#no nuance november i guess

[usaigi]

Everyone is allowed to interpret media how they like and no one’s opinion/head canon/theory is more valid than anyone else

Anyways, here’s are the dumbest head canon I’ve seen about moon knight

1. Marc or Steven got snapped

2. Layla never noticed that Marc had did because he was happy with her so he never switched

3. Jake is evil

4. Marc isn’t Latino because he’s Jewish/doesn’t have a Spanish name

5. Steven is shy uwu soft boi

#hot takes I guess #moon knight #marc spector #jake lockley #Steven grant #layla el faouly #no nuance November but it’s June #usaigi speaks

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Reminder that Kazuki has an Instagram Account

It's called fantastic_sweeper0516 and his little write up states: 

I am Kazuki Papa.  I'm a papa to one child (daycare). ｜Struggling to raise my child with my partner. 👧 miri (4y) 11.8 

Note: He uses 相方 (aikata) for partner.

相方 (aikata) is a bit different from 相棒 (aibou). Aibou is more of a workplace partnership, while aikata is  いつも一緒にいる人のこと or “a person who is always with you.”

I searched for the difference between the two words in Japanese and the top result was this write-up:  相方」と「相棒」の違いとは？意味や違いを分かりやすく解釈 on the website “meaning-dictionary(dot)com.” 

This is what it had to say about aikata:

A summary of the above is:

1. The word means “a person who is always with you.”

2. Comedian partners, marriage partners, and lately lovers are sometimes called “aikata.” 

3. 相 (ai) means “to help, assist” and 方 (kata) means “companion, same group” (etc.)

4. Some examples of how it is used with comedians is to announce things like how a popular comedy duo are no longer partnered together or when a comedian is looking for another partner to make a duo.

The Japanese dictionary site Goo has this as the definition for 相方 (aikata):

1. A person who you do things together with. Especially a partner in a comedy duo. Aite (partner like “Who is your dance partner?, the other party/addressee, opponent in sport). Aibou (work partner). 

2. (Also written as “enemy prostitute”) This is the partner of a prostitute in the eyes of the customer at a brothel.

[In recent years, this term is also used to refer to lovers and spouses, especially among young people.]

The first definition is one we already talked about before, with both aite and aibou being synonyms that have slightly different nuances to them. 

The second definition, from what I could tell, seems like an older, more antiquated definition.

The inclusion at the end there of young people using the term for lovers and spouses is probably the one that most people would assume Kazuki is using when looking at his Instagram account. Especially since he uses it when talking about raising a child together. 

That being said, I don’t necessarily think this confirms anything about Kazuki and Rei’s relationship as it is currently. But it likely is the term that is just the most fitting given their current relationship dynamic involving Miri. 

Especially because in this scene from Ep. 4, when Kazuki is dragging Rei to the first daycare, he uses the term パートナー (paatonaa) or “partner” to refer to Rei. This has a very general meaning:

From Jisho(dot)org. It can be used for a (dance or other performing arts) partner, a work partner, a spouse, etc. So maybe the use of 相方 (aikata) on Kazuki’s Instagram account indicates a future shift in their dynamic, but maybe Kazuki just finds it the most fitting for their situation. Since they are partners, but more than just work partners, and they do spend pretty much all their time together now, especially, because of Miri.

Of course, I am still looking respectively at the use of aikata and keeping it in the back of my mind. 

Also, this is a total change in the conversation, but I’m going to guess that 11.8 is Miri’s birthday, so November 8th. 

#KazuRei #Buddy Daddies #Kazuki Kurusu #Rei Suwa #Miri Unasaka #long post #image heavy post #Japanese language

[beardedmrbean]

I'd be slightly more charitable towards the "the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a genocide" crowd if they didn't immediately flip-flop between that and "but forcibly driving the Jews out of Israel wouldn't be".

"Anti-colonizers" are fucking morons, man.

Can't colonize your homeland, Jews never left, they've been there 3,200 years on the official record depending on how you interpret the Merneptah Stele, which even if it is only mentioning a "people" that would be Isaac son of Abraham which honestly the Islamic crowd probably hates that even more since they claim that Arabs are the "true" children of Abraham through ishmael the kid Sari's handmaiden had with him, never get any mention though and honestly Arabs are indigenous to Arabia anyhow which is to the east of the Levant where "shocker" Saudi Arabia is.

The Mizrahi never left, or at least they've been there since before the Greeks showed up, still a small number of Samaritans as well, they're from the northern kingdom after Israel split following Solomon's death. Genetically at least the 2 European branches of the Jewish family are undeniably more closely related to the folks that never left than they are to any European genetic group.

But ya, the whole genocide thing is ridiculous. I'd be more inclined to believe people actually cared about genocide if they actually looked around the world where that kind of thing is happening in a major way.

inb4: muh fox news.

It's not like the information isn't out there, NYT thing is the only one that's more than a week or so old, so why after this has been going on for years is it still mostly crickets from the peanut gallery.

It shouldn't be a competition though I know, but you'd think this kind of thing would at least rate a mention from the noisy people on the internet.

Gaza situation it's gonna be hamass doing the genocide both ways anyhow, you install a military installation under, in, or in extremely close proximity to civilian structures any deaths that result from taking those structures out are on the people that turned them into military targets in the hopes that the PR would sway people and they wouldn't get called out for using civilians as human shields.

Not to say that Israel is by any means innocent, they screw up and the IDF screws up and innocent people die, some of whom were undoubtedly murdered and I hope the people that have done these things are held to account for them.

But again it's telling that I've seen a half dozen or more posts about palestenian children and it being international children's day and well did you know that November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women as decreed by the un, got to see pieces about all kinds of stuff for that day and almost nobody mentioning all the women who were raped and murdered on 10/7

There's people on here that I respect that have a differing view on the situation than I do, different ways to resolve the situation and end the bloodshed none of which involve genocide, so them I can take seriously on some of this stuff.

The screaming lunatics that have decided that of all the ethnic and religious minorities in the world that Jewish people are the ones that aren't allowed to decide what is and isn't derogatory and that anything short of something like 'gas the jews' has layers and nuance instead of listening to what the Jewish people have been saying for years and years and years that both 'infatda' and 'from the river to the sea' are calls to genocide, they don't get much respect.

