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#which is a new discovery as well
nanowatzophina · 2 years
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Here’s SOME actual ref (I guess) to my freelancer designs. Very doodly but. That’s what u guys get rn.
I’ll post more later but I do want to try and lump in as much as I can or this will take forever and trying to figure out what all needs to go in what group is… difficult. But for now. Gavin, Caelum and the Freelancer is gonna have to cut it.
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"fenris hates on mages relentlessly" dunno man i think he's (usually) being pretty reasonable about it all things considered
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sharkneto · 1 year
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It's been a minute since I complained about streaming services, but let me now complain about the new ~Max~. Please, app made by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, just load One Video. Just One. I'd like it to be Orville's episode of Trixie Motel, but I won't even be picky. An episode of Succession, I'd take that. A featured documentary. Anything. A video. Is that too much to ask from your new video streaming app.
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freepassbound · 1 year
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Anyway, I just really hope that -
A: this isn't the wind falling out of the "New Age of Trek" sails, and that they keep coming up with new and great shows...
and, relatedly -
B: they keep exploring the Discovery universe in the 32nd Century. Trek needs new frontiers to explore - and right now none of the other shows are doing that... they're all callbacks.
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confinesofmy · 2 years
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oh. good news btw. i've been brushing my teeth so damn consistently for so long that i am now officially brushing my teeth bc i want to bc it just makes me feel more comfortable to have clean teeth. it's not a habit, per se, and i still have to force myself to do it sometimes, and i'm still occasionally making compromises with my energy levels by spending <2 minutes brushing/not brushing my tongue/only using mouthwash in the morning bc i don't wanna brush rn, but! i don't think i'm capable of going a full week without brushing ever again, i think that is fully in the past and i'll never be there again, which is not something i thought i'd ever be able to say.
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mariocki · 2 years
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Infinite list of favourite lyrics: 217/?
O. V. Wright - Everybody Knows (The River Song) (1965)
"I am so miserable,
I am so tired.
Oh, I just sit on the Mississippi River
And watch the fish swim by.
My life is so confused,
But I don't wanna die;
I wanna go to heaven,
But I'm scared to fly."
#favourite lyrics#o. v. wright#everybody knows#everybody knows (the river song)#roosevelt jamison#m. j. keep#(if it is) only for tonight#1965#wright is a fairly new discovery for me but is currently featuring pretty heavily in my day to day playlist#finding out a little more about this song was something of a challenge; I'd taken it for perhaps a traditional song#perhaps even a spiritual with links to pre american civil war black folk music; apparently not bc this is credited to Keep and Jamison#Jamison was a manager and songwriter who discovered Wright and was largely responsible for his career success‚ writing most of his early#singles including notable hit That's How Strong My Love Is (better knownbin cover versions by Otis Redding and the Rolling Stones)#Wright and Jamison parted company somewhat acrimoniously later in the decade and it's fair to say that neither was quite as successful#without the other. m j keep is more mysterious; digging around online reveals only a single songwriting credit to that name‚ which is this#one. it could always be a pen name i suppose‚ or perhaps a person known to Jamison who helped with the composition; it's pretty useless to#wonder tho bc I'm unlikely to find out much more. wright himself isn't that well remembered today‚ although his work is sometimes sampled#by hiphop artists‚ and some later bigger artists would name him as an influence. it's understandable; the man had an incredible voice#a rich and emotive delivery which really sells the depth of pain that makes for a great blues song but without ever becoming too much#there's a touch of humour too (the opening lines particularly)#but there's something very simple and very beautiful about those final two lines I've quoted#some great insight into the human experience#wright struggled with addiction and criminal charges in later life which certainly hurt his career#he died‚ much too young‚ in 1980
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mobiues · 2 years
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i am going to be so controversial right now but i think episode 1 of the loki series might just be my favourite simply because the premise of the first episode was so promising. in fact, critically analysing the show, the theme of loki having had to outrun the title of villainy and yet not quite folding into the mold of a hero would have been so outrageously gorgeous to explore. people praise agent of asgard, and honestly, i don’t see that much of a difference between what the loki series wanted to do vs. what has been written — until the writers of the series completely forgot what it was that made loki so appealing in the first place (his ambiguous alignment and his overall morally grey character), and many heavier themes are sacrificed for a warped romantic story that hadn’t needed to be told in the first place
