#I am not looking for criticism on this post

[inhogf]

Gong Yoo nsfw headcanons ♡

· contains: purely nsfw, gun-play, he has a thing for your period UMM · note: its like 5 am but i HAD to post this

·⠀The Salesman/Gong Yoo's not the type to call you ‘baby, princess, honey’ during sex. no; his dignity is higher than that. he'd be more of a name user or would call you his ‘slut, whore, bitch’.

·⠀barely has personal preference for positions, as long as he’s in full control. just as eager to have you ride him as he is to flip you over. just as long as he's inside you. big fan of face fucking though! holds your hair as you're doing it :3

·⠀has a libido bigger than his dick. practically using you almost every night as his sex doll; his stress relieve toy. makes sure to use you till the last drop when he finally gets his hands on you, due to the disappointingly lack of free time to sate his urges w/ you. has a shocking amount of stamina too :3. he definitely initiates things more than you do. he's suuuchhh a horny little boy for you OMDSSSS.

·⠀not a surprise but he's totally into gun play— fucks u w/ his glock, adoring the expression you make as he thrusts every single length of the gun into your pussy. holds his gun against your temple as he makes you bounce on his dick, getting off to your increasing fear. may even shoot a single bullet across the room to show you that the one against your skull is still functional and still a threat to your well-being.

·⠀i feel like he'd have a fetish for periods. doesn't like eating you out but as soon as he finds out you're menstruating, he'd BEG you to let him give you head and always find a way into your pants strategically. keeps a tight grip on your waist to hold you against his mouth ♡ & the mere smell of your blood is enough to get his dick sprung up.

·⠀this MIGHT be controversial but he'd be the type to beg you to send him nudes of your bare body. especially when he's out at work. his gallery is all pictures of your body and he's always shamelessly scrolling through them— palming away vigorously at his dick, wishing it was your mouth wrapped around his tip instead.

·⠀he's 100% a moaner. not high and squeaky moans, low ones; groans low enough only for you to hear. very vocal and mouthy, he's not scared to let you know how much of a good job you're doing, how pretty and fuckable you look doing it.

·⠀he's sooo harsh with you, spanking you on your plump ass until there's a visible red handprint, manhandling your hips off the bed to get a good angle to fuck, slapping your face every chance he gets. he's so mean.

·⠀he's big on degrading, is talking shit any chance he gets. “you can't even take me properly, useless little thing.“ and he's soo mean and criticizes every move you make. by the end of it all you’ll be nodding with tears streaming down your face (he gets off to it), lost to the pleasure he’s giving you and only able to apologise for being such a pathetic and stupid little baby!

·⠀owns multiple toys— gags (dog bone gags to be specific), ropes, blindfolds, vibrators, beads, dildos, you name it. he's a spender. ties you up with his ropes to feel the control that he craves so much.

cr @inhogf dont steal

[southpauz]

I am genuinely frightened for the future of America, its people, and every other country that America imposes itself upon.

Trump's administration falls under literally EVERY defining characteristic of Fascism.

Far-right conservatives have completely overtaken our mainstream media, forcibly silenced them, or bought them out so they can praise and sane-wash Trump over fear of retribution.

His administration is owned by the ultra wealthy who control all of our social media apps/sites. Every large corporation owner was in attendance at Trump's inauguration, sitting in FRONT of his cabinet. Tiktok is spreading pro-Trump propaganda, Zuckerberg intends to "remove factchecking" from Meta platforms (like Facebook and Instagram itself), and Bill Gates just said he had a fascinating talk with Trump recently and was impressed by him.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought Twitter and completely turned it into an alt-right misinformation machine that spews hatred over diversity and acceptance and directly impacted people's impression of the election which lead to Trump's victory. He changed the algorithm on Twitter to boost nazi, transphobic, racist rhetoric alongside retreating similar posts to his audience and changed the algorithm to suppress democratic posts.

After Trump's inauguration Elon was on stage and he gave an enthusiastic NAZI SALUTE. TWICE. ON TELEVISION.

They're targeting our education to keep us dumb and complacent little worker bees so we don't learn how to critically think and see through the propaganda and lies they spew.

They are targeting minorities, especially the trans community and undocumented immigrants, to make people fight a different "enemy" than the people ACTUALLY harming them: the 1%.

They are targeting women's right to their own bodily autonomy in order to keep making sure they keep having worker bees to keep making them more money and to foster a disdain for human rights in our population by linking our government to evangelical Christian morals.

We are in danger.

Please do your proper research and make sure you take your information from multiple sources, including primary sources like court and governmental documents, to prevent bias.

Please look into local programs, volunteer opportunities, and social gathering events so you can get to know your community better and help build more solidarity and safety.

Please keep your eyes open to help your neighbor who may be targeted by this administration. Make sure to should "LA MIGRA" if you spot any ICE vehicles to alert your undocumented friends and neighbors, and remember that police can't come into your home without a warrant and you have the right to remain silent.

Most importantly: DO NOT GIVE UP. It feels so hopeless, but the only thing that can make it worse is if we give up. Becoming compliant in advance only speeds up fascist takeovers.

Resist. Be careful. Care for one another. I love you guys.

