#and it gets misinterpreted and removed from context SO MUCH

[steampoweredlovemachine]

someone said honeybee by spg in my love song tag game I'm too exhausted after scunting [cosplaying scunt [scout]] for three days straight but prepare for a LONG rant abt the song tomorrow

[illym]

Hi, hello, if you like reading about localization choices be sure to check below the cut because I Had Fun Here (not being sarcastic. It was enjoyable learning about vinegar in Japan).

Translation Assistance: @masked-and-doomed + @solradguy

ID in alt.

Cleaned and original comics below the cut.

Specific Assistance:

@.masked-and-doomed: transcribed what I couldn't pick up.

@.solradguy: Verified the translation of what the npc was saying in panel 4, offered a line for it.

Fun fact: The Japanese department of a college all got together to work on this one.

I hated redrawing the back of Ky's head. I'm glad I was able to hide most of it behind the text (lol).

Anyway, let's get on with the localization (and process) discussion!

In the original text of this comic, Ky was drinking vinegar.

"But Illym," you ask, face twisted in confusion, "Huh? Who drinks vinegar as a drink for fun? Is the joke that being compared to Robo-Ky made him go mad and believe that vinegar is delicious? Did you change the joke? Why are you writing me to be so verbose?"

I'm a very verbose person. To answer the rest of your questions, here's what DeepL gave me when I put the transcript in.

[

npc:

Captain… it's only the body that gets soft from drinking vinegar.

ky:

I… This is for your health!

npc:

If you drink it without diluting it, you'll get a stomach ache.

]

At first, I assumed that DeepL has misinterpreted some other drink as vinegar, such as cider, sake, or general alcohol. In this example, even, it translated Ky as saying "For your health" when within context he should obviously be saying "For my health".

I went to [ https://jpdb.io/ ] to check the line. Lo and behold, it still translated as vinegar. Hm. By this point, I'm fairly sure it's a cultural thing that I'll have to localize, but I try to be thorough in these things as, again, I don't understand the language and rely on machine translation. I search up vinegar in English in jpdb and find the Japanese character there immediately. So it's obviously the same word, not a messy translation.

My next course of action is to look up "drinking vinegar japan".

To summarize, according to the articles/blog posts I read, the process of making vinegar is just adding an extra step to the process of making sake. After that, if it's to be drinking vinegar, it's blended with sweeteners such as honey or fruit.

It's an extremely old drink in Japan, and it's seen as a health drink there (along with, I assume, being pretty tasty). You should go read up on it yourself.

But in the western world, drinking vinegar is... Not a big thing. While I could leave it as is and just write a translators note explaining the drink, I decided that given that Ky is French and Japan has been exploded for ~100 years, it would be more lore accurate to have him drink something else. If it was Anji or Baiken, I would have left it.

Also, it's more enjoyable and easier to understand to make it ambiguously alcohol instead of requiring a 4 paragraph explanation.

So to localize, I removed mention of vinegar and made the joke into Ky drinking too much alcohol. The NPC's worries apply to alcohol as well as drinking vinegar (drinking it makes you soft, it affects your body poorly, drinking too much is Seen as bad for your health) so it made for the smoothest change.

As I write this, I'm debating whether to add a translators note between panels saying that the bottle reads 'vinegar'... It'll get people curious, at least!

Original translation of the comic below.

[demaparbat-hp]

In almost all of your artwork you transform Katara into a different person. You take away her hair loopies, give her short hair (knowing how much hair is important to her culture), take away all her heritage, and now you have her join Fire Nation military because of your AU, which can be misinterpreted if your art is reposted without context. You’re really talented but as a woc, why do you like removing all of Katara’s culture in your AUs?

Hi! I had never given this much thought because I honestly didn't think it would ever be a problem, but I guess I can see where you're coming from.

Culture is something precious, and it's very, very important to me, as a creator, to get these character's cultures right. I've studied about cultural inspiration and lore in ATLA, especially their visual characteristics. They're so diverse, and I love exploring them. Especially through clothing and the characters' distinct features. Katara in particular is probably my favorite character to draw, and I always do my best to make it clear she's Water Tribe through visual representation.

That being said, I took the liberty of checking out the artworks I've posted to see things from your pov. And I guess you're right, to an extent. I can understand that, without context, it may seem as if I'm erasing Katara's culture.

Except that's not true. At all.

Even, as I already said, without context.

