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akiizayoi4869 · 2 days

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The Southern Raiders

Been meaning to make my own post about this episode for a while now, so hear it is. The main thing I hear about this episode is that Aang didn't understand Katara's pain at all but Zuko did. The notion that a genocide survivor doesn't understand another genocide survivor is certainly one hell of a take, and it's very stupid. Are we really going to forget the air nomad genocide?

Aang lost EVERYTHING because of the war. And to make it worse? He feels guilty because he wasn't there to stop it from happening (even though he wouldn't be able to do much since he hadn't mastered the four elements yet) because he ran away from his duties as the avatar. When Aang finds Monk Gyatso's body in the Southern Air Temple episode, he's overcome with so much grief and anger that he triggers the avatar state:

Katara herself even compares what she's been through to what Aang was feeling in this moment by saying "I know how hard it is to lose the people you love! I went through the same thing when I lost my mom." Certainly sounds like two people who understand each other perfectly if you ask me. Also, in the Lost Adventures comics, we're shown that the Fire Nation used a dirty tactic to smoke out any other airbenders that might have escaped from the genocide.

We see how happy Aang was to learn that some airbenders may have survived, only to find out that it was all a lie to capture any remaining survivors. At the end of the comic he looks disappointed and crushed knowing that the possibility that air nomads fell for this trick and were killed as a result.

A lot of people take Katara saying "I knew you wouldn't understand" to Aang as her saying that he doesn't understand her pain, but if you actually look at the context? That's not what she's saying at all. What she means is that she knew that Aang wouldn't understand her need for VENGEANCE. For her desire to kill her mother's killer. Because Aang was taught that revenge isn't the answer. Even though Aang absolutely understands how she felt, something that he says himself:

In both of those moments he felt extreme anger and hatred, both strong negative feelings that would have caused him to lash out and do something that he would regret later on. Who stops him in both cases? Katara. She calms him down (and can I just say that I think it's really poetic that in this specific episode, Aang's words are what calms Katara down in the end, and is why she decided to spare Yohn Rha?) in his moments of rage, something that he's grateful for.

Another argument that I've seen is that Zuko understands her pain more than Aang because he also lost his mother. While I can see why people make this comparison, those are two entirely different situations. Ursa was banished because she protected Zuko from being killed when he was a child. Which means that she's still alive (as we later find out from those horrible comics). Kya, on the other hand, was KILLED because she protected Katara by saying that she was the waterbender that they were looking for. This happened in a genocidal raid by the Fire Nation. Safe to say that Zuko can never understand what that feels like.

Also, it's pretty crazy to me how people can say that Aang was wrong in this episode, when Zuko HIMSELF says that Aang was actually right, and that what Katara needed in the end was revenge. Aang knows Katara a lot better than Zuko does, and he knows that killing the man who killed her mom would have absolutely destroyed Katara because of the kind of person she is. Just like Aang remembering how he killed all of those Fire Nation soldiers in the North Pole while he was in the avatar state and being controlled by his past lives and the ocean spirit caused him to have nightmares and be terrified of what the avatar state can do. Both of them are alike in that regard. The closest thing I can say that Zuko understands about Katara is her anger. Boy spent 3 seasons being angry so he definitely understands that. But other than that? He doesn't understand her, which is to be expected since he just joined them a few episodes ago, and spent a whole year chasing them and trying to capture Aang. So he's just started getting to really know everyone on a personal level. In conclusion, Aang did indeed understand Katara, and his words were exactly what she needed to hear.

#atla #aang #katara #zuko #atla meta #the southern raiders

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beautifulpersonpeach · 3 days

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I was a bit surprised to see that mhj specifically said that newjeans had approved the statement saying that belift had copied newjeans' concept with illit. I'm not the type of person that thinks that you're a bitch for asserting position or your value, so this isn't where I'm coming from, but, especially in an industry where it's so rare to see groups say anything negative about other groups, particular junior groups I would think, it was quite the strong, swift position to take. Do you foresee newjeans continuing to engage publicly with this scandal, and how would you think taking an active part in this would affect their brand?

Ask 2:

bp in your opinion is there any chance that in this Hybe/MHJ situation there's a buried kind of double-blind motivation?

Like the kind i've seen attributed to E|on Musk, where he creates a big scandal to provide cover when he's doing something much shadier (and then maybe it gets out of hand, like the TwiX thing lol)

You've said you're pretty familar with the corporate side machinations - could Hybe be purposefully airing all this, sure to stick it to MHJ, but also to temporarily drive down stock prices for idk easy shares-repurchasing? Or even allowing a mess they can blame for having to report lower numbers to shareholders for whatever reason: boycott actually impacting profit, hedging against lower-than-predicted bts returning numbers, etc.

Or is this too convoluted of conspiracy thinking and BPD/HYBE/MHJ, and by extension from your recent posts basically 'corporate kpop' entire, are really just that transparent and petty?

Ask 3:

Might be a stupid question because I honestly don't have any clue about corporate businesses and how they work. But in the light of this scandal and how BigHit/Hybe developed over the last years: would you say this is what you get when you become too greedy instead of concentrating on what you were good at?

Ask 4:

in your opinion, is mhj truly an indispensable part of newjeans creative output? Also, do you see any way that hybe would let newjeans leave with its name and discography if they try to break their contract to go with mhj like some people are saying?

Ask 5:

I’m seeing a lot of discussion about whether newjeans will try to leave with mhj and break their contract with hybe, but I don’t see this as a realistic scenario, and I especially don’t see hybe letting them leave with their name and discography. You mentioned that there are a limited set of options now, but is this even one of them? In my mind, newjeans as a concept either stays at hybe, with or without mhj in whatever capacity, or can’t really exist legally

Ask 6:

Also this has given everyone (kpop stans, ARMYs, journalists) the go ahead to drag Newjeans in order to "defend" Illit, BTS, Riize, etc by throwing (again) dozens of plagiarism accusations and trying to discredit everything the group has done and achieved. And it was started by Hybe themselves... I have no words, bpp

***

I think these six asks capture most of the talking points in the asks I've received since yesterday, so I'll use these to answer your questions.

