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rivkae-winters · 19 days

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Edit: the app launched and Is down- I have the initial apology video in a post here and I’m working on getting a full archive of their TikTok up ASAP. I’m letting the rest of this post remain since I do still stand by most of it and also don’t like altering things already in circulation.

Warning for criticism and what I’d consider some harsh to outright mean words:

So I’ve just been made aware of the project known of as ‘lore.fm’ and I’m not a fan for multiple reasons. For one this ‘accessibility’ tool complicates the process of essentially just using a screen reader (something native to all I phones specifically because this is a proposed IOS app) in utterly needless and inaccessible ways. From what I have been seeing on Reddit they have been shielding themselves (or fans of the project have been defending them) with this claim of being an accessibility tool as well to which is infuriating for so many reasons.

I plan to make a longer post explaining why this is a terrible idea later but I’ll keep it short for tonight with my main three criticisms and a few extras:

1. Your service requires people to copy a url for a fic then open your app then paste it into your app and click a button then wait for your audio to be prepared to use. This is needlessly complicating a process that exists on IOS already and can be done IN BROWSER using an overlay that you can fully control the placement of.

2. This is potentially killing your own fandom if it catches on with the proposed target market of xreader smut enjoyers because of only needing the link as mentioned above. You don’t have to open a fic to get a link this the author may potentially not even get any hits much less any other feedback. At least when you download a pdf you leave a hit: the download button is on the page with the fic for a reason. Fandom is a self sustaining eco system and many authors get discouraged and post less/even stop writing all together if they get low interaction.

3. Maybe we shouldn’t put something marketed as turning smut fanfic into audio books on the IOS App Store right now. Maybe with KOSA that’s a bad idea? Just maybe? Sarcasm aside we could see fan fiction be under even more legal threat if minors use this to listen to the content we know they all consume via sites like ao3 (even if we ask them not to) and are caught with it. Auditory content has historically been considered much more obscene/inappropriate than written content: this is a recipe for a disaster and more internet regulations we are trying to avoid.

I also have many issues with the fact that this is obviously redistributing fanfiction (thus violating the copyright we hold over our words and our plots) and removing control the author should have over their content and digital footprint. Then there is the fact that even though the creator on TikTok SAYS you can email to have your fic ‘excluded’ based on the way the demo works (pasting a link) I’m gonna assume that’s just to cover her ass/is utter bullshit. I know that’s harsh but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck.

I am all for women in stem- I’ve BEEN a woman in Stem- but this is not a cool girl boss moment. This is someone naive enough to think this will go over well at best or many other things (security risks especially) at worst.

In conclusion for tonight: I hope this person is a troll but there is enough hype and enough paid for web domains that I don’t think that’s the case. There are a litany of reasons every fanfic reader and writer should be against something like this existing and I’ll outline them all in several other posts later.

Do not email their opt out email address there is no saying what is actually happening with that data and it is simply not worth the risks it could bring up. I hate treating seemingly well meaning people like potential cyber criminals but I’ve seen enough shit by now that it’s better to be safe than sorry. You’re much safer just locking all your fics to account only. I haven’t yet but I may in the future if that is the only option.

If anyone wants a screen reader tutorial and a walk through of my free favorites as well as the native IOS screen reader I can post that later as well. Sorry for the heavy content I know it’s not my normal fare.

#it’s especially insulting the way this is marketed as solving a problem when the solution already exists #ableism #lore.fm #terrible app ideas that shouldn’t happen #serious #accessibility #screen readers #lore.fm should not launch #accessibility tools that are inherently ableist in design #I wish I was making this up

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hadoriel · 2 years

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Why does anybody use Spotify

I have tried to use it three times now and just zero of my music is on there apparently and the search function is a mess so it’s not like it’s easy manually searching every song on my Youtube/Soundcloud/files anyways

Discographies can’t be condensed, you seemingly must make playlists to make your song likes public/shareable, there’s a ton of ads (even a banner ad on the bottom of the program!) etc

Thankfully I don’t listen to music much in general but I can’t imagine suffering with this service

#people who only use Spotify must have no idea how much music they miss out on #'cause I'm assuming why most of the remixes I have aren't on there is due to copyright issues #despite other artists I have I can only find reposts of their work on there like not the official artist #personal

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copperbadge · 1 year

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Hi Sam! Because I just saw the post on ao3 and donations, and a different post about ao3s updated statement regarding chatgpt/ai generated fiction, and you generally have a good read on things like this - what's your opinion on it, and how its meant to be interpreted?

(I want to good faith believe, and its a complicated/ongoing topic, but wanted to hear your thoughts)

I don't know which post about the update you mean, Anon, but I assume the update referenced is the one the OTW posted on 5/13 about AI scraping and ChatGPT. I do have some thoughts but I want to go through the post a little because I don't think I'm actually needed to interpret this one -- I think with some critical thought anyone can, but a lot of people don't get critical thinking training in school, so I want to do a little demo of it.

Pre-emptively, this is a list of things I'm not an expert on: copyright law, data scraping, AI, website design, and the legality of certain forms of freedom of expression. But honestly for this you don't need to be.

First and foremost, we really have no reason to disbelieve OTW when they speak on this subject. While there's debate and discussion about AO3 and certainly it's imperfect in a number of directions, they are pretty transparent, generally speaking. I don't believe there is a reason to approach AO3 with an assumption of disingenuity in a general sense. However, the organization is run by humans, who are imperfect and can sometimes be deceitful, so it's good to always approach public statements with a critical eye.

So the post is talking about two separate but related issues: preventing AIs from scraping AO3, and policy on AI-generated works being posted. What we are looking for, from both, is a combination of things: we want what they're saying to make sense both in the world, and within the statement -- no contradictions, nothing that seems illogical, nothing that seems like baseless assumption or generalization. We want simple prose, and we want a look at the reasoning behind the actions they're taking.

When talking about AI scraping, they start with what they've done to counteract scraping, speaking in relatively simple terms but with enough specificity that if you wanted you could look up anything you didn't understand. They list what they've done to prevent scraping, and they also discuss the issues with the kinds of measures that would need to be implemented to fully prevent it. They mention specific examples that people were concerned about, and they talk about what they'll be doing going forward.

In terms of the text, this all makes sense to me -- here's what we've done, here's the problem with doing more, here's what we plan to do next. Internally, no matter what the topic is, this section is logical, there are no contradictions and no particular evasions. Critically it passes muster. Additionally, with the knowledge I do have of website design and data management, I can tell that they're doing all they reasonably can. From a standpoint of ignorance, the statement makes internal sense; from a standpoint of knowledge, they're doing what I would do in their place.

When talking about AI-generated works, likewise, they're pretty open about their process and reasoning. They say look, this isn't against TOS as it stands, and here's a reminder of why, followed by a mission statement. The bolded text of that statement is very clear, and correlates with what I said in an earlier post: their policy is maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This statement is consistent with policy AO3 has held for years, which is well-known to the community.

They go on to discuss how AI-generated work could violate spam policies, but those spam policies apply to everyone everywhere, and they remind us that we can always have the Policy & Abuse team examine a work we're skeptical of. (Inside baseball, I know some people who have beef with Policy & Abuse for being unresponsive, particularly in certain cases where harassment is involved. However, within this document, they are saying both "here's why we do this" and "if you have a problem, here's the first step.")

Again, after saying what's happening and what's being done about it, they move on to say that these are only current policies, and may change depending on future developments, and that those changes will be made available for public discussion. This is once more internally logical, and with the benefit of outside knowledge, perfectly rational.

Because I agree with them -- when I saw there was an "updated" statement from OTW on AI-generated prose I was frankly alarmed because I think banning AI-generated prose from AO3 causes way more problems than it solves. It's pretty restrained of them not to bring up the issue in more detail, but it's not difficult for those of us familiar with the community to project outwards as to why banning AI prose might be a bad thing.