As for the apartheid claim, why would any country let non citizens vote in their elections or any of the other nonsense people are trying to claim like 'segregated' communities because apparently the concept of 'little' Italy, Havana, Saigon or any of the various districts like the Chinatowns where different groups have congregated to be their own community within a community aren't things that form organically or anything like that I guess.

#anonymous

[pawstepsinthesnow]

On DeviantArt, DreamUp, and Lies

I’ve had things to say about the whole situation, mostly on Twitter, but Twitter is a horrible place to have an actual conversation. Warning: this is going to get long. There will be links in the body, I understand that this will tank visibility, but I need to have this written out.

If you haven’t already heard about DeviantArt’s extraordinarily failed rollout of AI scraper protection and their own AI image generator, DreamUp, I’ll quickly summarize it here for background context going in. 

On November 11th, 2022, DeviantArt debuted their own AI art generator in a huge, splashy announcement talking about how they were going to protect your art from scraping for AI datasets, and to that end, they’d made their OWN, ETHICAL AI generator only trained on opt-in art on dA.

There was just one little problem.

Every single artwork on DeviantArt was opt-in by default. 

[Nobody liked that.]

Now, I like to get my story straight-- the earliest snapshot I can find of the announcement did not say that it was trained on dA specifically. However, multiple news websites reported that it was trained on dA.

After a few Twitter spaces in which they patronized the fuck out of Major Artists (if I can find the backup of this, I will update the post to include it), they updated their policy to opt-out all art by default.

This is a distraction.

I’ll refer you to this twitter thread first, because I think it’s a brilliant summation, but for a quick summary of what their opt-out actually does:

Webpages have tags in them for web-crawlers to read, such as the ones Google uses to index webpages. dA is proposing a new one, “noai”. In order for this to actually have any effect, web crawlers need to be programmed to recognize it. You can probably guess the obvious problems with this.

[image desc: popular meme image from the show Arthur, captioned “that sign can’t stop me because I can’t read”]

Additionally, dA’s own ToS says they won’t take any legal action to enforce their noai directive, meaning it has all the weight of a “take one” sign on a Halloween candy bowl.

Very notably, this does not affect any images that have already been scraped for datasets such as LAION, which Stable Diffusion is built on. It is well known that LAION is rife with stolen artwork.

DreamUp is built on Stable Diffusion.

The Main Point: Lies

As of the time of this writing, DeviantArt is claiming that no artwork from DeviantArt was used to train DreamUp. (ARCHIVE.ORG snapshot taken while I was writing this post for proof) This is blatantly false, knowing what’s in LAION, but in an interview with the Verge, dA’s current CEO gives a more nuanced take: “no dA-specific training”.

That is unfortunately also a lie, and trivially proven.

Before I can say how, you need to know two things about me, and a bit about the technology.

The first thing about me: I’m a cybersecurity master’s student in a very rigorous program, and my particular flavor of neurodivergence ended up trading a lot of points in “basic life skills” for “really good at computer shit”.

The second thing about me: I’ve poured years of my life into community management on dA, helping build art RPGs. It’s a little bit of a weird space if you’ve never been exposed, but what  you really need to know is we have our own lingo and our own systems of IP. 

So, Stable Diffusion is a neural network. People really hype this stuff up, but what it really is in the end is an extremely complicated math problem. What you need to know is that these neural networks undergo two phases: a training phase and a usable phase. A pretrained neural network can be retrained on additional data, but it cannot be untrained. Once trained, its training data is an intrinsic part of it. It’s actually a little worse than a human being-- we forget shit all the time, but these things can’t. All products of a neural network are mathematically dependent on its training data.

As a text-to-image generator, these generators need a specific type of data: described images. In order to generate an image from a caption, it needs to know what’s in it, after all! 

LAION is an intrinsic part of Stable Diffusion. DreamUp has stolen art in it. This is a fact. What I’m seeking to disprove here is dA’s CEO’s claim that there was no dA-specific training. In order to do so, I asked a basic question-- does DreamUp understand the shibboleths I pose it? If I ask it to generate images that use terms that would only be understood by those who work in my opaque-to-outsiders closed species groups, then it has dA-specific training. 

In order to run tests, I used Hugging Face’s official Stable Diffusion test space as a control. Any differences in Stable Diffusion’s output vs. DreamUp’s output would be down to DeviantArt’s additional training. Please also note that these tests were run on the 12th, before any username bans went through.

Here are my results:

(Please note that an “import” is a certified character for use in an ARPG. Ketucari is an arpg I help run.)

“ketucari import by matriarchs haunt”

STABLE DIFFUSION:

A lot of textures, rope, and horses. (Horses might be a factor of the dA data already in the dataset, horse arpgs are extraordinarily popular and I believe outnumber closed species arpgs like ketucari).

Dreamup results:

These pictures are recognizably in the style of ARPG imports, to the point where I swear I’ve seen similar ones. The beasts on them are twisted horses, likely due to the sheer amount of horse ARPG imports in the training data. 

Additionally, with the names of multiple popular horse groups, a fellow ARPGer was able to generate an even more convincing import. (I’m sorry I don’t know your username, though your name is so familiar!)

For comparison: a ketucari import of a character I own, another import of a popular arpg with a character I own -- please note the basic format of a character with color-your-own lines posed on a background. 

A second test:

Stygians ARPG is a different flavor of ARPG I don’t help run, but I generally hang out in. This is the reference art for the Stygian species. Their name is a common word that can be easily confused for other things, but they’re a large group. Stygs do not follow the above ARPG format but have free-drawn adoptables, so they won’t have quite the same GLUT in the training data that imports do. 

“legendary stygian by zoomutt” (Zoo is a sweetheart and the species owner, and legendaries are a specific lore subclass)

Stable Diffusion:

Predicatably, it has no fucking clue what I’m on about.

Dreamup:

This is the most damning, and convincing example yet-- these are recognizably deer-shaped creatures. The left has a four-critter lineup like an adoptable sale, and the middle has a frame and a label, though notably in a different style than Zoo usually uses for her sales. One person in the Stygs discord did point out there’s an MLP character named Stygian who might be contaminating the results, which I do want to make note of (I stopped watching the show a while back). I do also want to note that none of these creatures are at all MLP-styled. 

So, how is dA generating recognizable closed species and ARPG imports?

