it automatically now and it’s a good habit to get into.
But let’s talk about some other scenarios. Last October I lost power for over a week after hurricane Ian. Apart from not having internet or A/C I did find plenty to do, I collect books so I had plenty to read, but maybe, unlike me, your favorite comfort reads aren’t sitting on a bookshelf. So let’s do something about that, shall we?
In olden times many long years ago around 1995 we printed off a lot of fic. It was mostly SOP to print a fic you planned to reread and stick it in a three ring binder. And that’s totally valid today too, but you can also make a very nice paperback with a minimum amount of skill and materials.
Let’s start with the download; Go to Ao3 and select your fic, we’ll be working with one of mine. This method works best with one shots, long fic tends to need a more complicated approach. Get yourself an HTML download
Open up the HTML download and select all then copy paste into any word processor. Set the page to landscape and two columns, then change the font to something you find easy to read, this is your book, no judgement. This is all you have to do for layout but I like to play a little bit. I move all the meta, summary, notes to the end and pick out a fun font for the title:
No time like the present to do a quick proofread. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first typeset. On to the fun part.
Now you’re going to need some materials: 8.5x11in paper ruler one sheet of 12x12 medium card stock (60-80lb) scissors pencil pen or fine tip marker sheet of wax paper white glue two binder clips 2 heavy books or 1 brick butter knife
You’ll also need a printer, if you’re in the US there is almost a 100% chance your local library has a printer you can use if you don’t have your own. None of these materials are expensive and you can literally use cheap copy paper and Elmers glue.
Print your text block, one page per side. Fold the first page in half so that the blank side is inside and the printed side out:
use the butter knife to crease the edge. Repeat on all the sheets. When you’ve finished, stack them up with the raw edge on the left and the folded edge on the right. I used standard copy paper, because you’re only printing on one side there’s no bleed to worry about. Take the text block and line everything up. Use the binder clips to hold the raw edge in place.
Wrap the text block in the wax paper so that the raw edge and binder clips are facing out. I’m going to use my home built book press but you don’t need one, a brick or a couple of books or anything else heavy will work fine.
Once the text block is anchored down, take off he binder clips and get out the glue.
You can use a brush but you don’t need one, smear some glue on that raw edge.
Go make a margarita, watch The Mandalorian, call your mother. Don’t come back for at least an hour
In an hour smear some more glue on there and shift your brick forward so that the whole book is covered. This keeps the paper from warping. While glue part 2 is drying we’ll do the cover. Get out your 12x12 cardstock
Mark the cardstock off at 8.5 inches and cut it. Measure in 5.5 inches from the left and put in a score line with the butter knife (the back edge not the sharp edge)
Carefully fold the score line, this is your front cover. You have some options for the cover title, you can use a cutting machine like a cricut if you have one, you can print out a title on the computer and use carbon paper to transfer the text to the cardstock. I was in a mood so I just freehanded that beoch. Pencil first then in pen.
Take your text block out from under your brick. Line it up against the score mark and mark the second score on the other side of the spine
Fold the score and glue the textblock into the cover at the spine. Once the glue dries up mark the back cover with the pencil and then trim the back cover to fit with your scissors.
Voila:
I’m going to put this baby on the shelf next to the Silmarillion.
The whole process, not counting drying time, took less than an hour.
If you want to make a book of a longer fic, I recommend Renegade Publishing, they have a ton of resources for fan-binders.
ERASE the idea that America saved lives by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan from your minds. ERASE the idea that it was anything more than a political move to scare Russia and also to satiate US curiosity as to the true ability of nuclear weapons. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not military bases. They were heavily populated civilian cities chosen precisely bc the U.S. wanted to see how many people an atomic bomb could kill in one go. Japan was on the verge of surrendering, the U.S. literally wanted to test out their nuclear weapons on people that they deemed disposable. That is it. If those bombs were dropped by any nation other than the US veryone involved would have been tried as war criminals.
Also erase the idea that America was the hero of WWII and got into the war because they wanted so save people. They couldn’t have cared less about the victims of the Holocaust, proven by the fact that they turned away so many shiploads of refugees that went on to die at the hands of Nazis.
yatsbr
“the us wanted to see how many people an atomic bomb could kill in one go” oh really? Source your bullshit, asshole
“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” - page 52-56
- Dwight Eisenhower future president and then Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces also said:
“I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to [the then Secretary of War] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” - page 380
- Admiral William Leahy, one of the highest ranking officials in the US army during WW2 wrote of the usage of the bombs:
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. […] My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” - page 441
- General Douglas McArthur, another high ranking US official in the war:
“[When asked about his opinion on bombing Japan] He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” - page 70-71
- On September 9, 1945 Admiral William F. Halsey commander of the Third Fleet publicly quoted as saying:
“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment… . It was a mistake to ever drop it… . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it… . It killed a lot of Japs.” - online source
- The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, speaking to President Truman:
“I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon [the atomic bomb] would not have a fair background to show its strength.” - diary of Henry Stimson which can be found online here
- Even those deploying the bombs questioned the decision to drop them on civilian cities:
“I thought that if we were going to drop the atomic bomb, drop it on the outskirts–say in Tokyo Bay–so that the effects would not be as devastating to the city and the people. I made this suggestion over the phone between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and I was told to go ahead with our targets.” - online source
- Lewis Strauss Assistant to the Navy Secretary James Forrestal on the locations of the bombings:
“I remember suggesting […] a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. […] Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation.” - page 145
So to recap:
A lot of American generals were against using the bomb as they felt it served an empty purpose.
Those who agreed with its usage completely disagreed with dropping them on cities.
Truman went ahead and had them detonated in two highly populated civilian cities anyway. Two cities that had remained mostly untouched by regular bombings throughout the war precisely bc of their lack of value to the Japanese war effort.
No one asked but I think the secret to making the enemies-to-lovers trip work is respect. They can loath each other, but they have to loath each other as equals. Like “sorry but no one else is allowed to murder this man but me” + “it’s an honor and privilege to despise you.”