Unless you voted for or currently support Trump. Go fuck yourselves you pieces of shit.

[ms-demeanor]

Great question! This is legitimately an important thing to ask when you're presented with advice online.

Some tips for when you see instructions/a how-to/educational guide online and you aren't sure if you should trust the source:

Find out what else the author has done; you can do this by searching their name online or by following the links they may have attached to their writing. In my case, I've got information about myself in my pinned post which includes links to previous guides I've written on a variety of subjects - including tech-related subjects - and a link to my personal website that you can investigate.

Find out what experience the author has in the field being discussed. During the height of the pandemic we saw how important this was, because there were often GPs and nurses giving advice that contradicted the information shared by virologists and infectious disease specialists. It's not just important that someone presenting information is knowledgeable about one subject, it's worthwhile to find out if they're specifically knowledgeable about the subject they're talking about. To find this kind of information you'd want to look into a writer's history; check their publication history by searching their name on the site you found their writing on (so if it's a magazine click the author bio, if it's a journal search research databases). On tumblr you can click through someone's archive or you can run their handle through the jetblackcode tool to see what their most popular posts are about. I try to make this easy, so I (again) link a bunch of posts in my pinned. Tumblr search is notoriously terrible, but you can also search keywords on someone's blog (and it's a good idea to do this on anyone's personal website if you're following up about something they've read online). Personally, I have a long history of posting about various kinds of scams (medical and pseudoscience scams, as well as email and phone-based scams) and social engineering; you can find this in my archive but also in some of the many sideblogs I list in my pinned.

Think critically about the information being presented. Ask yourself: - If this information is incorrect, how could it cause harm? - If it does do harm, WHO would it harm? - Who is this information aimed at? - Does it seek to change someone's behavior? How?

Fact-check the information yourself. If something stands out as sounding wrong or incorrect to you, or if it is directly counter to something else you've learned, do some research.

Compare the information presented to what other writers in the field have to say. If the information is way out of line with other writing in the field is there a reason why (is it highly contextual? based on new research? predicated on an unusual behavior) and if so is that reason explained?

Do exactly what you've done here and ask questions. People who are operating in good faith generally don't mind being questioned about their work and why they did it. (They won't always have time to answer, but they should at least be *open* to being questioned)

Anyway, the 30-second answer on why you should trust me specifically on this topic: I am a tech professional who has spent 13 years educating people on how to avoid being scammed online as part of my job. I also have a background in journalism and have a great deal of interest in increasing media literacy in general; I consider this kind of thing an aspect of media literacy.

How to avoid sharing Social Media Scams in the Wake of a Disaster

The world is full of disasters. It is also full of people who have learned to profit off of disaster. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the modern social media/online environment that in order to avoid spreading scams, you have to make a continuous effort and you have to be cynical.

There are a lot of wonderful, well-meaning people in the world who want to help everyone who asks for it. Unfortunately, those people are easy to scam.

These are some rules to prevent you from either falling victim to scams or from passing scams along to other people.

These are not suggestions, these are not things to take into consideration, the rules listed here are RULES that you need to adopt in order to keep from spreading scams on social media.

Rules:

Never, ever share screenshots of fundraisers or resources that you haven’t verified yourself. If you see a screenshot of, say, the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds Instagram announcing that they will be accepting evacuees with RVs, you go find the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds website, you find the social media linked on their website, and you check that the post you’re seeing actually came from the entity it’s claiming to. Once you have proved that the post actually came from the entity it’s claiming to, double check that entity with a couple of verifiable sources. So, for instance, if I was checking on the Guitar Center Music Foundation I’d check Guitar Center’s website and maybe I’d look for news articles about donations from the foundation. If I was looking up the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds, I’d look for a local newspaper calendar of events that linked to the fairgrounds or would check the city websites in the area and search “fairgrounds” on them. I would not share a link to a social media page for an organization until I was 100% certain that it was actually associated with the organization. You shouldn’t either. If you see a post that claims to come from a specific group but all you have is the screenshot of the post, go find the group’s website and if it all checks out you may share it IF AND ONLY IF you add the link to the post. And if a post has a link already, click through it and STILL check that everything looks okay.

Never give money or information to someone with a free email address. This sucks. I know. But if the group you’re looking at only has a gmail address or a protonmail you have no way of knowing if they’re legitimately associated with the organization at a glance. And even if they ARE associated with the organization, the free email account demonstrates a lack of planning/commitment that has troubling implications for the handling of your money or data.

Do not share screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. I’m done with screenshots. Screenshots are easy to fake and almost always remove context from the discussion. A standalone screenshot isn’t information, it’s a trap to get you to share something without thinking. Do not *trust* screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. Always assume a screenshot is faked unless you have found the original post yourself. A screenshot isn’t a “resource” it is an un-source, it is intentionally removing information from the viewer and we are well past the time when people should have understood that sharing screenshots without a link to the original text in context is never, every trustworthy.

