#(and you don't have to agree with me!!! that's perfectly valid!!!!!)

[glitter-stained]

Agreed! And personally when I say he should mess up, he should mess up greatly. This is probably because I'm starved for representation of abuse that doesn't portraits abusers as monsters evidently evil and full of ill intent, but I'm totally down for abusive Bruce Wayne. Yeah, sure, have the literal Batman berate and psychologically abuse his kids, neglect to address super important stuff in their background only for it to blow up in your face when they're confronted with it on the field, I'm even down for him to hurt his kids! As long as the narrative doesn't agree with it.

The thing is, with the narrative (and some takes from some very hardcore fans) is "this isn't actually abuse because you're missing key context". And then you look up and the context can be super complicated, with a whole lot of intense stuff going on, and it can be a very good explanation for what is happening, and it is still abuse. I think the issue is with the portrayal we usually have of it we see "abusive" as a personality trait, something really bad people do. It's safe, and comfortable, and it allows us to feel comfortable in our knowledge that because we're trying our best, we couldn't possibly accidentally become abusive. And on that ground, it's perfectly valid to refuse your childhood hero being some terrible monster who hits his kids! But the thing is, abuse isn't a personality trait, it's an action, and actions are extremely context dependent. If you're in an extremely high emotional situation, and trying to handle three different crises at once, and your child is being intrusive while you just need some space and you're mental ill and having an episode and you hit your child -that is still physical abuse. (And yeah, you can also abuse your adult children). And that means you have to acknowledge that it was abuse and it hurt them and you shouldn't have done it. What that doesn't mean is you have to define yourself as a horrible person and a failed parent.

The danger resides in two complementary courses of thinking that follow from these ideas :

1. abusers are awful and terrible. + i hurt my child, doing something that follows usual definitions of child abuse. + I know that there was a lot of context going on and I feel like it's not fair to define myself just based on that action while ignoring the context = I don't fit my conception of an abusive person because of the context = the context means that I wasn't abusive = the context justifies taking actions that would be usually characterized as abusive => chronicization of abuse.

2. abusers are awful and terrible. + my parent hurt me doing something that follows usual definitions of child abuse + I know that there was a lot of context going on and I feel like it's not fair to define my parent, whomst I love and consider good, just based on that action while ignoring the context = they don't fit my characterization of abusive parents because of the context = the context means they weren't abusive = the context justifies actions that would otherwise be characterized as abusive = I wasn't actually abused = child doesn't speak up /avoids potential help/remains in the unsafe situation.

These are called justificative thoughts! And of course, we get similar thoughts in bystanders who know there's a lot of context going on, know the abuser personally etc. (They also work with intimate partner violence and even murder!) Examples include the all time famous "but he loves me!", "it's not what it looks like, she was only trying to keep me safe", "but what if I'm not stern enough and he grows up and become a criminal? He'll get hurt worse in prison, I'm protecting him!" "He can't possibly be an abuser, he's so kind! He was so sweet when he supported me after my mother died!"

The thing with the "you know I'm only doing this to protect you" line is we often know it as a very vicious manipulation technique. But it's not always the case! It's not necessarily a lie. Punitive abuse isn't (necessarily) practiced for the pleasure of hurting the child, it's a parent trying to raise their child and believing that this is the best way to teach them. That's why it's so important to acknowledge that good intentions in abuse exist and they don't justify it! Whether or not someone is lying to you, manipulating you or not when telling you this isn't what matters most: it's that right now, they feel hurting you is an acceptable way to get to that result, and it's still abusive, and you don't have to accept it just because they mean well.

So yeah, I'm pissed off when dc does exactly that, brushes Bruce being abusive aside and justifies it time and time again instead of addressing the abuse. I think the reason I personally want abusive Batman rather than a huge retcon is that a hero, someone who does so much good and tries and fights so hard to protect what he loves, someone like that failing so bad at parenting and then learning and becoming better, would have been revolutionary growing up. Still would be today, honestly. We need to humanize abuse, because we're gonna feel empathy towards abusers whether we like it or not and we have to choose if we avoid the discomfort it causes by using that empathy to justify not acknowledging the abuse, or treat abusers as human people that are capable of learning, that are sensitive to context (internal and external) and that can be, on many other fronts, perfectly good people. Instead, dc feeds us heaps of justificative thoughts like it's their personal mission because THEY have the same thoughts and don't want to contend with batman being "a dirty evil abuser" but they also love their edginess and shock value too much to stop writing conflict the only way they know how. And like, I know they're not gonna address it the way I want them to but then at least stop doing it- straight up stop portraying batman as abusive and justifying past abusive actions - and bury it under enough new, better batman/batfam stories that we can put this behind us as some kind of "edgy batman dark age". At this point that's all I'm asking, my expectations are so low but come on. I'm so tired.

The thing is that DC’s consistent choice to have Jason Todd blame himself for his own murder comes across less as maturity (the intent) and more like his self-esteem is so far down the toilet it’s been filtered through the Gotham water treatment facility and is currently being sprayed over Wayne Manor’s lawn.

[sassydefendorflower]

There is this common misconception in the fandom that to get the "fullest" Fullmetal Alchemist experience, you should watch the first 20 or so episodes of 03 (up until Hughes' murder) and finish the show watching Brotherhood.

I think that's bullshit.

Not because I have anything against 03. Oh, I think 03 is a perfectly valid interpretation of the text with a few absolutely genius moments thrown in there that make Brotherhood pale in comparison.

But it is an interpretation of the text.

Don't get me wrong, so is Brotherhood.

And while Brotherhood is a lot more faithful to the text, especially later on, that anime as well cuts out a lot of important worldbuilding in the beginning. Which is where this idea of inter-cutting those two animes even stems from.

But these two stories have wildly different interpretations of the same characters! The depth of characterization in both 03 and Brotherhood gets undercut by a mix and match that does both a disservice.

Ed is a lot more vulnerable in 03 - he is the tragic hero we follow who will make horrible choices in order to save his brother only to suffer and fail and break. The anime establishes this by introducing him to us at the age of 12, when he's only just starting in his journey. Many of his first adventures (the train, meeting Hughes, Nina and Alexander) take place at a point where Ed is a lot softer, a lot less hard, a lot less broken - they are what breaks him in a way. What eventually leads him down the path he takes.

That is a hugely different interpretation of the text as Brotherhood offers it to us.

In Brotherhood we meet Ed when he's at the top. The priest of Liore is no problem for him, he's been doing this for years, he's internalized a lot of the hurt he grew up with. Getting hurt doesn't faze him, his biggest hindrance is his urge to finally get this done and over with. He's cocky and self-assured and oh, so insecure. Which is why we need Nina, to remind him of the fragility in life and his own powerlessness. In Brotherhood Nina is the linchpin that leads to Ed finding out about Philosopher's Stones.

In many ways this interpretation of the text is a lot closer to the source material, but, yes, it is still an interpretation. Someone once said the biggest mistake Brotherhood made was include the Elrics' backstory in episode two and I agree - it is often what hooks first time viewers with the stark horror of what these kids went through, but it stands at odds with the original purpose of the backstory only being revealed in vol.6 of the manga.

Because in the original story, up to that point, we don't know why Ed and Al are the way we are. We've seen flashes, we know Ed has nightmares, we know certain things spook them, and we know they committed a taboo whatever the hell that means. And only when we meet Izumi, only when Ed has to forcibly drop all the walls he spend the last three years building, do we see what actually happen. It's also the closest Ed comes to crying - clinging to Izumi and begging her for forgiveness.

These are three very different ways to tell the same story.

All of these are valid. All of these can be fun.

But they hold fundamentally different approaches to the characters within them, which makes them not interchangeable.

The same is true for Hughes, who - in 03 - is a presence in the Elrics' lives from the very beginning, their friend and confidant in ways not even Mustang is. He helps them during the train hijacking and Elicia shares Ed's birthday.

That's a significant switch-up from the manga, where Ed and Al only meet him once they go to Central to search through the First Library - and in which only Winry ever really grows close to Hughes as a person, and not as a mistake made by the brothers.

And Brotherhood tells a different story again, by having Ed and Al meet Hughes in the first episode, as they visit Central to catch the Freezer and befriend Mustang's ally who invites them home - placing that relationship somewhere in the middle of coworkers and close, intimate friends.

These are three different characters, who are connected to our main duo in three different ways.

There's overlaps and I am not keeping anyone from having fun (03 Roy Mustang being the one to kill Winry's parenty, my beloved) but to really enjoy these stories, they need to be understood as three different texts.

