It Seems All BLU Medics Come With Built In, Dead Eyed "may Or May Not Be Considering How Ur Corpse Would

it seems all BLU medics come with built in, dead eyed "may or may not be considering how ur corpse would look on their operating table" stare

(medics from left to right are: lil pootis blu medic // my blu medic // emesis blue blu medic)

Literally my first match playing Splatoon in a while and not only does my team win, I get 13 splats and I only got splatted twice. WHAT.

just casually started learning today. why is "bye" tschüss. what.

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

Not to rant about the Jedi as a family again, but it always makes me so happy to think about the smallest younglings insisting on being picked up and as a result, honored, experienced jedi masters having conversations about Very Important Jedi Matters with toddlers hugging their necks and older younglings being delighted that there are jedi from species big enought to keep picking them up almost until they become padawans, and padawans helping escort younglings to ilum and helping teach initiate classes and the younger padawans gathering around the senior padawans to hear all about the adventures they just had on an off world mission and young jedi knights taking on their first padawans being terrified they'll mess something up because this isn't just a class, this kid is now their responsibility. This is their kid now and being comforted and guided by older knights and masters and old grizzled masters taking on apprentices as young as seven and loving them with their whole hearts and younglings seeing a knight or a master or a senior padawan and just knowing that that's going to be their master and creche masters who wave to their initiates who have become padawans as they walk past in the hallway and asking them to step in and help with a class and archivists who encourage their curiosity and help them navigate the temple archives and all the jedi who don't even recognize that lost-looking kid in the corridor but still stop and ask them if they need help or directions and yeah.