#i am once again back on my bullshit because i think the idea that self love#needed to be visualised the way it had been with the whole s*lvie and l*ki is so unnecessary#because there are TONS of movies and stories out there#about individuals struggling with self-acceptance and self-love#and they react in such a questionable or damaging ways#that would've been so fun to explore in l*ki's perspective#from loki's questionable character#like coming out of age-ish genre?? would've been so fun to infuse#even if tom is already well in his 40s#because what if the discovery of sense of self if not you feeling too young and too old in your own skin#and thinking about it now... s*lvie's character would've been such a nice contrast#of a l*ki who has went too rogue; too deep-set in her revenge to come back#vs. this l*ki whom after the invasion of new york is still particularly new from the wounds#we know he carried in the mcu since hasn't experienced it yet; not by himself#like i could go on and on#people are so insistent that s*lvie is her own character#which is fine! but u have to understand she too is a l*ki and i wish she would've written more with that in mind#because l*kis are so interesting to explore in and of itself; in whatever version they existed with or upon#like im not sure if im making sense but ..... i just wish people care more to explore character study when they say they want to#anyways ep 2 shouldve been my fave cause of mobius' gorgeous gorgeous involvement#but ep 1 is so chef's kiss... i love the potential.#that would for sure be my favourite#gen: out of character.
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nazumichi · 2 years
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not even kidding dolphin daydream is cinema at its finest
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airyairyaucontraire · 2 years
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did you know BJ Hunnicut invented the electric cardiac defibrillator
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i-am-a-fish · 2 months
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some good news articles I found
Recent breakthrough in combatting brain cancer
Major discovery in coral reef restoration
Thought to be extinct since the 18th century, 5 Gray Whales have been discovered alive and well
also this cool funny bird is doing alright too
2 million pounds of plastics and trash removed from the ocean by one nonprofit
Tidal power being used to power 1 million homes, largest tidal power project yet
and as a bonus thousands of 3D scans of animals have been published, which is very cool for anatomy artists and will increase the number of skeleton drawings in the world which is nice
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iluvzaddies · 8 months
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could you please do hcs of luffy being in love with reader? i have a big crush on iñaki godoy, that man is so fine
✦` ༘˚ luffy being in love with you ˚ ༘`✦
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— monkey d. luffy, the captain of the strawhat pirates, is a very unique individual.
— he is stupid at times but also smart at times.
— he is silly at times but also serious at times.
— he appears to be normal but beyond his looks, he is actually strong and possesses a devil fruit called the “gum gum fruit” which makes him have the ability to stretch and expand his body.
— when he meets you, he immediately takes a liking to you, just like he does with a lot of people.
— but a different kind of liking.
— he tells you all about his adventures. with you, it is like he is back to being a kid again, boasting about his imaginary adventures, except this time, they aren’t imaginary.
— he shows off his abilities. he can stretch his entire body and can turn into a human balloon, which he explains is a new discovery he found out about while fighting his grandpa, who happens to be the vice-admiral of the marines.
— he even surprisingly shares his food with you. everyone knows luffy doesn’t like sharing food.
— he is incredibly sweet and fun.
— he is clingy and follows you around like a puppy.
— he is protective and does his best to keep you out of harm’s way.
— he urges you to share about yourself as well. he reacts with a bunch of “that’s so cool!” “really?!” “and then what?” because he is genuinely curious and interested.
— only does he realize he loves you when his crew mates point it out.
— what a cute little oblivious bean.
note: iñaki godoy as luffy is such perfect casting fr
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stra-tek · 1 year
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This is one of the greatest things ever. Walk around every single version of the U.S.S. Enterprise in photorealistic 3D in your browser, from the Roddenberry Archive. On a phone you just see wraparound 3D pics. On a PC or laptop you get the full 3D interactive experience. They NEED to make this VR compatible, it'll be beyond words.