03 stands strong in its originality, Brotherhood in its closeness to the source material, but if you want the OG experience just read the manga. It shouldn't stop you from enjoying the other two as well.

If anything, it should be more fun to have three similar - but different - worlds to play in.

[luckybyler]

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

[scribblesofagoonerr]

— a lot of reserved feelings | buddy & monkey: double the trouble - the prequel

so i got an anon hc asking about how monkey be with lia at the start and this is the result of it.

thank you to @alotofpockets and @lvnleah for the help and support with this one!

“Why do I need to stay with her? I’m fine by myself!” You shouted in annoyance through the house, making your feelings perfectly well clear.

You weren’t happy about this decision at all.

“Because I said so,” The blonde was quick to reply.

You scowled at the blonde across from you and let out a loud huff,  “That’s not a proper reason though!”

“It’s the reason I’m giving you and I’ve made my final decision about it now, so I don’t want to hear anymore whining about it, alright?” Leah told you, sternly.

You were definitely not in agreement about this whole idea, but apparently you didn’t get a say in these things.

The whole idea of being left alone with people other than Leah, Jordan and Kim made you feel anxious and you really didn’t like it, not one bit.

Usually if you had to stay with anyone other than Leah and Jordan, it would be Kim, however due to her making other plans, it meant that she was unavailable to do so this time.

So, unfortunately for you, Lia volunteered instead.

It’s not that you didn’t like the woman, after all she was your team mate and she was nice, but you just didn’t know her well enough to not have your guard up around her.

Therefore the reason you weren’t happy about it.

“Look, I know you’re not happy about this kid, but just go along with this one, will you?” Jordan spoke up, trying to keep the peace in the house between you and Leah.

“I don’t see why I have to stay with Lia– I’m perfectly capable of staying home alone!” You still continued to further insist against the idea, “I don’t even know her that well!”

“Lia is nice and she’s part of the team, so it’ll be good to hang out with her other than through the club, won’t it?” Jordan still tried her luck to get you to agree to this one, “Come on, I know you don’t like this but just agree to this time, yeah? Just to put the pregnant lady’s stress at bay in the meantime.” She joked, trying to keep the mood in the room light.

“Fine, whatever. I still don’t like it though!” You made your feelings perfectly valid that you were definitely not happy about this, but if it meant keeping Leah stress free with her due date around the corner then you would go along with it.

"Monkey! Lia's here, are you going to come downstairs and say hello?" You heard Leah shout from downstairs to get your attention.

"Guess I got no choice," You thought to yourself, not bothering to move from your bed where you had bundled yourself in a blanket and made yourself comfy watching a marvel film.

Could it be worse?

"Hey kid," Jordan poked her hear around your bedroom door, "Lia's here now, so we're gonna be going soon." She explained.

You peered to look at her from where you lay on your bed, "I know, I just heard Leah shout upstairs to me."

"You gonna come and say hi then?" The older women wondered, hoping that you would be a bit more willing to come downstairs than you have been since you heard about it overall.

"Do I have a choice about it?" You remarked, more than aware you most likely did not.

Jordan shrugged her shoulders in response, "Well I guess it would be polite to at least say hello to her kid."

"Fine, alright then," You couldn't help but huff, pausing the film and slump of your bed to make your way downstairs to see Leah and Lia having a conversation between them.

"Are you sure you don't mind watching her?" You overheard Leah question as she moved slowly round the house to make sure she had everything she needed for their night out.

"No, it's not a problem at all. I'm happy to help out when needed!" Lia replied, taking her coat off and making herself at home.

You could see Leah giving the woman a weary smile, "Only if you're sure about this? Monkey can tend to be a bit reserved around people that she doesn't know that well." She explained, briefly.

"I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't sure about it, Le," Lia chuckled slightly and shook her head, "I'm sure I can handle a teenager for a few hours!"

"You know I can hear you, right?" You quipped, walking down the stairs to make your presence known, "I already said I didn't need a babysitter, but none of you would listen." You added, still continuing to make your feelings known about this.

"Ah, here's the menace," Leah joked, spotting you appear down the stairs with Jordan behind her, "You know we just feel more reassured if you had someone here with you, Monkey." She explained, trying to make her reasoning a bit more clearer.

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes and huffed once again, "You worry too much, I'd be fine!"

The blonde clicked her tongue in disapproval, "Well what you call me worrying is what I call myself caring," She stated as she picked up her purse, "Lia is here to take care of you so please don't be giving her a hard time about this, alright?"

"Fine, whatever," You grumbled in protest.

Jordan nudged your shoulder slightly and smiled at you, "Come on kid, we talked about this, didn't we? Just stay here with Lia for us and don't make a fuss about it," She tried her luck to get you to be more willing again to agree, "Just do it for Leah's peace of mind, eh?" She reminded you.

"Anythin' to save the wrath of a pregnant women," You remarked cheekily, rolling your eyes.

"Exactly, you know how protective she is and especially this late at night, yeah?" Jordan playfully joked, slinging her arm around your shoulder and having to lean up a bit since you were just that bit taller than her.

You groaned in annoyance and slumped your shoulders, "Ugh alright, fine, but I'm still not happy with this though!"

"Good girl," Leah walked back in on the tail end of the conversation and pressed a gentle kiss on the top of your head, "Alright, we shouldn't be back too late. Remember to go to bed at a reasonable time, alright?" She reminded you.

"I'm not a child," You grumbled in response.

"Yes you are," The blonde chuckled and ruffled your hair, "Bed at a sensible time and don't be staying up too late, alright?" She repeated.

"Yeah yeah, fine alright," Begrudgingly you agreed to save an argument, although you sometimes found it hard to sleep and you didn't know exactly how well you'd be sleep without familiar people in the house.

"That's my girl," Leah stated, lightly kissing you on the top of your head again, "Have fun!" She waved, heading out of the front door.

"Sure, mandatory fun. It sounds somewhat wonderful," You sarcastically remarked, sticking your hands in your pockets, "Buh-bye now!" You waved goodbye to them both.

"Thanks again for watching her tonight Lia," Jordan thanked the women with a kind smile, "I hope she doesn't give you too much of a hard time." She joked, motioning to you where you awkwardly stood in front of the stairs.

"Please, I'm delightful!" You insist, trying to make it seem like your fine with this when your definitely most not.

You felt nervous and you really didn't like this at all.

"I'm sure we'll have fun," Lia chuckled, sending you a small smile, "Have fun you two!" She said, waving them both off as they left the house.

"So then, what is it that you like to do when your not playing football?" Lia questioned, being the first to break the silence in the room between the two of you.

Shrugging your shoulders in response, you barely acknowledge Lia, "I watch movies and stuff."

"Oh," Lia's facial expression turned to surprised, "Is there one that you would like to watch?" She wondered, you guess somewhat hopeful you'd take her up on the idea of that.

"No, I'm fine," You disagreed, shaking your head.

You didn't feel safe, you just wanted to bury yourself under your duvet cover and shelter away in safety.

You knew Lia but it didn't mean you felt comfortable with her.

You couldn't help but have your walls up again with a complete stranger practically, since you only know her from being a part of the club.

"Okay then, that's alright if you don't want too. Is there anything that you do want to do?" Lia wondered, trying to figure out how best to interact with you.

You shook your head in disagreement again, "Nope."

"Alright then, well if you change your mind--" Lia began to speak until you abruptly cut her off.

"Why are you here?" You snapped at the older woman.

Lia looked taken back at your sudden change of mood, "I'm here so you're not alone, Monkey. Leah told you that already though." She explained, frowning slightly.

Shaking your head, you furrowed your eyebrow and began to pace the floor, "I don't get why you're here-- I already told them that I don't need a babysitter!" You exclaimed, loudly.

"I'm sure they just want to know you have someone here with you, you know?" Lia tried to be a voice of reason, however, she wasn't exactly sure what to do in this situation right now.

"I don't need you here... I don't! I am perfectly fine to take care of myself, I don't need anyone checking up on me either!" With that, you stomp off back in the direction of the stairs and leave Lia sat downstairs dumbfounded.

"Why are you allowing me to just ignore you while you're here?" You murmured, wandering down the stairs a few hours later in the night to see Lia sat watching a television program quietly.

Lia paused the TV and looked directly at you, "Well if you think that me ignoring you is what you need then who I am to stand in the way of that?" She wondered.

"Yeah well, you can go home. You don't need to stay here," You told her, firmly because you still didn't understand why she was still here.