The sheer amount of spin happening in the media right now is ridiculous lmaoo. With the mention of BTS in the "escape files", ARMYs have predictably moved from shady bystanders to actively joining in the negative spin, spreading rumor articles and many are now attacking the girls themselves. But honestly, this is nothing less than what I expected. NewJeans is the most popular group in Korea, the 2nd most valuable IP only behind BTS, and Min Heejin is the brains behind the operation - an achievement she's insisted on taking full credit for since inception. Leaving the only option for whoever is masterminding this from within and outside HYBE, to destroy her reputation as an executive completely to diminish her value to outside investors, and weaken the fan support for NewJeans given how closely they are already associated with MHJ. And that's what is happening. It impacts every group at HYBE and nearly obliterates the viability of NewJeans.

For HYBE, it's a tolerable loss given there's only one year left before BTS returns and closes that earnings gap in mere months. Whoever took this action sees it simply as resulting in a numerical loss that can be soon corrected, but personally, I disagree, for the same reasons I objected to HYBE's acquisition of SM even though on paper it made numerical sense.

Anon in ask 1: I can understand your surprise but sad as it is to say, I expected that response from MHJ. She's a creative, not a PR exec or an MBA-credentialled suit. I'm not sure how familiar you are with ADOR's press releases in general, but anybody who reads them can tell there's almost no corporate doublespeak, no vague allusions, nothing that shows it's written by a typical media-trained PR person. Which is why most people, including you, take that statement to mean NewJeans agrees with MHJ that Illit copied them (it's a possibility), when in reality the language shows it could refer to them agreeing with MHJ's assertion that HYBE hasn't duly responded to her requests about inter-label discrimination, or other related matters. That's the kind of detail a trained PR person would be sure to include, to minimize the fallout to NJ, but just as with the press release on Cookie, the one on Minji's rival sasaeng, the response to Hyein's veneer rumours, and practically every press release ADOR has put out, the language is unsophisticated.

"Do you foresee newjeans continuing to engage publicly with this scandal, and how would you think taking an active part in this would affect their brand?"

NewJeans has so far not engaged publicly with this scandal. MHJ has mentioned them to signal any separation between them will likely be contested. It's leverage. If they do take an active part in this scandal, it will completely destroy their brand. Like, it's already on life support. Anything more and we might as well say their last rites.

Anon in ask 2: I'd say that's not a conspiracy exactly but it is kinda pushing it. Anytime there's a stock dip it's a buying opportunity, and HYBE is always guaranteed to be a Buy so long as BTS is slated to return within 12 months of the stock event. But we simply don't have any clear indications that's the case now given the timing doesn't quite line up. If anything, that is more like the 4th order side-effect.

And yeah, people on the corporate side, not just in k-pop, are many times just that petty. But it's also true this case has been sensationalized in particular ways to appeal to k-pop stans specifically.

Anons in ask 4 & 5: The options available are:

MHJ leaves HYBE and NewJeans stays in HYBE

MHJ leaves HYBE and NewJeans leaves with her

MHJ stays in HYBE but is demoted from her exec role and NewJeans stays in HYBE

MHJ stays in HYBE and keeps her exec role and NewJeans stays in HYBE

None of these options are good, but the worst of these evils is option 2. If the members attempt to leave with her, there's no pretty way to say this, but they'll be done. I'm not even going to waste time writing all the ways HYBE and k-pop stans as a whole will rip them to shreds, all I'll say is that whoever is attached to these girls should consider taking a 6 months sabbatical away from k-pop entirely once that news breaks. The law is not on their side and public opinion, especially after all the 'leaks' and spin from HYBE in the last 72 hours, certainly isn't on their side either. It would be career suicide.

"in your opinion, is mhj truly an indispensable part of newjeans creative output?"

Personally, I think yes. Every label at HYBE had similar initial monetary investment as NewJeans and ADOR had, and other groups from the Big 3 have had even bigger investments and resources at their disposal. There isn't a single group, both within HYBE and outside HYBE, that has yielded the same results as NewJeans in the same period of time. Illit comes close, but even with their achievements they haven't reached the same (positive) notoriety as NewJeans did at debut. All HYBE groups have access to HYBE's youtube channel, connections and resources, and yet the achievements of BOYNEXTDOOR, LE SSERAFIM, ENHYPEN, and even ILLIT, are nowhere near comparable to that of NewJeans. And I agree with MHJ that she's the primary reason why. Having access to resources is only one part of the equation. How you allocate those resources and what you do with it is far more important, and this is where MHJ and ADOR excels relative to other sub-labels.

NewJeans without MHJ will not be nearly as threatening to everyone else in k-pop, and I suspect this is one reason there have been calls for her to be removed from managing the group since their debut.

Anons in ask 3 & 6: Yeah there's a fair bit of greed on show here. Generally, for a lot of people in this industry, greed is good... unless the greedy person is a woman. Because the only thing more central to nasty corporate tussles like this, more than greed, is ego.

I'm not trying to play the gender card, but sometimes I do wonder why there are no articles like this about people like Jaden Jeong and Simon Jakob given the reputation those men have in corporate circles, where top officials (in this case, within HYBE) are saying they cannot possibly work with MHJ because she is "overly and excessively opinionated". I'm highlighting this article because despite the initial paragraphs of spin, that bit is the only thing consistent with MHJ's claim that this attack from HYBE started because she'd filed a whistleblowing report on toxic inter-label competition and followed up an email that said quote:

"..is this deliberate obtuseness and unapologetic behaviour consistent with HYBE's founding philosophy of rebelling against unfair practices in the entertainment industry?"

I mean... in corporate Korea, I can see how they were sick of her shit and it was only a matter of time before she got the boot.