There are more Enterprises here than Tumblr will allow me photos of, and more will likely be added.
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Here's the TOS Enterprise, which appears in several incarnations ("The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and TOS proper as well as TAS with the second turbolift!), has the correct original graphics and is perfect.
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This is the bridge from the unmade Star Trek: Phase II series (whose pilot episode "In Thy Image" was rewritten to become Star Trek: The Motion Picture), with it's legendary big comfy command sofa seat and tactical display bubble!
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The Motion Picture, such an accurate recreation that there's even a very faint flicker on the rear-projection animated screens as seen in the movie.
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Enterprise NX-01, looking exactly as it did in "Broken Bow"
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Recognise this? It's the briefing room of Discovery season 2's version of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. Although at the front of the saucer on the "real" ship, here it's off the second bridge door which may well be where the set was IRL.
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I wasn't expecting modern Trek to be represented equally as the originals in this project, but it is. This is the Enterprise from Strange New Worlds, with Pike's Ready Room located just off the bridge.
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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. My favourite version of the classic bridge, as a kid I drew all these control panels and stuck them on my bedroom walls. And now I can look around and look at them all close-up! They've even replicated the noticable TVs stuffed into the panels for the more complex animated screens.
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The Enterprise-C bridge from "Yesterday's Enterprise". This one has always fascinated me, being a low-budget TV set (formerly the Enterprise-D battle bridge, originally built from the rain-damaged TMP set's back wall and redressed endlessly though TNG) representing TNG's immediate predecessor. In the episode they mostly shoot the back wall and imply the consoles make a huge circle, but here you can see the set's real dimensions and the weirdness of the classic movie helm/nav console in front of the TNG con/ops panels. I love it.
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You know how much I love the Kelvin movies, so seeing this was amazing. For some reason the consoles don't have their screens lit (hopefully this'll be fixed soon), but you can see the saucer under the window and it's shiny and amazing.
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The last thing I expected was the U.S.S. Titan-A/Enterprise-G bridge, but it's here. And the lights are on.
Other bridges available to explore which I'm out of pictures to show: The Enterprise-D (of course), Enterprise XCV-330 (the ringship, based on concept art for the unmade non-Trek series "Starship"), the Planet of the Titans U.S.S. Enterprise (again, based on concept art for a cool multi-levelled set) and the "launch" U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (based on the very first piece of TOS bridge set concept art), the Enterprise-E, the Enterprise-F (seen on viewscreen for all of 2 minutes in Picard) and the U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656!
Take a bow lads, you've done good. Now just add VR support!
That link again.
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sttoru · 9 months
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ෆ tags. dad!toji x female reader. toji letting baby megumi try all kinds of new food !
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it was a typical monday morning: you were making breakfast for your little family, flipping pancakes and eggs as you left toji to handle the task of helping megumi go through his routine. once your husband had finished, he walked into the kitchen with your little child in his arms (this time holding the boy somewhat properly).
once you turn your head towards the two, you noticed how megumi was eagerly suckling on toji’s index finger—a habit of your son to signal you that he yearned for his daily nutrients.
“megumi’s biting my finger off,” toji exaggerates, yawning before moving towards the fridge and opening the door. the sudden breeze of cold air hitting his skin makes him shudder.
you laugh and flip a pancake, revealing its golden brown colour on the back, “i stored ‘gumi’s food on the second shelf. a little in the back.”
megumi’s tiny arms were already reaching out for the familiar bowl, making grabby hands at it as if encouraging his dad to feed him his meal. toji’s eyes, however, were scanning the entire content of the fridge for something new, “y’know, maybe it’s time to learn how to eat somethin’ else, kid. your taste buds need’ta get used to other foods.”
according to his ‘brilliant’ logic, it’s best to get kids used to new foods at a young age so they won’t become picky eaters later on. thus, toji grabs the most random combination of whatever looks edible. the gathered items consisted of pickles, strawberries, mini-carrots, tomatoes and a single lemon.
toji quickly glances over at you, but your attention was totally focused on the breakfast you were preparing. your husband takes his chance, puts megumi in his high-chair and cuts up all the food he grabbed to biteable pieces for the baby, “alright, i’ll give ya the freedom of choosin’ something on y’r own. go on.”
toji places the various items on megumi’s small tray. the boy stares at the food and picks a piece of strawberry first since the red colour was the most appealing. megumi munches on it, hands as well as his lips getting a bit messy. he didn’t seem to dislike it as his little pouty lips continued to move and digest the fruit.