These are the only artworks I could find that fit your description. But I don't know if you've noticed, anon, the things they all have in common: each one of them is an AU, in which Katara is put in a position where she needs to hide her identity (the Hunters AU, as well as Lee and Kya) or has a different background all together (in the middle, the HalfBlood AU, where he's born in the Earth Kingdom as a water half-child); but even under these circumstances, I don't forget about her culture, and neither does she.

Instead of her hair loopies, she wears a Warrior's braids and beads, a waterskin, and a blue sash embroidered with silver waves; all of this while she's part of a Fire Nation crew that's trying to end the war from within.

The other AUs are like that, too. Katara finds ways to remember her culture, who she is, even if it's in the little details. A blue and silver sash in seas of green clothing, a betrothal necklace once belonging to her mother and grandmother. Her features.

I refuse to forget about Katara's culture and how it has shaped her, even if the AU demands it so. She is who she is, no matter what.

[breached-containment-script]

So the scarring discourse is still going.

No, characters keeping scars does not automatically equate to that being torture porn. In this context, fans clearly intend it in a way that says "even if you end up with physical marks, it doesn't diminish you". Or is Aang getting scarred torture porn too? Or do you think things like Mortal Engines movie shrinking the female lead's facial damage to a minimum "spared her of physical trauma"? No, it was afraid of depicting something deemed "ugly" and it's a huge disservice to real people who look like she was described in the book.

The topic was not handled super well in ATLA. Katara's wounds got healed leaving no trace on her, on her psyche nor on how she views Aang which is not just unrealistic, but you can literally feel in the show Katara having to go "no Aang it's ok, I'm fine, you don't have to beat yourself up over it, I'm healed, let it go Aang, it's not your fault," it is too much. It would have been much stronger had the burns left some mark, even a tiny one, because then Aang's reluctance to practice firebending would have made more sense and all characters would have gotten a more solid demonstration that the Avatar can be dangerous too. It would have been a wakeup call to Katara that Aang isn't a completely harmless kid she can always shield and protect. That's character development! This would have been a more powerful moment in the progression of their relationship, especially after they sort it out and Aang learns safe firebending later on, because they'd have a more real problem to overcome rather than just Aang's guilt.

Again, show didn't frame things too cleverly - there's no heightened moment of perhaps Katara being extremely happy that she discovered a part of her lost Southern waterbending heritage (just remember her behaviour with Hama, there's none of that here). The show just removes her wounds, she's confused about the ability, and this leads to Jeong Jeong making a point about how fire is wild and destructive. The whole segment ends with removing the source of the problem (wounds) and is about how evil fire is. Aang ends up being traumatized anyway, he isn't less traumatized because Katara's wounds didn't scar.

The point is - Katara gets nothing character-building out of this event, even though it made her cry and cradle her arms for several minutes on screen. Because of this her burns could be considered torture-porn (slightly). Her discovering healing abilities is not a reward she got exclusively because she suffered the burns, she could have discovered it by accidentally hurting herself, or healing someone else. Imagine if Aang hurt himself by being reckless and Katara discovering she could heal him? What she should have gotten out of specifically being burned by Aang, is a changed view of him. I don't mean her viewing him negatively, but taking a step back and both learning they should be more careful. Who said zutara stans want Katara getting scarred by Aang in order to make Aang a villain in this? He literally cannot be a villain here, he made a big mistake by being careless. It's got nothing to do with zutara. It's not helpful to misinterpret some storytelling tools that have nothing to do with shipping, just to prevent them from creating some later story hooks which could potentially be used in shipping a NOTP. Heck, Katara getting scarred could even be used (with skilled writing) in shipping her with Aang - like zutara fans use Katara being angry at Zuko and expecting him to demonstrate that he wouldn't betray or hurt them again.

And if you have a distaste for two happy friendly characters hurting each other on accident, that's fine, but well I have a scar on my arm from my brother's scratch that happened on accident. These things happen and stories shouldn't be scared of portraying it, especially if later on they show how to make ammends and overcome the problem. I'm not saying "Katara should definitely have kept her scars!!!" I am showing narrative weak points and suggestions how things could have been done differently, what benefits it could have had character-wise and what that might have changed.

[deepdreamnights]

A friendly wizard and style reference.

Midjourney has just released both the version 6 of its niji anime engine and the first version of its "style reference" tool.

Functionally this is a variation of the image prompting system (explained here), in which breaks a submitted image down into the 'token language' the AI uses internally and uses that as a supplement to a text prompt. "Style Reference" (or 'sref') lets you do this with up to three images, only with only the tokens associated with 'style' being drawn upon.