Do not give money or information to accounts without a history. This may mean individual social media accounts, or it may mean a shiny new mutual aid project that popped up near your house. It’s unfortunate that people have their accounts deleted, it’s unfortunate that new orgs have trouble finding support, but the likelihood that a new account is a scam is simply too high to trust your money or information with it. If someone is asking for money or offering help on an account that hasn’t posted for years, or that suddenly changed all its content, or that has only existed for a month with no links to other, older sites and socials, you shouldn’t trust that account.

Okay, those are the RULES. Those are the lines you draw in the sand. The TL;DR version is this:

Don’t share posts you haven’t personally verified

Don’t give money or information to accounts with generic email accounts like gmail

Don’t share or trust screenshots that have no links or further context

Don’t give info or money to brand new accounts

I absolve you of any guilt you have surrounding this. You want to share that post to help a stranger but they have only had an account for a week. You want to spread that resource, but unfortunately it is only available as screenshots of an anonymous instagram account. You think that perhaps that mutual aid group really can help people, but the only way contact them is to put your info into a google form and send an email to their gmail account. That post seems really helpful, but actually you can’t find anything that suggests that the Mt. Pacifico Aquatic Center exists outside of this twitter account. No more guilt! Guilt be gone! You do not have to feel bad for not sharing these things, or not reaching out, or not giving money because doing so would be irresponsible and would put other people at risk of being tricked by scammers or wasting what money they can donate on a potential fraud.

Now, some tips:

Always, always, always take at least ten minutes to think about giving someone money or your information online. Read the post that moved you, then re-read it, then go sit away from it for ten minutes and think about it. There’s a good chance you will still want to give, or sign up, but ten minutes away will give you a chance to consider if there are any red flags in the post that inspired you.

Independently search everything you’re going to share. Go outside of social platforms and check on search engines. Check Wikipedia. Look up the website and send a while clicking around. Go on a *different* social media platform and check their account.

Just straight up search “[SUBJECT] Scam” before you do anything. See if this thing you’re looking at is actually an old scam that’s revamped for a new disaster. See if you can find an explanation of how something might be a scam or risk in a way that you didn’t understand before.

Get used to getting away from social media. Go check websites.

Learn domain name syntax. “musicfoundationguit.arcenter.com” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenterfounditaon.org” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenter-foundation.org” is a bullshit scam. The actual domain is “guitarcenterfoundation.org” and the link to the correct page isn’t going to be “guitarcenter.foundationfires.org” it’s going to be “guitarcenterfoundation.org/fires”  

Tips for Orgs:

If you do not want your org to look like a scam you are going to have to put some effort into it. Unfortunately this will probably also require at least a little bit of money; I know it’s hard to get money together at the beginning, but it will pay off in the long run.

Invest in a domain and hosted email. You can get relatively inexpensive hosted email through most domain registrars and even if you only get one email address for your domain you can forward it to all the free gmail and protonmail accounts you want. But buy a domain, set up a simple website, and get an  info@[yourdomain].com email set up because you don’t want people emailing “MyOrgInfo@gmail.com” because it’s super fucking easy for a 1337 hax0r like me to set up “YourOrgTeam@gmail.com” and scam the people who want to reach out to you.

Make a blog on your actual website, not on a social media site. A blog means that you can make regular posts and establish a history to prove that you are real and you do real stuff; it will also help with SEO and help to ensure that when people search for your org YOU are what comes up. Keeping up calendars of previous activities with links to those activities is also good.

Set up social handles on all the sites you use, make a “socials” page on your website, and link to your handles so that people can verify if you’re the one posting something. If you don’t make it extremely easy to find your socials, that means it’s extremely easy to set up fake accounts claiming to be you. Then put the link to your website in the bio on your socials.

If you are offering something or holding a fundraiser or doing anything on your social media page, link it back to your website. If you have an IG post offering resources, you should include a url for your site in each image. If you share a photo on twitter with the info for a march, that should link back to your website with more info about the march. If you post a fundraiser on tumblr you need to link the fundraising page of your website on that post.

If you absolutely positively cannot set up a website and a real-ass email address, set up a linktree, choose a primary social media to post on that all the others refer back to, and very explicitly state what your email address is and that you do not have other email addresses somewhere that's difficult to miss. Build a history of posts and link to other orgs that you work with or any writeups or stories about your events or projects. The point of all of this is making yourself easy to verify. "northfullertonfnb@gmail.com" sucks but it sucks a lot less if it's in the bio of "@northfulltertonfnb" and that page has a two year history of posting meal share schedules and menus.

In conclusion, don't share things that you haven't personally checked. When in doubt, it is always safer not to share.

[worlds-worst-ships]

Do you seriously, actually ship it?

Okay. Lets talk. Because apparently some of you are defending... well... "that" (under the cut)

"He's autistic! It was a stim!"

If you genuinely think that this has ANYTHING to do with autism, you are an objectively stupid person. Like, your brain is so fucking smooth, it puts the surface of freshly tempered glass to shame. You're a barely functional reprobate with subhuman intelligence who has no idea how to form thoughts so you let a 50 year old billionaire who spends too much time on his phone decide your thought process for you.

"He was throwing his heart out to the crowd!"

