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traceybrakes · 6 months

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Let's Talk About Un-ironicizing Art!

In light of a lot of the conversations i've seen surrounding Death Grips and recent events concerning them, I want to take the time to point out that this is a good time to start thinking about how we engage with art on the whole!

For a long time, the irony poisoned method of consumption went unchecked in all facets of internet culture. As an internet musician in current day, I have noticed a sharp disconnect between artists and enthusiasts/casual listeners when it comes to attitudes surrounding music specifically, though I've witnessed it permeate all forms of art in some way.

I see people who have grown scared to engage on deeper levels, intentionally severing any resonant connections or knowledge learned from a piece of media before it has the chance to take root. In short, dare to be vulnerable! Dare to enjoy something on the basis that you yourself resonate with it, and not for any other nebulous reasoning. When masses of people relegate art to a spectacle, not only do artists become more likely to be disenchanted with the passions that fuel their work, but the consumer base ultimately suffers as well. All art at that point becomes less an extension of ourselves, less a vehicle to explore our identities, and is rendered a meaningless hulking sludge, or worse, the opponent to an already shrinking and narrow worldview.

Be not afraid to be unabashedly in love with the work that inspires you. Be not afraid to have the things you love misunderstood by by some. When you engage with work new and old, make sure to do it for yourself. Making and consuming art is inherently selfish, but being selfish is not inherently misguided. Allow yourself to learn, grow, discover, and repeat that cycle until the day you die.

To speak more candidly about my own experience, throughout the course of my life, there has been art that I've held near and dear to my identity, and own journey of self discovery that I seldom find others who hold the same sentiments to. I've always found this exciting. Exciting to hold something close to my chest as something so personal, and even more exciting when I can ease up on that grip when I find someone who I can share that with. However, I've also been through the throws of how the internet tends to chew up and spit out art that generally isn't understood by the many. I've fallen victim myself to the hive mind mentality that circles some artists and the cult of non-identity around them. This off-color ouroboros of knowing all about an artist's work and simultaneously upholding this facade of vapid complacency. I've come to the conclusion that if being openly supportive and connected to an artist's work or a particular piece of work automatically renders a person uninteresting and unambiguous at the very least, then I will live happily as an uninteresting open book. At the worst times, we see this line of thinking contribute to Death Grips being mocked and belittled en masse by people who are unwilling to engage with their art before they even get that far. It's heartbreaking, to me at least to see people put so much effort, emotion, and passion into transforming culture for the better to be rewarded with a crowd that's plugging their ears.

I realize I run the risk of sounding pretentious, self indulgent, or even patronizing to an extent; I apologize because that isn't my intention, I'm hoping to see gears shift at least on a micro level surrounding attitudes towards art appreciation. Remember to dare to be in love holistically with the art you engage with! Speak of the things you love in a way that makes that clear to others, and consider your peers to do the same! You and the people around you can only be better off for it.

#long post #really long post #music #death grips #the internet is full of bright and beautiful art so why not help yourself

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astercontrol · 2 months

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If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #userworldproblems #diy punk #censorship #kosa #internet literacy #email #solutions

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worldsunlikemyown · 2 months

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THE 'ENLIGHTENED SCRIPT'

Warning: This will end up becoming a VERY LONG post. Also it turned out to be vaguely academically phrased — so warning for language too formal for how not-normal I am about this

Disclaimer:

This isn't for the 'actual' Enlightened Language — only to write stuff out in English with a different set of symbols in art (or, let's be honest, just for fun).

I have no proper knowledge of how to make scripts (such as if there are any common conventions to follow). If anything here offends you in terms of its accuracy or correctness, please don't come at me with pitchforks :)

I've done my best to make this explanation simple and thorough, but obviously there may be things that I have forgotten to mention (or things that I've perhaps not even considered). If you want clarification on anything or just have questions about the script, asks are welcome! (any discussion of the script will be tagged '#the enlightened script')

If you wish to use this script, feel free to do so! (I only request that you credit me (@/worldsunlikemyown) if you do). I would prefer it that you do not repost this to other social media sites, but if you do, please credit me clearly.

Introduction

The term 'Enlightened Script' (ES from now on) is technically a misnomer, because we know nothing about the Enlightened Language (EL from now on) and thus cannot make a script 'for' it. This script is, however, built upon the little we know about the aesthetic appearance of the actual script of EL, and contains the same twenty-six letters as the Latin Alphabet. It is made primarily for use in writing Modern English (it contains no diacritics, and will thus have little utility for writing in many other languages that use the Latin Alphabet). ES can be used to simulate the actual writing of EL, and represent this simulation in art and inscriptions where desired.

The Enlightened Script

This script has been designed with a view to the aesthetic of the actual script for EL, modelled somewhat from the unreliable example of Vespera's signature. It features heavy use of curls for this reason in the alphabet, with numerals and punctuation marked out by their relative lack of curls and embellishments. Note that symbols may vary from example to example in some small ways, as they are hand-written. If you wish to write ES in any of its forms, follow the general form of symbols from the three examples below).

**Click for a better resolution**

LETTERS

PUNCTUATION

(yes, I'll explain the square-bracketed symbols later)

NUMERALS

Modern ES

'Modern' ES refers to the version of ES that would be used in the modern day by elves and the other Intelligent Species in their daily writing — what we might call the 'normal' version. It is written with the same writing conventions as English, keeping the same spelling and orientation (left to right, then top to bottom). For example:

Here in the top-right of the image, the word 'suldreen' (chosen because it is the only real EL word we know) has been transcribed into Modern ES. It can be seen that the letters have been written out without joining or cursive elements in the manner of an English word. In the bottom half of the page is a quote: 'No reason to worry' (yes I used an Alden quote — it'll be easier to remember and was the first typical Keeper thing I thought of). This has also been written out in keeping with the conventions of writing in English.

NOTE ON PUNCTUATION: You will notice that in the PUNCTUATION section, some forms have been given in red square brackets. These are to be used for Modern ES (such as the colon represented in the image above, as well as the dash in the example). The version of the form outside of the red square brackets is to be used for Traditional ES. Symbols with no variant form remain the same in both versions of ES.

Traditional ES

Traditional ES is the oldest version of ES currently in use. It is the 'old' writing of the elves, which is used in the modern day mostly for adding a sense of grandeur to the atmosphere through its use on signboards, meaning that only its display version, which will be in the next section, is still well-known. I shall explain the proper form of Traditional ES first, however, because it is commonly used by the Ancients and as a basis for many of the codes and ciphers of the Elven world.

You may have noticed in the LETTERS section that the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) of ES are represented by symbols that open to the left, while the consonants are represented by symbols that open to the right. This is a 'remnant' (hush I don't know how to model change in writing systems and besides this is a simulation) of the system of Traditional ES, shown below.

Here is the word 'suldreen' again, transcribed in Traditional ES. The change in orientation is at once apparent, for Traditional ES, unlike Modern ES, is written from top to bottom, then from right to left. As seen in this example, letters branch out from a trunk that forms the word, with each letter's connection to the trunk referred to as a branch. Consonants are written on the right of the trunk, and vowels are written on the left, resulting in all symbols opening outwards. The topmost branch on a trunk is to be read first.

An example of longer text in Traditional ES:

Note that the punctuation orientation for the quotation marks has changed, and now uses the symbols given outside the red brackets. The question-mark remains unchanged, and is written in the same way in both Modern ES and Traditional ES (along with the comma, full-stop/period and exclamation-mark symbols). The sentence starts on the right, and the second line is the next one to the left, which is to be read from the top again.