So, think about what happens if an AI prose ban goes into effect and you read a fic you think was AI generated. How can you tell? Have you read some of the human-generated prose on AO3? Some of it's not great. So really in that case, what you're banning is someone saying they AI-generated the fic, which means AI-generated fic would still show up, it just couldn't be tagged as such. It's like Prohibition -- they banned alcohol and people still drank. They poisoned the alcohol and people drank the poisoned alcohol (check out paragraph five for specifics). If you ban something off the archive it'll still show up there, it just won't be tagged, so instead of a bag labeled "dead dove, do not eat" you just step on a land mine in your kitchen. AI prose is not content in the way that say incest or underage sex is; I'm against banning those as well, but at least with those you can pretty clearly say "yes this is" or "no this isn't" based on objective criteria. You can't do that with "was this made by a human or a machine" when it comes to prose.

Which leads to the second issue: if a text is reported as AI-generated and the author says "No, I wrote that," how do you prove otherwise? If you report an author for uploading AI-generated prose, all that will happen is either they just say "No, I wrote that" or someone on AO3's abuse team unilaterally decides that yes, this is AI prose, and punts someone off the website who might just be kind of a crap writer, which is not a sin or a crime. Either way it's a waste of time. So introducing a ban on AI prose is really just introducing either a useless show-law that will still cause AI prose to be posted there, just without proper tagging, or a tool to harass people with. Harassment is already an issue on the archive.

And we can reason all this out for ourselves simply by asking "What is the good-faith reason for not banning AI prose?" Assuming good faith isn't just for blindly trusting, after all; it's also for reasoning out other peoples' motivations for things.

And frankly fandom gets a little weird about assuming bad faith when it comes to anyone who has the least bit of power within the community. It's something I've encountered personally, as someone with some clout in fandom who is occasionally assumed to have weirdly malevolent intent. I'm not malicious. I'm just an awkward dumbass. But this is just something fandom does, so it's also good to check oneself and go, "Hey, is this person being genuinely malevolent or am I just assuming wickedness because it's easier to be mad at a villain than to explore the complexities of these acts?"

It's why I deliberately didn't speculate about the person who uploaded an AI fanfic and didn't respond to others doing so in comments. That person is right there. You don't have to assume any intent at all, you can just ask them. And it's so much more educational to do so!

So yeah, actually real props to whoever wrote that post by the OTW -- it's internally logical, reasonably transparent, simply written, and avoids a lot of prose pitfalls that I would absolutely fall into (did fall into, in this very post). I think within this area, they are doing what they can to prevent scraping and making the correct decisions, for now, regarding AI content on the archive.

#ao3 #otw #ai prose #censorship #archive

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dreamescapeswriting · 1 year

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Stray Kids Reaction || You’re Sana’s Best Friend And Have A Crush On a Member

⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - June 2023

⤜MASTERLIST

CHAN:

As soon as Sana found out about the crush that you had on Chan she was doing everything within her power to make sure the two of you would see each other. It didn't matter if she had no real reason to go and see him, she would find something. Today was no different it seemed, Sana told you that you'd come here because she owed him some money but Chan had no idea what she was talking about when you both got here.

"We can bring him to lunch with us, right Chan? You'd love to come and grab food." Chan glanced up from his laptop and as soon as his eyes met yours a slight blush began to creep onto his cheeks.

"I'd love to," He stood up from behind his desk, grabbing his bag while your heart was doing summersaults at the thought of getting to spend some time with him.

"Great because I can't and Yn is hungry," Your mouth dropped open as soon as Sana left the room leaving you and chan alone as you stared at one another.

"I guess it's a date." Chan nudged you ever so slightly and you could have sworn your whole body was on fire.

"Y-Yeah, a date," Chan smirked noticing the slight stutter that you were now giving off and the two of you headed out to go and find something to eat together.

MINHO:

You should have known Sana was up to no good when she'd texted you to meet her inside the JYPE building. Normally the two of you would meet up at your favourite cafe but this morning she'd told you to come and meet her inside - which was no issue since you were under her list of friends allowed inside.

"Sana, if this is some weird way to scare me I'll never forgive you." You called out to her as you walked into the practice room, the lights were all on and as soon as you walked inside the door was slammed shut behind you.

"I see you were given instructions to meet her here too." Minho suddenly asked from the seats in the back corner of the room, you jumped a little holding your hand over your chest.

"Ever since I told her about my crush, she's been relentless." Minho finally admitted as if it was the most casual thing in the world, meanwhile, your heart was refusing to stop racing.

"You have a crush, on?" You waited for him to say it explicitly, not wanting to just assume.

"You," He smirked, confidence oozing out of him as he made his way over to you and winked a little, your whole world was spinning so fast you could barely see.

"I'm- I'm going to need a minute," You giggled making Minho blush, honestly it was music to his ears whenever you giggled all laughed around him.

CHANGBIN:

When you'd told Sana about your crush on Changbin, you'd never really expected her to think much of it. You'd only mentioned it in passing and had assumed that she'd barely acknowledged what you were saying since you were both a little tipsy.

"Tell me again why we had to meet in Changbin's studio..." You said as you sat down on the swivel chair, looking at everything that was set up on his desk. There was a photo of you and Changbin together and beside that were a couple of keepsakes you'd gotten for him since the two of you were friends.

"We're just waiting for him to show up." She lied, Changbin was just in the next room set up for some of the NMIXX girls to come and record.

"Do you still have a crush on him?" You span around to face her, stunned by the sudden question.

"Can you be quiet about it? He's one of our best friends, I don't exactly want to tell him I've had a crush on him this whole time." You laughed awkwardly but a smirk began to take over Sana'a lips and you froze in place.

"He's behind me, isn't he?" All Sana did was nod before you span in your chair to see a very blushing Changbin looking at you.

"A crush? On me?" He sounded so surprised by it but he was already making his way over to you,

"Me too, I mean...a crush on you, not on me, I can't have a crush on me because that would be weird, and I don't-" He stopped talking when you let out a small giggle, looking up at him.

"I'll come and see you after I'm done here...Please, don't go anywhere." He begged and you nodded quickly kissing his cheek before leaving the studio.

HYUNJIN:

If it wasn't obvious enough to everyone around you that you had a crush on Hyunjin, it was now. Not only did you suddenly turn into a clumsy mess around him but it appeared you now stuttered and stammered whenever he was close to you.

"Hyunjin just put the girl out of her misery and take her on a date," Sana said as she noticed you drop a glass on the floor and it shattered as it hit the floor. Sana knew that Hyunjin knew of your crush on him and every time he flirted with you or got too close on purpose it was because he liked to see you flustered for him but she'd had enough.

"But it's fun to see Yn squirm," Your heart was in your throat as you turned your head to look up at him.

"You knew? This whole time?!" Your voice cracked ever so slightly toward the end of your questioning and he nodded his head.

"Don't worry, I thought it was cute." Hyunjin complimented as he bent down to pick up the broken shards of glass leaving you to whine and groan at the thought of him knowing this whole time about the crush you had on him.

JISUNG:

"Did you get the same text?" A voice suddenly asked making you look up from the menu and instantly you knew that you were going to kill your best friend.

"Yeah, she told me she'd meet me for food." You told Jisung as he took a place in front of you, sliding his phone into your view so you could see the exact message word for word on his screen,

[SANA 4:55pm] Let's meet at FuzzCafe at 5:30! xx

You should have known she was going to do something like this for you, ever since you'd told her last week about your crush on Jisung she'd relentlessly been telling you about it.

"I'll kill her." You grumbled under your breath, noticing Jisung looking slightly saddened by it,

"It's nothing against you, it's just, she knows what she's doing by forcing us together and she thinks it's going to end well but I told her that you would never feel the same way and that she shouldn't get involved and yet here we are." You rambled our before realising a little too late that you'd in, some way or another, told Jisung you liked him.