The insidious thing about spin is that it mixes the truth with lies, making it easy for people to accept it wholly. It's entirely possible that MHJ wants more compensation, more autonomy and independence, feels that Belift and other companies borrowed her ideas without full credit, and that she was unsupported by HYBE HQ. It's entirely possible that she took actions such as monitoring fan feedback of the group(s) she suspects and filing a whistleblowing report to build a case - according to both MHJ and others at HYBE, these are complaints she's apparently had since last year, but none of those things would justify HYBE's response nor is it enough to turn people against her.

What I find particularly interesting about this case, is that everything that decisively incriminates her of the more sensational and sinister allegations, comes from the person of VP L or CEO A - a person who only joined ADOR in January 2024, shortly after which HYBE received their first tip-off that MHJ was planning to escape. It's VP L who titles documents with the equivalent of "TOP SECRET DO NOT TOUCH" on company computers... the same guy that's supposedly a double agent working in favour of MHJ and ADOR but is situated within ADOR, not HYBE, where simple logic shows he'd be most useful. Unless he's situated right where he's supposed to be.

Anyway...

HYBE has requested for a shareholder meeting on April 30th where they'll likely table the motion for MHJ to resign regardless of what's found in the audit. Far as I know, she's completed the audit questionnaire but not surrendered her laptop as HYBE has requested. Given the play is for HYBE to kick her out while continuing to manage NJ, I can see how she'd rather die than surrender her laptop and hand over her ideas (and potentially incriminating info) to HYBE on a silver platter for them to use in her wake.

Every way this shakes out is bad news for HYBE groups IMO. So long as NewJeans keeps quiet and sides with HYBE, they'll be somewhat okay. But regardless of the fallout from HYBE cannibalizing itself, all HYBE groups have no choice but to take it on the chin and bide their time until BTS comes back to capture the attention back to them.

I hope I answered all your questions. IMO there's really no point talking more about this until there's a firm conclusion.

#min heejin #newjeans #ador #hybe #bang pd #kpop #kpop industry #kpop business #belift

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sideprince · 2 days

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I've seen the same post a hundred times now. Sometimes it's a few days old, sometimes it's from years ago, but it's always the same. Some anti posts about how they don't understand how anyone can like Snape because he was so awful, and then there's a long reply that goes something like, "imagine this happens to you, and then this, and then this" to describe Snape's experience. Sometimes there's some James Potter hate thrown in.

Look. You can go through describing a character's entire experience but you don't really need to. Here's the thing that antis don't understand:

For all her faults (and they're big, bigoted ones) Rowling understood a really integral part of the human experience and conveyed it through Snape. Everyone needs love and to feel accepted. It's that simple. Snape became a Death Eater to seek acceptance (Rowling has confirmed this, though I can't remember the source - whoever wants to add it please do), because it was the only way he could find any.

Snape's understanding of morality, like everyone's, is subjective. Some readers understand this and some don't. When faced against a morality that says there is good and bad in the world, everyone makes choices based on their personal experience. Context is everything. Someone who experiences pain and suffering will not see the person inflicting it on them as moral. That's it. 'How can this person be good when they caused me so much suffering?' = human psychology. Most of the people who think 'I'm a bad person and deserve this' have been gaslit and abused into thinking so, because it's not a natural reaction - it's one that has to often be socialized into someone at a young age, exactly because it's not natural. Everyone is the hero of their own story; no one sees themselves as a villain, because they see the valid aspects of their own perspective.

You can write essays on how vulnerable people needing acceptance is what cults and fascists exploit to recruit vulnerable people, or on how the standard anti's un-nuanced reading of Snape both ignores canon and displays a disturbing lack of empathy or compassion, but at its core it just boils down to context. From Snape's perspective he experienced cruelty, therefore the people inflicting it must be cruel. Again, it's that simple. He was a person, like any other, except he was fictional so he wasn't even real. On the flip side is James Potter, who, for all his faults, didn't get to live long enough to get a chance to change and grow unlike Snape, and I think the Snapedom also needs to acknowledge that.

They're fictional characters representing things an author wants to say, not sports teams, not martyrs, and not all good or all bad emblems that define your identity depending on how you feel about them. It's depressing how much time is wasted arguing with bullies and trolls whether from the Marauders fandom or just random antis. I literally can't find more than three blogs to follow without this argument coming across my feed daily. I know the Snapedom is Not OK™ and that's kind why we're all here, and I know that my take is super unpopular but like Snape, I don't care what others think: this fandom has been having the exact same argument for years and nothing has changed. There's fanart and meta and fic and so much content out there appreciating this character, you're not going to change an anti's mind who's deliberately trolling in the tags, so why are you trying? What are you getting out of it? What does it give you? It's exhausting just scrolling past it.

#The thing about morality is that it's subjective #the religious leader who's a beacon of moral purity to their congregation #is a source of selfishness and pain to someone they abuse in secret #is that abuse victim immoral for rejecting the values the religious leader represents?#the congregation might think so because their definition of morality relies on the religious leader being a moral guide #the victim might not think so though because how can something be righteous if it causes suffering #look this is just an example of how perspectives can vary and I know there are more possible takes on that example #my point is that the idea that there's no clear 'good' and 'evil' there's only power/what you do with it is actually how psychology works #'good' to one person can be pain to another #'scourgify' is an innocuous household spell that cleans stains until it's used to waterboard someone #context matters more than labels like 'light' and 'dark' magic

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golyadkin · 9 months

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I cannot express enough that if your reaction, as a hobby artist, to not getting that many notes on your art is to say "maybe I should just stop doing art altogether" you need to stop posting art to tumblr

not necessarily forever, not even for long, but just stop putting your art on here and start doing it for you again, remember why you enjoyed doing art in the first place and stop relying on the attention of faceless people on the internet for your enjoyment of your hard work

believe me, I get it, nothing crushes the artistic soul quite like labouring for hours on a piece only for it to get like 10 notes, so you need to find your own source of joy in the act of creation and a lot of the time that means making art and not showing it to anybody