Signboards in ES

The use of Traditional ES in the modern day remains mostly limited to signboards. To write on a signboard, a line of Traditional ES is, so to speak, rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise, with the vowels now written on the bottom of a horizontal trunk, and the consonants written on top. It is read from left to right, then top to bottom if applicable (perhaps this may have influenced the left to right orientation of Modern ES). An example below:

The word written in the examples above is 'Everglen', first given in standard Traditional ES, then in the signboard version. In terms of the appearance of this 'signboard version' to elves, it would be read by Ancients as a vertical sign in English is read by us (see the right of the image). To most modern elves, it would simply register as an archaic version of their script, with no particular orientation difference observed.

Numerals and Mathematical Operations in ES

In-universe, the base-ten place-value system was (in my HEADCANON, and I cannot stress this enough) brought to the humans by elves. The writing of their numerals, as may be noted, has some similarities with Roman numerals (which in-universe, the Romans would have learned — again, only as a plausible headcanon — from elves). I have created the numerals to be written somewhat like Roman numerals (with the combination of symbols — I'm not sure of the right term for it). Operations are conducted in the same was as in the base-ten place-value system we use. For example:

In the example on the left (which reads 'Book 9.5'), it can be seen that numerals in Modern ES are written with the same orientation as the letters, with an un-filled dot representing the decimal point. The same applies to Traditional ES, but there is no trunk for numerals (just as there is no trunk for punctuation).

Operations have always been done with a horizontal orientation. Addition, subtraction and multiplication operations are done as shown in the middle-right of the image. The only thing drastically different from our own method of carrying out these operations is that the operation symbol is always to be put in a circle. The same applies to division, which is shown on the far-right. Fractions are written as shown bottom-right. (I don't know about special numbers and stuff okay let's pretend elves can't do math or just use the human symbols and say we got them from elves)

Handwritten examples (for a better understanding of sizing and possibly nicer-looking symbols) have been given under the cut, along with explanations and some interesting notes.

MODERN

TRADITIONAL

Note that the trunks for Traditional ES have been marked on each line. For numerals and punctuation, the portion of a line on which they are written will not be 'dashed through'.

Notes:

It is possible to 'reverse' Traditional ES to read from left to right by using mirror-forms of the letters, resulting in the vowels written on and opening to the right, and the consonants written on and opening to the left. Punctuation may or may not be used.

Modern ES could be 'reversed' in any of the many ways things written in the Latin Alphabet can be 'reversed' (one of these was likely used by Jolie for her mirror-written diary. Do with that as you will).

Taglist (tagging anyone who has interacted with the original post): @mee-op, @im56bithc, @lgbtqforeverything, @bookwyrminspiration, @camelspit, @strs-rndrps, @thefoxysnake, @kingkrakie, @keeperofthelostswiftie, @fintan-pyren, @brontekotlcyan, @vesperas-mirrors, and also @acanieve and @theefrenchcroissant, whom I can't seem to be able to tag properly)

#kotlc #kotlc elves #keeper of the lost cities #the enlightened script #the enlightened language #sorry this turned out so long ahskshdjidk I just couldn't think of a way to split it into multiple parts (or even reblogs)#I might post just the examples later to simplify it #well here you go #hope you like it <3

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comicaurora · 3 months

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These have been pent up for a while, so there's a whole list lol. Some are Aurora, some are not.

1) Can lacrimas carry out multiple purposes at once? Or will they blend them? I'm assuming that this is possible, considering that the automaton in the ruins was using a lacrima as a brain

2) Has anyone tried to make tools or weapons out of lacrimas? I'm talking like chisel that needs no hammer. Or maybe a Fire lacrima on a bow that sets your arrows on fire

3) Can you engrave runes on lacrimas to make them affect themselves?

4) Where can I read more about the Twins? If I'm not wrong they're the creator gods, aided by the Light dragon and the Void dragon to create life, but I might be getting a wrong read on that

5) Since we see Erin successfully become the first Void mage, does that now mean there's potential for him to make a Void lacrima? The dragon probably won't allow it, but still

6) What exactly does elemental corruption of each element do? Fire literally burns you up, as we saw in Arc 1. I can infer that Life likely makes you a chimera. Void corruption makes you a cave crawler. But what do the other one do? Does Earth make you a statue? Does Wind disintegrate you, Thanos style?

7) Now onto the non-Aurora questions, is your art vector or raster? I believe it's vector, but it's always better to confirm

8) What are your opinions on reading into the environment and the character design to infer things about the character themselves? In any type of media

9) Have you played Baldur's Gate 3?

10) Do you have any music that you'd recommend? I've listened to every song I liked so many times that I hate them now.

11) I'm new to Tumblr, anything that I should know? You don't have to answer this one if you don't wanna. I think I know some of the basics already. Reblog what you like, and avoid the terfs, right?

You might be able to tell that I like the idea of the lacrimas a little bit. Just a teensy bit. The artificer in me definitely isn't obsessed. I appreciate any answers you can give :3

Cheers!

Ooh, lots of stuff!

Yes, it's possible. A lacrima can be engraved with multiple spells, set in a casing engraved with commands, or some combination of the two. Typically, all spells engraved directly on a lacrima will activate at once when the lacrima is "switched on", but a spell can be quite complex, and conditional activations are possible - "if-then-else" statements, basically.

Yes, magic items exist.

Generally no. If the lacrima is disrupted or broken, the spell generally stops functioning, so a self-affecting lacrima will run only as long as it takes for the lacrima to distort or break.

There's an extra lore page about them!

He probably could if he wanted to (and the Dragon allowed it) but Void energy is very dangerous, so he likely doesn't want to.

Each form of elemental corruption agitates the presence of the element in the mage's body. Earth corruption can damage or alter bones, encourage unhealthy petrification of soft tissues, etc. Wind corruption can have physical effects but it often most obviously produces breakdowns in the person's ability to speak or understand language. Lightning damages, numbs or intensifies a person's physical senses.

Raster, I draw with CSP's digital pens. I've only very briefly experimented with vector art - I don't like how it simplifies the lines.

I think it's a fun school of analysis but, like all literary analysis, it runs into trouble if it tries to lock down exactly what the writer was thinking or intending (which is an objective fact that one can be incorrect about) rather than trying to analyze the story on its own and what meaning might, intentionally or unintentionally, be factoring into it.

Nope

don't trust my taste in music it's 90% nu metal and sonic OSTs

Like what you like, reblog what you want, generally it's considered dubious form to add a comment to a reblog unless you have something profound to contribute (commenting in the tags is fine), steer clear of discourse and callout posts and generally the sectors of the site that are constantly on fire, blocking someone for any reason is 100% fine

#asks #aurora #not aurora

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 22 days

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AITA for getting mad at a friend over Harry Potter?

🏳‍⚧🎊 <- for recognizing this later

I (15X) have this IRL friend who we'll call A (14X). A and I are both under the trans/nonbinary umbrella, which I feel will be important. A also suspects that they have autism, which I won't deny, I feel like they do as well.

A is one of my best friends, and I've known them since we were 8 years old. We generally know what types of media would be considered dogwhistles towards marginalized groups - or so I thought, which is why it surprised me when A said they were getting into a mild HP hyperfixation.

A tends to hop around from fixation to fixation, and currently has been into Percy Jackson for the past month, constantly sending screenshots of their favorite moments in different fanfics to a group chat, including me and another friend, J (14X). I'd been fine with that, as A usually did this with any fixation and I thought it was fine.