"Who said I wouldn't feel the same?" A blush was growing deeper on his cheeks as he stared back at you, both of you smiling a relaxing.

"Let's order food and we can continue talking about it?" He suggested making you shyly nod at him.

FELIX:

Felix was oblivious to it all, it didn't matter how obvious Sana made it for him he just didn't take the hint and it was starting to get to her. All she wanted was for her best friend and someone she saw as a little brother to finally be happy together but it seemed he was blind to all the signs.

"Oh my god, no!" You screamed out when you walked into the small canteen to see Sana writing a literal sign with the words "Felix YN has a crush on you" written on it.

"Are you insane?!" You quickly placed your tray on top of the sign and scanned the room to make sure none of the stray kids boys was even around to see it.

"It's the only way he's going to take the hint," She pouted at you, your heart fluttering when you saw her giving you her signature pleading eyes look.

"Maybe he knows and is choosing to ignore you. Did you ever think about that?" She shook her head at you, there was no way Felix didn't like you back.

"He likes you. I know it, besides when he sees this sign, he'll tell you the truth," You shook your head at her, slowly taking your tray away from her when you thought it was safe to do so.

"Oh." The voice came so deep you almost dropped your tray turning around to see Felix right behind Sana, your eyes scanned him before he looked at you and blushed.

"My work here is done," Sana said proudly, leaving her sign on the table as you and Felix sat down together to talk some more.

SEUNGMIN:

It was a stupid dare, one that you were regretting as every single second passed by. You were sneaking into one of the dance studios where Seungmin and Jeongin were practising together, the plan was to grab his phone and delete the voicemail before he ever had a chance to listen to it.

"Will you relax, he's probably not listened to it yet." Sana giggled as you stopped just outside of the room, everything was completely silent which didn't feel you with much hope.

"If he's listened to it, you have to kill me." You told her as you headed into the room, your eyes squinting a little as you tried not to let the bright lights hurt you since you were hung over/

"Seungmin!" Sana squealed rushing to hug him while you made a quick b-line for his jacket, you knew his passcode since you, Sana and himself were quite close with one another.

"Did you girls have a nice night last night?"

"We did, did you? I heard you and Jeongin had an early night." Sana did her best to distract him while you hunted for his voicemails.

"We did. Yn, did you have a reallllyyy good time last night?" As soon as you heard his line of questioning you froze and turned to face him.

"I heard that you reeeeallllyyyy liked last night and that you, reallllyyyy like me." You groaned inwardly and slowly sunk down into the seats.

"It's cute. I'm glad though," He told you as he made his way over to you, standing above you with his face so close to yours.

"Because I reeeallllyyyy like you too," He whispered making your whole body burn for him.

"I'll leave you guys to it," Sana smirked before heading out.

JEONGIN:

"Are you sure this is a good idea? Do I look okay?" The uncertainty in your voice oozed out easily and Sana smiled turning around to hold you in place. All morning she'd been prepping you for your "date" with Jeongin and you were suddenly ready to back out of it and run for the hills. You'd told Sana about your crush on Jeongin months ago and now suddenly he was asking to hang out with you alone.

"I told you, you look great and this was a fantastic idea. He wanted to spend time with you." That was the part you were having a hard time believing, if jeongin wanted to hang out why didn't he just ask you.

"Why didn't he just ask me? I feel like you're setting me up," You stuttered a little but before Sana even had a chance to answer you the door to a studio opened and Jeongin blushed seeing you.

"H-Hi," He stuttered out, stepping inside the room and letting you come inside. The room was darkened except for a few candles sitting on the desk where a whole picnic was set up for the two of you.

"I told you, it wasn't a set-up." Sana winked, slowly shutting the door and leaving you both alone.

tagline: @chiisaiblog @hanasonmi @sw33tnight @taestannie @illicee @army24--7 @acciocriativity @scarletemeterio @halesandy @aerastus @lost-leopard-beanie @laylasbunbunny @critssq @lenfilms @btsiguess-kpop @meowmeowisdaname @imafivestarkpopstan

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velnna · 2 months

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What's wrong with using a pose ref lol, didn't you just redraw a screencap from a tv show

See this is why I prefaced it by saying it's not objectively "wrong", it's a personal take and a grey area. Ultimately if an artist tells you they're uncomfortable with something and you choose to do it anyway it's on you if they then complain about it or ask you to reconsider, it's not the law. You can always tell them they're wrong but then don't be surprised if they take issue with that lol

But for a more detailed answer, I know I've said this a thousand times but I'll always hammer it in. I think there's definitely leeway to do redraws of things across media (so if you redraw a screenshot from an animated show and link said redraw etc, I see it as more of a transformative thing and a tribute than just straight up copying. Same for live action or even photographs - the same way that if someone took one of my drawings and decided to replicate it in photography or animation with a very clear link to it I would see it as more of a tribute because it's transformative) but even then if anyone was shown to take an issue with it I'd just Not Do It. Also the vast majority of the time these things are memes and very obviously a nod to the original one rather than me saying "look this is totally something canonical to the characters I'm drawing and didn't originate elsewhere"

There's times when I don't take an issue with people using my poses as inspiration or reference but a lot of my work does sort of just work as pieces of a comic or a scene that I don't like seeing repurposed for other characters. But that's the keyword: I don't like it. Not gonna send the police after you for it or claim copyright or even force you to take it down but I may *ask* you to reconsider it and think about it. And if it's a recurrent thing and I see you do it a lot I may insist 🤷‍♂️ it's a boundary I established but others are free to feel differently

ALSO I'm not referring to accidentally creating shit that's too similar. We all take inspiration from each other so that's bound to happen. I'm mostly referring to when it's very obvious a single artwork was used as a direct reference - and again, no shade if people do it without realising the artist might feel bad about it. I never assume ill intent from the get go

#ask #im not the only artist feeling this way too #so I think it's just something to keep in mind you know

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txttletale · 5 months

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Hey this is only tangential to the AI art thing, but I'm curious how you feel about the distinction between plagiarism and information property infringement?

I take issue with plagiarism (which isn't what AI art is doing anyway) but I don't think copyright law is the place to solve it. IP as a concept and copyright as a practice I feel only have meaning within the bounds of capitalism and are mostly vehicles for capitalists to extract more value from creative labor, but I still think plagiarism would be wrong even if there was no publication-as-means-to-survival element.

Like, passing off someone else's work as your own at the very least feels different from owning the right to profit from that work. But simultaneously it does seem like even that is veering toward an 'economics of clout' if that makes any sense. Like, I would still be upset (albeit, much less so than if I relied on that work to eat) if I made something cool and someone else got the credit, but I think I lack the vocab to articulate why or whether a meaningful difference actually exists.

For clarity, my background is in research rather than art so maybe that affects my thinking?

If you don't feel like writing a full response, name-dropping a book or an article for me to get started would be greatly appreciated too.

yeah i mean i think the thing about plagiarism that differentiates it from copyright infringement is that imo the crucial part of plagiarism is taking the name off the thing. like, plagiarism fundamentally is not a crime of taking or distributing something, it's about refusing to name the author, about purposefully lying about the origins of a piece. & i think it is bad while copyright infringement is not because it inherently muddies the water of truth -- like, to take the recent high-profile somerton case, i think one of the really bad things about his plagiarism was that he was mixing plagiarised research and journalism with ad-libbed nonsense like "the SS was teeming with homosexuals", and without attribution people were led to assume that the well-researched accounts of queer history were from the same source as the insane claims, which lent somerton's editorializing totally uneared credibility.

but yknow i think that in many cases copyright law legalizes plagiarism. like the only difference between ghostwriting and plagiarism is that one is legal -- i often think about how atari didn't credit game developers on their early games, or how game studios still find bullshit reasons to not credit workers now. hell, i screenshot someone in the notes of an AI art discourse post sayting shrek was "the hard work of Dreamworks Studios", which to me is just as much of a misattribution of credit as saying james somerton wrote his videos.