#not art #listen #for real #this is not about any one person because i've seen posts about it from a bunch of people #you think i post everything here? buddy i dont even post half my stuff here #every drawing you see is preceded by five more just like it #that never see my cursor close to the save button #i have a sketchbook i draw in regularly that i do'nt show to a single goddam person #i make cutout art from gels i steal from work and stick them to my windows and do paintings in my living room just for me #because that it the only way you are ever going to be able to retain your original love of art #is by doing it for the sake of doing it #not for the sake of seeing how many people stop and stare #anyways i'm sorry if this sounds terse #but i'm so sick of seeing artists put all their self-esteem and happiness in the hands of a blogging website #stop selling yourself short by measuring your self worth by how many reblogs you get and what people say in the tags #your artistry and your happiness are worth more than that #if you're an artist for a living that's another story #but even then #even then #anyways sorry i'm done ranting

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iwritenarrativesandstuff · 3 months

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on my quest to find more books to read this year, there's been something kind of heartwarming to see that of the books on hold at my local library, or on the weekly bestseller's list at my local bookstores, there's always at least one book up there that's about Palestine. It's at least nice to see that some people in my area want to learn about the historical context of what's happening now, and learn far more than what a few posts on their feed can tell them. It makes me hope that public perception will continue to change for the better - and that the kind of support I've seen in my area won't die down immediately after a ceasefire is called

#storyrambles #palestine #i'm always hesitant to make any posts about palestine given my lack of personal connection or deep knowledge beyond the #continuous reading i've been doing #but idk. i wondered if this might be nice to see for people who do have a connection and feel discouraged.#and well. i don't think there needs to be a personal connection for one to feel happiness in this sort of situation #it needs to be so much better than it is currently. but i'll be honest #i really thought these protests were going to peter out very quickly after they started. that people would say 'it's a shame'#but not act. i've seen the same thing from previous outrage.#and i think that's because outrage doesn't carry as long or as strong as knowledge does.#eh i'm rambling again. i guess it's just nice to see people caring. even when the people who should speak for us civilians do not.#it's a mixed bag of emotions.#all my love to everyone affected by this. i wish you didn't have to be as strong as you are.#but for as long as you have to. i'd like to stand strong with you. and i hope that's enough to see real change.#ceasefire now

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ineffablefool · 8 months

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The lil corner of the Good Omens fandom that I generally see is getting more and more into publicly declaring that That Theory I Dislike Is Bad And People Who Ascribe To It Should Feel Bad, and I don't know if it's really new, or if I was just lucky enough to generally be missed with that shit the last four years.

Different people's brains work differently, which means they will notice things, form interpretations, maybe come to extremely firm conclusions, all different from each others'. Different from mine, different from yours.

I get that some people think that they have the brain which produces the Objectively Superior theories (and/or which can easily determine which other people's theories are the Objectively Inferior ones). I just really missed the memo where Your Interpretation Is Not My Interpretation (And That's Okay) was dragged out back and fucking shot.

Anyway this blog is an "I may not agree with your theory but you may trust that I won't publicly heap scorn upon the very idea of having it" zone if anyone was wondering.

#negativity #discourse type stuff #apparently i can't turn off replies to a specific post? but i am Not Interested in discussing why that kind of behavior is okay actually #also Not Interested in hearing about how i'm overreacting #unless you are prepared to prove that you have personally catalogued everything that I have read/seen/etc on this topic #this is not about any one specific post just about the bizarrely judgemental zeitgeist #also not about any of the posts where someone is like 'huh i know people like this theory but i'm not sure here let me tell you why'#i've always seen posts like those and those are great because YTINMTATO remains intact #JUST. yeah. Not Interested in discussing this at all really #but i've seen some posts that made me feel bad for being so unthinking as to ever find merit in this or that theory #and i'm probably not the only one feeling bad?#so you can think x character is fake or y character is secretly running everything from behind the curtain or z object was drugged #(or none of these things at all!!)#and i 100% promise i am not scoffing at the foolishness of falling for such a completely unsupported idea #i PROMISE i am not going to be mean #because if i wanted to *reduce* the amount of kindness in the world then i wouldn't have created the fucking Soft Zone now would I

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bluehairperson · 1 year

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I don’t want to start drama but I’ve seen some concerning posts floating around about how distasteful and disappointing it is to see certain creators “support” Dorian and I hate to break it to you guys, but if you’ve ever interacted, shared or created anything regarding The Arcana you are supporting Dorian yourselves.

Being in the fandom alone is supporting Dorian by creating engagement, publicizing the game and being part of the audience they’re trying to target.

And even if you were to delete your whole blog and everything you’ve ever posted to enjoy the original game in private you would still be supporting Dorian by bringing traffic to the app they now own.

The one and only way you have to stop supporting Dorian, if you care about it so much, would be to distance yourself from the series entirely and go join another fandom. Never play the original game ever again and never interact with any fan creation regarding it from now on. 👋

#you're basically saying you dislike people supporting the company by working with it #while you yourself are supporting the company but indirectly by giving visibility to their brand #let's be coherent please #I personally don't care about dorian just like I never cared about nix hydra #but I still like the game so I'm gonna cherry pick whatever I want #and full offence but between this and continuous character and ship discourse you guys are unsufferable lol #you're murdering the fandom from the inside by being toxic af and finding the most bullshit excuses to attack artists for shit #that doesn't matter and then you turn around and whine and wonder why the fandom is dying and no one is posting anything new anymore #like MMMMMMMMMNHHHHHHH 🤔🤔🤔#it's a mystery I wonder why #mentioning this because I also saw some discourse about dorian being awful for supporting quote unquote tOxIc and aBuSiVe ships 😨😨😨😨#with the most basic and vanilla couple I've ever seen here #like nix hydra was never great either but I've never ever seen posts claiming that if you support them you must be an awful person #what changed exactly?#it sounds to me that you guys are just really bitter that the new quote unquote canon content is... not super good so you're trying to #vent your frustration in any way you can #which means attacking independent artists who use the platform because it's easier to reach and demolish them rather than the company itself #I log on here to recharge after a day of work and all I see is people acting like twelve year olds trying to be mean like bruh #it's literally the hom3stuck 2 fandom situation I called it #tagging this as discourse so you can blacklist it if you don't wanna be annoyed #discourse #the arcana #dorian era #not art

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eviltothecore13 · 1 year

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lots of people in this fandom CLAIM to love Gomez but when someone makes a post with Morticia as "Barbie is everything" and Gomez as "he's just Ken", it gets likes and reblogs

like...isn't that meme essentially saying "he's bland and boring/doesn't do anything interesting/is no good at anything and has nothing special about him, and no-one cares about him that much because he's just some bland generic guy with no personality beyond being a sidekick"?

do the majority of fans genuinely believe Gomez has no personality and no interesting traits?