Why hadn't she left?

You had found the comfort of your bedroom, your type of safe haven, but yet you still couldn't help but wrap the idea of Lia willingly let you ignore her for the past several hours that she has been here.

It didn't make a whole lot of sense, did it?

"I'm here because I care about you Monkey," Lia told you sincerely, "I also understand that you need space and me pushing you won't help that."

You didn't miss a chance to roll your eyes, "You don't even understand how I feel!"

"I'm far from perfect myself and I do remember being a teenager, so I know that me trying to yell at you or even trying to force to you talk won't solve anything, would it?" Lia questioned, trying to keep the situation from getting too tense.

"Oh, you think you're so wise, huh?" You couldn't help but scoff, "Just because you're older, you think you know everything about how I feel?" You questioned, trying to figure out where you would hit a nerve.

You don't mean to push buttons, but you did wonder how much could you say to push her away?

You don't know whether you could trust her right now or not, there's one way to find out.

Lia shook her head in disagreement, "No, I don't know everything but I am trying to be here for you in a way that you need." She explained, honestly.

"You're not doing a great job of it, so maybe you should just leave if you can't handle it," You still continued to try and rile the woman up, trying to figure out how much further you could push her.

"You think I can't handle it? I've dealt with worse than a frustrated teenager," Lia had an amused expression on her face, "I'm here because I care about you, no matter how hard you find that hard to believe, alright?"

Right there and then, you felt too stunned to speak about things.

"If you want to try and push me away then go ahead but I'm still going to be here for you," The older woman stated, gently as she gave you a reassuring smile, "No matter how long it takes for you to trust me, Monkey. I won't leave you alone." She added.

With Lia's words fresh in the back of your head, you couldn't help but wonder if she actually was being truthful about what she said.

"I wouldn't blame you if you did want to leave, you know? I haven't exactly been that nice to you tonight," You spoke up, shuffling from one sock clad foot to the other as you fumbled with her hands.

Lia gave you another sympathetic smile, "Your a teenager, Monkey. I take no offence to it. Like I said before, I'm not going to leave you." She repeated her words.

"Why not? Other people have, you wouldn't be any different to do the same," You can't help but wonder why she hasn't indeed left, like so many other people have done in the past.

"I can understand why you don't trust easily and it's okay to have your guard up," The older woman explained honestly, "But I want you to know that you can trust me, I know I haven't known you for as long as Leah and Jordan have, but I do care about you." She added.

"You do?" You looked at her in complete surprise.

Lia nodded in agreement and smiled, "Yes, I do. Not just as my team mate but as a person."

You feel like there's a small piece of you that can begin to trust Lia know, a sense of knowing that if there is something wrong that the woman would listen to you and have your back about it.

Maybe Lia is a safe person then?

"Lia," You murmured quietly, waiting for her acknowledgement, "Would you uh, would you maybe like to watch a film?" You questioned, hesitantly.

Lia beamed a wide smile, "I would love to watch a movie with you, Monkey. Which one would you like to watch?" She wondered.

"Really? Awesome!" You all but flopped onto the sofa beside her as she passed you the remote, "Have you ever watched Shrek?" You questioned.

"No, I haven't," Lia replied, confused at the movie title.

You spun your head around to look at her and gasped, "What?! You... You've never watched Shrek?!" You questioned in disbelief, "You have to see it, I'm puttin' it on, right now!" You insisted.

"Okay if you insist," The older woman chuckled in amusement as she briefly checked the time on her watch, "How about you and change into your pajamas and I'll make us some hot chocolate for when you come back?" She suggested when she realised that you were still in the clothes from the day.

"Hot chocolate?" Your eyes did light up at the mention of that, you were an absolute sucker for them, "With whipped creams and marshmallows, right?" You double checked with her.

"It wouldn't be a proper one without it, would it?" Lia joked, patting your knee lightly, "Go on upstairs and I'll start to make them." She told you, gesturing in the direction of the stairs.

You didn't have to be told twice as you dipped off upstairs to get changed into comfy pajamas, before dragging one of the fluffy blankets you have collected back down the stairs into the living room to get settled on the sofa while Lia finished making the hot chocolates.

"That was quick," Lia smiled as she walked back into the living room with 2 steaming mugs of hot chocolate in her hands, "Eager for the hot chocolate, huh?" She teased you lightly.

"Duh its' hot chocolate!" You exclaimed, reaching out eagerly for it from the Swiss woman's hands, "I can't believe you haven't watched Shrek before. You need to educate yourself!"

Lia chuckled and settled back on the sofa beside you, "Well you'd better show me what it's all about then, eh?" She joked with you.

"Be prepared to amazed then," You were determined to leave an impression with this film as you scouted through the TV to find it as it began as the familiar dreamwork logo appeared on the screen.

"How many times have you watched this film then?" Lia wondered, laughing in amusement as she saw you literally bouncing up and down in your seat, "I feel I should be concerned with how excited you are."

"Sh, it's starting!" You butted in as the film started to play to stop her talking any longer, "No talkin'!" You declared, firmly.

You didn't waste the time to bop along to the music at the start, all but leaning forward to watch it for what was probably the hundredth times.

"This is the part where you run away," You whisper the words from the start of the movie, Lia just watched you and shook her head in amusement, "I'm not a puppet. I'm a real boy!"

The two of you watched the movie, of course you yapped on the whole way through reciting the movie quotes as you were so familiar with and Lia was just happy to see you slowly opening up to her.

"Hey, wait a minute! I got a great idea! I'll stick with you!" You exclaimed loudly still continuing to speak the movie quotes aloud, "I like that boulder, that is a nice boulder."

"So, have many times have you watched it now?" Lia repeated her question in amusement, shaking her head in complete amusement until you scowled at her, "Alright, noted. I'll stop talkin' until it finishes." She joked.

You nod in agreement as you continued to watch the film, "We can stay up late swapping manly stories and in the morning, I'm making waffles!" You repeated it again, word for word, "WhAt ArE yOu DoIn' In My SwAmP!?"

"Do you know all the words to this-- Alright, right, got it. No talking, I remember," Lia couldn't help but laugh and held her hands up in mock protest when she saw the dirty scowl you still continued to give her.

Despite your excitement, you still didn't manage to make it through the first film before a wave of exhaustion washed over you and you found yourself trying to fight to stay awake.

Even though it seemed be impossible to do exactly that.

"Someones' getting tired, huh?" Lia joked, watching you as you tried to keep your eyes pried open, "How about we turn the film off and you head up to bed?" She suggested.

"Nuh-uh, its' not over yet!" You protested against the idea, literally shuffling your body to lean up against hers, "M' not even that tired yet."

"I don't think that's true is it?" Lia remarked, stifling her laughter but allowed you to curl up beside her.

"Yer don't know what yer talkin' about!" You grumbled as you continued to fight to stay awake, all but resting your head on her chest as the older woman smiled and without much thinking started to thread her fingers through your hair.

It did work wonders to make you fall asleep through as less then 10 minutes all that could be heard is the sound of your soft snores.

"That worked a charm," Lia thought to herself as she still continued to her fingers through your hair.

Really the woman thought it would be best to move you to your bed but you looked so peaceful asleep, and from what she heard previously you hadn't been sleeping all that well the past few nights so you could do well so probably get some sleep.

It wasn't all that long before a key was heard turning in the door before Leah and Jordan stumbled through the door from their night at the awards ceremony.

"Hi, we're back," Leah whispered aloud, more than aware you were fast asleep upstairs or so she thought at least, not realizing that you were in fact downstairs on the sofa instead as she unfastened the straps on her shoes.

"Hi, we're in here," Lia's voice quietly spoke out to the two women, careful to not jolt you awake from your deep slumber.

"Hello," Jordan's voice whispered through the house as she unfastened her shoes and followed Leah into the living room.

"How's she been-- Oh, I didn't realise she was asleep down here," Leah tried to speak quieter than previous as she smiled softly at your sleeping state, "Has she been out long?"

"About half an hour now. I thought she might've stirred though when she heard you both come home," Lia admitted to the two women, shifting carefully to avoid you waking up still.

Jordan smiled and took note of the television, "Oh I see she's got you watching Shrek, she loves them films," She chuckled, shaking her head in amusement, "Did she recite it word for word?" She questioned.

Lia laughed and nodded in agreement, "Oh yes, I got a few scowls when I tried to talk." She told them.