Because they fed it additional, tagged data from dA. It knows people’s styles and IPs. That’s why you have to block your username to begin with.

#deviantart #dreamup #ai art #lies

[discluded]

I was wondering if you'd have any opinions on why MileApo haven't done any fan-meetings yet (just purely them in a hall/arena with fans only doing a qna, playing games etc.)? I know we've seen them do promotional lives, the world tour, they did the FanStar event in Vietnam, ManSuang promo, Dior etc. But I would have hoped they would've done one by now. I might be projecting since I follow a lot of kpop etc. but I was thinking about it and wondered why, could a duo fan-meet not be worth planning?

Hi! they actually did do a fan meet last year.

It was in November and in collaboration with a Line Friends promotional event.

if you remember these outfits.

I can't find the announcement press release, which was in Thai anyway, but it was at Central Pattana mall (what I tagged it as) and called Embracing Happiness 2023 (what @nattaphum tagged it as) if you want to look through our tags for it. It should turn up quickly with a search.

This fan meet didn't require tickets and the turnout was genuinely huge... so I'm guessing you mean something else? I looked up some variations on what a fan meet vs. fan sign vs. concert is for kpop just to try to get an idea of the nuance you're looking for I'm missing... if you're talking ticketed event where they play games and take audience questions, the Woody interview was fairly close to that. Mile had a fan sign to make up for missing the KPWT send off (it's tagged under mile send off on my blog) but those were from random raffle winners and not available through buying tickets. The Planet of Stars event in Vietnam had more of the concert element and I think they were supposed to interact more with fans who bought certain levels of tickets but that was, um, kind of a mess.

maybe you can clarify what specifically you qualify as a fan meet? I'll answer based on what I'm thinking right now anyway:

1) financially, I think doing events with sponsors makes more sense for them. it's not as intimate for fans, but it does allow more people to attend events, which is better for sponsors. additionally opening it up to a larger audience avoids the element of fan scalping / reselling tickets at absurd prices for fan meets (which was an issue with some of the man suang showings with actors in attendance).

2) for foreign fan meets, the logistics are challenging and BOC isn't really sized to scale to handle that.. for various reasons. working with a third party to coordinate is risky: see Planet of Friends concert and the JeffGameplay fanmeet in France that didn't include Jeff in the end, and the sponsors made off without even hosting the meet.

3) The air is poisonous right now. there's already been instances of fan photos or fan engagement where the person invited up was openly nasty to Mile or Apo (see: Woody interview when Apo invited up a greeny rose, or a recent fan photo event where an apc was openly hostile to Mile). why open the door to more of that?

I mean, look at Bible's fan meet today... I really sympathize for him right now. He doesn't deserve this for his first fan meet and no one deserves to be treated like an accessory to someone else's career. (I'm not posting it but check @blramblingx2's blog. they posted it because I sent it their way...)

but we'll see! I wouldn't mind seeing a large scale fan meet like embracing happiness again. that was fun... for me... mile and apo were going through it in those 3 layers of sweaters and jackets 😂

#mileapo #fan meets

[amphoterrible]

some background information

What am I doing? Why, I'm re-watching House, M.D. as a whole-ass pharmacist and taking meticulous notes!

I’m only going to focus on when House, M.D. gets something about medication just wildly wrong. I’m not going to be like “why are the chest compressions so slow” or “would Chase really be inserting that temporary transcutaneous pacer at the beside wouldn’t they want to do that in the EP lab” or anything else along those lines. I am but a humble pharmacist.

Hydrocodone/acetaminophen (APAP), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

This is going to be interesting because House aired from November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012 and there are two things that come to mind for me: 1) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked drug manufacturers to reduce the strength of acetaminophen in combination acetaminophen products to 325 mg in 2011(1) and 2) hydrocodone combination products were still scheduled as schedule III by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).(2)  Hydrocodone combination products weren’t rescheduled to schedule II until 2014. Schedule III prescriptions are a lot easier to write and fill than schedule II prescriptions. A lot of the legal nuance varies by state and I am not going to read New Jersey pharmacy statutes, thank you very MUCH I barely passed every Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination (MPJE) I’ve ever taken. Back to the Vicodin. So how am I going to know exactly what formulation of Vicodin House was consuming?

I really don’t care about the hydrocodone component of it. There is no ceiling to an opioid, it’s whatever the patient can tolerate it. (Well technically there is too much to give but you have to look at if the patient is used to taking opioids or not don’t just slam someone with 10 mg of IV Dilaudid you know what I’m saying.) And if they don’t tolerate it give them some naloxone. And patients with chronic pain can tolerate a lot of opioids. Was Vicodin an appropriate opioid for House? No! But it was less regulated! And the threat of liver failure is dramatic! But Oxycontin would make more sense – Wilson’s an oncologist, he would be prescribing it all the time! Cancer hurts! Antineoplastics hurt! Oxycontin was the most widely abused prescription opioid in the United States in 2004(3), right when House started airing. But no, it’s Vicodin. The writers chose Vicodin for a reason. I’m going to let the art flow over me. We’re sticking with Vicodin. Or, hydrocodone/APAP because Abbott isn’t paying me to do this.

I worked in an independent retail pharmacy my first year of pharmacy school (which was 2010 before I realized I do not have a poker face to deal with the general public and immediately started working in a hospital), and I vaguely remember there being way too many formulations of hydrocodone/APAP. Hydrocodone/APAP has a few brand names: Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab. I usually say Norco because it’s the easiest. (I actually say hydrocodone/acetaminophen because I’m an asshole.) I found this email(4) sent by Abbott in October 2012 that discussed the newly reformulated Vicodin®, Vicodin ES®, and Vicodin HP®, which is handy since it lists the old formulations too:

Vicodin®

Hydrocodone 5 mg/acetaminophen 500 mg

Vicodin ES®

Hydrocodone 7.5 mg/acetaminophen 750 mg

Vicodin HP®

Hydrocodone 10 mg/acetaminophen 660 mg

Who the fuck puts 750 mg of acetaminophen in one tablet? That limits the patient to five tablets in 24 hours. We’ve known the maximum dose of acetaminophen is 4000 mg since the 1970s. What the fuck, Abbott.

(Matthew Mercer Voice) How Do You Want To Do This?