#I really am starting to consider deleting all my fics and my Tumblr #because most of my planned WIPs focus on Gomez quite heavily #and I feel like no-one will care or want to read them because apparently everyone thinks he is dull and bland #I'm also assuming everyone I've ever talked to about him was secretly #thinking 'I wish this loser would stop going on about this boring character who no-one cares about'#'ugh they're pathetic he's the most generic bland guy on the planet why would anyone be a fan of him'#even if at the time people seemed interested I'm starting to think they must just have been pretending #because APPARENTLY the whole fandom thinks he's boring and useless and bland and stupid and has no personality #if I post any of my fics I'm worried I'll either get zero response because no-one likes or cares about Gomez #or I'll just get comments from people going 'give up and quit writing no-one cares about this stupid character he sucks and so do you'#I don't get why he's apparently seen as dull and boring when he swordfights and builds robots and blows things up but apparently he is?#I especially don't get it from Morticia fans tbh #because I don't think SHE'D actually like people calling Gomez dull and bland and forgettable and useless #she generally seems to believe he's amazing just as much as he believes she's amazing #but hey what do I know I'm clearly the only person in the fandom who finds him interesting #or thinks he has a personality or is anything more than Morticia's forgettable stupid sidekick #so I guess I'm just stupid and wrong about everything #and should stop writing fic because apparently I'm too stupid to understand the characters properly #and I'm just an idiot with bad taste and bad opinions #because if I was a true fan who understood the characters I'd think Gomez was boring and useless too like everyone else does #it's just not fun to know that everyone I thought was interested in my fics and headcanons was only pretending to be

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shikai-the-storyteller · 2 years

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I genuinely tear up whenever I think about how English fans are learning Spanish for Quackity and how Spanish fans are learning English for him. He's really loved.

#i talk #dsmp talk #I have now moved from ''genuinely tear up'' to ''I am currently crying my eyes out rn thinking about it''#maybe this is a bit too tmi for a frickin tumblr post but #I'm Mexican and I've always been really deeply ashamed that I can't speak Spanish #esp because I look white passing and Ive dealt with the whole ''but you dont SEEM Mexican!'' thing my whole life #which — as someone who has always been fiercely proud of her heritage — never failed to piss me off #but I've always been too scared to practice with other people or with family #because I'm still afraid of that judgement and I'm afraid of not being seen as ''good enough'' or ''Mexican enough''#and like. I know I am I KNOW I am and there's no invisible standard or whatever I need to prove myself to #but at the same time. those kinda things build up over the years y'know?#then I got into DSMP and I found out Quackity was Mexican too #and I got really invested in his character and him as a person / creator #and when he joined Karmaland I finally decided to start practicing Spanish #and like. I've never been someone who could learn Any Kind of language outside of a classroom setting #and it's hard and frustrating and embarassing more than anything else #but I saw Quackity post about today's lore on his Spanish twitter a bit ago saying people should watch it even if its in English #and one of his Spanish-speaking fans responded to it saying how they started doing English duolingo for him #and like y'know Ive been an English teacher for ages and I'm always quick to congratulate people because learning a new language is hard #so I (in Spanish) respond by saying that I'm learning Spanish so I can watch Karmaland #and I say how amazing it is how everyone's learning a different language for Quackity and I wish them good luck #and I'm looking at the responses to both our comments rn and it's making me cry more #because the English and Spanish communities are both so enthusiastic and supportive of each other because we all love Quackity #I'm not really sure how to put my emotions into words but. it's nice to see that support. it's nice to feel seen by my own people #and it's nice to see that love trancends culture and language barriers #I see so much bad stuff in the world but then I see stuff like this & it makes me bawl my eyes out because we're all just people in the end #something about human connection and love and communication #I dunno. Quackity is very important to me and so is his community.#Anyways I know lore's gonna kill me today because this just made me bawl for 10 minutes #karmaland talk

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icykalisartblog · 10 months

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DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation

Normally I don't make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I've seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I'd remind people of a few things:

Anonymous Sudan appears to have no actual link to Sudan at all, or to any previous hacktivist groups that once operated there. This masquerade is probably based in anti-immigration and other racist sentiments, and utilizing those sentiments in other people to scare people and set up Muslims and Sudanese people as a target. This should be obvious from the language used in their note, but this was already known prior to this particular attack.

This so-called Anonymous Sudan has actually been very active recently—remember that they claimed to attack Reddit, Flickr, Riot Games, a huge number of Microsoft web portals like OneDrive and Outlook, etc. before AO3, so AO3 was totally a logical target for them since they've gone after smaller entities before. DDoS attacks like this are easy for any script kiddie to set up, so it's not weird that they'd go for a smaller target like this.

Honestly this group of posers probably just wants money, everybody. They sent AO3 a ransom note asking for Bitcoin (and just in case people don't know, do not pay a ransom if at all possible if this ever happens to you).

My advice to people who've noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and... I don't really know a better way to put this, but don't believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn't use terms like "LGBTQ+" and "smuts," and it's so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you'll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations... though I think I'd go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.

To be clear: this post isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I've just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn't anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.