“okay, so ya like the strawberries. noted.” toji makes a mental note of the new discovery, already planning on buying boxes of strawberries for his son.
once megumi swallowed the piece, the curious boy goes on and picks another type of food. this time it was a yellow coloured piece—one which megumi had no knowledge about. toji did, however, and was already grinning.
the man crossed his arms while he looked down at his kid who was about to go through an unpleasant experience. that’s what builds character according to toji, so why would he intervene and stop megumi from eating a lemon? finding out on his own will teach him a very valuable lesson.
the second megumi’s tongue picks up on the extreme sour taste, his nose scrunches up, eyebrows furrowing along with a disgusted noise escaping the back of his throat, “blegh!”
toji bursts out laughing and points at megumi whose tiny fingers were trying to wipe the taste off his tongue, spitting and almost crying from the unfamiliar taste that entered his mouth. most parents would help their child out and give them water to rinse their mouth, however the scene was apparently way too hilarious to your husband for him to even think about rushing to aid megumi.
you turn to see what the commotion was about and spot your son almost in tears from whatever he ate. you frown and walk up to the high-chair, inspecting the squished piece of lemon in megumi’s hand.
“mannnn, that was the funniest stuff i’ve seen in a while.” toji snickers once he calms down, finally grabbing a tissue to wipe megumi’s drool and spit off.
“poor baby.” you watch the small child stare at his dad with a pouty expression on his little face like he was awaiting on an apology of some kind.
even toji can’t deny it: he did somewhat feel bad now. those big and watery eyes looking up at him made him soften in a fraction of a second. the dark-haired man dumps the used tissues in the nearby garbage can and then walks back to the high chair;
“aww, okay, ‘m sorry.” toji coos and lifts megumi up in his embrace, smothering the child with kisses all over his exposed shoulders before softly poking the fat of his cheeks, “can you forgive your daddy, kiddo?”
“da-da!” megumi happily giggles without knowing the meaning of toji’s words. all the kid desired at that instant was more of his dad’s attention and affection. especially after what occurred a moment ago.
megumi was guaranteed to get what he needed since toji was already preparing to tickle and kiss his adorable son all over as an apology.
you chuckle and go back to making breakfast—your ears filled with high-pitched squeals from your son as toji’s voice called out for a ‘tickle attack’.
at least all was well in the end.
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libraryofgage · 10 months
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Steddie brainrot continues to worsen to a concerning degree but here's a crack idea that is absolutely sending me:
Famous Spicy Six in which Jonathon is a director who decides to work on a passion project: a Scooby-Doo movie. His ideal cast is as follows:
Nancy Wheeler (investigative journalist with a few special appearances on crime dramas) as Daphne Blake
Argyle (an actor with a habit of playing small parts; he acts only because he thinks it's fun, so he's not concerned with significant roles) as Shaggy Rogers
Robin Buckley (a well-known voice actor who is more well-known for her social media posts and clap-backs) as Velma Dinkley
Steve Harrington (basketball star who is also more well-known for his social media clap-backs and for being Corroded Coffin's number one fan) as Fred Jones
Eddie Munson (frontman for Corroded Coffin, an insanely popular metal/punk/rock band and "infamous" for unashamedly posting Steve Harrington thirst tweets) as the voice of Scooby-Doo
Corroded Coffin is also creating an entirely new, original soundtrack for the movie
And because I think it's funnier this way, this is also an AU where the Upside Down still happened, so Jonathon just calls his friends up and is like "Okay, so hear me out"
The absolute insanity that breaks out when both the movie and cast are announced because nobody can figure out how Jonathon managed to convince all these powerhouses to join his movie.