One thing I did know is that PJO and HP crossovers are really popular (or at least, they were - not so sure about now), but I didn't think that A would associate with anything relating to HP. But then one day, I saw that A was talking with J about sorting their favorite PJO characters into different Hogwarts houses. If you haven't read HP, the school is called Hogwarts, and there are four houses within the school that you can get sorted into based on personality traits.

This surprised me, a lot. I thought that we all knew HP wasn't the greatest series (romanticization of slavery, anyone?), and that the author herself was a complete piece of shit. But when I voiced this, A basically said that they were rewriting the series to be "gayer" and more trans-accepting.

This troubled me. For one thing, as we were all trans, I thought they would know not to associate with HP in any way, shape, or form. I replied with, "You know JKR thinks people who support her books are transphobic, but are just too afraid to say it, right?" (Yes, I'm fairly sure she did actually say this. I wasn't lying.)

A responded with, "Who cares what JKR thinks? She's a bigot. Separate the art from the artist."

I couldn't do that, personally. HP felt too tainted by JKR's actions and words, and it felt wrong to come up with an excuse to engage with the series. I told A as such, and they replied with, "okay" and haven't responded to me or to the group chat since. J has spoken in the group chat, but hasn't said anything about our debate over HP.

Immediately, I was worried I had upset A too much. I thought they would understand, but I felt like I had accidentally crossed a line with them. I sent them a private message telling them I apologized for upsetting them, but I'm not sorry for what I said about HP. And I can't go to apologize to A in person, because I live an hour away from A and J. J hasn't updated me on A's position at all, and I haven't asked.

So I'm not sure. HP sucks, and I thought A would realize that as a trans person as well, but it also felt like I had personally insulted them by insulting their side fixation.

AITA? TL;DR My friend, A, got a side fixation into Harry Potter. This troubled me, as we are all trans, so I told them off for it, and now they won't talk to me.

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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bigcowboydyke · 9 months

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about your disability pride month post: is there anything important/significant you think people should take notes on when writing a character with an upper arm prosthetic? (like starting from the elbow if i phrased correctly)?

Yeah! I think the biggest is that you ought to consider first, esp if its an OC, your reasoning for making the character disabled- you wanna make sure you're not fetishizing or exploiting their disability to prop up abled characters. I've got a list of questions for authors to ask themselves along those lines that I can post or dm

Secondly, you have to consider what level of realism you wanna go with. If you have a character where, in universe, the prosthesis functions in exactly the way an arm does, you could just go with that if you want - it's the path of least resistance, right? BUT you ought to consider that most prostheses in media exist in that way AT THE EXPENSE of good representation of disability. Erasing disability or "curing" it with magical prostheses IS a form of ableism that is so pervasive it just goes unnoticed by most. I believe personally that disabled bodies are worth portraying well even when the creators of the source material did not do that. SO if you want to go with real well thought our representation, here are some common things I think authors and artists often miss (specifically as it pertains to upper limb prostheses):

1) I already said this, but seriously, I cannot emphasize enough that upper limb prosthetics ain't cheap and are usually uncomfortable. Your character, if they are poor, or even like middle class, won't have access to multiple high tech popular mechanics cover story type robo arms. Even if they did ...

2) Not all limb different folks use prosthetics! I personally have used multiple and I disliked them. I tried very hard to learn, but there are multiple requirements to be able to use each model and sometimes, a lot of times actually, limb different people - especially people without a hand or an arm function Better without prosthetics. Be aware in your art that limb different people are Whole. How you ask can somebody without an arm, say, do all that stuff?

3) Consider the idea of adaptation in your writing and art instead of relying only on magicking disability away with prosthetics. Disabled People live in a world full of barriers and tend to be Very creative about navigating it, adapting to our environment through just being a little clever about how we do things is the biggest way i see other people with upper limb differences interact with the world. There are three main ways that we go about this without prosthetics: Using adaptive equipment, Finding an alternate method, or as a last resort, asking for help.

Example 1: I have like 1.5 arms ok so obviously only 1 hand, and I need to clip my fingernails every once in a while. The obvious solution to me, while it may seem gross, is just to bite them off. Bad habit, but efficient. I could use those horrible little nail clippers, with my remaining stump and a little finagling but it takes forever. I could also get some adaptive nail clippers - they make great big handled ones for ppl that can't grab the little ones. Or, I could ask my partner to trim them, but I'm usually too proud to do that. Let disabled people have their flaws too lol!

Example 2: I love to rock climb. This is where adaptive equipment comes in. I could slip off a rock climbing wall pretty easily right? So bouldering (rock climbing without harnesses) is totally inaccessible to me. But if I go to a gym that has harnesses, then that's fine - they catch me if I fall and that's adaptive for me.

Adaptive equipment comes in many shapes and sizes and can be regular items repurposed.

3. If after all that you Must create art or write about an OC or preexisting character that uses upper limb prosthetics, consider that in general, limb different people's prosthetics are not equivalent to having two arms. Prosthetics are only practical for limb different people if they enhance your life or are useful in some way, however, getting one high tech enough to do that is unlikely because they are expensive. There are different groups, clinics, and charities that make lower cost options but they tend to be much lower tech than is depicted (and often are clunky). My first prosthetic was a long flat piece of metal, similar to a doctors tongue depressor, attached to a plaster cuff velcroed around my stump. The idea was that since I had a little bit of stump poking out, I could pin objects against the metal and it would work like a crab's pincers. It was okay, but I did accidentally smack many. Many. Things with it, including my own face and since it was metal, that was unpleasant. Obviously hindered more than helped. Also it did not look even remotely like a hand.

4. Which prosthetics you can get generally depend on what you got on you. Literally. Bodily. With upper limb prostheses, If you don't have an elbow or wrist, your options are almost exclusively limited to the pricier electric options that are both super futuristic, unavailable to many, and also like new car priced. Many of the manual, non-electric models depend on the ability to flex a wrist or elbow, so if you have those things are a little more accessible overall. It also matters whether you are born limb different like me, or if you are an amputee. Amputees are more likely to be candidates for prostheses than people like me because they have all those preexisting muscles and nerves for prosthetics that are higher tech and require surgical attachment Also prosthetics might be an easier learning curve, and more useful for somebody who has been abled bodied than it would be for somebody who never had that limb in the first place.

5. This is a little thing and ... Not to get too medical with it ( and neither should yall) but limb different people often have physical changes associated with lack of or loss of limb. If you do not have a limb, you are not going to be developing the muscles that are surrounding it in the way an a nondisabled person would. Again for example I have 1.5ish arms which means I've got plenty of stump on my "affected" limb. Even when I did Varsity sports and everything, I was never able to get beefy on that side. It is a pet peeve of mine that many people do not seem to get this - Most art I see of vash the stampede has him with two super beefy shoulders and like yeah i get it that's hot, but if hes got roughly the same amount of stump as me, he probably shouldn'tlook like that. Another thing in this vein is chronic pain is associated with limb loss and limb difference- I have it and its reasonable that any prosthetic user or nonprosthetic using limb different person is more likely to have it. Again these are little things but if you're looking to do good representation you need to consider that limb difference is not just a cool little stylistic choice to make a character look tough or what have you - limb loss and limb difference mean that that character will not only think differently than abled bodied people, but move differently, pose differently, have different routines and preferences than are ever represented in most media. Disability is not a style, and it's not a diagnosis, it's an identity. It's important above all to be respectful of that by letting go of centering able-bodied expectations and aesthetic in your art and writing. Hard to do but i believe in y'all!