#ask

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littlediscoveredstars · 3 months

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Alright I’m on my Yugioh shit, but I think what Pegasus did to Seto Kaiba was waaaay more personal than any other Yugioh villain.

None of my thoughts are organized, but I’ll try to get it out in some kind of way that makes sense.

Let me first start by saying that Seto Kaiba is a minor through the whole series. This is important to his character, almost more than the others, because it is exactly what he’s trying to erase about himself.

Kaiba dresses himself up in outfits that accent his masculine features similar to how an adult will. His shoulder pads make his shoulders seem broader. His coat goes inward to give a very triangular shape to his torso. He’s got belts everywhere (and while yes, this is just the style of Yugioh, I believe it cannot be completely written off as just that).

At the base of it, Kaiba wants to be seen as an adult. He NEEDS to be. He runs a company and is in near constant threat of being taken advantage of by others. We see this many times throughout the show, especially by Pegasus.

Now, to connect things once again. Kaiba is a minor who was thrust into adulthood far too early, yet, he engages in child-like activities. Duel Monsters, while used for their ancient shadow games, is still just a game. A game Kaiba is OBSESSED with, to the point he becomes the face of the Blue Eyes White Dragon.

(Which is his symbol of power and autonomy over others, which further proves why he so badly hates the ancient talk, but that’s another essay)

Pegasus is the created (re-created, technically) of Duel Monsters. He made the paintings, the cards, the rules. He shows in many tournaments (assumed based off episode 2) and given how much Kaiba has won? I’m guessing they met before becoming business partners.

In short, it makes sense that Pegasus would be an important figure to Kaiba. Maybe an idol, an inspiration, or whatever it might be. Kaiba saw Pegasus and saw a man who’s game kept him alive through his years with Gozaburo, who gave him a connection to his own brother.

Pegasus is powerful. Pegasus has full control of his own actions. He is everything Kaiba wants and changed KaibaCorp. to be.

A little ways down the line, Pegasus becomes his business partner. Kaiba gets to work a littler closer with him. We never see what exactly that entailed besides letting Kaiba use the Blue Eyes (and other cards) without copyright issues and Pegasus using the holographic stages, but even that is a significant exchange.

(Makes me wonder if things hadn’t turned out the way they did, would Kaiba and Duke Devlin view him the same way?)

Then, Pegasus starts Duelist Kingdom. He uses Kaibams vulnerability to his advantage and steps in to take over. He kidnaps Mokuba, then takes his soul and shows it off like a trophy.

Pegasus has not just betrayed Kaiba’s trust, but he turned into a real person for Kaiba. It shows him that, just like everyone else, Pegasus is greedy and selfish. He takes what Kaiba worked so hard for, what he loves, just because he can. And he does so with the same smiles and teasing as before.

It’s beyond disappointment. This is heating your favorite person side with your abusers. This is a childhood hero watching you get kicked and laughing as he kicks you alongside them.

So, naturally, Kaiba won’t forgive him. We see in Battle City how bruised Kaiba’s ego is. He’s mad at Yugi, he’s mad at Izushi, no one is saved from his ire. Even Mokuba gets the short stick every so often. He is compensating BIG TIME and it’s directly connected to how things went over last season.

Might I add that Duelist Kingdom takes place less than a year after Kaiba took over KaibaCorp? This is a still pretty fresh CEO with some very big trauma that he simply has not dig into yet.

I think in a world where Pegasus was not so disillusioned by his own desperation to revive Cecelia, he would’ve been a good mentor to Kaiba. They both have a love for games, for the visual experience (painting and holograms) and they’re both very particular. Honestly, their traits would work relatively well, all things considered.

But it didn’t and we see Kaiba go through cycle after cycle of trying to get better and stumbling every step of the way.

Anyway, that’s my TedTalk. As a Pegasus enjoyed and Kaiba analysis, I found this topic very fascinating.

#yugioh #seto kaiba #maximillion pegasus #pegasus j crawford #character analysis #duelist kingdom #not toonshipping!#essay #cycles of abuse

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 3 months

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I saw another post on another blog that had a really good point and wanted to share it with everyone here...unfortunately I can't find the comment now!

The anon suggested that perhaps why the wire services may have freaked out about the edits on KP's photo is because of terms and conditions prohibiting agencies from selling post-edited or post-modified images. So someone at the AP or whatever wire service saw the edits and assumed that the usual rules - no selling or purchasing edited photos - applied in this case and overcorrected by issuing the kill notice to rectify their mistake of purchasing an edited photo. And in that panic to correct their "error", no one realized that the photo was sourced from a personal social media account, thus is subject to different rules. More internet chaos and a KP apology later, the photo suddenly gets resurrected and some of the community notes are removed.

It's a good theory, and one that's very plausible. Probably the most plausible explanation of everything that happened.

As to why there was suddenly a resurrection, I'm thinking the lawyers got involved and if the lawyers finally did get pulled in, they probably said either "this is a personal photo accessed on social media, those rules don't apply" (and everyone went "shit-shit-shit") or they talked about the sudden liabilities they're now open to with this precedence of calling out edits that they now have a standard to uphold (and everyone went "shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit"). Again, this is just conjecture. The kneejerking back-and-forth that happened today does seem classically lawyerese to me, though.

A second piece to this, I'm reminded of how KP shares their photos. Which is that the actually aren't selling their photographs. It's an old story from back in 2013, but when KP published the baby George-Kate-William-Lupo photos taken by Michael Middleton, a blogger who wanted to buy the photos for her website contacted Michael or KP to enquire about purchase and usage, and Michael or Michael's people responded that there was no cost for using the photos as long as she properly credited him with the copyright and used them only for a news story. I imagine that's similar to KP's process; if a publication (such as the AP) wants to reproduce a photograph credited to Kate (or William) that has been published on social media, the entity makes a request to the office, and the communications office sends them the source file.

At no point in any of this is there actually any money exchanging hands. I'm pretty confident there's no money being exchanged for KP's personal photographs to be reused, in which case the "we don't buy edited photos" rule is null and void. Different standards apply here. (My confidence comes from the fact that this is part of the "press pact" that Meghan and Harry pushed back against; they wanted to charge copyright and usage fees for their personal photographs rather than make them freely available on request like the then-Cambridges did.)

And then finally, all photographers - amateur and professional alike - edit their images before publishing them or sending them anywhere. What Kate did is no different than what Misan Harriman or Chris Jackson or Samir Hussein do (and have admitted to! Check out those links for their "confessions."). And I suspect that KP's statement where Kate said she had done the editing herself before the photo was posted is what threw the monkey wrench that maybe brought the lawyers in - because if they retract KP's photo on the basis that someone edited it before it was first posted/submitted to the public, then they have to retract thousands and thousands of other photos on the same grounds that someone edited it before it was first posted/submitted to the public. Again, this is all speculation.

At the end of the day, it all seems to be boiling down to one thing: there was a mixup and a miscommunication somewhere. And for me, all the signs point to the cock-up happening on the media's side. The rules/terms and conditions they have in place to use only verified images are good ones to have, but the last 48 hours have made it abundantly clear that there are holes in the rules and gaps in how they vet and verify images they source and distribute.

(Honestly I'm surprised that photographers haven't spoken out in Kate's defense. I'd have thought at least one or two would've said something. I can see why they wouldn't - maybe jobs are on the line or maybe they lose contest/recognition opportunities if they do - but it does strike me as a bit odd.)

(Also, sorry to the anon from earlier this morning to whom I said I probably wasn't going to post on the photo edit drama anymore. Clearly that plan went by the wayside.)