So, like, I guess I’ll just count the tablets I see House consuming and then calculate the total daily dose of acetaminophen for each Vicodin formulation? I feel like I can do total acetaminophen dosage based on episodes versus trying to keep track of the days. The timeline of this show is wonky and like once you hit the toxic dose you’re there so? Also, sometimes he takes more than one and it’s hard to hear the tablets like, clink against his teeth or whatever. Sparkle on! We’ll do our best. I was going to put this in an Excel spreadsheet but I just remembered I am a pharmacist and I cannot function in Excel.

Let’s talk about the mechanism of liver toxicity and treatment of acetaminophen overdose if we hit significant toxicity. Wouldn’t it be funny if we didn’t?? That would result in me rambling about House M.D. for pages and pages and he doesn’t even get hypothetical liver failure. Is this fanfiction? Am I writing really weird fanfiction? Anyways significant toxicity occurs if you hit 150 mg/kg of acetaminophen.(5) How much does Gregory House weigh?? Let’s give him a range: 160-180 pounds (73-82 kg). Fairly average, actually. So House’s toxic dose of acetaminophen is likely 10,950 mg to 12,300 mg. Let’s say lower range is 22 tablets of Vicodin®, 15 tablets of Vicodin ES®, 17 tablets of Vicodin HP® and the upper range is 25 tablets of Vicodin®, 17 tablets of Vicodin ES®, and 19 tablets of Vicodin HP®.

References

Department of Health and Human Services. Food and Drug Administration. Prescription drug products containing acetaminophen; actions to reduce liver injury from unintentional overdose. Federal Register. 2011;76(10):2691-2697.

Seago S, Hayek A, Pruszynski J, Newman MG. Change in prescription habits after federal rescheduling of hydrocodone combination products. Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2016; 29:268-270.

Zee AV. The promotion of marketing of OxyContin: commercial triumph, public health tragedy. Am J Public Health. 2009;99:221-227.

Abbott. Newly reformulated Vicodin® launch announcement. https://www.uspharmacist.com/email/ecf1248.html. Accessed January 8, 2024.

Hendrickson RG. Acetaminophen. In: Nelson LS, Howland M, Lewin NA, Smith SW, Goldfrank LR, Hoffman RS, eds. Goldfrank's Toxicologic Emergencies, 11e. McGraw-Hill; 2019:486-499.

#house md #hate crimes md #house rewatch 2024 #I'm halfway through season 1 this is going to take A Bit #so please bear with me #but here's some background ramblings #I'll make a pinned post and have links to each season #so I am ~*~organized~*~

[andrewlloydwebber]

do you guys remember when ALW said the US premiere of LND would change the ending so that THE PHANTOM DIES instead of christine and then he just straight up didn't do that. it proves that the "shock unhappy ending" of LND is completely tacked on and only exists as a facsimile of a parallel of original phantom's bittersweet ending with the phantom and christine separated forever, apparently permanently this time (i guess there's always room for phantom 3 lmao). say it with me folks, ALW hates women and would never allow his author insert to get killed off lmao. even if you agree with the broad strokes of LND, even if you think the way the characters ended up makes sense, even if you truly believe that the phantom and christine are the love... barf... that never dies... you should at least have higher standards for a musical you're going to enjoy unironically. the stakes have never been lower, my friends, literally what gets me about LND is like... it's a child custody battle for 2 hours with a couple of halfway decent songs. there's just really not much going on until a gun comes out. raoul and the phantom make a bet on who gets "ownership" of christine who knows fucking nothing about anything. despite the fact that they try to frame the phantom as the protagonist and good guy, he ends up coming off as completely unsympathetic and not even in a fun way! he's just a dick who learned nothing besides how to be even more controlling! there's really no redeeming qualities to the text itself and it really baffles me that anyone could enjoy this genuinely! you cannot plug your headphones in and listen to the sets and costumes! i really do think the phantom dying would improve the show, if they ever reframed it as him atoning how HE ruined multiple lives, but it's always no nuance november when you're andrew lloyd webber.

[ingravinoveritas]

u know michael has spoken out against people bashing/speculating about his relationship and anna multiple times right? even blocking some “fans” for doing so

Hello, Anon. I'm guessing this is in response to this Anon, which I answered recently.

I'd first like to clarify one point, which is that I don't consider what I wrote to be "bashing" Michael's relationship. I've noticed that people seem to characterize any commentary that isn't enthusiastic, over-the-top praise as "bashing," which in turn leaves no room for nuanced conversation, which is what I was trying to do with that post, by responding to a question that I felt I could answer.

Second, there are only two instances I am aware of involving Michael speaking out about or blocking people for talking about his relationship with AL. One occurred four years ago and sounds as if he was under tremendous pressure/had no other choice. The other took place three years ago, and what I think often gets overlooked is that this was during lockdown, when Michael was already not in the best frame of mind. It was a time I seem to keep seeing folks on Twitter refer to as "feral Michael" (such as the incident where he had an interaction with a fan over the bees in his house), but that I think is more accurately described as "unhinged."

The distinction between the two is that "feral Michael" is the Michael who was on the GO press tour making cheeky comments about Aziraphale and Crowley and brazenly flirting with David and basically being the world's biggest Ineffable Husbands shipper. "Unhinged" Michael was the side of him we saw during the pandemic, and the very difficult time we were all having. He was clearly, visibly depressed and struggling (it was especially noticeable during the second season of Staged), and it was frustrating to see everyone ignore that, and seemingly still ignoring it three years later.

That being said, aside from the above mentioned incidents, I'm having a difficult time recalling Michael ever speaking about his relationship with Anna, let alone defending it. He's talked about her during paid interviews, where the interviewer prompts him to do so (such as in the PR pieces that were published in the Australian media ahead of him appearing in Amadeus a few months ago, and this interview promoting LTTC at the end of 2021), but he has not and does not bring her up unprompted. (Again, in sharp contrast to how he constantly brings up David in multiple interviews without the interviewer even saying a word.)

There were also multiple opportunities for Michael to talk about AL publicly on social media over the past few years, and yet he's seemingly chosen not to do that. He didn't promote LTTC with her (and in fact if you look at their tweets promoting the film side-by-side, there is a stark difference). He didn't mention her or their appearance together in that one episode of Sandman, and he didn't at all promote Staged 3, which was released with almost no advanced notice in November of last year and has barely been talked about since.