Hope that helps! I've also got a bunch of links to go along with these points, if you want them lmk! I'm always happy to take asks about this stuff!

Tl;dr please consider making characters that don't use prosthetics, or don't use them excessively because it's more realistic, better representation, and makes me, a disabled dyke on the internet, really happy.

Lastly if y'all liked my advice and appreciate my time you are always welcome to tip me for it - my c*sh*pp is $neptunedrive

#cripple your art #disabled characters #vash the stampede #trigun #character design #disability justice

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muninnhuginn · 21 days

Text

In Defence of Qiao Ling

I've been musing on several threads relating to Qiao Ling in the last few weeks and have seen a few posts going around that have pushed me to actually try and put all my Qiao Ling thoughts into words and in one place.

Despite the title, I don't fully agree with the show's handling of Qiao Ling, but I do think she has been provided with a clear ongoing arc and so that's what I'm going to be focusing on here.

This got quite long so most of it is under the cut, but shout-out to @lizzieonka and @oceaniche for their previous posts on Qiao Ling, which definitely ended up inspiring some parts of this.

So, let's start with: what do we actually know about Qiao Ling?

Qiao Ling's Background

She's first introduced as the "landlady", for all it quickly becomes apparent that her relationship with Cheng Xiaoshi isn't quite that simple. Her family "took Cheng Xiaoshi in" but there's always been some distance and that's reinforced by the whole "rent" deal. (The fact that Cheng Xiaoshi is still adamant his parents will return likely also factors in to this.) Still, Qiao Ling herself clearly sees Cheng Xiaoshi as her younger brother and is willing to stake her claim on him as family to near-strangers (we've seen it both when she met Lu Guang and Li Tianxi).

Qiao Ling's social life is clearly contrasted with that of Cheng Xiaoshi. Where Cheng Xiaoshi's first "proper" friend was Lu Guang, Qiao Ling has her own circle of friends and is fairly sociable in general (she literally found a client by befriending a stranger when she came to learn martial arts). Xu Shanshan, for instance, is very much Qiao Ling's friend despite hanging out with the collective group at uni. Qiao Ling also spoke of Cheng Xiaoshi's childhood as something that happened to him specifically, implying that she herself was spared the bullying (which makes sense considering the fact that she wasn't the one with missing parents) and so had a more "normal" upbringing. Whether she spoke up back then or stayed quiet isn't fully clarified (not speaking up against adults is one thing but what about classmates?), but Cheng Xiaoshi doesn't seem to hold it against her either way.

Nowadays, Qiao Ling's role in managing the photo shop's side-business has her interacting directly with most clients. She's the most customer-facing of the three, relaying information between clients and shiguang. This is despite her not actually knowing the full details behind shiguang's diving process until season two, which in retrospect makes it more impressive. Qiao Ling taking on the managerial role (and what is also implied to be social media advertising) also has the (unintended?) effect of obscuring shiguang's roles in the business from the public, as it's Qiao Ling who earns the nickname of "witch". It took until Xiao Li saw Cheng Xiaoshi in the CCTV footage during the Doudou case for anyone to see through this.

Key Character Moments

In terms of Qiao Ling's key moments, we have four main ones.

In Doudou arc, Qiao Ling admits she saw Doudou being taken three years ago;

In season two, at the hospital, Qiao Ling asks for some trust and to not be shut out anymore;

Qiao Ling bonding with Li Tianxi and using their shared aspects to bring her out of her shell so she would help the investigation;

The revelation that Qiao Ling did, in fact, receive some form of Lu Guang's memories from Tianxi and her dismissal of their implications.

The main thread behind all of these scenes is that they are about information and what you choose to do with it.

My thoughts are two-fold here. First, how these scenes connect with Qiao Ling's arc specifically, and secondly, how they connect with the broader themes of the series.

Qiao Ling's Arc

Doudou

Let's begin with Doudou arc. In this arc, Qiao Ling reveals that she saw the kidnapping of a child several years ago. She hadn't told anyone about this for three years and likely would have continued to have kept it to herself if not for Doudou's father approaching the photo studio. In this arc, there is the following exchange:

Qiao Ling's main regret is that she didn't do something or say something as she saw Doudou being taken away. That her inaction may have ensured that Doudou's kidnapper was able to get away with him. And she specifically says "I didn't even have the courage to step forward and provide any information." (Tangent: Funnily enough, Lu Guang is the "star of courage" in the Star Warriors later in the episode, not Qiao Ling. Qiao Ling is "star of wisdom" who is meant to "light the way". Still fitting, but in a less straightforward way.)

Now, to me, this is clearly setting up an arc, not resolving one. Qiao Ling wouldn't have offered the information if not for the circumstances. And it tells us that for all Qiao Ling has friends and is sociable, she still holds certain cards close to her chest. She doesn't want to confront the past so instead she will hold her guilt tight and not say a word. Though, as this exchange shows, she does want to have that courage. And I'll get onto this later, but this ties in very clearly with the information she later holds regarding Lu Guang.

Hospital confrontation

Throughout this entire scene, even before it becomes a "confrontation" Qiao Ling is clearly feeling guilty. She runs after Cheng Xiaoshi when he tries to leave to help the police so that she can *do something*, make up for it the best she can. Guilt and avoidance are key traits for her and they both manifest here. They're still holding her back.

And, of course, there's her statement to Cheng Xiaoshi: "You're always trying to protect me. I really appreciate it. But what I need more is your trust." Qiao Ling knows what it's like to be locked out of the loop. She didn't know the specifics of diving for months (possibly years?) and it didn't really seem to bother her (or at least she didn't give the impression it bothered her when "Xu Shanshan" asked her about it). But she has her limits. And being locked out when the situation is actively dangerous? That's clearly past those limits.

Li Tianxi

Grouping together the final two scenes, because the first Li Tianxi scene is more a demonstration of character traits as well as digging in those sibling parallels between LTC-LTX and CXS-QL. Anyway, the first scene adds more evidence to the idea that Qiao Ling is more sociable and a people person. That she could could get Li Tianxi to open up by taking a more understanding approach and showing that she gets it to some extent. She's in the same boat.

Which means when we get to the final scene, this is what ties it all together. Qiao Ling has inherited the memories Li Tianxi saw from Lu Guang. She has seen Cheng Xiaoshi's "death". She has information now. But her first instinct is to dismiss it. To avoid it and refuse to confront it because the implications are too much.

But, see, she's been in this situation before with Doudou. She's had information and done nothing with it and regretted. She wanted to have the courage to do better. This is her goal.

And the implications of these memories? Do they mean Cheng Xiaoshi is in danger? Wasn't danger her red line in the sand? Didn't she tell him that "protecting" people and "trusting" them aren't mutually exclusive?

And finally, Lu Guang isn't Li Tianxi, but isn't the scenario here at least somewhat similar? Isn't Qiao Ling in the same boat as him here, wanting to keep Cheng Xiaoshi safe? Hasn't Qiao Ling shown she can connect with people through their shared experiences?

Qiao Ling isn't a confrontational character. She's avoidant. She will wallow in her guilt and not let on until it gets too much. But she wants to do better and isn't this her chance to do something? Say something? To not just be a passive observer and be left with regrets? I don't think it will be immediate by any means, but I think for her arc to conclude properly, she will have to conclude for herself that she needs to be open with the information she has and share it. If she's pushed into it, then it's just Doudou again. But if she chooses to share the information, then that's the pay-off set up back in season one.

Broader Themes in the Show

Broader themes regarding information and withholding of it. We see time and again in this series, that characters withhold information from others.