Now, I don't really play baseball, basketball, netball, or any sport where you throw anything other than sometimes darts, but... is that how you throw? You perfectly extend your arm at that angle? Twice? After spending years posting tweets that very much align with Nazi viewpoints? Do you throw a pitch in baseball and scream SIEG HEIL as the ball hurtles towards your opponent? No. Stop being a fucking idiot. This was deliberate. He did it twice.

"He's autistic! He doesn't know better!"

Please comment if you actually think this so I can personally call you a stupid cunt and block you. We absolutely do know better. Autism and Nazism aren't mutually exclusive.

"You're inhibiting his free speech!"

1st amendment only applies to censorship from government positions of power, which I am not, as should be obvious from the fact that I have no power to censor him. Though I shouldn't have to explain that.

"Well, he's gonna get away with it so stop being so sensitive!"

Yes. He is. But that's not a flex, that's A FUCKING MASSIVE PROBLEM. Call me sensitive if you want, but absolutely every single one of you should be offended by this. Did you pay attention in history class, or were you too tired after a long night of being fucking railed raw and bone dry by propaganda on Twitter? Moron.

"Well, he's rich and you're not, so there!"

Yep. Got me there. He's rich, and I'm not. Yknow, Hitler and a lot of Nazi officers were pretty minted too. So was Epstein, King Leopold, Stalin, Jimmy Saville, every MP currently serving in parliament... but sure, they're great people because they're rich, right?

"You're just a stupid offended libtard!"

Google "The Holocaust".

"Well, you're still using his app!"

His app? You mean the one he bought, then fucking ruined because he has no idea how to run it, right? And you because its basically impossible to find mutuals as a vtuber without it, you knew that, right? "His" app, please, you probably think Ronald McDonald makes your burger when you order McDonalds, you moron.

"If we punish Elon for this, then that's a violation of the first amendment!"

You mean like banning tiktok, removing any and all talk of election rigging, then putting it back up the next day? Or maybe like deleting any criticisms of you and your nazi salutes under your recent tweets despite it blowing up everywhere else? Or does that not count because its something you agree with? Yeah. You've been cucked harder than Sneako and you don't even realize it. Elon and his government buddies are leaving your free speech rights looking like this

Aaaaanyway

I find it well and truly laughable that so many people like Elon will say all this insane shit and do all these fucking heinous things and people will defend them. Like how that gun woman who shit herself says stuff like "I'm not homophobic, I just think gay people are disgusting and that they should die" or that comedian nobody finds funny anymore spends hours whining about trans people but says he's not transphobic.

Lets all be on the same page for once and have the balls to say what we actually think. Elon got so close, but being a spineless edgelord who doesn't have the balls to just say what he thinks out loud is quite the weakness.

[luxiomahariel]

this argument that terfs dont hate trans men/mascs just as much as trans women/fems has been pissing me off for a while and i wanted to collect a bunch of vile shit that terfs have said about trans men/mascs to show just how much terfs hate us in a very distinct way

but i really did not want to actually look through terf blogs and posts and subject myself to all that hatred because i will just end up feeling fucking miserable

LUCKILY i remembered caelan conrad did three entire movie length videos discussing the gender critical movement and they showed a SHIT TON of screenshots of the stuff these women would say behind closed doors, so here is the screenshot amalgamation of how terfs REALLY feel about trans men/mascs that they "pretend" to care about:

i have linked caelan conrads videos under the readmore as well as included content warnings

and here is my disclaimer: i am NOT CLAIMING that terfs hate trans men/mascs more than trans women/fems. i am showing you how they hate our two groups in vastly different ways that sometimes overlap and sometimes dont. but they DO target ALL OF US MORE OR LESS EQUALLY. STOP DOWNPLAYING THE OPPRESSION OF TRANS MEN/MASCS AND LISTEN TO US WHEN WE SPEAK OUT ABOUT THIS SHIT AND UNDERSTAND THAT WE WANT TO FIGHT AGAINST OUR OPPRESSORS TOGETHER. WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO THAT IF YOU KEEP DOWNPLAYING OUR EQUALLY VALID STRUGGLES IN ORDER TO CLAIM THAT YOURE THE MORE OPPRESSED GROUP OF TRANS PEOPLE. WE NEED TO STAND TOGETHER. AND THAT CAN HAPPEN WHEN WE ACKNOWLEDGE EACH OTHERS PROBLEMS AS EQUALLY SIGNIFICANT.

content warnings for: transphobia, exorsexism, homophobia, misgendering, slurs, conversion therapy, dehumanization, mentions and depictions and mocking of suicide, mentions of sexual assault, mentions of physical assault, internalized queerphobia, discussion of cults, misogyny, racism, misogynoir, white supremacy, islamophobia, antisemitism

[technofeudalism]

i will confess. i hate the Democrats for a lot of reasons. like a lot of reasons. i've posted about them excessively. but giving this donkey brained, pointless, chronically incorrect fool a platform is the perfect example of why i hate them so much. i am sorry to go on a cooking spree but i have to do it.

keep in mind, this is a person that the Democrats gave a microphone and speaking time at the DNC instead of a Palestinian speaker. here she is giving her speech, which was about representing the young voters of the United States.

this person is exactly what is wrong with the way the Democratic party thinks and operates. somehow, in spite of her ridiculous opinions, she is only 22 years old and therefore, she's held up by Democrats as an example of the party's "youth movement." what you're gonna see below is their messaging. they own the rhetoric as much as she does.

here's the message she's delivering today to her massive audience (326k followers) re: the outcome of the 2024 election and the events of the last 24hrs. think about all of the horrific things that Donald Trump has announced he's going to do, then look at what she is focusing on and how many views, likes and overall engagement it is getting, and the following of young adults she has tried to cultivate.