I have to admit something, Anon: I am disappointed. You could have come in here and said you disagreed with me, and that would've been absolutely fine. I'm always open to hearing other opinions and people who don't agree with me, and we could have had a discussion and shared opinions in a constructive way. But when you come in here without any receipts and make comments that sound a lot like barely veiled threats, I know that your aim is to intimidate and shut me down, because you want me to stop talking.

I believe that Michael is welcome to cultivate his online space, and so are we all. My intention is to keep a respectful dialogue going because I don't believe shutting people down is the answer. I'd love for you to be a part of that, Anon...but if you don't happen to like what I am writing, it costs nothing at all just to block me and move on.

#anonymous #reply post #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #the fact that i even gotta respond to this #i can't even with this nonsense #i'd rather look like a 'bad' fan and talk about the reality of the situation #than look like a 'good' fan by ignoring it #and it also blows my mind that the stans can't see the sadness in Michael's eyes #and would rather pretend that everything is fine instead #anna lundberg #discourse

[demonslayedher]

Some KnY inspired outfits

I like going for the general nuance of a character or using a tasteful amount of accessories when going to KnY events, but I like doing that when going to other manga events and art galleries too. This was a Shinobu day, though the hair accessory is a Wisteria Mansion crest.

This day wasn't quite Nezuko in nuance, but you'd have had to be pretty invested in KnY merch to have recognized this as an official Nezuko item (and it was something I found at a discount ages after it was released, ufufufu~).

And sometimes I toss out the idea of "tasteful amount" and just stay at home.

This kimono really was a find, not just for Zenko Closet Play, but since it's an actual Taisho period kimono! I had always been curious about meisen kimono, but whenever I find them they tend to be too small for me (Taisho Secret: the Japanese populace was shorter back then, most of the KnY cast would be considered very, very tall). Meisen dyed the threads before weaving and thereby led to this blurry pattern effect, which, along with new and experimental (and rather flamboyant) styles, was all the Taisho rage. However, it didn't come into style until at least a few years after KnY would had taken place.

Also, that objiime (the string around the middle) isn't really up to standard, but it was being sold at the antique shop where I found the kimono, and the owner of this shop/gallery has a certain appreciation for KnY aesthetic, as well as Taisho-esque gothic, I might describe it? Anyway, we didn't make small talk or anything, but when he saw both items I was getting I suspect he saw the same Zenitsu connection I did, and he gave me a discount on what was already pretty cheap for a kimono. Yay~

Oh? Not enough Inosuke in this ensemble?

Well, turns out my sensei had just been to a big tea ceremony in Kyushu (and he remarked that tons of extra people were there because it was at one of the shrines with "Kamado" in the name, ufufu), and guess what he brought back as a gift?

INOKO-MOCHI.

My November was complete.

#Yes technically the first day of the boar in the month of the boar was much earlier #but there is flexibility in what day you switch to the sunken hearth in the tea ceremony #it is considered like a New Year celebration because you start a cycle of when you use different seasonal tools and arrangements #and since the boar is a water element it is good luck for fire safety #so many tea practitioners eat inokomochi on that first day of using the hearth in the floor #somehow a fashion post turned into a tea ceremony post #anyway #kny closet play #kny merch

[giftedpoison]

So I don't know what to do with this information so buckle up I guess.

Hi, my name is Eve and in my real life I used to work at a grocery store (it's a chain but not necessarily a national one so i won't be saying their name for purposes of anonymity).

I worked there from the age of 16 (was hired December 18th 2016). Eventually started working in their shopping department for curbside pickup in 2019, when the department opened. Became a supervisor in the department in November of 2021 (after doing the job for a few years being paid as a part time shopper rather than supervisor) then i was promoted to Lead of the department in Feb. of 2022 (which essentially meant I ordered supplies, dealt with managing a group of 13 individuals and sat in on corporate meetings and the like).

That's my history. I quit in September of 2023. Because the job was trying to kill us all and I hit my breaking point. (My breaking point was when 5 of my employees including myself nearly passed out from over exertion. I say nearly because I forced them to stop and eat and hydrate when it got too bad, i was fighting for management to give me help so we could get breaks out but they wouldn't listen and I ended up absolutely word vomiting my building frustrations with their management style that I had been actively fighting against for well over a year at that point.)

I know I'm a good leader, but management increasingly thought of me as naive and too soft as a leader because I refused to step back and allow abuse of my workers for corporate profit. Despite the fact I would show them statistics and give them nuanced balanced perspectives they let their own biases get in the way.

Three of my shoppers were their main targets. Two of which were neurodivergent and came from a not so great background. The third one wasn't neurodivergent but she came from a broken background that involved drugs and alcohol as a minor she was 19.

I think about the third girl so often. Because I remember she wasn't shopping at the speed they wanted her too (aka the goal for the whole department) which was a valid critique and the manager basically played bad cop which was fine. And I remember after this I was working with this girl and we were running behind that day, to no fault of hers, and i had to come help her finish her shop so we could prepare for the customers to arrive.

And she was panicked. Saying she's really trying and she's afraid she's going to get fired and a bunch of other things as i'm helping her. And I looked at her and tell her. "Listen I've seen you're numbers recently, they aren't where they need to be but i can see you steadily increasing if you keep increasing no matter what the number is by the time management says something again. I will back you. It is okay and me helping you right now is not your fault." I found out recently she no longer shows up to work. And she basically quit. Which was probably in part due to personal issues like the fact her best friend was in coma at one point. And such. And she also got jumped in the parking lot by some girls and the police had to be called. But I can't help but to wonder if I had still been there, if she would have felt safe to keep coming back knowing that there was at least one person in charge in her corner. (now, I know for a fact there is none because I was a one man defense line)

I can't help but to think about my one coworker, one of the neurodivergent ones, who is still routinely get shit about his out of stock list despite back when I was still working there I literally showed them that his numbers averaged out to be about the same as everyone else.

I'm not going to say any of the three were perfect, they didn't always do their best and were sometimes unreliable. But did they deserve to get emotionally abused by one of the supervisors (who i reported over five times, and who also once threatened me but management refused to deal with)? No. Did they deserve to be treated like less than assets when two of them used to come in all the time on their day off to help until they got fed up with being treated like they were lesser?