Liu Xiao and Lu Guang with Li Tianchen and Cheng Xiaoshi respectively, both holding more information than their "partner". Refusing to share it so that they can control them. Their reasons may differ, but the dynamics mirror each other in that respect. Unhealthy dynamic number one.

Li Tianchen and Li Tianxi, never addressing what Li Tianchen is doing with their powers. It allows Li Tianchen to pretend to himself that he is protecting Li Tianxi and carrying out justice. Li Tianxi is heavily implied in her telling of their backstory to know more than she lets on with regards to Li Tianchen's actions. But the refusal of both siblings to broach the topic eventually leads to Li Tianchen going where Li Tianxi cannot follow in his pursuit of vengeance and puts Li Tianxi in the very danger Li Tianchen wanted to avoid. Unhealthy dynamic number two. (There are more than this but I'm just sticking to these to keep this from getting any longer)

To go back to the hospital confrontation, when Qiao Ling says: "You're always trying to protect me. I really appreciate it. But what I need more is your trust." When she says this? It's a direct hit against the idea that protection should involve keeping people out. And in this case, Cheng Xiaoshi does start to let her in. They do manage to have healthy communication here now that Qiao Ling has been let in on the dives and is allowed to do something to help. She doesn't want to be passive.

She knows what it's like to be locked out, to be "protected" without having her own agency respected. But now, as of end of season two, she's on the other side. She has the information and Cheng Xiaoshi is locked out.

When Qiao Ling was assigned as the "Star of Wisdom, to light the way" in the Doudou arc, that's because it's her role in the show overall. Lu Guang certainly isn't going to push forward with healthy communication; he's too committed to his path for that. Cheng Xiaoshi meanwhile doesn't have the information needed to even start a confrontation. Qiao Ling is the only one in the position to lead the way with her knowledge. To provide the route to healthy communication once more.

She is the catalyst.

#ikik catalysts speed up reactions (not cause them) and are used up in the process so pls don't take this metaphor literally #link click #shiguang daili ren #shiguang daili ren spoilers #also my bolding is so eclectic but I tried to just go for the parts that were most important to what I was trying to say #also sorry im too lazy to make this more screenshotty so it's just full on words without many images to break it up #hopefully the formatting helps a tad but yeah sorry

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bettsfic · 6 months

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What are some qualities of a “good” writer in your opinion?

i can't really articulate in general terms but i did find an example recently. (i wrote these out as examples in the writing log i kept while i was at this residency.)

this is from The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a book about the Vietnam War:

If Rat told you, for example, that he’d slept with four girls one night, you could figure it was about a girl and a half. It wasn’t a question of deceit. Just the opposite: he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation.

what i love about this paragraph, this whole book really, is that it has a strong sense of voice. the humor of "a girl and a half." the fragment of "just the opposite" and the placement of "i think." there's a rhythm here. to me it reads as though every word was chosen because every other word was considered and dismissed.

next i attempted to read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, which is also about the Vietnam War. here's a paragraph that happens a few pages into the book that was so bad i put the book down and never picked it back up:

Bass handed him some coffee in an empty C-ration fruit cocktail can and then poured another can for Hamilton, who had dumped his radio in front of his and Mellas’s hooch and was sitting on it. Hamilton took the coffee, raised the can to Bass in toast, and wrapped his fingers around the can to warm them.

this paragraph from Matterhorn is littered with unnecessary descriptive adjectives among bodily action that's not needed and serves only to show the detail of the C-ration fruit cocktail can. that information is better placed elsewhere, where it might be more relevant and interesting to the narrator. there is no tension in this paragraph. it's only bodily direction as if in a film, and because this is prose, that's not needed unless it's relevant to the conflict. in this case, the conflict is that our narrator, Mellas, is absolutely terrified and trying to scheme however he can to get out of the combat zone. but do you get any sense of that urgency in this paragraph? no, it's just things happening.

i think good writers (and i use that term loosely, because we all determine good writing based on our personal tastes and the art/media we've encountered in our lives thus far) draft these kinds of sentences for the sake of knowing where their characters are in time and space but eventually cut them, even if they love the image of the C-ration fruit cocktail can. but if you love the C-ration fruit cocktail can, you can lend it meaning. you can honor it by making it matter to the narrator. here it's just kind of thrown in along with the other details, like a valuable antique thrown into a pile of junk. that antique deserves to sit on a shelf and be admired.

maybe the C-ration fruit cocktail can arrives in drafting totally on its own. in revision--when you're going through the pile of junk looking for valuable things--is when you find it again and go, "oh, this is good, i need this." you know so much about your story that you know how to find what's valuable, what sings. so when i say that in TTTC every word was chosen because every other word was considered and dismissed, what i'm saying is that O'Brien meticulously went through that pile, found the good stuff, and put it on the shelf in a beautiful way.

that's where creative skill comes from, i think. the endurance to consider, to make millions of little choices meaningfully.

#writing advice

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xannador · 2 months

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Have you considered going to Pillowfort?

Long answer down below:

I have been to the Sheezys, the Buzzlys, the Mastodons, etc. These platforms all saw a surge of new activity whenever big sites did something unpopular. But they always quickly died because of mismanagement or users going back to their old haunts due to lack of activity or digital Stockholm syndrome.

From what I have personally seen, a website that was purely created as an alternative to another has little chance of taking off. It it's going to work, it needs to be developed naturally and must fill a different niche. I mean look at Zuckerberg's Threads; died as fast as it blew up. Will Pillowford be any different?

The only alternative that I found with potential was the fediverse (mastodon) because of its decentralized nature. So people could make their own rules. If Jack Dorsey's new dating app Bluesky gets integrated into this system, it might have a chance. Although decentralized communities will be faced with unique challenges of their own (egos being one of the biggest, I think).

Trying to build a new platform right now might be a waste of time anyway because AI is going to completely reshape the Internet as we know it. This new technology is going to send shockwaves across the world akin to those caused by the invention of the Internet itself over 40 years ago. I'm sure most people here are aware of the damage it is doing to artists and writers. You have also likely seen the other insidious applications. Social media is being bombarded with a flood of fake war footage/other AI-generated disinformation. If you posted a video of your own voice online, criminals can feed it into an AI to replicate it and contact your bank in an attempt to get your financial info. You can make anyone who has recorded themselves say and do whatever you want. Children are using AI to make revenge porn of their classmates as a new form of bullying. Politicians are saying things they never said in their lives. Google searches are being poisoned by people who use AI to data scrape news sites to generate nonsensical articles and clickbait. Soon video evidence will no longer be used in court because we won't be able to tell real footage from deep fakes.

50% of the Internet's traffic is now bots. In some cases, websites and forums have been reduced to nothing more than different chatbots talking to each other, with no humans in sight.

I don't think we have to count on government intervention to solve this problem. The Western world could ban all AI tomorrow and other countries that are under no obligation to follow our laws or just don't care would continue to use it to poison the Internet. Pandora's box is open, and there's no closing it now.

Yet I cannot stand an Internet where I post a drawing or comic and the only interactions I get are from bots that are so convincing that I won't be able to tell the difference between them and real people anymore. When all that remains of art platforms are waterfalls of AI sludge where my work is drowned out by a virtually infinite amount of pictures that are generated in a fraction of a second. While I had to spend +40 hours for a visually inferior result.

If that is what I can expect to look forward to, I might as well delete what remains of my Internet presence today. I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go. This is a depressing post. I wish, after the countless hours I spent looking into this problem, I would be able to offer a solution.