The further screaming online after one of the movie promo interviews where a reporter asks how they all agreed to the movie and Nancy hits them with, "Well, Jonathon asked, and he never asks for anything."
Which leads to the discovery that they all knew each other in high school, and the reporter jokingly asks if that means they've all dated each other, too, which leads to Eddie jumping in with absolute delight like, "Well, that's a funny story, there. See, Stevie here dated Nancy, who then dated Jonathon when they broke up, who then dated Argyle after they broke up. And I thought Stevie and Robin were dating, so I was very confused when I saw Robin and Nancy kissing. But then I found out that Robin was a true-blue lesbian, which meant Stevie here was open for the taking, and we've been banging ever since."
and Steve is just sitting there, head in his hands while Robin cackles and decides to tell the reporter all about Steve's "fuck I have a crush on Eddie" crisis
This interview, of course, leads to even more freaking out online and comments like "I know I asked for poly Scooby gang, but this is ridiculous," and "I can't believe that in this, the year of our lord 20xx, ScoobyXFreddy became a canon ship," and "if I had a nickel for every romantic relationship the Scooby gang actors have had with each other, I'd have five nickels, which is way more than any of us fucking expected to have," and "suddenly Eddie Munson's thirst tweets make a lot more sense, but can we talk about Steve Harrington's CC tweets now," and "everyone say thank you to Eddie Munson for revealing that mess of a relationship map," and "finally, the canon lesbian velma and daphne we deserve"
The movie is a box office hit, btw, and bloopers from filming roll with the credits, among which is Eddie Munson making Steve Harrington lose his shit laughing on set while dressed in a Scooby Doo onesie and singing Corroded Coffin songs with his Scooby Voice
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humans are space orcs
imagine someone with chronic joint pain, whose dream their whole lives has been to go to space and meet the aliens and be a scientist and learn
so they look up the requirements as a kid and go "fuck."
they wouldn't make the cut.
their dreams are dashed. hopes ruined. lifelong dre destroyed.
except....
they've never really said a whole lot about their pain. they don't particularly like doctors, and they think that they've been managing just fine, so they never saw the point.
so maybe... maybe if they just don't say anything, they can make it to space.
they spend all of their time training. doing physical therapy exercises so that their joints aren't so loose, soaking up as much scientific and mathematical knowledge as they can, teaching themselves to push through the worst of it in pursuit of their dream.
and they make it.
they make it to space! it was gruelling, tortuous work, but they made it!
their first mission is an exploratory one, with a diverse crew which only has one other human.
they're thrilled.
they have dozens of alien friends and acquaintances. they spend hours learning and researching alien planets and cultures. it's everything they've ever wanted!
but
it's exhausting.
they're in more pain than they've ever been, more frequently than they ever have.
they keep up their exercises as best they can, but even those are often too much.
they smile when asked if they're alright, tell everyone that "i'm fine! just tired."
but they need a break. they can't imagine going or being sent back to earth, this is their home now, with these people, on this ship. but they don't know how much longer they can take this.
one day, on their day off, a fellow researcher comes and knocks on their door.
"are you here?"
"not today islith."
"but we've been called! there are some exciting new discoveries that need further cataloging and investigation, and carlmoth thought you would enjoy the task!"
"i can't today, islith."
"are you ill?"
"...kind of? but i'll be right as rain tomorrow. it's my day off anyhow."
"nonsense! you should go down to medbay!"
"i'm alright, i promise."
"you get out here right this minute or i'll report you to medbay myself!"
"no!" there's a series of crashes and thumps, and then they open the door.
"oh, you look awful. come on, you really must need medbay, what if you're contagious." islith tries to grab them but they shy away.
"i'm not contagious, i promise."
"how can you possibly know that? what if you picked it up from a sample, or, or, garfon has been sick recently! humans can't survive cerian sicknesses-"
"i didn't catch something from garfon, islith," they sigh and open the door wider. "come in and let me explain."