Olivia Julianna should not be considered your ally in any way. she should be chased away from politics completely. she should go away forever. the only reason she has any notoriety in the first place is because Matt Gaetz is a massive piece of shit who unnecessarily insulted her appearance repeatedly. that does not give her political credibility, no matter how much of a pedophile loser Matt Gaetz is.

at the end of the day, that kind of thing is extremely unnecessary because… i mean… there's no other way to say it. she's stupid. it's so easy to focus on that. whether it's naturally or she's monetizing it, i don't know. but for context, she is from Houston (pop 2.3m) and Joe Biden is from Scranton (pop. 75k), which was like 8x the size before his family moved away in 1953.

this is a person who was still advocating for Joe Biden to stay in the race the day before he dropped out and telling the media 2 weeks prior that a House Rep - the first to call for Biden to get out, who has served in the House 30** (not 20) years - that he should sit down and shut up. look at the timing on that.

he won re-election by 50 points by the way.

she never acknowledged that she was wrong the entire time about Joe Biden and still has not to this day. she said several awful things in defense of his Gaza policy that she has also never apologized for.

here is what she flipped to talking about when Kamala became the nominee. this is barely scratching the surface.

this was what she said about donating to DSA (yes they have their own problems, but people were looking for a way to organize) hours after Trump was declared the winner of the election and everything leftists have been saying for a year was validated:

as with all of my long posts, none of this is intended to be a dunk fest and if it comes off that way, it's not my intention. it's just getting increasingly difficult to talk about politics in this country without coming apart at the seams with contempt.

this is just a warning that if you see this seemingly "left-leaning" Gen Z influencer roasting conservatives on social media, just nod and keep scrolling. the less engagement this person gets, the better off we are. if the Democratic party is promoting them at all at this point, they should be endlessly questioned and critically examined.

[mask131]

This is about Neil Gaiman's work - this is NOT about the rape accusations, but it is about the aftermath of them. I wanted to make a post for some times now about works you could read that were similar to Gaiman's works if you wanted to go see something akin to his fictional world without directly supporting him. Which would have been a VERY easy post since Gaiman kept listing everywhere the works that influenced directly or indirectly his own novels and creations. But I realized other people were already doing this, so I just thought "Heh, let's not bother with this".

And then I randomly stumbled upon this post which is trending on Tumblr. And this post got me a little mad. Because while I do agree that several of the facts in there should be more well-known and more talked about... I also think this post is quite unfair in its depiction of how Gaiman acted towards his inspirations.

People are currently screaming that Neil Gaiman plagiarized stuff by "taking huge inspiration from things and not crediting people". Except... he did credit people. It's just that his fans never bothered to go look for what inspired him. I was there back in the old days - so I saw exactly how it went. Don't start telling me Neil Gaiman purposefully stayed "silent" about the works that inspired him - I clearly saw how people were just apathetic. Myself when I compiled lists and made posts about all the works that preceeded Neil Gaiman or that he explained were his inspirations for things, people didn't bother and had no interest... but when I made a list of Gaiman's work suddenly everybody reblogged. Whether Gaiman plagiarized or not is not the thing I want to talk about today - but I want to HEAVILY criticize the way people are saying "Neil Gaiman never said he took X from X" when in fact, he did, and people were just too lazy to do their research. (Or, if you take the "Gaiman is a villain " angle, Gaiman counted on the fact people would not bother to read the original books and he won his bet!)

I am deeply sorry for this rant but it is a little trigger for me, since I have been studying and exploring the "chain" of inspirations and rewritings throughout literature and the fantasy genre (half for university work, half for personal hobby), and I have seen people literaly ignore all the bibliographies given to them under titles like "If you want to read more of the sort". [For example the original post talks about how Martin was very honest about how he took inspiration from Druon's book series. Fair. But nobody is talking about how he indeed kind of "plagiarized" Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. A lot of people don't know about this series, despite said series having literaly almost all of ASoIaF's supernatural - in fact, the reason Martin seems to be under-using his own supernatural creations, like the White Walkers, is precisely because they don't come from his mind and they are just a copy of Williams' Norns and he seems to not really know what to do with them. But that's a talk for another day.]

EDIT: I realized the post got very long, so all my personal objections and my argumentative points against the post I linked above will be under a cut. And if you want a conclusion to my long rant below the cut, it is this one: You can shit all you want about Gaiman, but at least get your facts right. It is not because someone turns out to be a bad person that you must feel the need to blast cultural misinformation. Heck, I will directly compare it to how the entire Internet wished and wanted Rowling to have "plagiarized" Gaiman's Books of Magic, because of their similarities, only for Gaiman himself to point out, no, it was not plagiarism, it was just a set of similarities and coincidences due to both works coming from a same British culture with a specific background in children literature and fantasy works. It just happened that people didn't know anything outside of Harry Potter and Gaiman's works and so assumed it was the only two pieces of a much vaster puzzle...