"That doesn't surprise me," Leah laughed in response and peered down to look at you, "She looks comfy, I didn't expect her to be curled up to you. Thank you for looking after her tonight, has she been okay?" She wondered, curiously.

"It was a little bit rocky at first but we talked," Lia explained to the blonde defender, "I think she's starting to come around now so that's a start." She added, accepting it would take a while for you to come out of your shell.

"One day at a time," Jordan chipped in as she smiled fondly down at you fast asleep, "I'll wake her up and take her upstairs to bed." She offered, kneeling down beside your sleeping form.

"I think she's completely out of it," Leah chuckled in amusement.

"Monkey, wake up, kid," Jordan gently nudged you to wake you up.

You slowly opened your eyes tiredly as you realised that Jordan and Leah were both back now, "You're back." You murmured in a state of still being half asleep.

"We are," Jordan chuckled, shaking her head in amusement, "Come on, time for bed, kid."

You let out a small groan and stretched a bit before you just stared at her tiredly, "My legs are too tired to walk," You mumbled before you let out a yawn, "I wan' more sleep."

"You can sleep once your upstairs in your own bed," Leah piped in amusedly as she watched you start to close your eyes again, "Bed time, Monkey." She repeated.

"M' fine," You waved them off as you started to shut your eyes once again, "I wan' stay asleep down here cos' I'm comfy." You didn't remember falling asleep where you did on Lia and your pretty sure that if you were more awake you wouldn't be so keen to be virtually lying on top of her but you were in a such tired state that you didn't care at this point.

Jordan chuckled and despite the height difference, your weighed considerably less so she was able to lift you up from Lia and comfortably hold you up in her own arms, "I'm gonna take sleepy head up to bed." She gestured in the direction of the stairs.

"Wait, wait, no... I gotta show Lia the rest of the Shrek movies," You jolted in Jordan's arms as you suddenly realised it and the older woman chuckled, "Can she please stay the night so we can watch them all tomorrow? Pretty pretty pleaseee!" You pleaded with the two older women.

Leah laughed in amusement, "Well that is fine with us, but maybe you should ask Lia first if she'd want too, huh?" She teased you, shuffling past you as she ruffled your hair.

"Lia, will you stay? Please! That way we can watch all the Shrek movies!" You exclaimed, secretly hoping that the women would indeed stay, "Please, please, you have to stay!" You begged and pleaded with her.

"Don't worry, I'll spend the night," Lia smiled and nodded in agreement, "I can't wait to watch the rest of the Shrek movies." She added.

"You'll regret saying that," Leah joked and shook her head, "Right, you, go to bed, its' late." She pointed towards the direction of the stairs before she kissed the top of your head.

"The night is still early," You grumbled in protest, fighting to stay awake in Jordan's arms, "We could even make time to watch another film!"

"I don't think so, there'll be plenty of time to watch more tomorrow," The blonde stated in disagreement as she laughed, "Sweet dreams, Monkey."

You let another yawn escape your mouth unwillingly, "Night Le, night Lia!" You murmured, the exhaustion taking over you once again as you rested your head on Jordan's shoulder as you felt you move up the stairs, "Can't wait for the Shrek marathon tomorrow!"

© scribblesofagoonerr

[zucchiniegg]

#dead dove is such a useful tag if used right because you know that whatever is on the label the author commits to it (via @dropdeadjack​ )

^ dead dove is meant to be used in conjunction with other warnings, to indi not to replace them.

'creator chose not to use archive warnings’ is the tag you’re looking for if you want to tell readers ‘there might be some fucked up stuff in here, but i dunno if it meets the point of a formal tag/i don’t want to spoil it/i don’t want to promise anything/etc.’ it already exists!

the conflation of "dead dove" into a genre of fic when it's intended to mean "there are warnings here, take them seriously because you get exactly what's on the tin" is probably one of the worst things to happrn to fandom because you get people who tag "dead dove" and no other type of warning. like. cool. this is worthless

and you get people saying "anyone who writes dead dove is morally awful" or whatever. which is like. hello. this is a label you slap on the front of something to say what it is not a type of story

[colorfullyminded]

TLDR

Okay I cannot believe I'm about to go off like this, but this has been bothering me for awhile, and it's only making me more spiteful. I have been enjoying the influx of Billford art lately. Amazing, great wonderful. What I have Not been enjoying, is the absolute vitriol the Billdip fans have been getting since the influx of TBOB. I was a billdip shipper for awhile. Hell I was a billdip shipper when I was a Parapines shipper-- I liked shipping Dipper with boys. I was also like 14 or 15 at the time. Obviously, if you follow me now, you'll probably notice what my main ship for Dipper is. I grew out of Billdip, and moved on to Pinescone. I have been shipping Pinescone for 10 years. However, not once did I go around saying "Lol, glad I matured and became a better person and shipped something healthier", nor did I post in the billdip tag, condeming people for a fictional ship! And saying mine was better because it was less problematic.

"I'm really glad people stopped shipping Bill and Dipper together. Bill is a 1000 year old triangle demon, and Dipper is 13--" Stop. Repeat what you just said.

"Bill is 1000 year old triangle--"

Repeat that last word to me. "....triangle?" TRIANGLE! I'm sorry what?! This ship is already completely wild enough. You're getting mad at this fictional age gap-- AND BILL IS A FUCKING SHAPE! A FUCKING SHAPE! This ship was weird from the moment GO! And Billford isn't any better. IT'S STILL A SHIP WITH A FUCKING SHAPE! And you're going to sit on your high horse and look down on the Billdip community. On top of it-- they have an age gap too! Bill is still thousands of years old or whatever-- however long it's been, who knows? And Ford was in his 20s or so when he met Bill. That's still a huge, ridiculous age gap-- that Bill could easily use and manipulate; which he did....and then also caught feelings and became a sad ex, but that's beside the point~ Both of these ships are still insane. And again, the bigger thing I think people are just ignoring about these ships--is that Bill is a TRIANGLE! THREE LINES CONNECTED TOGETHER! And this is the hill you're going to die on? ...Cause apparently it's mine. First of all-- as many people pointed out-- Ford Pines did not exist until the second half of the final season. People couldn't ship Fordbill because there wasn't any Ford to introduce.

"Well, even before Ford, I never shipped Billdip! I always disliked it." ...Okay, that's totally fine. Not everyone needs to like or agree on the same ship. Lord knows there's probably people who don't really care for Pinescone either. There's a lot of popular ships that I can't stand. But I'm don't go into a ship tag I don't like, screaming to a void for self validation. I don't go around mocking other people for ships that they had in 2014-- or even still today! It doesn't matter! I did that when I was a kid-- and then realized that was rude, and it was better to just ignore the ships I didn't like and enjoy the ones that made me happy. And grow a community of kind, like minded friends. And listen, I am all for safe spaces and being able to block things that make you uncomfortable. I am not saying people who find the BillDip ship uncomfortable to be idiots or babies or overly sensitive-- or anything like that. I think if something makes you uncomfortable, that is okay and I think it's perfectly fine to blacklist a tag that you don't want to see. I also think it's imperative that people tag things as accurately as they can so people looking at your work can know if one of your pieces has a thing that they don't like-- and therefore can avoid. What I don't appreciate is the fanhate for this ship that is sprouting up like weeds. You can not like something, you can be disgusted by it (I have my Gravity Falls ships I can not stand, nor do I feel comfortable with), but attacking real people for a FICTIONAL SHIP-- two characters who are drawings on a piece of paper and can not be affected mentally, physically or emotionally by fanwork; who still retain the same shape after everything we put them through-- to the point that you send death threats, or threaten to Doxx, or just harass relentlessly, I have always found that more childish and disgusting. You are causing real world pain to people. Me fucking up Dipper Pines is not going to do anything to him-- because he doesn't actually exist. He's a cartoon character. I could squash him and stretch him in Wonka's taffy machine--- I could throw him mock speed at a wall and watch him explode on impact-- but he still exists. He's not dead; I can pick him up and dust him off, and If I wanted-- I could decide that eh, 'Not a scratch on him'. And I'd be right. Because he is a cartoon character, and I am just a fangirl. I can not change anything about him-- I have no ability to make anything I headcanon canon. And even if I was the original artist-- it doesn't change the fact that Dipper would still be nothing more than a creation. A construct of shapes; he can not be hurt or traumatized in a way that leads to real life consequences-- because he is not real. I am not a cartoon character. My friends are not cartoon characters. Artist and Writers who stay in their lane...are not cartoon characters. If you hurt us...it will linger. It will leave a scar. If you can not tell the difference between Fiction and Reality, then I think maybe media might be too much to handle-- and I think you need to really reevaluate yourself.