"alright, but if i think you should go to medbay afterwards then i'm taking you there."
"sure, islith."
islith enters, notices the piles of clothes, rumpled bedsheets, the lights are off and the port window shut.
"what's wrong?"
they sigh again, "my body doesn't work like it's meant to, islith."
islith is wildly alarmed, "and you said there was no need for medbay?!? come with me right now and-"
"no! i can't, islith, you don't understand."
"then explain it to me."
"i've... always been this way, although it's gotten worse as i've gotten older. my body, it just isn't built quite right, there's something wrong with it that makes it not work properly and hurt often."
"you're right, i don't understand. why can't you go to medbay?"
"i'd... be thrown off the ship."
"what?!?"
and so they tell islith a story about a young child whose dream was to touch the stars.
"and now, it's too late. i'd get in huge trouble for lying to the government, especially for so long."
"well- but- but humans are so resilient! you hear all the stories!"
"not every human is the same, islith. some of us are born disabled, and some of us get hurt in accidents, just like any other species."
"well, then, well there must be something we can do?"
they look up in shock, "we?"
"of course we, you ridiculous creature," islith said with a fond sigh. "you didn't think i'd leave you to suffer, would you?"
"but, you could get in so much trouble!"
"that's alright, i don't mind. what else are friends for? and, anyway, we don't have to tell your government, we can tell mine."
"but i'll-"
"we don't have any rules like that. any of us who are disabled can still manage in space just fine with the right support, and i bet you could too."
"i- islith- i don't-"
"don't worry, we'll all back you when it comes down to it. you're out teammate, our family. no one on this ship wants to watch you leave because of something you can't control. now come on, let's talk to glidlep in medical, she'll understand."
and for years, things continued on that way, until eventually it was an open secret that the human with the exosuit was disabled and not technically allowed onboard.
and down the line, when nasa found out and was furious, the entire ship and more stood by their side.
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lisafication · 1 year
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For those who might happen across this, I'm an administrator for the forum 'Sufficient Velocity', a large old-school forum oriented around Creative Writing. I originally posted this on there (and any reference to 'here' will mean the forum), but I felt I might as well throw it up here, as well, even if I don't actually have any followers.
This week, I've been reading fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a site run by the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit. This isn't particularly exceptional, in and of itself — like many others on the site, I read a lot of fanfiction, both on Sufficient Velocity (SV) and elsewhere — however what was bizarre to me was encountering a new prefix on certain works, that of 'End OTW Racism'. While I'm sure a number of people were already familiar with this, I was not, so I looked into it.
What I found... wasn't great. And I don't think anyone involved realises that.
To summarise the details, the #EndOTWRacism campaign, of which you may find their manifesto here, is a campaign oriented towards seeing hateful or discriminatory works removed from AO3 — and believe me, there is a lot of it. To whit, they want the OTW to moderate them. A laudable goal, on the face of it — certainly, we do something similar on Sufficient Velocity with Rule 2 and, to be clear, nothing I say here is a critique of Rule 2 (or, indeed, Rule 6) on SV.
But it's not that simple, not when you're the size of Archive of Our Own. So, let's talk about the vagaries and little-known pitfalls of content moderation, particularly as it applies to digital fiction and at scale. Let's dig into some of the details — as far as credentials go, I have, unfortunately, been in moderation and/or administration on SV for about six years and this is something we have to grapple with regularly, so I would like to say I can speak with some degree of expertise on the subject.
So, what are the problems with moderating bad works from a site? Let's start with discovery— that is to say, how you find rule-breaching works in the first place. There are more-or-less two different ways to approach manual content moderation of open submissions on a digital platform: review-based and report-based (you could also call them curation-based and flag-based), with various combinations of the two. Automated content moderation isn't something I'm going to cover here — I feel I can safely assume I'm preaching to the choir when I say it's a bad idea, and if I'm not, I'll just note that the least absurd outcome we had when simulating AI moderation (mostly for the sake of an academic exercise) on SV was banning all the staff.