Yes, Neil Gaiman is very derivative. Yes he is very imitative. But he never hid it? He always said he was, he always pointed out the works that influenced him, he always listed the stuff that he based his own works upon - down to sometimes helping these works come out of obscurity when they were too forgotten (like the Lud-in-mist novel?). People are doing a "surprised Pikachu face" today but... he never hid his derivatiness. In fact it was a certain part of the "charm" people found in his work back in the days. He never hid anything, it's just that a lot of people didn't want to see it or didn't care about it...

Gaiman posted an entire page on his blog for American Gods (back in the early days of Internet, he had a blog to follow his writing process for American Gods, weeks after week, you can still find it somewhere) listing the three dozen of books that inspired him/that he took elements from/that he learned stuff from. People can accuse him of having plagiarized Zelazny's work in American Gods because of one scene - Wednesday having Shadow drive into the "Backstage", which is a rewrite of the "driving to Amber" scene from The Nine Princes of Amber. But the accusation of "plagiarism" becomes a bit muddled when you know that A) Gaiman has been screaming for years about how the main source of inspiration for American Gods were all of Zelazny's mythological works and B) He literaly dedicated American Gods to Zelazny, first page you open.

When does an homage becomes too much? When is plagiarism allowed? Is taking after public domain a bad thing? What are the moral consequences of your work overshadowing your source of inspiration? These are questions I am not wanting to answer today and this post isn't about them - plus things are even more complex when you remember Gaiman was one of the most fervent defensers and advocates of fanfiction, reacting positively to it and encouraging people to do it a lot ; as well as one of the main celebrities on Tumblr to warn people to NOT send him fanfics so that it wouldn't cause legal troubles of potential plagiarism.

Anyway, my actual angry rant is below.

I/ Tanith Lee and Sandman

The post that got me angry starts with Tanith Lee. I do agree that it is a shame Tanith Lee is not more talked about and didn't receive as much fame as she deserved. I do agree that Neil Gaiman's work was heavily inspired by Tanith Lee's writing. I do agree Gaiman's work overshadowed Lee's own (for a long time I didn't know she was the first one to do a vampiric Snow-White twist, before Gaiman's own). However I have to recuse the idea that Sandman is a rip-off of Tales from Flat-Earth.

It doesn't help that the person who made this original claim clearly doesn't know very much about either Lee's Flat-Earth or Gaiman's Sandman (with easy to debunk claims like how "Delusion" is one of Gaiman's Endless - no, the character does not exist). For example the poster rightfully compares how the top-dogs of the supernatural pantheon of Lee's Flat-Earth are the Masters of Night, Death and Delirium, wth the Master of Night's physical appearance echoing Dream of the Endless' appearance... However the comparison stops there, unlike what the poster tries to claim, because the Master of Night is a demon who rules over hatred, fear, curses and malevolence first and foremost - and is this world's equivalent of Satan/Iblis - and is not a personification of dreams, imaginations and sleep like Morpheus. Also, unlike what the OP claims, the Demon Princes are not like the Endless, "eternal entities beyond gods" - on the contrary, it is shown by book one the Demon Princes CAN be killed, and that there are gods who are a distinct species far above the Demons.

It is also incomplete to try to claim that having Dream and Death be siblings is a "proof" of Tanith Lee plagiarism... Because Gaiman is very explicit in his narrative of how Dream and Death are transpositions of the Thanatos & Hypnos/Thanatos & Morpheus twinship present in Greco-Roman mythology (Ovid's "Gates of Horn and Ivory" are literaly there in the first issues). Plus, since we do have the original manuscripts and the proposition draft Gaiman sent to DC (it is in the bonus of collected editions and in companion books), we know Gaiman originally had just three Endless in mind, Death, Dream (who was a reshape of DC's Sandman super-hero), and Destiny (who pre-existed in DC's universe), Delirium only coming far later.

That being said, I am feeling very sad for Tanith Lee through the testimony of her friend - how, again, she had trouble becoming a recognized author despite her work being very influential and frequently talked about for the fantasy genre (all the fantasy manuals and guides and encyclopedias of France list her among the authors to be read), and I do feel her distate for Neil Gaiman's work vampirizing hers is very justified. But to jump into saying Sandman is a copy-paste or a full on rip-off of Flat-Earth is unfair and very limiting. Flat-Earth was one of the inspirations of Sandman, but it doesn't own "everything" to it.

Plus, the OP also gets very angry at how Gaiman "never" talked about Tanith Lee and ... you know how I got to learn about Tanith Lee, and how I got encouraged to read her? Through Gaiman's Tumblr blog, where he regularly listed her as part of the authors that inspired him/the fantasy authors he enjoyed/the authors he encouraged others to read. I saw her appear like five different times on his Tumblr, and without him I probably wouldn't have started getting curous about her. So he did talk about her and he did present her as one of his inspirations and favorite authors... At least on Tumblr, and for several years.

