fandom-trash-goblin

[fandom-trash-goblin]

its funny my rank is in 51 thousands in 12-13 lakh which usually sounds impressive but I have to take engg that I don't want and get married forcefully sare jahan se acha

... hindustan hamara. cut off went at 93 and honestly feeling really fucking bad. was like 3 percentile away. anyways advanced out of options, back to other exams.

#not qualified to commenting on the rest of it sorry. lot of us are gonna be dealing with a lot of shit #nta can burn the fuck down and I won't give a shit. so can iits #i hope the placement crisis in iits just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. bring them down from their holier than thou #i love being a certified hater #one of my classmates got 99 and when I say blocked them I mean it. I am out of this shit #over and out #anon asks #asks

[fandom-trash-goblin]

I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

#general

[fandom-trash-goblin]

*Sees someone on twitter arguing that DoorDash is necessary for the disabled because microwave food is too much to handle.*

...What. That seems absurdly specific.

There are a lot of reasons someone might not be able to microwave food. "I literally cannot get out of bed", "i need nutrients you can't just microwave", "my dumb brain has put up 18 billion barriers to try and stop me from eating and this is the loophole I have" "the microwave in this apartment is out of reach/not labeled properly/not ADA friendly in another way" "for x or y reason microwave food is a one way ticket to severe burns", etc. I found a lot of reasons someone might need DoorDash and I also found this cool article about food sharing in the disabled community and how the author had to rely on an abusive partner once because she was either in bed or barely able to crawl and they were among the few people bringing food.

Just saying, there's a reason disabled people have higher chances of food insecurity and there's a reason meal trains, meals on wheels, and other programs focus on bringing food to people in need and not just assuming "they have a microwave and money, why bother?". Sometimes you don't have a family or friends or mutual aid group to bring you meals when you can't even pop something in the microwave.

#ableism tw #general

[fandom-trash-goblin]

#fandom #people being people

[fandom-trash-goblin]

no other websites go so hand in hand, its all kill or be killed out there but when ao3 takes a little nap tumblr loses its mind thinking its best friend is gone forever. this happens every single time. it trends #1 for server maintenance. never gets old.

#ao3 #tumblr #ao/tumblr is such a good ship #insane4insane codependent messes

[fandom-trash-goblin]

WATCH THIS VIDEO

a very, VERY important post. spread everywhere and screen record the video to your phone. or message me and ill happily send you the video. give to every woman and girl you know.

bc as they both said / demonstrated, its not only super easy to do, but super easy to miss.

#and they ask why we need feminism #<- just a general tag against assholish people who live to oppress. #archive

[fandom-trash-goblin]

#holy ... #people are insanely talented #craft

[fandom-trash-goblin]

this may or may not be a fantasy writing exercise for me. please reblog

#sea glass #it just fits #polls #result remaining polls

[fandom-trash-goblin]

i was sixteen for twenty years

#literature

[fandom-trash-goblin]

Learning languages is SO FUN right up until you need to learn conjugation and then suddenly it turns sour real fucking fast

#the username tolkein fantasy lmao #french verbs sucks there are more exception than categories #I learned the three ending stuff and you tell me it's for like 20 verbs each and there's a lot more to go??? all of which are exceptions??? #girl no I will die #literature shenanigans

[fandom-trash-goblin]

“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it

#Jesus in italics #i'm in this picture and i don't like it #collection pour moi

[fandom-trash-goblin]

he can be yuor white lotus or your demon king

#the demon marks ahhh #fanart #luo binghe #luo bingge

[fandom-trash-goblin]

A moment between Jiujiu and Jin Ling 🪷

(Read the fic this was drawn for here)

#it's a red fucking ribbon guys it's a red ribbon #jin ling #Jiang cheng #jin ling and his jiujiu #this is so so pretty op I love your style I'm gonna go stalk your blog #fanart

[fandom-trash-goblin]

800 year old martial god causes problems on purpose by kidnapping the heir of a great sect . or something

#jiang cheng #mdzs #tgcf #hua cheng #<- hot second forgot his name I am not in tgcf

[fandom-trash-goblin]

People sorting ao3 solely by stats and only clicking on fics with a certain amount of kudos or comments, you will not survive the winter, nor the summer, nor at all, *brings out knife,* run

#ao3 #my favourite fanfic is a very specific scenario with like 450 hits before I read it. It now single handedly has crossed over 500 hits #and I found it two months ago. it was written 7 years ago.

[fandom-trash-goblin]

It's a dictionary. You're searching it up yourself. You wrote the word you're finding the synonym for. This is sort of a stupid question, frankly. You're thinking search engine rather than AI, because if you use ChatGPT+ for searching synonyms I sort of pity you.

If you copy paste the whole ass conversation, you're using AI. If you're adding your own stuff, if you're adding your own spice and bulk to the dialogues, I don't think you need to tag AI. In this sense, I assume you're talking about AI as a prompt generator, if only for a particular fandom.