This is not to be confused with style transfer, a much older and very different AI art process.

But what is a style in this context? And how does it affect generation?

Prompt: a blue axolotl-anthro wizard in a red-and-yellow swirl-pattern robe, holding a sheleighleigh made of purple wood and a potion full of glowing green energy drink. A blue-and-green ladybug familiar stands near his feet, white background, fullbody image

Settings: --niji 6, --style raw --s 50 --seed 1762468963

Here, I've tested the same seed and prompt with a number of reference images.

My semiorganized ramblings under the fold

The first thing I note is that style reference affects the gen so much that same-seed/different style ref comparisons are kind of pointless. Way too much of pose, composition and content changes for it to matter, so for future style ref tests, I'm probably going to drop the seeds.

The second thing I note is that there are certain limitations. You need to change up your prompt for things like photography, and the system interprets styles using its own criteria, not ours. If image prompting misinterprets something, so will style ref, but perhaps not in the same way.

This is notable for the one prompted with a scan from the Nuremberg Chronicle (first row). It recognizes that its a woodcut and emulates that general vibe nicely, but MJ is highly tuned for aesthetics, and emulating real world jank and clumsiness is a weak area. This is literally the first printed (european at least) book with illustrations. Every example thereafter is building on that skillset, so the dataset for woodcuts is going to be largely of a higher apparent quality.

In short, with Midjourney, additional prompt work is needed to replicate the look of early jank or intentionally 'ugly' art styles, and even as recent as v6 I've had no luck with things like midcentury Hanna-Barbereesque cheap TV animation styles or shitty 1990s CGI.

Style reference can help, I've gotten some pretty good cheap 80s-90s TV animation looking stuff from v6 niji and style ref in my early tests:

Color observations: Absent specific requests in the prompt, SREF will stick pretty close to the palette and lighting conditions of the referenced image. With such instructions, you get blending, so the one referencing the okapi fakemon (second row from bottom), for instance, has a lot of colors the reference image doesn't have, but they're in similar in vibrancy and saturation.

One limitation, however, is it doesn't apply to the aspects of the gen that come from any image prompts, so it will always blend the style of the style reference with the style aspects inherited from the image prompt, and that is very strong compared to the style ref.

Using the dog as the image prompt, and the TFTM reformatting as the style prompt, and the text prompt: "a cute older yorkie dog sitting on a bedspread", we get the image on the left. Dropping the image prompt weight to .25 gets us the center option, and removing the image prompt entirely produces the one on the right.

I expect this will be patched eventually, or general image prompting may fall out of favor compared to a combination of style ref and the upcoming character reference option, which will be the same thing, but will only reference the tokens associated with the character in the reference image. Depending on how that works that will have a lot of uses.

Stay tuned for more experiments. There's some good potential for freaky, unexplored aesthetics with combinations of multiple style refs and text prompts.

[favorvn]

Being an old ahh demon can Z sense when MC has "Sinful" thoughts? I don't just mean like if they have a horny thought but also like what if they think of someone who hurt them in the past and have that impulsive "Wrathful" thought of wishing the worse on them? Maybe not mind reading but like could Z sense it like how Tanjirou in Demon Slayer can smell emotions?

Z can sense emotions, but the emotions lack context. Z can sense the emotion MC is feeling but can't sense WHY they are feeling that emotion. So if Mc gets angry, even if MC isn't outwardly showing that they are angry, Z will still be able to feel it. Z will not know what made MC angry, though. Z can be a little dense at times, so he may misinterpret emotions or look for context clues where there may be none. He is trying his best, though, so please be patient with him 😅💕

I think I mentioned before that the most likely scenarios to occur from misinterpretation would be:

If MC is turned on, and Z hasn't done anything intentional to turn MC on, he may become jealous assuming that it was someone else that MC is thinking about.

For feelings of anxiety from MC, Anxiety isn't something Z understands much as he is a creature that truly never feels shame or embarrassment, and he truly could not care less about the perception towards him that others may have. That being said, he is a bit frazzled by how intensely feelings of anxiety can affect MC in specific scenarios. His gut reaction is to just hide MC or pick them up and remove them from the area....but as you can imagine, these solutions are not always helpful. Z has a lot of self educating to do about some human feelings and emotions, and this is one of them.

If Z senses a feeling of wrath, he is on board with whatever MC wants to do. Wrath is kind of Z's M.O. so he is always willing to recommend helpful and creative 'solutions'. Anyone who has hurt MC deserves suffering as far as Z is concerned.