#Ao3 #archive of our own #DDoS attack #cybersecurity #islamophobia

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autismserenity · 3 months

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know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

#covid isn't over #covid 19 #disability rights #disability advocacy #wear a mask #covid conscious #covid cautious #mask up #wall of words #public health #health care

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stromblessed · 5 months

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Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

#blue eye samurai #mizu #akemi #kinuyo #bes #women are birds okay they are BIRDS #the let me die line is so SCARY AND SAD like a part of Mizu wants death but she cant? she doesnt know how?? excuse you show???#when all these other delicate birds are dying all around her #akemis character gets more and more gutwrenching upon subsequent rewatches because whenever she says her life is in danger #NO ONE BELIEVES HER - certainly not other women #because shes rich and pampered and that means shes safe and is worrying about nothing right? right?????#and it turns out that all of akemis instincts were right and she was in danger the ENTIRE TIME #also I need to make a post just for kinuyo because I am sad

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birdantlers · 8 months

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A heartfelt and grievously expanded-upon update to this—please, please read the whole thing if you can. reblogs much appreciated.

(DISCLAIMER, for all who are saying reasons like abusive parents/legal stuff/toxic ex/triggering memories/page got deleted/job/stalkers/bullying/[[insert any other shitty life thing]], This is not concerning that—personal safety & health ALWAYS comes first, and is worth more than any media ever could be. This is my biggest reason for defending that autonomy. I would be a hypocrite to say I hadn’t deleted triggering posts of mine or ones that got me in trouble with my family.)

it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it

...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..

Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.

I wanted to attach this video because it condenses my point very well. A TLDR of sorts. Please watch the whole thing, it genuinely changed the entire way I think about art as a concept.

(2nd vid is "Subjectivity in Art")

“The moment your art touches an audience, the ownership shifts in an irreversible way. [They're] not having an art experience with you and your intentions. They're having an art experience with the art object.

“You can't just burn your past; it's not even your past to burn anymore. It's other people's history as well. Whether or not you like it, that art is already bonded to somebody's soul, and if you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it.”

The digital age makes it very easy to distance or detach yourself from the impact your work has—be it art, fanfic, videos, even memes. Online content is as important to people now as any other media, if not more. But it's also by far the easiest, fastest, and most effective form of it to erase from public access. Media so unbelievably important to people and in general. Yes, you—with the 2010s purple sparkle dog speedpaint. I still think about that speedpaint all the time, because it was the first time i learned that you could draw on a computer, and I thought it was cool as hell. I still do.

I do wish there was a stronger culture of preservation and consideration for this, because every time I see people talk about snuffing their stuff because it doesn't personally resonate with them anymore, I just think ...what about all the people it did?

I've seen lots of people saying "get over it, it doesn't even matter," but it fucking does. It does matter. Even if I didn’t make it, even if I don’t have to deal with being the one who made it, even if I'm naturally inclined to be distressed by it—It still matters. And there’s nothing you could ever say to suddenly make it not matter, because there’s nothing you could ever say to make it not matter to me.

Don't devalue the act of creation. Don't dismiss something you made. It's out there, in people's thoughts and hearts and souls, and that is real. Even if you don't know it. Especially if you don't know it. Especially in a world where physical media is being snuffed out, the internet is constantly dying without any physical remains to recover, social isolation is rampant, and simply because independently produced content online is still media.

Fanfiction can hold equal or greater significance to someone as a book, but you can’t unpublish a book. Authors don’t have a button that can vaporize every copy of their work across all time, but fanfiction authors do. I’m not counting people who download fics either—when you buy a book, that transaction is over. But online, you have the power of unending transaction that can be terminated instantly at your will. The process of publishing fanfic vs. publishing a book may be different, but people’s connection to the art is the same intensity.

So yeah. I do get depressed about the Internet being a constant Alexandria, but the times I get the most depressed is when I click someone's page and see that all their work is gone because they're ‘curating a new aesthetic’ for their page or some shit. Or weeding out all the "ugly" art. Or just went on whatever the hell 'thrill deleting' is, because they just get a kick out of it.

Fuck it—yeah! It upsets me! I’m not wrong to say that. I’m saying it!

Under the cut, because it got long as shit! Also don’t worry the ending is way sappier and more ‘beauty of human nature’ vibe so it’s not all doom and gloom lol

What if that was someone's favorite art of that character. What if someone read that 'cringe oneshot' on the worst day of their life. What if that Warriors meme vid is still burned into a college student’s mind despite being gone for 10 years. What if it's actually not just you and the ones and zeros you rent out to the world—secure in knowing the original will always be on your computer for you to do whatever you want with it.

I really, deeply wish there was more of a general awareness of this, because even though social media can be used like a diary, that’s functionally the opposite of what it is. It’s social media. When you post, it’s no longer in a vacuum, even though you can’t see the real humans that content touches—often deeply.

Media is history. You shouldn’t burn that history just because you personally believe it isn’t worth saving.

Because it’s no longer just your personal opinion. It’s no longer just your personal work. it’s. history. Memory of media is not a suitable replacement for the media itself. If it was, we wouldn’t save anything at all. Nostalgia is an agent of that. The definition of nostalgia is grief for moments of the past that are inaccessible, and the biggest balm for that pain is accessing a physical reminder of those moments. That opinion of yours is no longer personal. It’s weighed against uncountable people across all time that your thing is ALSO personal to. People who would, and will mourn its absence.

How many times have you joined an older fandom only to discover that some of its most popular works are gone? How many times have you routed through random blogs looking for scraps people hopefully reblogged? how many times have you used Wayback machine desperately praying that a fan fiction or a YouTube video will be there? How many times do you look up crunchy old vines or YouTube videos or anime AMV‘s? How many times do you remember old fanfic.net sex that impacted you in middle school, only to shake your head and go ‘probably no point even looking.’

i mourn the absence. No, people can’t and shouldn’t have their agency over what they post revoked, but they should be conscious of that weight. If you’re reading this and getting extremely annoyed, and you’re not in the pink text above,,,, good.