I think about the time I fought against a capacity increase (literally one of the hours we could have 13 orders drop for one hour with only 2 hours to do it, and maybe 2-3 shoppers to execute it, and that's assuming we had the previous hour completed and actually had a full 2 hours). And then when it went into effect anyway despite me shoving numbers at every higher up I could about how it didn't work for what we had to work with. My one manager told me that's just how you build a business, increasing volume. So I told him it's also how you burn one down. He didn't have a reply.

I asked politely from the store manager that if we called for help, if there was no other employee who could, a manager should help us. And he returned with hedging and saying that "well if there's only one manager on duty that's not really feasible". Even when there were three managers on duty and two of them were standing around talking they did nothing. But don't worry if it was register front end drowning two managers plus a stocker would come to the rescue.

And prior to all this, prior to my Lead position, I didn't know I could be an effective and intelligent leader. Now I know I can, but absolutely no one will listen to me and will routinely talk down on me when they were so interested in me, that they fought corporate when corporate didn't want to give me the promotion and gave me a bigger raise than was protocol because they believed in me. And that belief went down the drain immediately when they realized I would not blindly fall in line.

I feel so bad that I'm no longer on the front lines defending them, and that I failed to give management one last piece of my mind like I was going to, but I know if I stayed there it would have eaten me alive and that it was slowly killing me.

I don't know where to go from here. How to live knowing I have enough intelligence to lead and be fair and nuanced, but having no where to put that to use. I don't know what to do anymore but this one haunts me.

And like I'm not gonna say I was perfect and I definitely didn't know the answers to everything. And I did have my issues. (I was angry but refused to take it out on anyone, I sometimes got so overwhelmed I had to ask someone to take over while I laid on the floor for a second to regain perspective, and I would often have to sit down because I would become light headed and dizzy from the heat outside). But at the very least I fought for them ya know?

#musings #tw: abuse #capitalism #i think about them so much and i wish there was something else i could do #but i can't even go public with my knowledge because there's no documentation #all there is is first hand accounts from shoppers #but that's not really anything #and everything can be twisted in our own faults very neatly #corporate hell #leadership #anyway this is part of the reason i want to work as a librarian because of a big part of that job is public service and giving people safet #where there is none #which stems from like my trauma or whatever i guess #i just want people who have the cards stacked against them to at least have one person in their corner when everyone around them is telling #them that they are worthless #can you tell why i live AFTG yet #I'm such a wymack #or dan #or neil #aftg

[dotthings]

Something else I want to point out. While I agree actors shouldn't be hassled, on anything, so if the questioner is going in with ill-intent, looking to wankbait, I'm not for it. But when the question is a thoughtful question, made in all sincerity, and the answer is a nuanced response.

It is ridiculous and outrageous and shaming and absurd to cast blame on a positive in person exchange between a fan and an actor.

I know nothing about who asked the question of Jensen. People claiming it was done to wankbait, you'd better show up with receipts or shut up.

The fan asked a really really good question. I appreciated that question. I would ask that question.

Jensen gave a nuanced, beautiful loving answer. (You twisting that answer because you fear invalidation of your own views, or because you have a cynical need to pretend Jensen hates the shippers and is bothered, in any way, by our view of canon, while you weaponize Jensen and use him as a silencing tactic. Will not. Change. My mind. Go away.)

So one broken part of the wave of anti-Destiel entitlement and bs eating stan twitter discourse

Is this presumptuous and out of line demand

That fans stop asking about a pivotal and important canon moment

I understand some fans are merely anxious. But guess what. The reason you're anxious is bad fandom discourse. It's not because there's anything wrong with a positive exchange between fan questioner and actor.

Some however, keep screeching on twitter dot com STOP ASKING ABOUT THE CONFESSION SCENE, due to their own biased wants and needs because they're scared of Destiel. No. Screw you.

Jensen's answer is something he's had in his head since November 2020 early in 2020 and he held it in for 2 years. MORE THAN TWO YEARS (Edit because I should have put when they filmed 15.18 not when it aired)

Jensen finally got to speak his truth about Dean's love for Cas.

He got to speak Dean's truth, that he loves Cas.

Maybe we'll get to see Dean on screen speak his truth to Cas too but for now, we have Jensen speaking Dean's truth.

You screaming and yelling and raging how it's bad

You blaming the person who asked the question and blaming Jensen and blaming the existence of a drama free and positive exchange between fan and actor

Is some of the dumbest most cynical nonsense I have ever seen and I have seen some dumb in spn standom in my time.

#dot trolls fandom

[deancas-stabfest]

does there have to be a new original stab or can we simply contemplate one of the preexisting canonical stabs a lot? can cas just fantasize about being stabbed? can the stab be a metaphor? can it be a flashback? i'm mostly just trying to feel out the rules here

HELLO! Per the FAQ:

Does this have to be an AU? Nope! Your work can be canonverse; it can even be based on Thee Originale Stab. Be aware that non-AU fic will be marked with the sticker of Cannon of Canon Compliance.

As for fantasizing--this is fiction, so Cas thinking about and ruminating upon and providing juicy sensory details about getting stabbed is pretty much the same experience for the reader as the stab "actually happening" in the fic. In an artwork, I guess it would depend on if the stab was actually depicted in a thought bubble or smth idk.

nota bene: your work will probably end up with a Lawboy Sam sticker for loopholing.

If the stab is a metaphor for something else, that's fine! YESSSSS stab with additional DEPTH and NUANCE and FAR-REACHING EMOTIONAL AND NARRATIVE IMPLICATIONS. If it's something like "Dean gently pressed his index finger to Cas' chest and it FELT like a stab" well. probably not. Unless Cas then goes on mental safari and there is the aforementioned elaborate fantasizing. And again with Lawboy Sam sticker.

Flashback is totally fine. Heck, it could be a flashforward. Flash sideways? (Note the potential for a Reverse UNO/NO U sticker for Cas stabbing Dean. Then think about the warehouse scene in s8. and the crypt scene. Naomi would probably have some ideas for StabFest is what I'm saying.)

The rules are pretty simple: Dean, Cas, and a stab.

