phantomechospics

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Good reads

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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Update April 2024

Hi Everyone! It's been a while since I gave an update, especially when it comes to my AO3 stuff. I figured I'd take a moment to catch you guys up on some of my IRL things.

Good news, I have finished my Master's Degree! :D And I got a good enough grade on my last few classes that my work let me use Education Assistance to pay for the classes.

Bad news, I did not read the fine print on the Education Assistance and so I now have to stick with my current company for 2 full years after the last 'assisted' class or pay back the assistance they gave me. 

So rather than June 1, 2025, I am now aiming for my hiatus to end in December of 2025 or January of 2026 (holidays make it rough). Sorry about the delay, but this is a great lesson in reading the TOS. (-_-)

#update #phantomsechopics

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Nice! :D

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

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Signal boost.

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

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Raising awareness. Not sure when this deal is happening/has happened as no dates were listed, but always good to know.

What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?

An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.

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Reblogging this because, as an SE, I should know how to do this, but do not and have not.

It's going on my TODO list.

Already mentioned it in another post two days ago, but it bears repeating: if you use social media primarily as a way to write out your ideas to the world, maybe making your own website on neocities could be your thing.

But I don't know how to code!

Here are two templates you can basically copy/paste and use directly as is. Personally I started with Zonelets and learned html+css from cannibalizing bits of its code & improving upon it.

But I don't know what I can put on it!

Frankly you can just make it your personal blog and post stuff like "ate spaghetti today :)" but if you're here for fandom stuff I really recommend this zine as a list of fansites you can do, from ship shrine to meta analysis to fanlistings.

But how can people keep up with what I post?

Add an rss feed. That way, people will get notified when you post new shit.

But will people be able to interact with me?

Sure! You can add a guestbook for that. Or an askbox. Or just chuck in a duplicate email you made.

I swear it's easier than you think! Just give it a try, what do you have to lose? :)

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One last re-blog because Oct. 18 is this Wednesday, which is the deadline for any comments.

Just in case, like me, calendar dates fly by really fast.

The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI

American friends! The US Copyright Office (which we know exerts huuuge influence in how these things are treated elsewhere) wants to hear opinions on copyright and AI.

"The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject."

We can assume that the opposing side will definitely be using all of their lobbying power towards widespread AI use, so this is a very good chance to let them know your thoughts on AI and how art and creative content of all kinds should be protected.

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If this is ever written, someone please tag me with a link.

AU where Zuko, by technicality, wins the Agni Kai against his father.

AU where his father put out a "i'll give you a handicap; if you can manage to burn me then you win not only the argument, but the throne lmfao"

So when Ozai is burning Zuko's face, Zuko, completely by instinct, grabs at his fathers hand to get him to stop.

Zuko's self preservation kicks in and he burns the absolute shit out of his fathers wrist, leaving a scar just as violently bad as the one he got.

Zuko doesn't know he did this.

The entire court knows he did.

His father never banished him, his father ordered his execution and the council smuggled him out; Iroh told him a lie to protect him.

Ozai is never seen in anything short sleeved again, and demands that all Fire Nation fashion be long sleeved. The locals hate this and don't understand why, but the council knows.

The council knows and the council plots.

Because according to the terms laid out, Ozai is not the King. The regiment Zuko was defending is instead rerouted for special training, giving false reports of deaths and defeat.

They have been selected to be Zuko's personal and palace guard, after all; they should not be anything less than perfectly trained.

Basically everyone is plotting against Ozai and the only ones that don't know are Ozai and Zuko.

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This just has such strong Black Organization vibes for me. It's not actually how the organization is in canon, but at some point, I think half of their highest operatives were undercover agents and that's just... *chef's kiss*

An FBI Agent goes undercover in a cult only to realise that all the members are undercover agents from different branches

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Reblogging this again because, important, but also...

I'm a software engineer in real life. I've had a few classes on AI and cybersecurity and know how the basic design works.