And just to vent some other things that i keep seeing that are frustrating: You can't claim the twins are only 13-- and then on August 31st go "Happy 20-something Birthday Mabel and Dipper!" And then proceed to drop a picture of them as adults. Well which is it? Do they age or not? Because Gravity Falls showed them canonically aging. If you think the twins age-- then you can't suddenly turn around and go, 'no you can't ship them-- Dipper is a child!' but you drew him as an adult. So sorry, it looks like you can't draw the twins grown up anymore. You claimed they're 13, so better draw them 13 forever--. Aged up stories and works exist for a reason, especially for a fan who grew up on the series. The characters might have grown up alongside them. It's not unlikely for a person to ship Billdip when Dipper is much older.

And on that note, for people who are like 'well older billdip is fine-- it's just people shipping him during the show that deserve to die.' Okay... and like I said, this rant is coming from a recent influx of Billford shippers spitting on Billdip shippers. You know? The TOXIC Old Man Yaoi!

You're still shipping something that is problematic. You are still shipping something twisted and wrong. And I am not judging you. I am here for this divorced arc. I am thriving. But you can't just pick and choose what is and isn't okay. And let me first off explain; if there is something that personally triggers you about a toxic ship, and you want to avoid that-- again, perfectly understandable. Perfectly reasonable. You are the makers of your content space. And I am not judging anyone for that. I want people to be safe. I want people to have a good time in fandom spaces. I want people to not have to deal with the things that upset them or frighten them, or disgust them. But you can not say one is fine, and one is not. They're both bad! They're both toxic. In real life, these ships would both be charged with serious crimes! And yes, there are some crimes that are worse than others, and if you asked me what I thought was more problematic-- I'd say Billdip-- but both of these ships are extreme, and severe in their problematic content. You are still consuming problematic content. If it's a personal thing, that's fine; avoid it. But don't sit there throwing stones from your glass house.

[theshiftingwitch]

The ethical dilemma of permashifting

And other Shifttok shenanigans!

Despite the fact that Shifting is a centuries old practice across countries, religions, and peoples, it had gained a lot of fame through TikTok in 2020 due to the rise of Dracotok (thank you Harry Potter fandom!)

If you haven't seen that famous video of a creator coming back from an eight months shift to Hogwarts, then you have missed a big piece of Shifttok lore. However, that fame brought with it a lot of debates concerning the morality of Shifting as a practice, with people (young and old alike) declaring their own moral code as the one true religion for shifting. (sounds familiar? Bear with me.)

From the shifting police, to creators claiming their S/Os told them they would miss them once they shift back (*cough* Draco Malfoy *cough*) to people straight up lying about shifting for views, a lot of misinformation has been swimming around the Shifttok pool, threatening to drown baby shifters with it. Clones (not a thing), respawning (not what you think it is ) being kicked out of your dr... it was a mess. At one point, the majority of Shifttok has even unanimously agreed that permashifting is wrong and despicable, and you should never ever ever do it or else you're a terrible person.

What is permashifting? It is simply choosing a different reality to this one to shift to, and deciding to not shift back. That's it. That reality becomes your current reality or your original reality or whatever you want to call it, and your awareness shifts from there if it chooses to.

Your life here doesn't cease to exist. You don't die or end this version of reality and kill everyone else with you. You are simply not aware of what happens here anymore, and your current self continues to live as they were, and so does everyone else around you. No one will know you permashifted, because your soul and your consciousness are, in fact, not the same thing.

So why is everyone and their grandmother so against permashifting?

That's because, dear reader,(if you're still even here) those people are treating this reality as the end all be all to all realities. They believe this is the one true reality, and everything else is just a divergence, a self insert fanfic, or even worse, a fictional story for their own amusement. What some seem to not understand, is that all realities are equal, all planes of existence hold the same weight, and whatever reality you choose to be aware of does not determine whether you're a good or a bad person. It is simply a reality, and you are simply the awareness.

So why do we take the moral code of this reality and force it into the others? Why aren't you allowed to permashift and experience a reality where all of your dreams come to life? Why do you have to suffer in this one with a mere break here and there in your desired reality? Why can't you stay there and experience joy and happiness and love like you've never had in this one?

You can.

Permashifting is perfectly okay. You're not obligated to stay here simply because this happened to be the first reality you became aware of in this lifetime. You are allowed to experience whatever brings you joy and ease and peace and love across all realms and universes.

You don't have to limit yourself to the box this reality and its people are forcing on you. Just because you were born at a certain year here doesn't mean that's the only year you can be born in across ALL INFINITE REALITIES. Just because you are a certain race or ethnicity or gender here doesn't mean you have to be that exact same race, ethnicity, or gender across all universes. Just because you're human here doesn't mean you can't be anything else throughout time and space! And just because you were born here doesn't mean you have to stay here.

Everyone has an opinion, it doesn't mean every opinion is valid. And by all means, if you think this here (my opinion) is not valid, feel free to disregard it completely. However, know this:

You are limitless. Ageless. Bodiless. You are pure consciousness. You are the universe, and if this experience is not to your liking, you have the power to change it. Don't hold back.

Happy shifting ❤️

[snapscube]

In Dawntrail did you enjoy a different character playing the main role, or do you prefer when the player character is leading the narrative?

this is definitely a major point of contention in the fanbase rn and i can generally see valid feelings/criticism on both ends of the spectrum. i myself do fall somewhere in between the most extreme takes on this. i won't go into too much detail about actual events but ill tag this as spoilers anyway just in case. ok so my thoughts are:

firstly, i like Wuk Lamat a lot. i don't think she deserves even half of the pure unfiltered ire that she is receiving from a large subset of the community rn. the amount of people who have already turned being a wuk lamat hater into an advertised personality trait really frustrates me. i really enjoyed seeing her personal journey through the story and i was overall very satisfied by her inclusion. however, i do not think the story was perfectly paced or balanced, and i definitely do understand where people are coming from when they say that they could have used a little less of her in the forefront. honestly it did kind of ultimately disappoint me that we missed out on a lot of potential interaction/development with someone like Krile, who in spite of being promised a big breakout role in this expansion still somewhat felt like a SLIGHT (i have to stress slight) afterthought. she did get some notable moments of development and emotion, but i feel like there could have been more.

okay but, your question is about our role as a player in the narrative. i hold the opinion that for THIS EXPANSION SPECIFICALLY, the warrior of light taking somewhat of a narrative backseat actually made a ton of sense and fit the themes of the narrative as well as the promise of a somewhat breezy summer vacation for our heroes. now, i will say this: i really do not agree with the idea that the WoL should be in a mentor role indefinitely because our story is done developing and we need to give the spotlight to "the next generation" of heroes in the world. i appreciate the SENTIMENT of this, but like for me personally.... i don't want Pella's story to be done, yknow? i definitely would be disappointed if this was the DE FACTO role she played in every expansion past this. but i don't even think that is factually what's going to happen. we're currently in a setup phase! and, again, bringing it back to this narrative and the themes within, a lot of Dawntrail about the experience of entering unfamiliar places and learning about the customs and the traditions of people already within it to best help them without unwelcomely trampling on their culture in the process. i think a story like that is the PERFECT time for the WoL to take a bit of a backseat. wuk lamat is also somewhat unfamilar like us yes, but Tural is still her home and she is about to be tasked with leading it. i feel like centering our character in that equation would feel.... really disingenuous? it was kinda frustrating sometimes when it felt like hey.... there's a situation happening right now that can be solved by skilled combat and you have a literally god killer standing right here doing a frown emote, but at a certain point i could chalk it up to growing pains or necessary suspension of disbelief in the interest of the overall emotional hook of the narrative. a lot of those moments could be explained away with enough thought about the character motivations and culture at play, though sometimes it does feel like a stretch. again, far from a perfectly written MSQ. it starts slow and it's messy and it throws a LOT of stuff at you that doesn't always pay off like you expect or want. but i dunno! i think we're gonna see some really interesting stuff come to the forefront in the future, and i think especially now knowing that much of the playerbase thought we took TOO much of a backseat here CS3 will probably adjust their focus accordingly next time. so i can't be too upset really about the stuff i wasn't into. the rest of it was great imo!

[nekropsii]

Hello, pardon and I don’t want to be a bother but I would like to ask for your take on something. And if you’re not down to answer this question, that’s completely fine, you seem to make large opinion posts on a noteworthy basis so I understand if you don’t have the energy or motivation to give an opinion right now.