#brf #waleses #theories

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fuckyeahbaldursgate · 7 months

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Viconia - Plot Support extraordinaire

Just to preface this as I don't want this to seem like I am hating on BG3 as a diehard fan of the original series because I really do love BG3. I've completed it twice now and think it will absolutely be joining my annual rotation of BG1/SOD/BG2 playthroughs but it has its problems, much in the same way that the originals themselves have problems as well.

So after my Sarevok post I wanted to treat Viconia to the same critical analysis as unfortunately I think she also gets the short end of the evil plot stick. I get it, evil characters can be hard to get right but again similar to Sarevok, in my opinion, her character regresses to evil Shar mook number one rather than actually being Viconia. Worse still she's entirely at the mercy of being wrapped up in ShadowHeart's backstory.

Anyway this is a bit of a deep dive into Viconia's issues in BG3. Spoiler warning for both BG3 and BG2.

1. No Grey DeLise.

Again, similar to Sarevok, another prolific voice actor that has done recent video game work seemingly not approached for the role. I can't help but think that some of this is down to the rushed nature of act three generally and Larian just having to get whoever they could for the job in the time that they needed it. Unlike Jaheria and Minsc there's no attempt to mimic her original VA or get someone who sounded like her so she ends up sounding completely and utterly different.

This version of Viconia sounds haughty and stuck up which while the original Viconia VA has a degree of arrogance, she is also pretty sultry. Haer'dalis even comments that she has 'the throaty voice of the most expensive courtesan' and Viconia deliberately plays on the stereotype of the sensual female drow with certain male party members for her own benefit e.g the male Bhaalspawn, Edwin, Sarevok and even Anomen (I cover this a bit here and here).

2. Her in game design...just isn't great.

Let's be honest, combined with the voice, Viconia's design basically makes her unrecognisable. She looks like a generic old drow lady to the point that I did have 'Is that meant to be Viconia?' moment when I first met her.

Now I appreciate there is minor controversy with Viconia's original BG2 portrait (which is probably the most recognisable image of her) because the artist actually used a famous porn star as the base for it.

For info, this was a common practice at Bioware at the time as they used to use lots of different images as bases for portraits. They finally got into legal trouble for it in NWN where due to various copyright claims they had to change quite a few portraits.

More recently, I think that Beamdog actually did quite a good job of recreating a faithful adaption of her original portrait in Siege of Dragonspear while presumbably navigating the original copyright issue.

In comparison to her BG3 portrayal, my first impression was she looks incredibly old. Now as far as I'm aware we've never been given a canon age for Viconia but we do know she was around for House DeVir being defeated by the Do'Urden house so she has to be at least 100 years old by the time of BG1... but her character level is between 2 and 6 (depending on the party's XP) so a relatively inexperienced cleric. With that in mind I definitely assumed she was on the younger side (maybe 200-300?). Either way 5e elves can live between 750 to 1000 years although there are instances in the Forgotten Realms books of drow living to over 2000. Now tack on the additional 120 years for BG3 in my mind it would definitely put her in the middle aged category but not necessarily anywhere near the end of her life. Critically she would be aging much slower than Jaheria but with those wrinkles she looks WAY older than her. I honestly feel cheated of an interaction between the two about how hagged and old Jaheria looks in comparison to herself.

In terms of her outfit, although initially she wears the Sharite mask and hooded outfit, which is good for concealing her identity, we eventually end up with Viconia in a spider adorned dress. This seems like a strange choice given the spider motif when she literally stopped worshipping Lloth for Shar - maybe she's being ironic? The lack of armour,when she's a cleric that knows there's a good chance she's about to have a fight seems kind of stupid. If you do choose to fight her, she then looks entirely comical in her light dress accompanied by an enormous oversized shield and mace.

For me though this really identifies her design problem: her leather armour was a critical part of her original design. Given that we only see portrait style headshots of BG characters, the decision not to include her leather corset with the three straps and the head band is really what makes her unrecognisable. It would be like removing Minsc's head tattoo or Jaheria's braids or Sarevok's armour (which even with all the problems I talked about in my post, at least he got to keep that).

My hope is that some enterprising modder out there makes a more BG2 accurate version of her in future. Larian, please give my lady her leather armour back or maybe even a justicar outfit!

3. Ignores her BG1/2 alignment, motivations and twists her original epilogue.

Now I do appreciate BG3 deliberately assumes that the events of BG1/BG2 are a little bit fluid, which Jaheria confirms this when she talks about the bards that tell stories of her slaying gods or bedding them depending on which one you listen to. But the game goes onto confirm certain events in Viconia's history that don't really make sense:

A.) The game confirms that Viconia did travel with the Bhaalspawn but not for the entirety of the game. Minsc informs you that after trying to dissect Boo she was expelled from the group. I have to admit this story didn't gel with me at all because it implies Viconia is some sort of chaotic evil idiot (reminder: Viconia is neutral evil with a 16 INT score and 18 WIS score in BG2) who would deliberately provoke a giant raging berserker man by murdering his beloved pet. Like that's the sort of thing I could see Xzar (who is completely and utterly mad) doing but not Viconia. What benefit would she get out of it? Maybe it would be a good tribute for Shar but that would be a pretty short term benefit. In fact in BG2 Viconia offers begrudging respect to Minsc for his effectiveness in battle, she knows he's powerful and she wants to be on the right side of that. Minsc for his part does what he does with many of the female characters, particularly in BG2 and makes her a proxy substitute for Dynaheir offering to protect her. That's not to say she won't insult people (Aerie and Jaheria or characters who she perceives as weak often get the brunt of it) but she's generally smart enough to stay out of an actual fight. Important to note that in any of NPC conflicts that end in a fight in BG1/2 (e.g. Kivan, Ajantis, Keldorn) it's never Viconia that's starts the fight.

B.) The Waterdeep cult.

In Viconia's epilogue, which you only get if you kept her for the end of Throne of Bhaal and you didn't romance her, Viconia goes on to do a few things which you can see below (obviously massive spoilers for BG2) :

So it feels like Larian has taken the first part of this ending but nothing else, which really leaves a lot of questions. We know Shar isn't entirely happy with Viconia based on her diary entries so why is Shar still giving powers to a woman that basically killed a whole bunch of her followers? Why is Viconia still working for a goddess that hates her? Why is she so accepting of Shar's plot to groom Shadowheart as her replacement? Why on earth hasn't Viconia got the fuck out of dodge, which is pretty much what she has been shown to do in the past? And this comes neatly onto my next point.

4. Viconia is just a plot device for Shadowheart.

I love Shadowheart and I love her arc but honestly Viconia being the Mother Superior just felt like a way of inserting her into the game in a way that didn't really fit especially when Viconia's diaries in BG3 show that she knows that Shar intends for Shadowheart to essentially replace her as one of her prominent followers/chosen. The whole plot ignores two critical points about Viconia and her backstory:

Firstly the reason Viconia left the Underdark in the first place was because she refused to sacrifice a child to Lloth and Lloth turning her brother into a drider after he saved her from being sacrificed. Now Viconia is many things, she's self serving, cruel and dedicated to her own survival at the expense of anything and anyone else (quintessential neutral evil through and through) but at the same time she threw away her position, caused the downfall of her house and got most of her family murdered to save a child. You're telling me she would then willingly go along with Shar's plan to deliberate plan to kidnap and repeatedly torture a child for YEARS whilst also training said child to replace her? My girl doesn't have many lines in the sand but harming children definitely seems like one of them. I actually wandered whether Shadowheart not liking to harm children / prefers saving them is not just about her being a secret Selunite but also a potential a hint of Viconia's influence.

Secondly, that plot seems to ignores Viconia's other primary driver, which is to survive: it's why she leaves the Underdark, it's why she travels with the Bhaalspawn, it's why she worships Shar and it's why she murders an entire cabal of Shar's followers after one person betrayed her. Now if we ignore that she has qualms about children, you're telling me that she would instead essentially train her replacement to be an amazing cleric who is 99% likely to murder her? I'm pretty sure Viconia would have tried to kill Shadowheart way before her becoming a justicar or simply skipped town as she has done before.