All I know for sure is that artists should not remain on "Art/Creative" platforms that deliberately steal their work to feed it to their own AI or sell their data to companies that will. I left Artstation and DeviantArt for those reasons and I want to do the same with Tumblr. It's one thing when social media like Xitter, Tik Tok or Instagram do it, because I expect nothing less from the filth that runs those. But creative platforms have the obligation to, if not protect, at least not sell out their users.

But good luck convincing the entire collective of Tumblr, Artstation, and DeviantArt to leave. Especially when there is no good alternative. The Internet has never been more centralized into a handful of platforms, yet also never been more lonely and scattered. I miss the sense of community we artists used to have.

The truth is that there is nowhere left to run. Because everywhere is the same. You can try using Glaze or Nightshade to protect your work. But I don't know if I trust either of them. I don't trust anything that offers solutions that are 'too good to be true'. And even if take those preemptive measures, what is to stop the tech bros from updating their scrapers to work around Glaze and steal your work anyway? I will admit I don't entirely understand how the technology works so I don't know if this is a legitimate concern. But I'm just wondering if this is going to become some kind of digital arms race between tech bros and artists? Because that is a battle where the artists lose.

#AI #anti ai

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fanhackers · 6 months

Text

How To Be Gay, by David M. Halperin

While there are obvious fan studies classics, there are other books that don’t always fall into the “fan studies” canon that I have found incredibly useful for my own thinking. I cited one of them, Carol Dyhouse’s Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire (2017), a few posts ago; another is David Halperin’s How To Be Gay (2012)

How To Be Gay came out of a course Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, whose full title was “How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.” The initiation in question was not sexual, but cultural: Halperin believes that there are not only gay texts, a gay canon of sorts, but also gay ways of reading that are taught and learned and that help constitute something we might call a gay subjectivity (that you don’t have to be gay actually to have): e.g. Hollywood movies, opera, Broadway musicals, camp, diva worship, drag, muscle culture, style, fashion, interior design. Halperin asked both why this set of things–why musicals? why this diva or that–and what do they tell us about gay experience? Halperin was trying to trace “gay men’s characteristic relation to mainstream culture,” which often involves collaborative and camp appropriation: a queering.

I find this book very useful, both because fandom also has its own shared languages and rites of initiation (consider the idea of watching something with fannish goggles or slash goggles or a fanfic lens, as was recently discussed in a previous post; think about all the languages and tropes and artistic structures we all learn from each other) but also because Halperin talks about modes of identification that aren’t representational or based obviously in identity politics. So, for example, he says that the gay male students in his class were more likely to express themselves vis a vis a shared text like The Golden Girls than vis a vis the traditions of what Halperin calls “good gay writing.” There is, Halperin argues, a queer pleasure in the Broadway musical that’s different than the pleasures of gay identity or even gay sex; similarly, queer female fans might find pleasures in identifying with, say, Sherlock, Crowley, or Blackbeard that are very different from the pleasures offered by a woman- or lesbian-centered text.

Here’s an excerpt that gives a good sense of the book, I think: fans might identify with this or recognize it as descriptive of their own fannish feels. (FWIW, the italics are all his!)

[H]omosexuality is not just a sexual orientation but a cultural orientation, a dedicated commitment to certain social or aesthetic values, an entire way of being. That distinctively gay way of being, moreover, appears to be rooted in a particular queer way of feeling. And that queer way of feeling—that queer subjectivity—expresses itself through a peculiar, dissident way of relating to cultural objects (movies, songs, clothes, books, works of art) and cultural forms in general (art and architecture, opera and musical theater, pop and disco, style and fashion, emotion and language). As a cultural practice, male homosexuality involves a characteristic way of receiving, reinterpreting, and reusing mainstream culture, of decoding and recoding the heterosexual or heteronormative meanings already encoded in that culture, so that they come to function as vehicles of gay or queer meaning. It consists, as the critic John Clum says, in “a shared alternative reading of mainstream culture.” As a result, certain figures who are already prominent in the mass media become gay icons: they get taken up by gay men with a peculiar intensity that differs from their wider reception in the straight world. (That practice is so marked, and so widely acknowledged, that the National Portrait Gallery in London could organize an entire exhibition around the theme of Gay Icons in 2009.) And certain cultural forms, such as Broadway musicals or Hollywood melodramas, are similarly invested with a particular power and significance, attracting a disproportionate number of gay male fans. What this implies is that it is not enough for a man to be homosexual in order to be gay. Same-sex desire alone does not equal gayness. In order to be gay, a man has to learn to relate to the world around him in a distinctive way. (p. 12 - 13)

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

#author: francescacoppa #fanhacker #fan reading #queer reading #subjectivity vs identity

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pk2317 · 9 months

Text

On shipping "erasure" in fanwork

Might as well throw some of my thoughts together here, for easy reference later. For all 5 people who may read this. Right off the bat I'm going to admit that there will be a lot of caveats included, as opposed to absolute "truths". Also I'll be using the term "queer" to encompass LGBTQIA+, if that term is something that bothers you then just be aware of that. And “straight” (in quotes) generally refers to “straight-presenting”. I'll primarily be referencing The Owl House, just because it's a point of reference that I'm very familiar with the source material and the fandom.

I want to come out right from the beginning and state clearly that *ARTISTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CREATE WHATEVER ARTWORK THEY WANT, AND INDIVIDUALS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CONSUME WHATEVER ARTWORK THEY WANT*. Fan art, fan fiction, whatever. This is NOT an attempt to police what others do or enjoy, or an invitation to harass anyone.

With that being said, when someone makes artwork, they make decisions on what to include, or not include, and it's not unreasonable to analyze these decisions and question why they were made. Especially when those decisions are counter to established "canon" aspects of the character(s).

Shipping is one of the biggest examples of this. When you boil it down, "shipping" is focusing two (or more) characters and their relationSHIP to each other. Generally, this is going to be a romantic (and/or physical) relationship, which may (or may not) be "canon". Shipping has always existed within fandom, and it's not an inherently bad thing. It's a form of character analysis - based on what we know about Character A and Character B, how might they interact in this specific situation, or what would it be like if they were attracted to each other?

In a largely heteronormative media landscape, this can (and often is) a vehicle to explore queer relationships that otherwise aren't (or at least aren't likely to be) depicted in the source material. But, as we (finally) start to get some explicitly, canonically queer characters, we start running into the issues of "erasure". This will *usually* come in the form of canonically lesbian characters being shipped with guys (for some reason, gay men being shipped with women doesn't seem to come up nearly as often - there's a whole tangent about sexism and misogyny there that I'm not even going into right now).

For a specific example, I'll go with Amity from TOH, who (not infrequently) gets shipped with Hunter. Now, I'm sure there are some people who are genuinely interested in this pairing, and their character arcs do have similarities that could provoke some interesting interactions. But - Amity is explicitly, canonically a lesbian, and (canonically) in a relationship with Luz (another woman). So, the majority of time when I see this pairing, the reasoning behind it usually boils down to one of three things:

Outright homophobia, to reject the canon, same-sex relationship between Luz and Amity (just because they don’t like seeing two women together)

Outright homophobia, to insist that Amity "should be with a man, instead"

Trolling, because it'll "trigger the snowflakes" (which is just homophobia with extra steps)

Of course, all of them will (conveniently) hide behind the excuse of it being "just an interesting pairing". (Some of the same issues arise with "Lunter" (Luz / Hunter), except that considering Luz is canonically bi, it actually is a more logical pairing. So that gets tied up in biphobia, which is {once again} an entirely separate tangent that I'm not addressing here.)