Again, machine translation different from AI. Atleast thats what I've been taught. Your own written work is being translated. Key is your own work. Don't go using someone else's or you'll be a pariah in seconds. Listen, I read machine translated novels, to be honest. Feel free to cancel me for it, but I don't have the time to learn 3-4 new languages.

Tag AI. Also you're better off searching for author advice rather than using AI. Personal Opinion, I won't read it.

Once again, I am a singular person. Opinions differ. I've been reading fanfiction since 8-9 years. As a matter of fact, you might have been in fandom longer than me. There's certainly people who've read fanfic longer than I've been alive. They'd probably know better.

There are currently ~2300 works in AO3 tagged with "Created Using Generative AI"

I'll be upfront with my opinion, which mirrors my opinion in regards to my field: using AI will only hasten your own obsolescence. The point of fanfiction is not to crank out fics, but rather to enjoy the hobby and communities of writing and fandom.

#fandom drama #anti ai writing

[fandom-trash-goblin]

[discourse] in defiance of the author’s wishes (re: mxtx fandom)

table of contents : context  : moral arguments : addressing the legal side of things  : closing remarks

Context

on March 17, 2018, mxtx posted:

“As long as you don't split or reverse the top/bottom positions of the main couple, I won't mind what you ship. I myself have a lot of fun shipping couples in mainstream shows, and isn't reading all about finding joy? You can imagine freely or ship whoever you like, just don't break up or reverse the top/bottom positions of the main couple.”

(I realise that the 不拆不逆 “no splitting or reversing” rule might be implicit within the entire Chinese danmei fandom, so i do not wish to single mxtx out. for example, i know that Chinese 2ha fans also go around policing people who ship, say, chu wanning with shi mei — so this isn’t just a mxtx thing. although i do not know if other danmei authors have explicitly stated “no splitting or reversing” since i have not been a part of other danmei fandoms.)

Nevertheless, “no splitting or reversing” became the constitution in Chinese mxtx fandom. Fans parade around with the slogan “拆逆死“ which means “kill yourself if you split or reverse”. Since the pronunciation of 拆逆死 (chai-ni-si) sounds like “chinese”, some fans on the Chinese internet have been putting “chinese” in their bios to mean “kill yourself if you split or reverse”.

From now on I will be referring to split/reverse ships as cult ships, as Chinese fans like to call them.

There are two main consequences of the “no splitting or reversing” rule (on the Chinese internet):

You will receive permanent bans with no option for appeal if you post cult ship fanworks in the novel communities on Weibo

It is implicitly agreed upon that you are not allowed to use individual character tags, the novel tag, or the author tag when posting cult ship content on any platform. So, for example, if you write Wei Wuxian x Jiang Cheng, you are not allowed to use #weiwuxian #jiangcheng #mdzs #mxtx. The name given to this conduct of tagging only your cult ship is 圈地自萌, which means “enclose a piece of land and amuse oneself within it”. You are not allowed to step out of your land. 

However, not everyone agrees with the practice of “don’t step out of your land” — this includes people from both sides of the debate. Some official shippers believe that cult shippers should not have any land to begin with, and purposefully leave the cult ship tag unblocked so they can police cult shippers at every opportunity. Some cult shippers believe that because their ship involves the individual characters, originate from the novel written by the author, they are in the right to use the individual character tags, the novel tag, and the author tag, and that people who dislike their ship should just use the block function. 

-

Moral Arguments

There are two main types of moral arguments that Chinese official shippers make.

1. If you split the official ship, you condone cheating behaviour and that makes you a bad person.

The first argument is too trivial so I will leave the refutation as an exercise for the reader to do at home /j

2. You are not respecting the author's wishes and that makes you a bad person.

The author has wished many different things. For example:

Screenshot 1 translation: I strictly forbid any crowdfunding or fundraising related to me, my works, or my characters, regardless of the purpose, whether it be for celebration, group buying, rankings, charity, or any other named activities.

Screenshot 2 translation: Once again, I emphasize: No new social media pages related to my works are allowed, nor organizing readers in a roundabout way, whether it be for celebrations, group buying, rankings, charity, or any other named activities. Please also refrain from flamboyantly organizing any collective birthday events.

Screenshot 3 translation: I've repeated many things many times and do not wish to repeat myself. Could everyone please just listen to my words occasionally.

(A brief aside before I address the second argument, something I used to say when debating Chinese fans: “I don’t think people who violate the author's wishes mean any disrespect. I don’t think they’re shipping or hosting charity events or birthday parties out of spite, but rather, it just so happens that the author prohibits a ship they enjoy or an event they organise. Just because I cult ship, for example, doesn’t mean I hate the author.” And they would respond: “if you really liked the author, you wouldn’t go against her wishes. You do not deserve to like the author. You are a mxtx anti.” And I would say, “I like my mom a lot, but I won’t listen to everything she says, simply because I don’t think everything she says is right. Plus, I don’t think the world can simply be explained by like vs. dislike. Also, Xie Lian said this: [For instance, if you admire or like someone, you won't always treat them well, no matter what happens.]” But then the most hilarious thing happened, in the revised version, a rebuttal for that scene was added:

【”For instance, if you admire or like someone, it doesn't mean you will always treat them well, regardless of what happens."