In a review-based system, you check someone's work and approve it to the site upon verifying that it doesn't breach your content rules. Generally pretty simple, we used to do something like it on request. Unfortunately, if you do that, it can void your safe harbour protections in the US per Myeress vs. Buzzfeed Inc. This case, if you weren't aware, is why we stopped offering content review on SV. Suffice to say, it's not really a realistic option for anyone large enough for the courts to notice, and extremely clunky and unpleasant for the users, to boot.
Report-based systems, on the other hand, are something we use today — users find works they think are in breach and alert the moderation team to their presence with a report. On SV, this works pretty well — a user or users flag a work as potentially troublesome, moderation investigate it and either action it or reject the report. Unfortunately, AO3 is not SV. I'll get into the details of that dreadful beast known as scaling later, but thankfully we do have a much better comparison point — fanfiction.net (FFN).
FFN has had two great purges over the years, with a... mixed amount of content moderation applied in between: one in 2002 when the NC-17 rating was removed, and one in 2012. Both, ostensibly, were targeted at adult content. In practice, many fics that wouldn't raise an eye on Spacebattles today or Sufficient Velocity prior to 2018 were also removed; a number of reports suggest that something as simple as having a swearword in your title or summary was enough to get you hit, even if you were a 'T' rated work. Most disturbingly of all, there are a number of — impossible to substantiate — accounts of groups such as the infamous Critics United 'mass reporting' works to trigger a strike to get them removed. I would suggest reading further on places like Fanlore if you are unfamiliar and want to know more.
Despite its flaws however, report-based moderation is more-or-less the only option, and this segues neatly into the next piece of the puzzle that is content moderation, that is to say, the rubric. How do you decide what is, and what isn't against the rules of your site?
Anyone who's complained to the staff about how vague the rules are on SV may have had this explained to them, but as that is likely not many of you, I'll summarise: the more precise and clear-cut your chosen rubric is, the more it will inevitably need to resemble a legal document — and the less readable it is to the layman. We'll return to SV for an example here: many newer users will not be aware of this, but SV used to have a much more 'line by line, clearly delineated' set of rules and... people kind of hated it! An infraction would reference 'Community Compact III.15.5' rather than Rule 3, because it was more or less written in the same manner as the Terms of Service (sans the legal terms of art). While it was a more legible rubric from a certain perspective, from the perspective of communicating expectations to the users it was inferior to our current set of rules  — even less of them read it,  and we don't have great uptake right now.
And it still wasn't really an improvement over our current set-up when it comes to 'moderation consistency'. Even without getting into the nuts and bolts of "how do you define a racist work in a way that does not, at any point, say words to the effect of 'I know it when I see it'" — which is itself very, very difficult don't get me wrong I'm not dismissing this — you are stuck with finding an appropriate footing between a spectrum of 'the US penal code' and 'don't be a dick' as your rubric. Going for the penal code side doesn't help nearly as much as you might expect with moderation consistency, either — no matter what, you will never have a 100% correct call rate. You have the impossible task of writing a rubric that is easy for users to comprehend, extremely clear for moderation and capable of cleanly defining what is and what isn't racist without relying on moderator judgement, something which you cannot trust when operating at scale.
Speaking of scale, it's time to move on to the third prong — and the last covered in this ramble, which is more of a brief overview than anything truly in-depth — which is resources. Moderation is not a magic wand, you can't conjure it out of nowhere: you need to spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money on building, training and equipping a moderation staff, even a volunteer one, and it is far, far from an instant process. Our most recent tranche of moderators spent several months in training and it will likely be some months more before they're fully comfortable in the role — and that's with a relatively robust bureaucracy and a number of highly experienced mentors supporting them, something that is not going to be available to a new moderation branch with little to no experience. Beyond that, there's the matter of sheer numbers.
Combining both moderation and arbitration — because for volunteer staff, pure moderation is in actuality less efficient in my eyes, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post, but we'll treat it as if they're both just 'moderators' — SV presently has 34 dedicated moderation volunteers. SV hosts ~785 million words of creative writing.
AO3 hosts ~32 billion.