II/ Coraline and Thief of Always

The comments mention Coraline and the Thief of Always as possibly being another "plagiarism" of Gaiman... I remember when Neil Gaiman was asked on his Tumblr about how similar Thief of Always and Coraline were, and he simply answered with the fact he and Barker had a similar thought process and came up with akin works though very different in the results.

You could say it is a form of copy or plagiarism (though Gaiman at least did an effort to make Coraline the almost opposite of Thief of Always in several ways). But I will have to point out that that Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker know each other, and that it has been reported, talked about and evoked a lot of times how they hanged in the same circles, with the same people, and exchanged thoughts, and talked about their mutual creations. We know Gaiman talked of the early Sandman issues when they were created with Alan Moore and Clive Barker, while Moore talked of his creation of From Hell. We also know that a part of the Sandman's universe was indirectly created by Barker - as Gaiman explained the idea for naming Desire's domain "The Threshold" came from a story Clive Barker had planned but never wrote, exploring the puns "threshold" could offer.

To my knowledge Clive Barker never claimed that Gaiman plagiarized him or stole from him with Coraline? But I might be wrong.

III/Other details

The comment about the "Lovecraft and Doyle" comparison is clearly taken out of context, because it was literaly about a story which WAS a literal Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu fanfiction, "A Study in Emerald". The commenter seems to think this comment applied to Gaiman's entire work? No it does not.

I don't know anything about the Lenny Henry situation, I will have to look for this.

[plotholes-and-spellingerrors]

I think the thing is that, fundamentally, there's no such thing as running an "AI" locally. (I'm assuming that when you say "AI" you're referring to the "generative" models where a user makes a natural-language request, e.g. "re-organize my business", and the model outputs an org chart or something.) The problem is that these models require so much compute that you basically cannot run them on a personal computer. If you saw that post going around talking about Windows quietly turning on constant system snapshots to run it's AI assistant, the article pointed out that some features were only available on machines with specially beefed-up processors and memory, and even then, internet connectivity was vital because it was sending data back to Microsoft to be processed - that was part of the privacy/security risk, that images potentially displaying passwords, etc., were being stored on Microsoft servers. The point being, you need massive server farms to ingest, store, and analyze the data that these models are being built on - and it never ends, or the model becomes stale. And even once you have the model, calculating a response is also incredibly resource intensive. That's why every single Google AI result takes so much more water and electricity than the entirety of the actual search results combined.

I have shared the link before, but I am begging people to listen to the "Data Vampires" miniseries from Tech Won't Save Us. They make clear very early on that the reason Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pushing AI so much is because they are data center companies: they make money every time a service uses their data centers. And you know where ChatGPT and MidJourney results are being processed? On Microsoft and Google and Amazon's data centers. In fact, a lot of the "money" that these companies are investing into GenAI orgs is actually just donating server usage to them, to get them locked in on those servers, which will then need to be paid for. So the GenAI companies have to find a way to get people to pay for AI services, because they're paying for AI compute power.

The other thing, and I cannot stress this enough, is that these are not knowledge models. They are very sophisticated duplication models. If you say to the "AI", "Make my workflow simpler", it doesn't have a semantic understanding of what "simpler" means (and it certainly can't ask for clarification). All it can do is look at its massive data set and try to predict a version of whatever it is outputting that is associated with the string of letters "simpler", based on a bunch of stuff that has previously been labeled as "simple" (or similar words). So you might get a work flow that has fewer steps, for example, but what the "AI" might not realize (because it doesn't have a concept of what any of the steps are) is that maybe it's actually added that are meaningless, maybe it's just shuffled some steps to it looks like there's fewer but actually it's just hidden a couple... or maybe it's eliminated some vital error-checking steps that 98% of the time result in nothing (it looks like a waste of time, so simplify it out) but 1.7% of the time catches something minor (oh good, that would have wasted resources to fix) and 0.3% of the time catches something mission-critical (this error could have brought us to bankruptcy/court/prison). And keep in mind, the person asking an automated system to simplify their business workflow is NOT the person who designed the workflow and knows what needs to be in there (if they were, they wouldn't need a computer to tell them how to fix it) - they're the person trying to not need to pay someone to design the workflow.

And for that matter, a lot of what happens when some "AI" system is inserted into a process is that it's still doing the same task (just at a much higher computational requirement, and potentially wrong), but it looks simpler because the human user is only clicking one button rather than five.

And look, I'm all for automating tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming for a human - that's the whole point of computers in the first place. But a truly effective and efficient replacement for human work is one that was designed by people who are intimately familiar with the required tasks and thinking deeply about how to make their jobs easier.