I honestly do hope it gets under your skin. I hope it sits with you. I hope you feel it every time you hit that button, and whether or not you do hit that button—if you hesitate, if you remember this, even spitefully, I’ve done my job. I am howling into the void. And I may not want an answer, but I do want my anguish to be heard and remembered. Because it isn’t me just being melodramatic.

I know I sound that way writing so much, but if my favorite writing YouTuber can drop trow this week and go, "yeah, sorry, all my video essays from less than a year ago that you listen to in the car all the time? I'm "rebranding" my content so i deleted them. besides, my personal views don't really agree align with the analyses i did, or the techniques i taught in them anyway. Sorry if some of the literal tens of thousands of you used them, but I don't want to feel shackled to having youtuber "classics" tied to me”

….then i guess I'm just going to have to sound dramatic! That fucking sucks! Hours of work and knowledge gone! This was a new channel too. It’s very likely there’s no archive of any kind, because who would think someone who worked hard enough to write, record, and edit hour-long videos, would just turn around and nuke it all? I definitely didn’t see it coming, but I did just start a new screenwriting class a few weeks ago, so I’ll tell you at least one person is REALLY missing those fucking videos right now. Because a lot of them were about specifically screenwriting, which I know jack shit about. and that specific person’s pace, editing, and style of breaking down information was the best suited style I found that I could focus on and absorb. There’s no replacement for that. No alternative for his individual perspective. his jokes. his opinions.

No, they may not resonate with him now, but in this decision, he’s put up a big middle finger to everyone who might have. And he has like 100k subscribers! Those are confirmed supporters! Imagine how many silent and untethered observers are feeling this loss right now. Imagine how many will not have it in the future.

If he never posted them at all, we wouldn’t know we had it. It wouldn’t be a loss. But we did. We did have it. Until he decided that no, we didn’t, because he just happens to be the one out of millions of individuals holding the button to burn it in a hundredth of a second.

His personal work, the attachment I had to it, and the ways that it helped me are now just ripped away. I am one person out of millions, literal MILLIONS of people who saw and liked this content before it vanished. The soul has been ripped, the access severed, and by CJ’s (and my) definition, the art is functionally dead. Not for the YouTuber or anyone else lucky enough to save a link or download, but everyone else. From this point until the end of time, even if people even two weeks from now don’t know it. Even if someone who stumbles upon his channel today, doesn’t know it.

We only mourn the concept of Alexandria because we had some kind of scope for what was inside. Yes, maybe you got self-conscious and deleted your 12 year old deviant art account. Do you know who else is doing that?? THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other twenty somethings who ALSO feel self-conscious about their old socials. Art. Fanfic. One direction fan videos. anything.

Suddenly, an unquantifiable amount of information from your age group—an entire age group in 2012, is. gone. And we will NEVER know what’s been erased from that history. We will NEVER know what could have been significant to us ten years from now. Twenty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand.

You could have deleted a fanfic that would have been someone else’s new go-to panic attack distraction tomorrow. You could have deleted a video someone used to laugh at with their friend who died yesterday. When you delete something, you risk tearing a hole in unknowable personal histories.

The Internet isn’t just a big library of Alexandria. It’s a library containing libraries. And those libraries have their own libraries in those libraries have their own as well. libraries inside libraries, inside libraries, ad infinitum. To conceive the amount of destroyed history on the Internet is crushing.

And I just can’t help but I ask myself how in gods name people can choose to contribute to that, instead of reposting everything to trash heap alts titled “hall of shame” or some shit.

You can offload to alts. Put up disclaimers. Make password locked blogs, or dropboxes, or anonymous imgur dumps. Anonymous reuploads. Orphan fics. Make a playlist or linktree of unlisted videos. Cut off the watermarks. Delete all references to it on your main. Make a dedicated unlisted playlist. make a google drive. Make new portfolio sites. Delete any questions you get about it. Change pen names. Pretend it never existed.

Give a heads up.

Something.

But don’t. kill. the media.

The knowledge that our stuff is going to forever be tied to us is a cross we have to bear, but the responsibility that comes with putting it out there in the first place, can’t be ignored.

Anyway. I'm not trying to start conflict. This is not a bash on anyone, nor a call for witch hunts. Or anon hate, or blocks and unfollows or anything of that nature. I'm not wishing ramifications or hate of any kind on anyone who does wants to do any of this.

I'm also not guilt tripping— I am not saying that you should feel bad. I AM saying why it makes me feel bad. That’s not guilting, it’s a dialogue. One I personally feel is long overdue.

It's me yelling into the void: please consider the real people on the other side of the screen before you hit that button. Realize and know that whatever you're about to erase from history could be the most important thing in the world to someone.

Art is an experience. It's why we revisit it. If art and history simply lived in the matter and code of media, we would only need to look at it once. We wouldn’t put things in museums. We wouldn’t build libraries. We wouldn’t look up vine compilations.

If you're able, consider (and I do mean consider, this is not a call to action) not destroying that. And don’t shrug it off as some pretentious asshole venting on Tumblr. You only need to look in the notes and tags to see that it isn’t just me. it’s never just me, or you, or the pixels.

And even if you do shrug it off, then at least recognize that what you make matters. Whatever you think about it, if it’s out there, that's not your discretion anymore. If a tree falls in the woods and even one person is around to see it, it fucking mattered. Because it happened. Don’t mulch your tree rings if you don’t have to. Because if enough people do it, a whole forest is gone. Media is history, no matter whether you think it’s worth putting in a museum, or only has 30 notes.

Thousands of years ago, a child named onfim doodled on his homework. They’re crude, and everyone has the wrong amount of fingers, and they’re also priceless archaeological artifacts recognizable throughout the world.

the only thing separating Onfim’s doodles and your MS paint Pokémon doodles is time. The only thing separating your old MS paint Pokémon doodles from being a priceless artifacts, thousands of years in the future is time. Your creations are already priceless artifacts. No matter what you do, don't ever, ever deny that. It isn’t blowing up your own ass, it’s artistic and anthropological fact.

