Chonk

Chonk

hope everyone has a good v-day

You know a little detail I love in The Martian book? That Mark is obviously smart, but to different degrees depending on the subject.

He’s a mechanical engineer and a botanist. This makes him especially good at math, biology, food science, physics, and techy stuff that involves building things or taking stuff apart and making it do something else and general problem solving

He’s also generally good at chemistry. He knows that to make water he can breakdown hydrazine, but doesn’t think about the fact that it would cause the place to fill with hydrogen and almost blow up until it does. He also knows you exhale some oxygen each time you breathe, but doesn’t know how much.

He knows that solar panels are held at a 14 degree angle but doesn’t know why, and only knows the angle because he was in charge of setting them up

When he gets injured he doesn’t say what muscles, just that his back hurts. He fixes most of his muscle injuries with pain killers and warm baths while thinking about how the medic would have more detailed instructions

He has no idea how the pilot is so good at pilot stuff, and never differentiates different kinds of rocks like the geologist would

It’s just cool to have a smart character who is smart at things that make sense for their degrees and experience. So many characters get the Sherlock Holmes treatment where they’re good at whatever the plot needs, but in this case the book uses his blind spots as part of the plot. He knows enough chemistry to solve problems but not enough to anticipate the problems the chemistry would cause as well. It’s refreshing to have a book where what a character is bad at, or just not super good at, works with the story rather than just getting glossed over or having the character magically good at everything because if you know botany obviously you also know anatomy and geology and meteorology, etc

please calm down about tumblr's new tip jar

I'm going to preface this whole thing with the statement that I'm not a lawyer and if you're truly worried, contact someone with legal expertise in copyright.

1) The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) does legal advocacy for fans and fandom.

2) AO3, which is a project by the OTW, has a non-commercialization policy. This policy means that it is against the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS) to ask for money or link out to monetization sources like kofi and patreon from their site.

3) One aspect of fair use (a concept in US copyright law) is monetization. Another aapect is transformation. These are not the only aspects involved and a court will look at each case on its own merits. The case law isn't black and white.

4) Platforms like tumblr (and Twitter and YouTube etc) are the first stop for a copyright holder. It's much easier for a copyright holder to file a DMCA request and get your content taken down than it is to sue everyone making fanworks individually.

In summary, using post+ and the tip jar may mean you can't link to your tumblr from ao3 anymore without breaking TOS, but that is a separate thing from legal worries and getting sued.

I recommend reading this post from AO3s legal volunteers about Post+ for more details. That's what I'm basing most of this on.

And in the meantime, remember what Ford Prefect would say: don't panic.

Why did I stay up till 1am making this