[ms-revived-frogs]

Anyways, so I've been seeing this gross misinterpretation of my post on unnecessary hysterectomy and I'd like to explain, even though the OP has me blocked (unsurprising).

Gotta love seeing my post resurfacing and being taken wildly ou of context! Anyways @ratbastarddotfuck and @vergess, the meaning of my post was not that hysterectomy should be banned. I know that hysterectomy is oftentimes medically necessary for the health of a woman. And no, I do not believe it should be restricted only until after a woman might have had a child. I am not right-wing and do not believe this is woman's "role".

However, my post was in reference to this new phenomenon of young women trying to get hysterectomies simply because they never intend to have children or because they don't like having periods. Meanwhile there better, less invasive, and less damaging surgeries out there! One example can be tubal ligation. As back-not-broken said on the post, the uterus plays a key role outside of reproduction. New research is showing that the uterus has a role in your cognitive function (removing it is linked to higher risk of Alzheimer's), and plays a structural role as well (removing it is linked to risk of prolapse). In my post, I was attributing this desire for unnecessary hysterectomy to beauty culture and plastic surgery culture. Because yes, these two involve the division of the female body into a collective of parts, rather than one whole human organism. Women are already en masse cutting themselves up, and making the bulk of almost every plastic surgery (nose jobs, liposuction, BBLs). And while men out there do get these surgeries sometimes, they are getting them at a far less severe degree than women. So as feminists, we must inquire as to why women specifically are doing this and not men as much. And the answer of course points to self esteem issues and societal voyeurism into what a woman's body is or should be. It's not a coincidence that all these women are getting surgeries to look like the media's ideal woman. And it's not a coincidence that the media treats women like a collective of parts ("Increase your bust with X product!" "Shave your body hair with X product!" "10 ways to make your butt look bigger!").

I think the funniest part about this extremely liberal interpretation is that the idiot @vergess decided to list... wisdom teeth removal, tonsillectomy, and kidney donation, as if these all were done with the same intention as women wanting to cut out healthy organs because they don't intend on reproducing. Neither of the three above can lead to prolapse or Alzheimer's, and neither of them are male-exclusive either. Almost all of @vergess examples were gender-neutral! Which proves exactly my point that it is mainly women who are encouraged to cut themselves from inside out unnecessarily. Once again, I'm not speaking of medically necessary hysterectomy.

It's feminists' duty to analyse the societal behaviours of man and woman. Why should this be off limits, when it is so invasive and dangerous?

[goldenspirits]

Saltburn (2023), Parasite (2019), and the Rich.

'When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.' — Rousseau

I'm writing this post becuase I feel most people misinterpret these movies, and how I don't consider either of them to be an 'Eat the rich' movie.

I'm starting with this quote because I often feel like people remove it from its original context, and I feel like putting it back there may make it regain some of its meaning.

Spoiler warning for: Saltburn (2023), Parasite (2019), Glass Onion (2022), The People Under The Stairs (1991).

The rich may get metaphorically or literally eaten in both Saltburn and Parasite, as someone from a 'lower' class gets rid of them and takes their place in the hierarchy, but I feel like when people celebrate these movies they are essentially forgetting that the systems that made these people 'lower class' or 'middle class' do begin with are still in place. [re: Coco's Feel-Good Oppression]

I believe 'The Rich' are inherently something bad, because the Rich can only exist with exploitation, I don't believe every single rich person realizes this is what's happening, and it's almost impossible to become Rich with just honest work, that's why I believe meritocracy is a lie.

In both of these movies, people go up the social ladder. And now what? They have become the rich. (Although in Parasite the protagonists go back down the social ladder. Put a pin on that*) Essentially nothing has changed, the rich just have new names and new faces now. These aren't stories to celebrate. Such as, for example, Glass Onion was, in a way.

In Glass Onion you feel like justice is being served and that an actual change in the system might happen, although capitalism still exists in-universe, Helen Brand finally got compensated financially for the work of her sister, Andi, who got massively screwed over. While in Parasite and Saltburn you just see average people become the oppressors, in a grotesque way. This doesn't necessarily make them Bad Movies and it's really interesting to see how the rich aren't necessarily intrinsically bad people with bad intentions, anyone could be the Rich, they are people, privileged people, people in a position of power, but people, and anyone could become like them under specific circumstances.

Pin*: In Parasite I think it's also very interesting how the protagonists go back down the social ladder way easily than they went up. But I'm not sure how to expand on that. But, I feel like Middle Class people often think of themselves as between rich and poor when they are actually much closer to Poor and Homelessness than they realize.