Check out the FAQ for more information: https://deancas-stabfest.tumblr.com/post/691529840649814016/faq-what-is-the-minimum-required-work-minimum

Ready to sign up? Click here or navigate to the airtable link: https://airtable.com/shrZNFFSaE0j3Bqw7

Sign-ups for PITCHERS will be open until SEPTEMBER 25TH.

Sign-ups for CATCHERS will be open until NOVEMBER 5TH (which is also when claims happens!)

#autisticandroids #questions #deancas stabfest

[psalm22-6]

Source: the Santa Cruz Sentinel, 17 November 1989

WHERE were you in 1822? Not Paris I hope. Talk about inconveniences; pastry prices were sky high and you couldn't turn a corner without fear of running into ranting anarchists or soldiers' bayonets. [where do I begin....] Now, with the advent of hightech stage wizardry, France's turbulent in-between-revolutionary era can be taken in much more comfortably. With some effort, one can secure a seat at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, (8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. matinees Saturdays and Sundays), and see "Les Miserables," the blockbuster musical hit based on Victor Hugo's epic novel.

Who would have ever guessed that Hugo's 1200 page tale of vallantry [sic], combat, love, hate, and suffering would wind up a hit musical? Alain Boublil (author) and Claude-Michel Schonberg (composer), that's who. There's no denying that the story of "Les Miserables" has all the makings of grand theatre, but its long-windedness makes it no breeze for stage adaptation; kind of like setting the Bible.

Boulil and Schonberg scaled the work down to fit into 3VJ hours running time, and though various omissions and truncations might rattle purists, the musical stands on its own, matching at least the novel's grandeur. Directors and adapters John Caird and Travor [sic] Nunn put theatrical means to exhaustive and imaginative ends in this multi-tiered spectacle. 

In terms of the grand sweep and nuances also, production values are on target. The novel's ideologies are tucked smoothly into context and character, their themes developed skillfully within the confines of the musical's somewhat synoptic form. 

Surprisingly, the show's most oft used and effective technology is dirt simple. With a large rotating disc planted midstage, time and Paris' dank back streets whisk by seamlessly. The highlighted hide n' seek saga between protagonist Jean Valjean and his nemesis Inspector Javert is just one strata of Hugo's bigger-than-life story that make the rounds. Other plots and subplots unwind upon the lazy-susan treadmill, eclipsing each other from scene to scene as if in planetary orbits. 

Though the story is broken down to essentials, it remains far more engrossing and elaborate than the greater bulk of Broadway fare. Jean Valjean has just served 20 years on the chain gang for stealing a loaf of bread, and his return to the free world is painstakingly encumbered by his inmate markings, (evinced by a yellow ID card). After thwarted attempts at making a straight-laced go of it, he assumes a new identity and destroys his card. He then pops up in scene two as mayor of the town and a successful businessman, but alas, Javert is hot on the trail, and before long he is forced to give up his respected station. The chase snakes through city and countryside, touching on a panoramic assortment of societal ranks. Jean Valjean's encounters with street people and malcontent students adds breadth to the political context, keeps the audience abreast of the situation as unrest foments to rebellion. 

Schonberg's apt and catchy song settings with John Cameron's glitzy orchestral packaging are ingeniously woven into the show's dramatic and technical pacing. Schonberg supplies a dynamic spectrum of musical atmospheres that correspond effectively with the story's dramatic scheme; a trove of memorable songs beginning to end. The simple, folk/rock flavored ballads "I Dreamed a Dream" and "On My Own" have already gained signature status, and underline a good deal of the show's progress via assorted retreadings. Noble and forthright, the stately chaconne accompaniment of the former tune echos the visionary strength of France's downtrodden, while "On My Own" intimates vulnerability and longing, sounding not too unlike "Shall We Gather at the River." The action scenes and larger music builds are more the work of Cameron's instrumental episodes, which are at times intriguingly shaded by acoustic/synthetic mixes. 

A toast to Herbert Kretzmer's irresistable lyrics. The serious songs touch both persona feelings and greater concerns, and there's no shortage of laughs, either. Ribald rhymes and ruthless punning make "Master of the House" (later "Beggars at the Feast") and "Dog Eats Dog" hilarious foils to the story's grimmer moments. The songs are sung by M. & Mme. Thenardier (Gary Beach and Gina Ferrall), shameless skalleywags whose pure wretchedness give the show a breath of fresh air. 

You couldn't hope for a better cast ... for the most part. Rich Herbert gives an unusually winning portrayal of the ever-valiant Jean Valjean. Playing a saint is no picnic and Herbert wears his halo credibly. His physical presence is a given asset for the role, but he also brings dynamic acting ability and beautifully voiced arias. Richard Kinsey poses a menacing presence as Javert, Jean Valjean's pursuer; a real swine. With a booming bass voice that shoots up the spine like an aftershock, Kinsey looms relentlessly on the heels of our hero from beginning to near-end. Javert's final withdrawal from the chase, (we're talking terminal) features one of the show's most ingenious technical displays, a stunt that is perfectly suited to the character's formidable stature. 

With all the pieces artfully made and fit in place, there remains something to be desired in "Les Miserables." By virtue of the sheer magnitude of spectacle, gadgetry overwhelms humanity. Guts and glory are mere ingredients of the multi-tiered phenomena rather than the meat of it all wedged in between hardware and software like the ewoks in "Star Wars." The musical's emotional resonance is strategically planted into the scheme of things, designed so neatly and predictably that the stitches show. 

For tickets call [phone]

#les miserables #lm musical

[found-the-secrets-in-your-eyes]

I posted 17,498 times in 2022

That's 11,918 more posts than 2021!