The other excuse that gets trotted out time and time again is "Everyone has always changed canonically straight characters into gay ones for shipping, and that isn't a problem, so why is this?" Which might sound "reasonable" on the surface, but is a near perfect example of a false equivalence for two reasons:

There are no "canonically straight" characters. I mean, *maybe*, but 99.99% of the time when a character has a canonically establish sexuality, it's not "straight". Just because someone may be visibly/textually attracted to just one or more people of the opposite sex, that doesn't in any way preclude them from being bisexual or pansexual. It's a very obvious display of heteronormativity to just assume everyone is straight by “default”, and no, it's not "just the same".

Even if it were, queer characters are *VASTLY* underrepresented in media. Yes, things are improving. Yes, we have more overtly, outwardly, explicitly, canonically queer characters (and relationships) being portrayed in all forms of media that we ever had historically, but it's still considerably outnumbered by "straight" (or at least straight-presenting) characters and relationships. When some shows (not all) have the "token gay character", that means that your average show is basically 0-1 queer characters. Not really great numbers. So let's say there's a show with 10 main characters, one of whom is queer and the rest are "straight". If we reimagine another one to be queer so we can ship them, there are still 80% "straight" characters on just this one show alone. Whereas if you reimagine the one queer character to be straight...it's not hard to see why a queer person might take offense at those decisions.

Let's take a look at The Owl House. This is one of the queerest shows targeted at a wide family audience. Most of the "main cast" (series regulars - I'll define this as being featured in the opening credits sequence) is queer in one form or another, either canonically or implied (in the show or by the crew). But let's take a look at the relationships of the characters. Among our main characters, there are three "canon" (explict or heavily implied) relationships:

Luz / Amity (queer F/F)

Eda / Raine (queer F/NB)

Hunter / Willow ("straight" M/F)

Yes, I know that neither character in the last one is straight, but their relationship is "straight", or straight-presenting. Still, 2/3 is good, right?

Now, let's extend it to all named characters that we see in a visible relationship, with a named partner, in the show:

Vee / Masha (queer F/NB)

Harvey / Gilbert Park (queer M/M)

Alador / Odalia Blight ("straight" M/F)

Dell / Gwendolyn Clawthorne ("straight" M/F)

Manny / Camila Noceda ("straight" M/F)

So, one of the queerest shows on television doesn't even break 50% of relationships being visibly queer. And this is the exception, not the rule, for visible representation. Most shows are vastly more skewed to straight, or straight-presenting, characters and relationships.

So, no, it's not "just the same". And that's why it's not at all unreasonable to see queer people be offended when, out of a plethora of "straight" characters and relationships to choose from, they feel the need to take one of the few visibly queer ones and make it "straight".

I do want to reiterate my first statement again, just to be extra clear. I do *NOT* believe in trying to police what people create, or consume. I will fervently defend artists to have that right, no matter how objectionable I may find their content (as long as it's appropriately tagged/categorized/labeled/etc.). Yes, this even applies to even more "problematic" ships (another tangent I won't go into here). I would like people to do some self-examination and make sure they are being honest with *why* they may be creating/consuming that content, and I absolutely expect it to be clearly labeled, but in no way am I going to try and prevent them from doing so on an individual level.

TL;DR - Make/consume whatever artwork you want, but be conscious of your motivations behind doing so, don't be surprised when it offends people, and don't try to rationalize it as being "the same" as putting "straight" characters into queer ships.

#shipping #erasure #analysis #the owl house #toh #lumity #raeda #huntlow #long post #sorry for the rant #seriously don’t harass artists #if you don’t want to see something then YOU block it #I’ll probably regret posting this #oh well #fanart #fanfic

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rivetgoth · 1 year

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Man there is this weird historical revisionism that happens with terminally online “alt” posers where they like, assume that all the cool underground alt counterculture stuff of decades past were easily accessible within the mainstream and nowadays it’s been suppressed or hidden or is even entirely nonexistent in favor of the “lame” mainstream media. And like, I have said before and will say again and again that there is PLENTY to criticize regarding the entertainment industry and arts as a whole in the 21st century, it has not just been some forwards progression of positive change and improvement and I know that, but it also just frustrates me ENDLESSLY because the reality is the things y’all are idolizing were NOT mainstream. You were not guaranteed to walk down the street in the 80s and hear gothic rock and industrial or even more accessible synthpop that remains popular today, there was plenty of absolute shit music in the 80s lol. Movies were not just inherently better 20-30-40 years ago and in fact plentyyyy of major blockbuster hits absolutely sucked shit and there was an insane amount of garbage being manufactured by corrupt production companies. Fashion was not all cute GNC boys with long hair and eyeliner or whatever. It was not like some safehaven for queer gendernonconformity it was LITERALLY the AIDS crisis. And the stuff y’all are idolizing are now extremely popular in hindsight! Everybody knows Nine Inch Nails and The Cure and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hellraiser! This is household name media!

I just constantly see posts that are like “back then there was UNDERGROUND COUNTERCULTURE EVERYWHERE and now all we have is TikTok and Taylor Swift and Marvel 💔😡” and honestly it makes you sound like clowns. You are not finding the underground counterculture because it is fucking underground. The stuff you’re consuming from years ago withstood the tests of time. But there were not goth clubs lining every street corner and cool cult classics coming out every fucking week back in the day lol. This stuff was considered underground, alternative, cult, etc for a reason. You are comparing the most successful underground media from decades ago with mainstream media of today and honestly all it actually reveals is that you don’t really care about keeping underground art alive and uplifting the artists who are doing so now in modern time, or even have the knowledge of how to do so. You aren’t finding today’s “underground” subcultures because THEY ARE UNDERGROUND. It takes effort beyond looking at what’s trending on social media or what’s getting major theatrical releases. You have to engage with music that is not even on Spotify, film that at best may run the festival circuit. And, frankly, some of y’all have wildly rose tinted glasses about what good art is and are judgmental as fuck of anything that forces you to expand your horizons-- Alt music genres have a huge amount of fusion within them now. Deal with it. Lots of y’all sound genuinely racist with your aversion to alt music drawing more and more inspiration from rap and hip hop. CGI is a relatively accessible and still very experimental art form with tons of potential and many poor or indie artists are experimenting with it. Deal with it. CGI is not inherently evil or ugly. Genres evolve and sounds change. Back then plenty of the experimental stuff that we find cool now was made with dogshit quality because it was just people scraping together the few resources they could afford to make something. You only think it’s better because it’s older lol. You are the alt TikTok NIN fan Hot Topic equivalent of people who think they were born in the wrong generation because their idea of the 50s is poodle skirts and milkshakes at checkered diners.

I would be less of a cunt about this topic if the result was not a staggering amount of people calling themselves fucked up deranged alt punk gothic freaks only to turn around and quite literally say that there is no longer an alternative/underground subculture and that capitalism has destroyed any semblance of independent or experimental art because they are not fucking looking for it. Which in turn shits on so many struggling indie creators desperately trying to get their art out there within an increasingly tumultuous, hostile, anti-artist landscape of capitalist modern society. Engaging with underground work does actually require digging for it. The underground work you are engaging with from the past is literally no longer underground. If you exclusively enjoy alt music from the 70s or 80s or exclusively enjoy oldschool cult classics that is FINE but I better not see “back in the 80s we had Cronenberg and Carpenter and now we only have Marvel and Star Wars :( Why did they get Bauhaus and now we only get Billie Eilish? Why is there no more community, no more subculture, no more actual interesting art?” as if these are normal comparisons and actual reasonable observations rather than an admittance of your lack of understanding of the way that underground art actually evolves or even a desire to seek it out. Problems with modern industries aside, with social media and the internet and the improvement of technology like personal cameras and digital art programs both creating and finding independent art is EASIER now than EVER in many ways. You can discover enough music to last you your entire life from the comfort of your IPHONE.