These are some very rough and simplified figures, but if you completely ignore all the usual problems of scaling manpower in a business (or pseudo-business), such as (but not limited to) geometrically increasing bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden, along with all the particular issues of volunteer moderation... AO3 would still need well over one thousand volunteer moderators to be able to match SV's moderator-to-creative-wordcount ratio.
Paid moderation, of course, you can get away with less — my estimate is that you could fully moderate SV with, at best, ~8 full-time moderators, still ignoring administrative burden above the level of team leader. This leaves AO3 only needing a much more modest ~350 moderators. At the US minimum wage of ~$15k p.a. — which is, in my eyes, deeply unethical to pay moderators as full-time moderation is an intensely gruelling role with extremely high rates of PTSD and other stress-related conditions — that is approximately ~$5.25m p.a. costs on moderator wages. Their average annual budget is a bit over $500k.
So, that's obviously not on the table, and we return to volunteer staffing. Which... let's examine that scenario and the questions it leaves us with, as our conclusion.
Let's say, through some miracle, AO3 succeeds in finding those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer moderators. We'll even say none of them are malicious actors or sufficiently incompetent as to be indistinguishable, and that they manage to replicate something on the level of or superior to our moderation tooling near-instantly at no cost. We still have several questions to be answered:
How are you maintaining consistency? Have you managed to define racism to the point that moderator judgment no longer enters the equation? And to be clear, you cannot allow moderator judgment to be a significant decision maker at this scale, or you will end with absurd results.
How are you handling staff mental health? Some reading on the matter, to save me a lengthy and unrelated explanation of some of the steps involved in ensuring mental health for commercial-scale content moderators.
How are you handling your failures? No moderation in the world has ever succeeded in a 100% accuracy rate, what are you doing about that?
Using report-based discovery, how are you preventing 'report brigading', such as the theories surrounding Critics United mentioned above? It is a natural human response to take into account the amount and severity of feedback. While SV moderators are well trained on the matter, the rare times something is receiving enough reports to potentially be classified as a 'brigade' on that scale will nearly always be escalated to administration, something completely infeasible at (you're learning to hate this word, I'm sure) scale.
How are you communicating expectations to your user base? If you're relying on a flag-based system, your users' understanding of the rules is a critical facet of your moderation system — how have you managed to make them legible to a layman while still managing to somehow 'truly' define racism?
How are you managing over one thousand moderators? Like even beyond all the concerns with consistency, how are you keeping track of that many moving parts as a volunteer organisation without dozens or even hundreds of professional managers? I've ignored the scaling administrative burden up until now, but it has to be addressed in reality.
What are you doing to sweep through your archives? SV is more-or-less on-top of 'old' works as far as rule-breaking goes, with the occasional forgotten tidbit popping up every 18 months or so — and that's what we're extrapolating from. These thousand-plus moderators are mostly going to be addressing current or near-current content, are you going to spin up that many again to comb through the 32 billion words already posted?
I could go on for a fair bit here, but this has already stretched out to over two thousand words.
I think the people behind this movement have their hearts in the right place and the sentiment is laudable, but in practice it is simply 'won't someone think of the children' in a funny hat. It cannot be done.
Even if you could somehow meet the bare minimum thresholds, you are simply not going to manage a ruleset of sufficient clarity so as to prevent a much-worse repeat of the 2012 FF.net massacre, you are not going to be able to manage a moderation staff of that size and you are not going to be able to ensure a coherent understanding among all your users (we haven't managed that after nearly ten years and a much smaller and more engaged userbase). There's a serious number of other issues I haven't covered here as well, as this really is just an attempt at giving some insight into the sheer number of moving parts behind content moderation:  the movement wants off-site content to be policed which isn't so much its own barrel of fish as it is its own barrel of Cthulhu; AO3 is far from English-only and would in actuality need moderators for almost every language it supports — and most damning of all,  if Section 230 is wiped out by the Supreme Court  it is not unlikely that engaging in content moderation at all could simply see AO3 shut down.
As sucky as it seems, the current status quo really is the best situation possible. Sorry about that.
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