987 posts created (6%)

16,511 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@anuraboy

@draculagerard

@the-ghost-king

@sam-winchester-kinnie

I tagged 4,900 of my posts in 2022

#ghost - 343 posts

#tagged in or something - 248 posts

#divide a whole into thirds thirds thirds - 244 posts

#flying guy core - 229 posts

#art - 149 posts

#milo - 133 posts

#ofmd - 117 posts

#love is a practice - 113 posts

#religious imagery in poetry in queerness in sin - 104 posts

#hi emily - 90 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#it wòuld make a lot of sense for me to have pots but once i start thinking i have something i feel like im looking for it and now i think i

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

32 notes - Posted April 21, 2022

#4

"you even managed to bring history's greatest pirate to ruin" okay but what a fucking flex imagine making someone love you so much that people say you brought him to ruin. someone like blackbeard. goddamn. and he didn't even do it on purpose he was just that genuine and in love with Ed that he ruined him. fuck. they make me feral

32 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

#3

"writing smut about children is wrong" a) a LOT of the people writing smut about children are... teens themselves. there's nothing wrong with exploring sexuality through fiction and in general it's a pretty safe thing to do b) adults writing it either age up the kids or write about it not in a pedo*hilic way but in a way that's chanelling their inner teen which guess what is also pretty healthy and safe c) can we stop throwing around pedo as a buzzword you literally don't know what it means if you use it against other people like that d) simplifying the statement like that erases a lot of nuance surrounding this like sure if you put it like that it seems simple enough but by doing so you neglect so much of it e) stop drinking the terf kool-aid "but I'm queer I'm trans" you are still drinking the terf kool-aid you are feeding into radfem rhetoric

71 notes - Posted April 14, 2022

#2

honestly fuck november

87 notes - Posted November 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

oh, he was a lawyer. this explains the devastating psychological defects he has.

225 notes - Posted April 21, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[my-mt-heart]

Hello

Hope u re doing great

Uh, ok, so im french, which means im from the most hated country right now in CarylWorld (LOL), but which also means i would have personnally been delighted to have a caryl spin off in France (even if i wanted New Mexico as much as everyone else) especially since i dont find it realistic that we dont know how apocalypse went in the rest of the globe (i know its a us tv show but even before all that i kind of wanted a story/spin off set in Europe, or in Africa, or anywhere else) and since it kind of makes senses with what Dr Jenner said back in s1 and with Twd world beyond.

But i would have been delighted, means im not cause now its just Daryl alone and im pissed.

But its happening either way, and i wanted to share something with u:

I registered years ago on a website to be an extra on some shows or movies in France. Never did actually apply but am still receiving emails about it. Guess what came through my mail box this morning? An invitation to apply to be an extra on Daryls spin off (God it hurts to write or read it that way). They dont say if its to be a walker or anything else, they say filming is going to be between the 2nd et the 10th of november (they dont say where exactly in France) that your hair cant be dyed (have to be natural) and must be long or semi-long and that... your size cant be more than 32 (....)

Im not going to apply of course (and not just because im more than 32 LOL) but i just wanted to share this piece of info.

Hello to you too :) The thing is, France could've been a great setting for the Caryl spinoff, like a honeymoon spot with the exciting nuance of the ZA. But if their character arcs are just going to be buried underneath Gimple's mythology, motorcycle chases, and a few explosions, then it's a waste. The Dr. Jenner callback never had anything to do with Caryl/Daryl specifically and I'm pretty sure the World Beyond coda wasn't always intended for them either, so that's also frustrating. But I digress. Thank you for sharing. It's too bad you can't apply to be our insider. Pretty weird to be calling for extras two months in advance though. Curious to see if we’ll get casting announcements, a start date, or even a title in the meantime. 

#caryl #darylneedscarol

[semper-legens]

7. The Real Guy Fawkes, by Nick Holland

Owned: No, library Page count: 207 My summary: The story of Guy Fawkes, from his early origins in York to his conversion to Catholicism and devotion to his faith, following him and his associates as they set the stage for the Gunpowder Plot...and, ultimately, fail and are executed. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. Some Guy tried really hard to blow up the king, so we ritually burn him in effigy and set off fireworks and apparently it was illegal to not have a bonfire on Bonfire Night until the 1850s, fucking hell, this country is a nightmare. Anyway, this is a book about Guy Fawkes! I...do not like the way this country remembers Guy Fawkes. While I’m not necessarily on board with all of his goals, the idea of ending persecution of a religious group (yes, even if that religious group is Catholics, they were being literally tortured and murdered for being Catholic, that’s not good) is something I can get behind, and I’m super against the state horrifically executing people. You ever read about hanging, drawing, and quartering? One of the most horrible ways to die. So I appreciated some of this book’s attempts to gain a more nuanced look at Fawkes’ life.

Guy Fawkes was a complicated man. Converted to Catholicism after seeing the torture and death of a Catholic in his home town, as well as being educated by a crypto-Catholic, he ended up going to Spain to fight for the Spanish then being involved in a plot to assassinate King James VI and I, who, let’s not mince words, was a fucking monster. Seriously, the guy personally ‘interrogated’ suspected witches and is pretty much responsible for the murder of anyone executed for witchcraft in England and Scotland, at least, he was awful. But anyway. Guy Fawkes is often seen as a historical villain, particularly if you’re being educated in England because he was a traitor, but I happen to be of the opinion that wanting to murder King James VI and I is in fact the right opinion, so there’s that. This book presented a more sympathetic and nuanced view of Fawkes’ life than the version presented to me by my school (makes sense, I was a kid at the time, but ya know), looking at Fawkes’ life as far as we could trace it through history.

Methinks this book was subject to a wee bit of historical bias, though. While Holland does try and present a balanced view of Fawkes’ life, it’s clear that his sympathies ultimately lie with Fawkes, given his emphasis on the horrific ways that Fawkes was likely tortured (look up the signatures on his confessions), speculation on Fawkes’ feelings and personal life, and the tragic way that he presents Fawkes’ death. Specifically, the mechanisms of being hung, drawn, and quartered involved being hanged not until death, then dismembered while alive. Fawkes, however, died instantly of a broken neck. It’s speculated that he jumped from the scaffold in order to hasten his death, and that was the way I’d heard it; it’s notable, then, that Holland presents it as Fawkes’ body just giving up after being so broken. Which, I hasten to add, is also a valid theory as to what happened, but it’s interesting that he doesn’t mention the other possibility. The one thing he did do that annoyed me, however, was to say things like ‘It is probable that’ or ‘It is possible that’ while in an act of historical speculation. I get it, Fawkes didn’t leave a lot of records, you gotta presume some things. And it’s perfectly legitimate to guess that, say, Fawkes’ parents were happy when he was born. There’s just some other times when the thing being posited is a bit more of a stretch, presented as being basically fact.

Next up, my first new graphic novel of the year, and an initiate witch.

#The Real Guy Fawkes #Nick Holland #book blog #book blogging #book blogger #4 #Death / #Murder / #Execution /