The alternative?

Personally I would have liked to have seen Viconia ultimately involved in a plot to overthrow the Mother Superior or maybe doing something even crazier like going after Shar herself out of revenge following her fall from grace after the events of the Waterdeep cult. Maybe she works with the Absolute to get her revenge and keep her divine powers - hell who better to help Ketheric with the Nightsong in Shar's temple then an ex priestess of Shar?

If not the Absolute then Shar's got plenty of enemies and Viconia has converted before. Maybe she could have joined the team to achieve a particular goal while giving fans of the original series the opportunity to have one of the original evil characters to join the crew. I would have loved to see the contrast with Minthara who is still fairly fresh from leaving drow society and a complete blunt instrument compared to Viconia's more subtle ways. Maybe Viconia would take the paladin under her wing, maybe introduce her to a new patron god (something I don't think is ever explained is how Minthara still retains her divine powers given neither Lloth or the Absolute are fueling them anymore). Shevarash the elven god of revenge, would be a fantastic fit for both of their back stories (which would also be a nice little throw back to Viconia's heated / sometimes fatal arguments with Kivan in BG1) presuming that Viconia could get over her disdain for the elven pantheon by that point in the timeline. The fireworks with Jaheria of course would be grand while Minsc I feel would be very conflicted given his mind's tendancy, as noted above, to sub in any female magic user as Dynaheir.

#baldur's gate #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate 2 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #viconia #viconia devir #discourse #spoilers

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charmac · 3 months

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They’re not allowed to read fanfic? Darn, I kind of assumed Rob found your Twitter handle from reading your fic since he didn’t seem to do anything else on twitter when he followed you

So it comes down to the basic idea of copyright. It’s not illegal or technically even banned, but since RCG are creators, writers, producers, etc. on Sunny and not just actors, it’s really a dicey area for them.

The copyright laws/legality of fanfiction is actually really interesting, there’s a long, messy modern history of fighting for the right to publish and protect fanfiction from studios and/or creators claiming copyright infringement. This use to be a huge issue where authors would send cease and desists to websites like Fanfiction.net to take down all fanfiction of their work. OTW (Ao3) kind of spearheaded the right for fanfiction to exist apart from what it's derived from. The T standing for Transformative argues that because fanworks ‘transform’ the content they are based off, they are exempt from copyright law, as long as there’s no profit. So we cannot find ourselves in legal trouble for publishing fanfiction. As long as it's transformative (aka you're not just republishing source material), it's new/original content.

So that means fanfiction kinda has its own protections in return. As long as you're not profiting off of your work, you have a right to claim that your fanfiction and the ideas that are new/original belong to you. Which means if there is ever any proof that a creator read your work and then a later episode (or sequel, book, etc.) reflected anything you wrote that was not already in the source material prior to that, it can get very messy, in that there may be grounds for you to claim they profited off of your work. So most creators (writers especially) avoid reading fan works.

You can see why for a show like Sunny they might be especially careful reading anything, since there’s so much you can do in that show. If RCG have an idea for something as simple as The Gang Goes Camping, for example, but they’ve previously seen or read a fan work that hit that plot they’d be pretty inclined to never make the episode.

The basic idea being that you don’t want to hinder what you can in good conscience, with no legal issues, write, so you avoid fanworks all together.

I'll give you an example based on what happened with Charlie: he was in public and surrounded by fans and one fan hands him his spec script, or plot idea for an episode. If he had read it, all of a sudden whatever was on that paper becomes a legally grey issue in the writers room. If they liked the plot idea or dialogue (or whatever was on that paper) and end up using something in an actual episode, what claim does the fan now have? Everyone at the event could potentially tell you that this fan contributed to the show, so it's best not to read it. Don't risk ruling out a plot line you may have wanted, don't risk accidentally stealing from a fan, don't risk the show ending up in a legal battle.

Also, first anon: I still don't know why or have any solid proof as to how Rob found my account, but at the time he followed me I did have a 5hr old Tweet with ~15k likes reposting one of his TikToks and calling him the cringiest person alive. I didn't tag him or name him, he didn't like it, or interact with it or any of the replies or literally any other Tweet that day, but I have to imagine he saw it and that's why he followed me. Degradation kink overrules everything else.

#ask #fanfiction #what about aus? :)#could my plot ever happen? not until they invent time machines..#nah its still an issue i think they'd avoid bc dialogue and other potential plots #dennis is circumcised bc the first ever fanfic was about him being uncut and they couldnt risk the infringement #i made that up tbc... there were no fanfic claims back then #that fic was and is real tho #imagine the first thing anyone writes about your show is about your dick anatomy #well thats on brand for them im sure rob had a blast finding that

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drdemonprince · 8 days

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i'm reading digital copies of your books from oceanofpdf and really struggling with not being able to highlight or copy sentences for later reference - the functionality is just kinda broken, because the text is somehow backwards on the backend but displayed correctly?? (i assume to avoid detection of copyright issues.) do you know if there are more functional PDFs available anywhere? thank you

libgen.rs

get the epub and use send to kindle to read it on the kindle app! it's way better functionality than a pdf.

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mistwhisperexpress · 5 months

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I'm not Jewish myself but I do belong to a couple of minority demographics that receive denigration for one reason or another, along with people trying to speak for me.

My only real advice is that there comes a point where it's no longer "defending the oppressed" and more infantilization. There is such a thing as being too sensitive. This is a kid's game, not propaganda meant to encourage hatred. Same as any other demographic, Jewish people can speak on their own behalf. They don't need others' help, they only need a listening ear. To do anything else is risking spoiling the fun for everyone including those you're trying to speak for.

Also "goblin" as far as I've seen is as much an umbrella term as anything else. Jewish people don't hold a cultural copyright on financial greed and hooked noses. (may I direct you to dragons and stereotypical witches respectively) I could probably name a dozen other fairy tale and mythological creatures that have such traits.

Suggesting that SSO's new little green goblin (Grinch? Norman Osborn?) is a caricature of Jewish people makes as much sense as saying the orcs in Tolkien's legendarium represent black people or that the white walkers from ASOIAF represent white people, aka little to no sense once you look past the surface. The comparison of Jewish people and goblins alone could be deemed borderline antisemitic in itself. It's misguided, but forgivable.

Worry more about enjoying the game and less about whether SSO is offending a group who are more than capable of defending themselves in a kid's game. ❤️

Okay I don’t blame you for assuming I’m not Jewish because apparently I haven’t mentioned that here yet even though I (mis)remembered I had, but this still feels really weird to send? Telling someone who’s not part of a minority to not speak for them is absolutely okay, the job of people outside a minority is to raise up their voices, not add their own, so I have no issue with that aspect and I am genuinely sorry that’s been done to you, but why are you, someone who by your own words isn’t Jewish, speaking on if goblins antisemitic or not at all? You are speaking for/over us there, and you would be even if I wasn’t Jewish.

I am Jewish, and obviously while we aren’t a monolith, no group of people is, I personally find this depiction of goblins (green and greedy/thief) antisemitic, and with much of the world going mask off with their antisemitism right now I’m not as open to giving benefits of the doubt as I used to be. I do believe this was a mistake on SSO’s part and not intentional as I said in a reblog, but that doesn’t make it any less harmful or antisemitic.

I have done quite a bit of research into the history of goblins and when they began to be used as an antisemitic caricature (as early as the 1800s thanks to the Goblin Market poem, which is just classic blood libel) because I make dice as a job and I want to enjoy D&D without antisemitism and the whole dice goblin thing, and there is a very large connection. This isn't unfounded.