But I wanted to ask for your take on the ethics of enjoying Homestuck in the modern day. Many people such as myself and seemingly you as well enjoy Homestuck but are painfully aware of all the gross stuff in it. And as I see the comic pop up in more and more dni lists, with people claiming that enjoyers of Homestuck are supporting these things inherently, no matter the fact that most of us stand against Hussie and attempt to reclaim Homestuck as something to express joy and our identities in, it makes me wonder more and more the ethics of enjoying Homestuck. Since you seem to have thoughts on the matter, I was wondering if you’d like to share your take.

I once again want to stress though, absolutely no pressure to answer. I am not entitled to your time or hearing your opinion. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. I was just asking in case you wanted to speak about it.

Hi, Anon! This is a very interesting question, and you were right to assume I have thoughts on it. They might not be as long and complicated as some of my other essays, but they still exist, and I would quite like to share them. Thank you for the opportunity.

My opinion on The Ethics of Enjoying Homestuck is that I believe it's perfectly fine to do so. I also think it's perfectly fine to dislike, or hate, or not want to associate with it or any fans of it. This is a personal boundary set by and for the individual, and it's not my business to question, nor my place to cross it. However, I don't really agree with the way some people go about communicating or enforcing this boundary. I've seen some people put Homestuck and Harry Potter on the same level before. I've seen some say that enjoyment of either piece of fiction is, at least in part, comparable. I heavily disagree with this- and the fact that this is a point that comes up shows to me that there's quite a few people who don't actually fully understand why so many people are saying to stop supporting Harry Potter.

The conflation of the two things reads to me as if some believe that Harry Potter has been "cancelled for having a problematic creator"- and that's not wholly true. Yes, J.K. Rowling is, by definition, problematic, and she is the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, but people have drawn such a hard line against supporting the series not just because J.K. Rowling is Transphobic, but because she has honest to god legislative power. She is, as it stands, currently the backbone of the TERF movement, and is spending a lot of time and money to ensure that Transphobes dominate the government. Monetary support of Harry Potter pools into her funds, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. Communal/Fandom support of Harry Potter increases her visibility as a public figure, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. J.K. Rowling has made very clear statements saying that she takes any support of the Harry Potter franchise- any at all, including Queer/LGBT+ Friendly fan content- as support of her beliefs. Support of Harry Potter is a method of legitimizing and validating Transphobia, and is being used as a way to further Trans Genocide.

If J.K. Rowling was just an average Transphobe, the outcry would not be nearly as severe, and the line wouldn't be nearly as clear cut. It would just be disappointing, bring to mind the phrase "same shit as always", and many would make the personal choice to distance themselves from it. But that's not the reality we live in. We live in the reality where J.K. Rowling has sway on the government, and is getting real people hurt and killed.

Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, however, is just some random asshole with no political power outside of his own vote. Yes, Homestuck is filled with plenty of unsavory elements- random out-of-place interjections of Hussie's own past bigotry included- but at the end of the day, Homestuck has no influence over government action. Hussie has no tangible political influence, and does not want to have tangible political influence. We don't even have evidence that Hussie still holds the same beliefs as he did during and prior to the creation of Homestuck. This is just some random indie comic, made by some random guy in 2009. J.K. Rowling is dangerously close to billionaire status, and using that power for evil.

It's fine to like something that's not very morally clean- or something made by a not very morally clean artist, during a not very morally clean point in time in a not very morally clean place in this world. It's okay. The fixation some have on this is OCD-inducing. The best that can be asked is that one recognizes the bigotry, and doesn't perpetuate them. That's all. You can read, watch, play, and enjoy just about anything, as long as you don't make the more unsavory elements out to be a good thing. Don't start acting like Racism is awesome, or Antisemitism is cool, or Transphobia is based, et cetera, and you'll be totally fine.

The ability to find value in something impure or unsavory is a valuable one. Some may not want to associate with that, or find the particular flaw in the work in question to be too uncomfortable to stomach, and that's fine, too. Not everyone can just sit through Era-Appropriate Casual Homophobia or Racism and come out feeling fine enough to keep going. I'd argue- hope, even- that most feel at least a bit bothered by such things. It's all about personal tolerance levels. No one's committing a moral crime by either enjoying it or not wanting to even look at it.

[loquora]

I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) and their terrible, very bad, no good stance on genAI (generative artificial intelligence) and why I won't be writing anything for this challenge again.

I'm very aware that I am an active and vocal genAI hater. But I am willing and open to hear about positive and useful things LLMs (large language models) can do. There are valid scientific uses for the technology and some really fascinating medical and academic breakthroughs that come from LLMs. But the use of genAI in creative writing context is complete bullshit.

Come with me for the breakdown.

The first part of their statement:

NaNoWriMo has made it clear they are not just tolerating genAI in their month long writing challenge, but that those of us who don't are 'classist' and 'ableist' because we don't.

The post was later amended with a list of reasons why they make each of those claims. We'll start from the top.

GenAI uses the technology in a way that is morally, ethically and environmentally bankrupt. See, all LLMs have to train on something. When you're using it to, say, detect cancers you can feed it images of cancer scans so that it builds up a dataset of what those look like to predict future scans. But when you want to generate text, images and video you have to feed it text, images and video. Those things came from people, actual people and actual artists who overwhelmingly did not agree to train anything with their work and can no longer wrest their work from the machine now that it's been stolen from them.

It also isn't 'intelligent' at all, considering it has that word in the name. Think of genAI like an alien learning our language with absolutely no frame of reference for what it's learning. It can predict that the letters "w-e" and "c-a-n" often come after the letters "y-e-s" because the phrase "yes we can" will come up often in training data, it's a common phrase. But it doesn't actually understand what any of those words MEAN. Just that they often follow one another so that when prompted it will, statistically, try put those letters and words together again.

So when it comes to actually writing or responding to prompts what you're getting is the most likely outcome based on a massive amount of data input. It is not actually giving you feedback on what your writing looks like, it's giving you the most statistically possible response based on input. It's fake feedback, a thousand other feedbacks crammed together and extruded into a goo that looks and sounds like feedback but is actually meaningless. ChatGPT doesn't understand your writing sample anymore than a phone tree understands your anger and desperation when you continue to say "OPERATOR" as clearly as you can to try to get through to a real human. Both understand you input a word and will output based on that, but context, emotions, cultural mores etc. are all beyond it.

This is why AI is so absurdly shitty at things like math, counting letters in words and identifying words that start with the same letter. It's mashing together a million math problem answers betting on the likelihood that statistically someone has already answered that question enough times in the training data that it can spit the correct answer out at you.

TLDR: If you're using genAI to get feedback on your writing you're not actually getting feedback on your writing at all, but the most statistically probable set of words that relate to feedback. So right off the bat the idea that genAI is going to help you be a better writer is just flat wrong. It doesn't know how to write, it doesn't even know how many Rs are in the word 'strawberry'.

Second point has the same issues as the first:

I actually agree with them on the point that if your brain doesn't handle certain writer activities well it's perfectly okay to use an outside source for help with it. GenAI isn't actually helping you be a better writer, though; it can't. It doesn't understand anything you write nor can it provide meaningful feedback when it's just spitting out statistically probably words to you based on your input. So while the point here is actually good on the surface, the solution of using genAI to help people who have trouble with certain aspects of writing is still not correct.

The final point:

Again, this is a very good point... if it wasn't being made in conjunction with a defense of generative AI WHICH DOES NOT HELP OR SOLVE THIS ISSUE. In fact, because of the known issues of bias in how genAI LLMs are built they can make issues for marginalized writers worse.

I genuinely have no idea how this very true paragraph about people who are routinely pushed out of traditional writing spaces is helped by genAI. Their entire point thus far seems to be that genAI is a 'cheap' alternative to some traditional writing aids but considering genAI doesn't work like that it's all dead in the water as far as I'm concerned.

If NaNoWriMo was actually concerned with solving these access issues to things they consider critical to writing in general, why not offer a place for real people to read and critique one another on their platform? There are myriad other technological solutions that don't cost huge amounts of water AND actually help aspiring writers!

All of this to say that you should write for yourself, write what you enjoy and get better the same way generations of people before you have: by reading other people's work, talking to and exchanging time with other authors and writing and rewriting in your own words until you're satisfied.

Wasting water asking genAI to do things for you that would make you a better writer to do yourself or with trusted allies is just that, a waste.