"Why not?" San Lang questioned. "If that's not possible, it only shows that this so-called 'liking' isn't anything significant."

Xie Lian shifted the conversation, asking, "Then... does it mean that aside from liking someone, the only other option is to dislike them? Are these the only two attitudes one can choose from?"

San Lang chuckled and retorted, "Why not? Right is right, wrong is wrong. To love is to love, to hate is to hate. Why can't things be clear and straightforward?”】

… ah.)

To address the second argument for real, i believe that producers retain no moral authority over the methods by which consumers engage with their products. for instance, i believe that choosing not to follow the official “twist, lick, and dunk” method when eating oreos does not constitute disrespect towards the oreo brand. Or to use another analogy, suppose a farmer selling apples insist that you peel the apples before eating them. I believe that it does not make you a bad person if you choose to eat the apples unpeeled, despite the farmer being the one who watered and harvested the apples from their trees.

I am thinking of potential counterarguments, and the strongest one I came up with is: “but products like oreos and apples are fundamentally different from intellectual property.” And I think the main issue here is that, to employ economics terminology, the content of novels like tgcf is a non-rivalrous good (not the novels themselves but the abstract content), which means that my consumption of it does not reduce availability to others. In other words, unlike Oreos or apples wherein after I purchase them, the specific items I bought are no longer physically in the hands of the vendor; after encountering characters like Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu still exists abstractly in MXTX’s head. This gives the illusion of ownership on the author’s part. I want to be very careful here because I think it’s easy to equivocate between different uses of the word “ownership”. I am not arguing that the author fails to retain ownership in negation of all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the creative process, i.e. their copyright. Instead, I am contending that, just as I paid for my Oreos and apples, upon my purchasing of the Seven Seas version, the paperback Chinese version, and the revised uncensored version of TGCF on JJWXC, the author does not own the ways by which I choose to engage with these fictional entities. Once a work is made public, its ontology becomes independent of the author’s intent, and in all its readers’ heads exist distinct versions of the characters, in effect making them belong to all of us.

(There. As a bonus I have also resolved the issue of not being “chinese” enough. Ah, is this a bad place to make a communism joke?)

Addressing the legal side of things

In 2022 I wrote to the legal team at AO3, and here is their response:

Regarding the “moral rights”, that’s actually a thing. Upon receiving lots of spam from 12-yr-old readers that “you are breaking the law”, I did a quick Baidu search (China’s Google) concerning the legality of splitting/reversing ships. Surprisingly, the search results yield “yes, it’s illegal”, and hence the 12-yr-olds' confidence. But that is akin to getting a cancer diagnosis from searching symptoms on Google. So I dug deeper. 

After reading tens of published papers and court cases, here are the key takeaways of what I found:

Given that intellectual property rights are a bit behind in China, they have largely based their laws on US copyright law. As organizations like OTW continue to fight for the rights of transformative works in the US, China probably will just follow suit.

The semantics of “distort, mutilate, or otherwise harm the integrity of their works in a way that harms the author’s reputation” is very vague and debatable. There are at least three ways to interpret it (I think one of the papers I read offered four). The first is that they only have to prove that you distorted the integrity of the work. The second is that you satisfy the condition of harming the author’s reputation. The third is that you satisfy both conditions (integrity of work and author’s reputation). It depends on the court. 

None of the court cases pertained to unserious, just-for-fun fan works. Usually what happens is someone makes a film out canon, for example, and sell it for profit, or someone publishes their own novel which contains characters from another published work. 

And that is for China only^ if you live outside of China, you are under another country's jurisdiction.

-

Closing remarks

I am addressing this issue because it has impacted me and my friends in many ways. "kill yourself if you split/reverse the official ship" is probably the least of our concerns, mainly because it is such a popular phrase that we've become desensitized to it. @/Eleven receives private messages on Lofter on a weekly basis of people wishing her entire family to get murdered. A hualian main friend of mine has been posted to Weibo for following me; and I had to pull a Shi Qingxuan with "hey let's not be friends anymore if being associated with me is gonna get you cancelled".

mxtx has been through a lot and i understand where she's coming from. and maybe, the people who identify as "kill yourself if you split/reverse the official ship" don't truly mean it -- maybe they're just expressing their love for the official ship.

Recently i've been seeing the sentiments I used to only witness in Chinese fandom surface on Twitter and sometimes I worry that western mxtx fandom is going to turn into Chinese mxtx fandom, with the in-group/out-group mentality -- you're either with us or against us. At the end of the day, I do like mxtx, I admire her tenacity and I think she's a brilliant author, I love her works and the characters in them. I simply do not want to be backed into the corner of "anti" due to not following every order she gives.

祝墨香和她的粉丝们平安。

#mxtx #holy shit I have never even heard about this #talk about censoring man #fandom drama