You’re right in that goblins are a bit of an umbrella term, they are, which is why it’s important to let the antisemitic version of them die. You can have goblins that are just mischievous, not green, big nosed, greedy, sneaky, and untrustworthy. It’s really easy to not have antisemitic goblins, but unfortunately the antisemitic version is a mainstream staple and that doesn’t just go away overnight.

If you apply harmful stereotypes to anything, even if it was completely harmless before, you’re going to get a harmful caricature. That’s what happened to goblins, and that’s what SSO did with the Snow Goblins. They took the popular depiction which is the antisemitic version, and applied it to the game without a thought because it’s been normalized to the point most people don’t even consider it may have less than great origins. Like Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel. They’re so normal the vast majority of people don’t even realize they were created for antisemitic reasons. Antisemitism is sneakily within a lot of things. You don’t start recognizing it until you become familiar with the tropes and stereotypes.

I’m also going to bet if they’re European in origin, the “dozen other fairy tale and mythological creatures that have such traits” you could name also had that done to them if they weren’t antisemitic to begin with. And since you mentioned them, it’s also what was done to the stereotypical version of witches, which is antisemitic and has a very long history of such going back to accused women who were burned being forced to wear Jewish clothing of the time as further humiliation. It’s also where the classic pointy hat comes from, since a pointy cone hat was what we were forced to wear to signify we were Jewish. Witches actually share a lot with goblins in antisemitic traits and SSO also needs to address Pi hitting all but the green skin.

You clearly know a little about the issue, as you brought up The Nose when I didn't, but you also don't know nearly enough to speak about this at all as evidenced by you not knowing the antisemitic history regarding witches, so please don't. And I never said they were a Jewish caricature, I said they were antisemitic, there's a difference. A Jewish caricature is the happy merchant meme.

What we're also not going to do is the whole 'you're the antisemitic one for seeing Jewish people in goblins' thing. That has and always will be an utterly bullshit dismissive argument. The whole point of this kind of caricature is to normalize the stereotypes so when they're actually applied to people you don't blink an eye, like how very few goyim blinked an eye at Mother Gothel in Tangled. I'm currently sick so I really don't have all the smart brain power to go into that right now and I hope someone else can. It's not antisemitic to notice when antisemitic caricatures have been applied to something. That's a very good thing to notice actually, and I want more goyim to start noticing that.

So it does actually make more sense than someone saying those things (which I don't think I've ever seen someone argue??), which I'll get into under the cut to clear up any confusion about how SSO's Snow Goblins tie into the antisemitic depictions, since a couple people were confused in my initial post.

And I am worrying more about enjoying the game; that's the whole reason I brought this up, because I'd like to enjoy a game that's been with me for more than half my life and means a lot to me, and this is preventing me from fully doing that.

Again, I am genuinely sorry people have spoken over and for you. That is wrong and not at all okay. And I'm sorry if I misread the tone of your ask.

Okay !! Education with Mandy time. This has been a long post but I hope you'll all stick with me for just a little longer.

And real quick before we get into the specifics, I want to mention that Christmas time is one of the times where you want to be especially careful about things like this, given the history present with characters like Scrooge.

So for those who don't know what the Snow Goblin is, this is the creature in question:

The typical antisemitic goblin is green, greedy, big nosed, and some flavor or sneaky and untrustworthy.

The Snow Goblin quite obviously hits on the green. If this creature looked like a normal capran and was named something like Snow Imp or Mischievous Capran, there would be no issue. Because bastardy little guys stealing things on it's own isn't an antisemitic stereotype. It's when there's multiple things that are the problem, like green skin, or in this case fur, and calling them something with a very large history of antisemitism when combined with those very traits.

The whole schtick of this little guy is they steal your snowflakes if you don't catch them in time, so it also hits on the greedy and untrustworthy tropes. If the Snow Goblin looked like a normal capran but was still called a goblin, there would still be an issue because the antisemitic goblin isn't just green, it's also bastard of greedy kinds, like a thief not out of necessity but of pleasure. "Thief" isn't directly an antisemitic stereotype, but it's very much there as an undercurrent. The "Jewish people are unfairly taking my money!" implication from The Middle Ages when the stereotype began, when money lender was pretty much the only job we were allowed to have.

If the Snow Goblin was called something else but was still green, I wouldn't say its directly antisemitic, but I would side eye it and not feel comfortable. It's kinda like the Grinch, ignoring the fact Dr. Seuss may or may not have been Jewish depending on who you ask because there's conflicting information. It's not directly anything bad, but I'm going to be a little wary of the intention and engage with it extra carefully.

Its about the combination.

I can't tell you exactly when the mainstream antisemitic goblin came together, because I don't know and it's really hard to find information on that, but it's there, and you can't deny that. I don't necessarily blame SSO for contributing to it's perpetuation, because you don't think to look deeper into something when you have no reason to think it's harmful, but I do hope they change it. And hire some Jewish sensitivity readers because this wouldn't have happened with more Jewish people around to catch it, and with witches being a focus of the story now I am admittedly a little nervous about how that'll be handled.

Also, this is all unintentionally made worse by use of the capran model, because it also gets to hit on the whole fun we're in league with the devil thing and the Jewish people have horns thing. I don't know when exactly those started either (drawings of us with "devil features" have been around a long time), but I know the we have horns one was popularized when Michelangelo decided to give his sculpture of Moses horns, because that's what we look like apparently. There are still people who genuinely believe we have horns. I feel robbed. Horns a super cool, I want horns. Where are my horns?

And before someone says it, yes this is a lot of words for something low stakes in a kids game. There are a lot of more important things right now. But that's exactly why it's mattering to me right now. I don't want to be silent about antisemitism while it's on the rise, but I don't know enough about the current aspects of that to speak on it. I do however know a lot about how it applies to fantasy, and I have had about three work in progress essays about the goblin issue to prepare for this.

And also before someone says it, Snow Gremlin isn't exactly an acceptable new name either. It's basically Snow Goblin 2.0. Gremlins aren't goblins (though they have become a bit synonymous and interchangeable), but they were popularized by the massive and proud antisemite Roald Dahl, and I have a hard time believing he didn't put any of those beliefs into them.

#star stable #star stable online #sso #sso critical #long post #antisemitism #jumblr #<- hoping some jumblr peeps can help explain why this ask feels so :/ to me #also side note but who's fun am i spoiling #the snow goblin's mechanic is horribly unfun even without this #it's just punishing #no essence of enjoyment in sight because there's a time limit that's really freaking short #and i know i essentially repeat myself a lot i am nothing if not a redundant girlie <3 lady redundant woman in world girl gets me

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thydungeongal · 7 months

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D&D is actually pretty good at what it does

So what can be done to make it better?

This is part five of my series of big silly posts about D&D, its mechanics, and how D&D best supports a style of play I like to call "Challenge Mode," and how it resists using it as a means to tell conventional narratives, i.e. "Story Mode."

Now, before I get to today's discussion: a lot of people already use D&D as simply a loose framework around which they tell stories and then ignore or bend the rules into the shape of the narrative they want. Those people are not the target audience for this post. The target audience of these posts are those people who already enjoy rules-mediated play and who wish to either hack D&D into a form where it better supports conventional narratives or to find games that already support conventional narratives.

Once again, I will be tagging this post as #the big damn post and you can find the previous four instalments below.

1. Terminologie

2. What is it that D&D actually do?

3. Misaligned Expectations

4. Challenge Mode isn't that scary really

Once again, let's go:

5. Hacking D&D into Shape

Another caveat before I start: I do think D&D is fine as is and that as written it does support challenge-based gameplay better than trying to use it to produce a conventional narrative. What I will be doing today is not presenting to you ready-made fixes to those structural issues of D&D that make it resist conventional narratives, but providing other games as examples for how these issues could be approached. If you like what you hear about these games consider these as either soft recommendations to maybe check out those games or as inspiration for your own hacks and house rules.