[ot3]

pretty long meandering post here just talking through some thoughts about the late game arizona progressive endorsement for kamala

i find it really fascinatingly racist the way certain people took the letter from local arab/muslim leaders in arizona endorsing kamala's campaign and decided that mean they now had 'palestinians want you to vote for kamala' as a hammer they could deploy in a world full of nails. to be clear i don't think this endorsement was meaningless at all and the opinions of these people are certainly worth considering. especially for swing state voters, who were the target audience here.

but i saw people responding to fucking bisan's on-the-ground video of people in gaza saying the election results made no difference to them with sentiment along the lines of 'don't believe this video,, its disinformation, palestinians want you to vote for harris' and i can only assume it's because none of them actually read the letter. they just saw headlines like this one and decided that absolved them of any need to own their own decisionmaking at this time

now clearly the palestinian people are not a monolith, and palestinians currently living in gaza and suffering through a genocide vs those living in the US in a swing state are going to have different priorities vis a vis this election. i don't think acknowledging that in any way diminishes the validity of either group's opinion, and it's absolutely not my place to critique the way these various communities are choosing to respond to kamala's stance on israel. so it really disgusts me to watch mainly white liberals act like this specific group of people discussing the specific political context they currently exist in represents the complete and collective will of the palestinian people, just because doing so happens to support their political goals. i don't know man i think the second you start talking about an entire nationality of people as if they have the same political opinions you've already lost!

the reason i say i don't think most of these people read the letter, beyond the fact that i've yet to see anyone discuss the specifics of it, is because the letter does go out of its way to acknowledge potential strategic benefits of 3rd party votes in the 43 other states that aren't going to be the deciding factor. i know this is not sentiment that the average voteblue liberal agrees with.

anyway. there's not really a conclusion to be had here other than i think we're going to see a lot of vitriol directed towards third party votes in the immediate future. we saw similar sentiment after the 2016 election; people were INCREDIBLY quick to say that the reason donald trump won was because not enough people showed up for hillary. people are still saying that, as a matter of fact.

as i and many other people have been pointing out for the past eight years, hillary won the popular vote by a margin of several million, and still lost. at that scale you simply can not blame things on voter turnout. i don't really know what to say at that point. trump's 2016 victory really just pitch perfectly illustrated in a way too blatant to ignore that the US presidential election does not represent the will of the public. but people will do literally anything to keep viewing the state of US politics as a result of people Voting Wrong and Being Too Stupid To Understand What's At Stake

as always, we are not allowed to hold the democrats accountable for delivering nothing to their constituents, but we can hold the constituents responsible for not showing up like loyal dogs to beg for whatever table scraps harris's campaign vaguely pretended to offer us. surely this strategy will work in 2028! see you all then.

[thejagermeister]

this might be a controversial opinion so i will preface by saying that max is one of my favorite characters in hatchetfield and i love him very much. however

i think some folks take parts of his canon characterization (namely, his emotional intelligence and the fact that he acts kinda sweet after the prank reveal) and their neurodivergent/queer/etc headcanons (which are perfectly valid! i am an "autistic trans girl max" guy through and through) and arrive to the conclusion that max wasn't actually that bad of a bully.

as in, he didn't bully the nerds for showing queer/nd traits, he bullied them for other reasons. but like. what other reasons would he have.

like sure, he flick-it tickets richie for being in his hallway, but that's because richie "stinks the place up," and max doesn't want that in his space. richie's self-proclaimed overactive sweat glands are either a health issue or a nd hygiene issue or a combination of both.

he targets pete because of the rumor that he has a small dick. some folks use this as evidence for trans pete (i wholeheartedly agree) but even if you don't consider it from that angle, it's still body-shaming.

ghost!max makes fun of ruth for daring to engage with her dream hobby in privacy. he makes pun after pun about theatre to rub it in. the whole point of bullying is to isolate people who are different, whether they're nd, queer, poor, people of color, disabled, etc...

the takeaway from the "difference between intent and impact" scene is that he uses his emotional intelligence and "inclusive" vocabulary to manipulate people, not that he actually learns anything about inclusion. he'd know what transgender means and would probably say he isn't transphobic, use all the "right" language, but then turn around and make fun of pete for his body.

the "bully uses victim's preferred pronoun!" memes are funny and i'm not trying to police anyone's fandom experience by saying you can't talk about max like that. softening his harsher traits in fanfic where the focus isn't on a max redemption isn't like, a crime. do whatever you want. but sometimes i get the feeling people straight-up forget the way he acts towards the nerds in canon.

to me, the appeal of a max redemption arc is that he goes from a terrible, cruel, arguably traumatized person, to someone who's willing to learn from his mistakes and make amends. not that he was already kind of an okay guy to begin with.

[sleepwithgiggli]

What Are Post-Hypnotic Suggestions?

There's an idea that a hypnotist can put you in a trance, then give you a suggestion to cluck like a chicken, forget a number when counting your fingers, or orgasm when they say the word.

These are things that can and do happen, but such suggestions are not as mysterious or magical as they seem.

What is a Suggestion?

Imagine you have a friend over. You are eating together and they say "pass the salt". You then realise you have passed them the salt without thinking about it.

Or you are watching TV and your dad says, "Give me the remote," and you think, "Not this time! I'm going to change the channel dammit" and after a little internal struggle, you reluctantly pass them the remote.

In both of these cases, and countless others, you responded to a suggestion.

You might reject this idea - "These aren't suggestions, I did what I wanted to do!" There are at least two misunderstandings in this statement. First, the easy one:

Whenever you respond to a suggestion, you are doing what you want to do. When a hypnotist gives you the suggestion to cluck like a chicken, at that moment you wanted to please them or the audience, and accepted the suggestion.

This opens the question of what does you mean in the statement, "what you wanted to do". It's really not as straightfoward as it appears, but just accept it for now. (That might be a suggestion.)

Authority and Suggestions

Secondly, a suggestion is not some magical command (well, at least it doesn't have to be). It can be something extremely mundane. There's a statement: "Hypnosis cannot make you do anything that you would not already do through persuasion."

Remember that statement, and think about what it means. It appears to be talking about hypnosis, but it is also talking about persuasion and everything associated with it, and also of free will.

When Suggestions Don't Work

You can refuse a suggestion. Many people think post-hypnotic suggestions don't work on them because it doesn't feel like that are being forced to do something. They think the suggestion hasn't worked, so they unconsciously refuse it, and it doesn't work. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Suggestions can be that fragile.

Suggestions can look magical (having a trigger to orgasm on command can feel pretty magical!) but they really aren't - they are just the normal functioning of the brain.

Here's another slightly esoteric example. Imagine you are in a BDSM relationship and are out to lunch with your dominant. While eating, they tell you, "Go to the restroom, take off your panties, and when you return, hand them over to me, my pet".

You might decide, "I'm not doing that, that's kind of sexual and we agreed not to do anythign sexual."

Or you might find yourself doing it, and feeling embarrassed about it, but you have agreed to obey, and feel kinda compelled to do it.

Or you might do it because you have an exhibitionist streak, and you really didn't need the dominant to instruct you - you love it anyway.

Now imagine that dominant was also a hypnotist and earlier gave you the post-hypnotic suggestion, "When I give you a command ending with the word pet, you will be unable to resist. You will obey."

With all these in mind, which of the above responses was an appropriate response to this post-hypnotic suggestion: 1, 2, or 3 ?

The correct answer is all of them.

Take #2 for example. You might respond because the post-hypnotic suggestion is that strong, or you might respond because you have accepted the dominant's authority over you and don't want to displease them - their authority compels you.

But also look at #1: refusing a suggestion is a perfectly valid response to a suggestion. We might sometimes wish otherwise, but hypnosis is not mind-control.

And for #3, the dominant's suggestion might just give you permission to do what you wanted to do anyway. Perhaps you felt inhibitions were stopping you, but now you are unleashed.

Also, imagine: if you do as commanded, how do you know you were not following a suggestion?

The Limits of a Suggestion

Whenever you accept a suggestion, you are accepting the authority of someone else in a context where it's appropriate to accept that suggestion.

Look again at the moment where you are enjoying a meal with a friend and they ask you to pass the salt. In that context, you might pass them the salt without thinking about it. Because that's a situation where you are already conditioned to do that kind of thing, so you don't think about it.

In another situation, you might look at them weirdly and say, "What?"