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mitskinaturalbang · 7 months

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MitskiNatural Bang Rules:

Hello all!! Here is a short overview of our bang rules:

You must be 18+ to participate.

You must join our Discord server, even if you don’t talk there. It’s how we will keep in contact with you and post updates. The link will be sent after completion of your Google form.

Email: [email protected]

Tumblr: @mitskinatualbang

Twitter: @MitskiNatural

Welcome to the inaugural MitskiNatural multi-ship bang! After reading, you may sign up on our google form for either Author/Artist/Beta.

Here is a link to our complete rules + schedule:

AUTHORS:

Your objective for this bang is to create brand new fic that centers around a Mitski song. You can base your work on a set of lyrics in the song or the song itself. This is a Multi-Ship bang so the possibilities are endless, so long as a relationship (romantic or platonic) is interwoven into the plot and the lyrics of the song you have chosen are, as well.

Pick 3 Mitski songs on the google form and include the ship you are writing, we will try our best to get you one of your picks! If you don’t have a preference, we will set you up with one! You will be assigned to an artist who has also picked your same song. You are expected to work and communicate with your artist to bring your interpretation of a Mitski song to life. All works must be beta’d.

All fic submissions must be a minimum of 3.5k words. It’s up to you whether or not you think you’re capable of doing more by deadline, long fics are welcome! As long as you meet the check-ins on time, the fic can be as long as you want, but in order to start posting in the month of April, we are trying to set a realistic word count for everyone.

While we encourage everyone to write for a multitude of ships within the Supernatrualverse, we do not allow incest or underage explicit content. All graphic sexual content and/or violence if you choose to include it must be involving 18+ characters, just as all participants must be 18+ to participate.

ARTISTS:

Pick 3 Mitski songs on our google form and include your ship preference, we will try our best to get you one of your picks! If you don’t have a preference, we will set you up with a song and author. Authors and artists are expected to work together to bring a shared vision for your mutually chosen song to life!

Artists will be granted one fic in the first round of pairings. After all artists have been assigned one song/partner, artists may opt to be assigned to a second song/partner if there are any left to be claimed. As with many bangs, we imagine that there will be more authors than artists. We would appreciate it if you could spread the word to your artist friends and consider being matched with two authors. Pinch-hitters are welcome!!!

By participating in the matching process, artists are agreeing to create a minimum of one (1) art piece. Artists may create more art if they’re inspired to and time permits it, but they are not required to do so. Please ensure that if you claim more than one song/pinch-hit, that you have time to create the art for each one. Additional text separators and icons are welcome, but do not count toward the minimum. All artwork MUST be your own original artwork created specifically in response to the claimed song/fic, and may be created using either digital or traditional media (NO AI ART).

GENERAL RULES:

Disqualification is a thing and the mods reserve the right to disqualify you for any of the following reasons:

—No bullying! If you experience this from your partner, other members (even a mod!!), please DM one of the mods so this can be addressed promptly.

—Racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, hate-speech, transphobia, etc.

—You can’t have the mods blocked, we’re here to work with you.

—Not reading the rules, disregarding rules that you don’t like, and/or failing to follow them. If you’re unsure of a rule or requirement just ask. Seriously. It’s that easy!

—Failing to submit Mod check-ins/complete the stated requirements for your fic or art.

—Failing to communicate with your author/artist and work together as a team. If you go missing/ghost and do not communicate with your teammate (or the mods, as needed) you will be disqualified and a pinch hitter will be assigned if one is available.

There simply may not be enough artists/authors to assign a pinch-hitter if there are many dropouts. All attempts will be made to find and assign pinch-hitters.

All uploaded fics should be added to the collection on Ao3 upon posting. The collection will be available to access starting April 2024.

We will promo your fic on Tumblr/Twitter on your posting date. Depending on how many fics we have, we will space posting accordingly. You will need to submit to us your formatted Tumblr post the day before/of your posting date; template information will be provided.

Thank you so much for joining my little passion project: the MitskiNatural Bang!!

Please feel free to reach out here or my main blog @rise-like-a-sparrow for any other info or by the contact info provided above!!

#mitski #spn #mitskinatural #archive of our own #ao3 #destiel #multi ship #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #fan fic #bang #supernatural

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sterekcollabang · 4 months

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Hello everyone! Here is a rebloggable post-format of our Criteria section. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to send an ask!

WORK SPECIFICS

FIC:

Word count is ~10,000 minimum.

Use Archive Warnings. Please do not use “Author chose not to use archive warnings”. If none of them apply, select “No archive warnings apply”.

Tag appropriately. If you are having trouble, there will be space for you to discuss your story with others to accumulate tag suggestions.

If you need any further clarification here and your question isn’t covered in the Rules, please feel free to send an Ask or DM one of the mods.

ART:

There are as many forms of artistic expression as there are people in the world. No type of art will be disallowed for this event, but some may be more difficult to complete regarding the style of collaboration and time involved when working on this type of event, so please keep that in mind when applying. We have an incredibly diverse team of moderators who are happy to do their best to help with any questions or concerns involved with creating your work. If the art you’d like to make isn’t featured here, drop an ask and we’ll be happy to establish something with you.

Illustration:

Must be high enough resolution to be displayed on a computer screen. We understand the importance of keeping your print quality images to yourself to prevent theft, but please don’t overly sacrifice digital quality at your author’s expense. Please find a middleground.

Photo Manipulation/Graphic Edit/Moodboard:

Outside of images of the actors, please don’t use images you don’t have permission to use. This is in regards to fanart by other people and personal photography shared online. Pinterest is not a source. Wikimedia Commons is a great source for high quality common license photographs. We will do our best to share other great photo and image sources later. As above, please maintain a high enough quality that your image can be viewed safely on a computer screen.

Cover Art:

Whether or not you are choosing to do an illustration, edit, or other visual modification to create a cover for the fic, please make sure you go over with your author whether or not use of lowercase or symbols is deliberate and confirm which username or author handle they would like to have credited.

Podfic:

Podfic may be difficult to finagle considering the length of time writers have to finish their works. We suggest getting together with your author and making sure they can work out a plan with you regarding timing, whether that’s limiting their writing time, sending you each chapter as it is completed, or something else.

Video:

At least 30 seconds. Outside of images of the actors and scenes from various media, please don’t use images you don’t have permission to use. This is in regards to fanart by other people, previously edited scenes by other fans, and personal photography shared online.

Playlists:

At least 12 songs. This is the general minimum number of songs on Soundtrack Albums. Please feel free to do more! If you decide to add an album cover, the previous cover art criteria apply.

Ficbinding:

Please make sure you go over with your author whether or not use of lowercase or text symbols is deliberate and confirm which username or author handle they would like to have credited.

We said it at the top but I will add it here as well: if you don't see the type of art you do represented here, please reach out! No form of art is disallowed from this event, and we would be happy to help work out some baseline criteria with you to make sure expectations are fair. Everything here comes from our experience hosting and participating in similar events with these mediums, but we are always happy to learn about something new. (:

FAQs | RULES | SCHEDULE | CRITERIA | MODS

#sterek #sterek is eternal #derek x stiles #stiles x derek #art is art is art #faqs

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