You know, these techbros love to make it sound like humans are just bad at making systems, computers will be so much better at it, but I think that's a lie they tell because they want to make one generic product and get everyone to buy it. That's the promise of "general artificial intelligence" - it's one system that can do everything. But what else in life works like that? Do you put your clothes and your dishes in the same washing device? Something that does a lot of things well is typically very simple. You can fry an egg and boil water in the same pan because it's a bent piece of metal sitting over heat. An espresso machine, however, will have a harder time with the egg. Good software generally focuses on doing one thing - the difference is whether that one thing is simple and can be applied to a lot of different things (Firefox renders web content, it just happens that you can have all kinds of stuff on the web) or if that one thing is extremely specific (Audacity edits music and GIMP edits images - audio and images are both data types that Firefox can show you, but can you imagine what a mess GIMPdacity would be?); the problem is that this specialization requires human effort, and these techbros do not want to PAY for human effort; the problem is that this specialization means that you have target audiences, and these techbros want to sell to a general (read: bigger) audience. And conversely, those byzantine systems that are so terrible? Often it's not because people are just dumb, it's because either the job is a very complicated one, and the system is tailored to success in that task, or because someone wanted a general system that accomplishes all kinds of things, and often what they want accomplished is METRICS so that the efficiency of the business can be micromanaged. But that's another story for another time. In short, don't ever let someone who is trying to sell you bullshit tell you the lie that you couldn't do better on your own.

Anyway, IDK if this is really even what OP meant, it's just where my mind went. If you put up with me to the end, thanks for reading.

MAN, can you imagine the clusterfuck of working at a company that’s become reliant on an AI layer between itself/its employees, and knowing how to do their jobs and use their systems and stuff? Like when that AI layer goes down, poof, you’re all hosed. And they don’t strike me as super robust…

I guess there are ways of training and running them locally, but they’re so seductive they’re definitely going to be deployed in places that aren’t up to the task of maintaining them in a sane state. Like… damn… cutting headcount in favor of relying on AI is like. A raccoon stuffing its head into a yogurt container. This is gonna be killing off organizations in a few years.

Unless AI gets good at destroying preexisting fucked up byzantine workflows and replacing them with simpler, human-friendly ones. That would be okay. But it is gonna irrevocably destroy a lot of records and botch a lot of database migrations on its way there.

[milkcioccolato]

Now, we need to have a serious discussion

Actually no, it’s not a discussion. I’m going to speak and you’re going to listen

It has come to my attention that my ship might be problematic to some because the characters had little crushes on eachother when one was around 18YO and the other around 16YO (characters that will not have a relationship with eachother until they’re both into their 20s)

If you think something like this hurts your sensibilities and you find it gross, please, PLEASE block me

I don’t like having the same conversation thousands of times with people who think they’re these knights of political justice that get so inflated in their "goodness" And being "morally better" Than anything becomes a fight, even stupid fucking things that no ACTUAL REAL LIFE PERSON WOULD FIND PROBLEMATIC!

I need some of you to engage in the real world a bit more and stop eating up every single things these moral paladins feed you as "problematic" and "weirdo behavior" and things like that

Someone can dislike you without being a "narcissist"

Someone can tell you you’re wrong without "gaslighting you"

Someone can definitely make a comic about two TEENAGERS having crushes for eachother without being a "proshipper"

You look ridiculous. Live in the real world please.

[yudol-skorbi]

i am at the point where if i dont finish now i'll newer finish so yeah the rest of the gaaaaaang

[bixels]

The Ryoko Kui interview's reception is such a disaster over a pretty normal (yet still flawed) interview between a non-Japanese fan and Japanese artistic. This is discourse for discourse's sake, and it's no surprise that almost every Twitter user I've looked at who's using this interview to parade Kui around as a goated mangaka standing strong against Western ideology is anti-trans.

Like, I do think the interview was kinda wonky with its focus on fandom culture, which Kui clearly didn't have much interest in. But sometimes that happens. Sometimes interactions between two people, especially a fan and a creator, two people who view and interact with a piece of media in completely opposite perspectives, don't click. Does this really need to get blown up into a "West vs. East culture war" issue.

Anyways, Kui saying "I don't consider my audience's interpretations when writing. I leave it to their imaginations, but I have my own read on things too" is the healthiest, most normal thing an artist/writer who wants a non-parasocial audience could say. Artists and writers use this line all the time. If Kui didn't enjoy autistic Laius or Farcille headcanons, she would have probably voiced/signalled her discomfort, like she did on the topic of Senshi fanservice. Overall, Kui handled the interview really well. Props to her to sticking to her guns and keeping a healthy disconnect from the fandom. While I think the interviewer could've/should've been more tactful and restrained, the flaws in their questions is not a symptom of the woke mind virus trying to wriggle its way into the pure Japanese psyche. It's the sign of an over-eager fan who sees a piece of fiction differently than its creator.

[eternalmomentss]

Rewatching EXU Prime and Kymal and I am fucking inconsolable.

[independent-fics]

Leverage | The Beginning and The End Parallels

Leverage (2008-2012)

01x01 The Nigerian Job

05x15 The Long Good-bye Job

[whirlybirbs]

tbh i have a running gag in my head about the mha heroes + late night talk shows, but all i can really muster rn is: dynamight and sabrina carpenter on snl.

[thesheriffandthebrawler]

WOMAN.

[essektheylyss]

Does no one else find it odd that magic that had been inhibited by the Malleus Key keeps being slowly and quietly returned with seemingly no changes to the key itself? Is the Solstice still stuck or is it simply progressing very slowly? Is anyone working on this in Exandria? Can we get some answers about this?