Your mind is full of suggestions that you just aren't aware of, that are triggered under certain situations and in certain context. You can always refuse them, but you may feel it's wrong to do so without really understanding why (that example of giving the remote to a parent who is overbearing about the TV remote highlights this sense of wrongness perfectly).

When a hypnotist gives you a hypnotic suggestion, all they are doing is adding to the suggestions you already have in your mind. The trance creates a context for you to accept such suggestions, so you do - if you are so inclined.

Lots of things can interfere with this process. First, you have to believe that it's possible. And you also need to trust the hypnotist. (This might exist in different degrees: you might trust a hypnotist to give you suggestions regrding what you wear or whether you do acceptable things in front of a live audience, but you might not trust them - or yourself - to do "naughty" things with you in private).

Final Thoughts (For Now)

There's a lot more that can be said about suggestions, like how and why reinforcement is sometimes necessary, and when it isn't, and what shape it takes.

But this post is already long enough for now. The main point is, suggestions are not as strange as you might think. They are a natural part of life, and hypnosis is simply hijacking a very normal behaviour.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Ok. It's pretty clear you are more welcoming of AI, and it does have enough merits to not be given a knee jerk reaction outright.

And how the current anti-ai stealing programs could be misused.

But isn't so much of the models built on stolen art? That is one of the big thing keeping me from freely enjoying it.

The stolen art is a thing that needs to be addressed.

Though i agree that the ways that such addressing are being done in are not ideal. Counterproductive even.

I could make a quip here and be like "stolen art??? But the art is all still there, and it looks fine to me!" And that would be a salient point about the silliness of digital theft as a concept, but I know that wouldn't actually address your point because what you're actually talking about is art appropriation by generative AI models.

But the thing is that generative AI models don't really do that, either. They train on publicly posted images and derive a sort of metadata - more specifically, they build a feature space mapping out different visual concepts together with text that refers to them. This is then used at the generative stage in order to produce new images based on the denoising predictions of that abstract feature model. No output is created that hasn't gone through that multi-stage level of abstraction from the training data, and none of the original training images are directly used at all.

Due to various flaws in the process, you can sometimes get a model to output images extremely similar to particular training images, and it is also possible to get a model to pastiche a particular artist's work or style, but this is something that humans can also do and is a problem with the individual image that has been created, rather than the process in general.

Training an AI model is pretty clearly fair use, because you're not even really re-using the training images - you're deriving metadata that describes them, and using them to build new images. This is far more comparable to the process by which human artists learn concepts than the weird sort of "theft collage" that people seem to be convinced is going on. In many cases, the much larger training corpus of generative AI models means that an output will be far more abstracted from any identifiable source data (source data in fact is usually not identifiable) than a human being drawing from a reference, something we all agree is perfectly fine!

The only difference is that the AI process is happening in a computer with tangible data, and is therefore quantifiable. This seems to convince people that it is in some way more ontologically derivative than any other artistic process, because computers are assumed to be copying whereas the human brain can impart its own mystical juju of originality.

I'm a materialist and think this is very silly. The valid concerns around AI are to do with how society is unprepared for increased automation, but that's an entirely different conversation from the art theft one, and the latter actively distracts from the former. The complete refusal from some people to even engage with AI's existence out of disgust also makes it harder to solve the real problem around its implementation.

This sucks, because for a lot of people it's not really about copyright or intellectual property anyway. It's about that automation threat, and a sort of human condition anxiety about being supplanted and replaced by automation. That's a whole mess of emotions and genuine labour concerns that we need to work through and break down and resolve, but reactionary egg-throwing at all things related to machine learning is counterproductive to that, as is reading out legal mantras paraphrasing megacorps looking to expand copyright law to over shit like "art style".

I've spoken about this more elsewhere if you look at my blog's AI tag.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Genuinely trying to understand why a gay person would be supporting the party you do.

Not American myself but from what I understand there’s a lot of homophobia there.

It doesn’t look like Democrats are perfect either but at least less hostile to gays?

I'll dispense with my usual "Shut the fuck up European" image response because you do actually seem genuine, so here's my genuine answer.

Yeah, there's some homophobia on the right. Some. It's nowhere near what the media would have you believe. But there's homophobia on the left, too. The left just has the media and their ability to shape a narrative on their side. The worst thing I've had said to me by someone on the right was that they don't support gay marriage and think its a sin. Or that they think gay sex is disgusting. And that's fine. I don't like hearing about certain sexual acts myself and find them gross and weird. I don't need anyone else to approve or support my sex life.

And as for the part about gay marriage, I understand where most of them are coming from when they say that, too. They truly feel that their religious beliefs are under attack and that religious marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman. But even many of those people will say that they don't really care if gays get legally married as long as there's some differentiation between the religious ceremony of marriage, and the legal institution of marriage, which are two different things. I personally don't need anyone to validate my marriage but me and my husband. I don't care if it's legally recognized. I don't care if it's recognized by any particular church. My marriage and my relationships are my own personal business. And there are a lot of people on the right who feel the exact same way.

So, that's the worst I've gotten from the right. Let's talk about the worst I've gotten from the supposedly gay friendly left. The following is not a complete list, but here's some of the things that I've been told by Democrats and other leftists when they find out I'm a gay right winger, both online and offline:

Kill yourself

Die faggot

You should be gay bashed

I hope you get raped by a closeted Republican politician

I hope your dog dies

Kill yourself

You're a traitor to all gay people

Kill yourself with one of those guns you love

I hope you get cancer and die horribly

I hope your husband dies

You should be sent to a concentration camp

Kill yourself

and basically every anti-gay slur you can possibly think of

That's what I get from the left, from other gay people, when they find out I vote differently then they do. Just based on these anecdotal experiences with the American right and the American left, I think it's pretty clear why I find myself on one side and not the other.

But!

I'm not a one issue voter. Gay issues are mostly meaningless to me. What I care about are personal freedoms, protecting my rights, and the success of my country on the world stage. Currently, the American right aligns with those beliefs way more than the left. That's not to say the Republican Party always aligns perfectly with what I want or believe, but the reality is we live in a two party system. Until enough of us get together and make a nationally viable third party, if the choice in presidential elections is between one party that I almost never agree with and whose stated goals are to violate my rights and destroy everything I love about America, and one party that does what I voted for them to do around half the time, of course I'm voting for the second party nationally.

Locally it can be a bit different. It's easier to effect local elections and policies just by being active, and in geographically close areas the differences between the people running for town council might not be as wide as two people running for president nationally, so I won't just vote the R party line by default. I've voted libertarian locally before. Hell, I even voted Democrat once. But, for the most part, it's the Republicans who I feel will do what I think should be done more than the other parties. And that's why I vote for them, and why I'm a registered Republican. Well, that and I want to be able to vote in the Republican primaries.

[galedekarios]

your tags on my ea gale clip sum up really well something i've been thinking about for a while now! even on full release, it seems to me like a big part of the hate gale gets stems from people's insecurity; he kind of disrupts this power fantasy some people seem to desire where they have to be the most cool and capable person on the team. gale is more knowledgeable than the player about certain magic-related things, was very powerful before being tadpoled, has a close association with a goddess, etc. and he isn't exactly humble or shy about boasting about his magic skills. so then a lot of people instantly get defensive over their own character's capabilities and dislike him because of that. that's what i think, anyway.

i couldn't agree more, really!

it's strange to see just how much larian has toned down this aspect of gale from early access to full release to the point of changing his introduction scene entirely from being extremely capable and saving himself to being a damsel in distress (with the added bonus of adding in even more options to kill him than there were in early access, which is yet another can of worms entirely imo, esp considering that they removed a perfectly valid rp option for a certain companion on a certain beach).

i'm not saying i don't like the new introduction scene. i do! it's sweet, it's very cute, but it's also very, very different and i think we can make a fair assumption as to why it was changed.

it doesn't seem to have helped much tho because even now people have an issue with the fact that a wizard prodigy, graduate of blackstaff academy, mentee of elminster, archwizard of waterdeep and (ex) chosen of mystra knows more about magic and other related academic pursuits than they do/their player character does.

be it asking them if they're versed in magic, which is still clearly done to suss out if he found someone capable of dealing with the orb, or the amount of times i've seen people either peacock or complain about the cleansing of the ritual circle in balthazar's room.

again, it's just so weird to me, personally, considering gale makes it clear that dealing with such dark magic was his bread and butter as a chosen. it's natural he would see himself as most qualified to ensure it's safely rendered inert.

it's not bratty, it's not arrogant, it's not bullying, it's not talking down to you or your character.

it's simply a fact.