D&D's rules are concerned with soft simulation over narrative convention. I don't mean this in the Forge simulationist vs. narrativist sense because I don't find that model useful. Suffice to say that while D&D's systems are not realistic they at least try to gamify things as they are present in a real environment. A wet rock is harder to climb than a dry surface with plenty of handholds, because that's how it is. This emphasis combined with a famously swingy d20-based resolution system can often produce narratives that do not follow the pattern of rising action towards a climax.

What makes QuestWorlds principles easily adaptable to D&D is that it is also a d20-based system that uses target numbers that are expressed in increments of 5. What makes it somewhat alien to the way D&D's rules work is that QuestWorlds assumes that a single check may be used to overcome an entire obstacle, and that it is very much a let-it-ride system: there are no retries on failed checks, as a contest represents all of your attempts at overcoming a story obstacle. Hence, you probably wouldn't even roll to climb a sheer cliff: you might roll to see if you manage to climb the sheer cliff quickly enough to prevent the enemy guards from raising the alarm. A combat in QuestWorlds would be handled as an extended contest and would not necessarily result in death, but will potentially result in permanent consequences for the characters regardless of whether they win or lose (also: losing in a contest in QuestWorlds would not mean death necessarily). Resolving that with D&D's blow-by-blow combat system would obviously require hacking.

Enter QuestWorlds. Originally released under the name Hero Wars, later changed to HeroQuest to tie it better to the world of Glorantha and the RuneQuest RPG, and later changed once more to QuestWorlds as the copyright holders sold the HeroQuest trademark to Hasbro who were in the process of rereleasing the classic board game named HeroQuest (which kicks ass). QuestWorlds is a role-playing game designed by Robin D. Laws, and while it was originally tied very closely to Glorantha, the amazing fantasy world that kicks ass, QuestWorlds is these days billed as a universal system. However, whereas most universal systems like GURPS are very interested in some kind of simulation, QuestWorlds' system runs very much on story convention. In QuestWorlds, the GM first sets the difficulty of a given check or contest based on what would make the most narrative sense at the moment (if the heroes have been breezing through encounters and obstacles it might be time to introduce a truly difficult obstacle: if the heroes have been struggling it might be time to introduce an easy obstacle to release tension and get the story momentum going) and then describes the situation.

If any of that sounds interesting to you, the game has a free SRD that presents many of its basic principles, but I heartily recommend checking it out in full. I am not a 100% certain on QuestWorlds, but I know for a fact that all of the older versions released under the name HeroQuest include a method for altering resistance (or assigning DCs) on the fly based on the number of successes and failures in previous contests the group has accumulated, thus mechanically enforcing the ideas of rising action/tension, and release, which is what I think would be most adaptable to D&D. The main takeaway from QuestWorlds is thinking about obstacles in terms of what the story demands right now, and letting the story branch out from both failures and successes.

While QuestWorlds already addresses the lethality of combat in its own way, its method of combat resolution is so different that it isn't readily adaptable to D&D. Luckily, there are some very trad RPGs that have blow-by-blow combat in the style of D&D that address lethality in ways that respect story convention.

I'm going to talk about 7th Sea. As opposed to the very narrative-logic driven QuestWorlds, 7th Sea is a very traditional role-playing game albeit one with many nods towards genre emulation. It is a swashbuckling RPG, set in a fantasy world very much inspired by the Age of Sail, distinctly European in flavor, and meant to emulate various swashbuckling romances. Its genre emulation tools (Hero Points, Danger Pool) are resources that can be used by players to achieve improbably stunts or by the GM to introduce additional complications or adversity into the story. As such, Hero Points and Danger Pool also achieve some of what QuestWorlds' adaptable difficulty due to story demands does, but the lethality issue is the most interesting one. One of the GM's available uses for their Danger Pool is Murder, which means that a Villain can kill a Helpless Hero.

I spelled Villain, Helpless, and Hero with capitals because they are all game terms. A Villain isn't simply any old adversary: a palace guard that stands between the Heroes and their goal isn't a Villain. A Villain is a named NPC that opposes the Heroes. Now, Helpless is very much like Dying in D&D, so when you've taken too many wounds. The distinction should be obvious: a Helpless Hero isn't necessarily dying, but they have sustained so much damage that they are prone and can not act (unless they spend Hero Points). The only way to kill a Hero is to have a Villain present and for the GM to have enough points in their Danger Pool to Murder them.

But even then, a player whose character is present at the scene can immediately spend all of their Raises as well as a Hero Point to save their comrade. That character is now out of the scene, but also immune to any further attempts to Murder them in this scene.

The simplest way to adapt this rule into D&D is to simply make it so characters are by default not dying once they hit 0 HP, but simply helpless and stable. Characters may not even be unconscious, simply too weak to move. This also achieves the potential for losing without dying: a group that gets beaten to 0 HP gets taken captive or left to die.

Only once there is a named NPC villain on the scene can players die. Now, without introducing the Danger Pool into the mix simply having an NPC villain murder helpless PCs might feel unfair, so this is where I suggest you look for a hack or house rule that addresses that issue.

And finally, the resource management structure of D&D does little to help shape conventional narratives. This one is the trickiest because resource management is so innate to the structure of D&D and without resource management in some form you risk screwing over game balance. Taking one-hour rests between combats also feels detrimental to story momentum.

Well, there's a little lesser known RPG that once tried to address these things: Dungeons & Dragons, 4th edition.

Now, I'm going to be frank, D&D 4e didn't succeed at all it set out to do with these rules, but it at least tried. First of all, short rests in 4e last only ten minutes, which is much less of a chunk of the day than the hour proposed in 5e. Secondly, and this is the big one, 4e experimented with something called a Milestone. This is not the milestone from milestone leveling in 5e, but a special reward for every two encounters completed without a long rest in between.

The reward for a milestone is simple: an action point and an extra use of a magic item's daily power.

Action points are a very powerful tool in 4e because they can be used to literally gain an extra action. However, the sad truth is that even with all these benefits for completing multiple encounters back to back, the benefits of taking a long rest ultimately still outweigh the benefits of an action point and an extra use of a magic item's daily power. Especially since you couldn't use more than 1 action point per encounter, meaning that you were already not encouraged to hoard them any way.

But there is still something there: a mechanic that encourages players to dive headfirst into danger. The mechanical reward for going on without a rest should outweigh the benefits of a rest until narrative tension has been resolved. I feel looking at QuestWorlds in addition to 4e might not be a bad idea here.

Honorable mentions that I am not going to talk about in depth here:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Despite its reputation for lethality WFRP is actually less lethal at starting levels than most editions of D&D simply due to Fate points, a resource that is gained at character creation and that can be used to save a character from death and permanent injury. They are permanently expended but can be gained through divine intervention or for especially brave or heroic actions.

Break!! This action adventure RPG inspired by old video games is very much a D&D in its structure, being very much a challenge-based adventure game, but where it deviates from D&D is how it handles injury. At 0 hearts characters don't immediately die, but instead roll on an injury table. The number of times you have already been injured weighs the odds towards death, but the first time you fall to 0 hearts you simply won't die due to how the rolls are interpreted.

Fate family of games. Fate has both rules that model story convention above simulation as well as a conflict system that does not result in death as the only result from combat. Fate's rules are available for free so there is nothing stopping you from reading it. Not all of it is adaptable to D&D of course, but even beyond specific rules applications Fate has a lot to teach about different philosophies to running games. I highly recommend it to everyone regardless of what games you're running, just to broaden your perspective.

I am not sure if there's going to be a part six because I'm not sure how much more use people are going to get out of "hey, consider playing these games instead." As said, all of the games mentioned above are already soft recommendations from yours truly, but as a general rule you have nothing to lose from broadening your horizons and reading more games, even if you feel D&D is perfect for you as is.

#long post #the big damn post

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