Copyrighted material is not safe in AI training databases. Not even counting the things hackers can do, a common user can type "Book-Title by Specific-Author" and the AI will just print out the book without any need for the user to purchase a copy, physical or digital. I'm sure the developers of AI will claim that they have flags in place for that, but they don't. AI is constantly learning, so that means it can constantly be confused. A simple stack overflow is enough to over-write the "don't print out copyrighted material" flag and super easy to do, even at the common user level.

I know not everyone cares about this and some people will still be all for putting their book into a training database. Honestly? All the more power to those people!

But I spent 8 years writing and editing my book and spent my own money to self-publish. I am not quite ready to give it away for free. Probs an unpopular opinion, but I wanted to make sure people knew what the situation looked like from a Computer Science perspective too.

The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI

American friends! The US Copyright Office (which we know exerts huuuge influence in how these things are treated elsewhere) wants to hear opinions on copyright and AI.

"The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject."

We can assume that the opposing side will definitely be using all of their lobbying power towards widespread AI use, so this is a very good chance to let them know your thoughts on AI and how art and creative content of all kinds should be protected.

[phantomechospics]

The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI

American friends! The US Copyright Office (which we know exerts huuuge influence in how these things are treated elsewhere) wants to hear opinions on copyright and AI.

"The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject."

We can assume that the opposing side will definitely be using all of their lobbying power towards widespread AI use, so this is a very good chance to let them know your thoughts on AI and how art and creative content of all kinds should be protected.

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I would agree, but there’s no face on it.

Where did the man in the moon go?

NASA took a pic of the dark side of the moon fyi

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To all my fellow poor bastards who just got the new twitter-style tumblr dashboard

You can fix it via:

Dashboard Unfucker

or

Old Tumblr Dashboard (July 2023) 1. Install the Stylus extension 2. then install the actual script for the fix

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Change Back

@Tumblrsupport How do I change my layout back? There used to be a Beta flip button, but I don't see it in my settings anymore.

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^^^

When it comes to commenting on fics, I'm a little nervous of explicitly saying I'm excited for new updates, because I don't want to put pressure on the author, especially if it's an older fic that hasn't been updated in months. Is that a legitimate thing I should think about, or is there a good way to phrase that kind of feedback? Or should I just stick to complimenting the current chapter?

If you're worried your comment leans toward pressuring the author instead of encouraging the story, just look at what you've written and ask if you're asking/talking about the work the author is going to do, or if you're talking about the work the story is going to do.

For example, comments talking about the work the author is going to do look like "please update soon!" or "Can't wait for the next chapter/update!" or "looking forward to more!" etc. While these are good for some authors morale, it demoralizes a lot of others. It can feel dismissive of what's already on the page, especially if it is the only thing someone says.

Comments talking about the work the story is going to do look like "I can't wait to find out what happens next" and "I wonder what x character will do about y event this chapter" and "looking forward to see how the characters handle what just happened!" etc. These clearly express that you're looking forward to more, because you're excited about the story that's already happened.

You can also just ask an author, at the end of a comment, if it bothers them for you to express that you're looking forward to new chapters. They'll know how they feel better than I could tell you, since authors have a range of feeling about this kind of comment. More communication is usually better than less.

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not a question, I'm just a very shy person but anyway

I just binge read a bunch of your fics and PLEASE YOUR BRAIN I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCH YOU'RE LITERALLY SO COOL OMGGG KSGSSJHSKABSMAVAN

I actually wanted to comment but I never commented on any fic because once again I'm really shy I always just left kudos but I really just wanted you to know that I absolutely adore your writing your brain is amazing (this is a horrible compliment excuse my illiterate-ness) I hope all your pillows are nice and cold and your ice creams the perfect state of solid (like not too hard you can't bite it and not too liquidy where it's just ice-cream juice like yk when it's that perfect amount of solid and liquid it's always 💯💯💯)

Aw, thank you! : ) I'm glad you enjoyed my fics! I had a lot of fun writing them, so seeing people enjoy them really makes me happy! (^^)

I totally get it about being shy to comment. I'm actually super shy IRL, which is something I am working on, but is very slow going.

My pillow was perfect last night and the weather is amazing for ice cream! I hope your pillow is equally as comfy and that you have many good reads in your future!

Phantom

#ask reply #ask response