The mundane and the supposedly unworthy are often the first things lost to time, and that’s why they’re so precious. That’s why artists who were before their time are scorned first only to be celebrated later. Do you think they knew that was going to happen?? What if they nuked it? Many probably did! But now that’s happening exponentially and instantaneously everywhere, WITHOUT the artist having to destroy their only copy—which makes it way easier and more dismissable.

Sometimes, If you’re revolutionary enough, people will make an effort to preserve your work, but recognized and thoroughly recorded work is rare compared to unrecognized and thoroughly recorded work.

Sometimes something is beloved enough that it would be impossible for it not to go down in history, but even then it isnt a guarantee, and it’s rare. But if van Gogh burned all of his paintings in a fit of despair before his death, we would have no van Gogh. Because he wasn’t respected as an artist in his time, but that wasn’t what defined the worth of his art. The people after him did, because his art was still there for them.

If you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it. If you belittle your art, you belittle the very real relationships and emotions and revisitations people have with the media. You defy the inherent worth and weight of a creation. you created. That's effort. It's passion. No matter how flippant or unskilled or worthless you think it is, it matters. Because at the end of the day, you could have chosen to make nothing at all, and you didn't.

•

Muting notifs

#artists on tumblr #Artistic #digital art #art history #anthropology #humanity #art discussion #art theory #skit yells

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dduane · 1 year

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Hello.

I've seen you posting detailed information about the WGA strike and wondered if you had any suggestions as to how those of us not directly involved can show our support for the Union?

Okay, bearing in mind that all this is entirely subjective at the moment (and so far lacking any more useful input from other sources): a few thoughts.

This will be my third WGA strike. (My first one was in 1988, just after I'd made my first live action sale—s1e6 of ST:TNG). And the thought keeps occurring to me at the moment that this time out, there's a potentially gamechanging player on the field that wasn't there before: truly pervasive social media.

(Adding a cut here, because this goes on a bit...)

In 2007, social media as we now understand it was still in its cradle. Now, though, those of us who're striking can make our voices much more widely heard. And so can those of us who're not, but just want to show solidarity. Last time, the AMPTP was able to do pretty much what it wanted without the public noticing or having even a medium-profile way to make their feelings known. But this time? Not so much.

So as an otherwise uninvolved person who wants to show solidarity, I'd start with something seemingly low-value. If I was on Twitter, I'd start routinely tweeting about the strike and my support for it—not obsessively, just persistently, a couple/few times a week—using the Twitter hashtags that are gaining ground even now, such as #DoTheWriteThing (and of course #WGAStrike). I would make sure I was following @WGAEast and @WGAWest, to keep an eye on what's going on.

Additionally: I would start politely, but repeatedly—again, maybe once or twice a week at least, and not stopping—tweeting the various major players in the AMPTP, especially the streamers: Amazon, Netflix, Hulu et al. I would start suggesting that their current attitude toward the WGA's contract negotiations is not only unrealistic but potentially (for the AMPTP) bad for business. (And self-destructive, too, as if this goes on much longer in this vein, they'll be seemingly eagerly casting themselves as The Baddies.) I would suggest that their bad behavior, if not amended by them coming to the table to bargain in good faith, might start affecting both my interest in their shows and my willingness to keep paying unreasonable people for access to them.

I should emphasize here that so far there've been no formal calls from anyone for boycotts or subscription cancellations. For the moment, this strikes me as wise. The point for WGA-friendly observers, right now, would be to keep what's happening to the writers visible: to keep bringing it up: to refuse to allow it to be swept under the rug. The "They only want two cents on the dollar!" angle seems potentially useful the more it's repeated. The point is to keep the repetition going: to make it plain, day after day, that the other side's being not just unreasonable, but greedy. Day after day, and week after week, and (if necessary: please Thoth may it not be...) month after month.

And tweeting is hardly all that can be done. Email is cheap and easy. But actual letters, written on actual paper and mailed, can still create a surprising amount of attention in a corporate office. (The saying in TV used to be that for every person who actually writes in about an issue, there are ten, or a hundred, who feel the same way but never got around to it.) Write letters to all the AMPTP members' CEOs, and make your feelings on the WGA's core demands politely plain. ...Especially when those CEOs collectively made almost three-quarters of a billion-with-a-B dollars in salaries last year, when many of the writers working on their shows can't afford rent.

After that: here's another thought, a little more physical. If by chance you're in an area where one or the other of the Guilds are picketing: turn out and support them! Honk when you pass: and if you're interested, show up and offer to walk the picket lines with them. These things get noticed. (In 2007 a bunch of us, both Guild members and non-, caused significant astonishment by turning out to picket AMPTP members' offices in Dublin.)

...Obviously not all that many people are going to be positioned, in terms of location or their own work and time commitments, to show up physically. But online? Find ways to keep this issue visible. The AMPTP wants this to go quiet, wants people to get bored with it, wants people to find reasons to blame the writers. They've tried spinning the story that way before. Don't let them pull that shit. Find ways to back those who're calling them on that, publicly. They do respond to this kind of thing (though they may strenuously deny it). If enough attention continues to be paid by the general public, they will blink—if sometimes excruciatingly slowly, as Disney began to blink over the dispute tagged #DisneyMustPay.

As viewers, and as viewers who pay for subscriptions to things, we far outnumber them. Help be a part of making the AMPTP understand that this quest for a truly fair deal is not going to go away. And the longer they try to act like the Guild's negotiation positions are beneath their notice, the more it's going to hurt them, and the stupider and greedier it's going to make them look.

...That's all I've got for the moment, as I need some lunch. :) ...But I hope this has helped. And thanks for your concern, and your desire to stand in solidarity with us! It's so welcome. :)

ETA: here's a link to the Guild's social media toolkit, for those who'd like to change PFPs or icons, etc., to show their support.

#Writers Guild strike #DoTheWriteThing #WGAStrong

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were--ralph · 4 months

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why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

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