I feel like in both Parasite and Saltburn we see people commiting acts of violence to become rich but in a way they are also being class traitors, seen in Saltburn as Oliver backstabs Farleigh and in Parasite when the Kim Family literally tries to murder a maid. As for a contrast in Glass Onion we do not see Helen screw over any fellow middle-class people. I feel like part of the horror both in Parasite and Saltburn come from said greed from the protagonists, they don't just want to go up in life, they are slowly becoming perpetrators of the violence that was enacted on them.

In a way, that is to say, in both Parasite and Saltburn the people have nothing to eat, so the rich have not been effectively eaten.

That begs the question of "What would characterize an Eat The Rich movie?"

The People Under the Stairs is a 1991 movie, directed by Wes Craven, the same director as Nightmare on Elm Street, and it's a movie that's not as popular as the other three on the list but bear with me here.

In the movie we follow a black protagonist, nicknamed Fool, his family is being evicted, he lives in the ghetto, so he and a man named Leroy plan to commit crimes to be able to afford cancer treatment for Fool's mother.

In that, they discover in one of the houses, a bunch of people in a basement. (This was actually based on a true story.) The owners of the house being very obviously rich, so the movie continues with Fool befriending the owners' daughter, Alice, although being born in a rich family, she is heavily abused by them and is a kind-hearted person.

At the end of the movie, when our antagonists, Mommy and Daddy, are defeated, we actually see their wealth be redistributed to the community. Oh, did I mention Mommy and Daddy were also the landlords that were evicting Fool's family?

At the end of the movie, the entire community of the Ghetto is together to get the justice they deserve for being mistreated by the landlords for so many years, and I think ultimately that's what makes an 'Eat The Rich' movie for me, the poor people of this Ghetto were getting this justice, not an individual family or just some guy named Oliver Quick, but everyone who was mistreated by the landlords, in this particular instance.

I wish I could compare this in a meaningful way to Glass Onion in which one individual, once again, is getting all the justice, but still feels more 'Eat The Rich' than Saltburn or Parasite, and I think it's because ultimately we don't see Helen as a person corrupted by greed.

That's not to say Saltburn or Parasite are bad movies, once again, but they are not feel-good movies, hell, both of them are horror, and I love both of them and how they explore class dynamics, but I think they fall short in being an 'Eat The Rich' movie.

This is, of course, just some of my ramblings that got way longer than I expected. So I don't have much of a neat conclusion aside from "People often misinterpret media" or "People often try to market ideologies in a way that waters them down" but hopefully you already know that. And thank you for reading :]

[blmynewobsession]

Be My Favorite ep 3 thoughts

So,  I wrote up a whole thing in a chat message, and then decided to post it here because apparently I have thoughts on this show (which, well, I already knew)

I liked so, so many things about yesterday's BMF, but most especially that Kawi is starting to show moments of awareness of the others around him. He's been so focused on himself, what he wants, in the first two eps, that he has appeared almost completely oblivious to those around him, even Pear, beyond what he wants from them. He's also been, in many ways, oblivious to his own reactions to the things around him, or if he is/becomes aware of them, he brushes them off if they don't match what he expects.

While I can understand and empathize with his disappointment that Pear calls a friend (or... more than 1?) to their dinner, you can see that it does become more than just disappointment. He does recognize that friendship is likely going to be all that he gets, and he doesn't push it by taking Pear up on her polite offer of a ride home. Is he disappointed? Yes. But, when he and Pear end up having lunch together, again he doesn't really push for anything more, which sets him up neatly as a contrast to incel-in-training Not.

And while he was visibly unhappy about Not showing up wanting to talk to Pisaeng, and he may have misinterpreted what Pisaeng would have prefered, I don't disagree with him removing himself from a third-wheel situation. He may not know their full history, but he does know that there is something there that isn't for him, and as a fellow introvert, I would likely also remove myself from their interaction, though probably not as pissy as Kawi does it. And later, when Pear tells him about how Pisaeng is lonely, and that there had been some sort of fight between Pisaeng and Not and maybe the others as well, even though she doesn't know (or at least, share) the details, Kawi does see an opportunity to maybe help. Is it selfish, because getting Pisaeng his friends back would make Kawi's life easier by allowing himself more space after the kiss? Sure. But, Kawi also knows loneliness. And even as he is trying to reduce his own loneliness, he does take the opportunity to try to do the same for Pisaeng. He just completely lacked the context for WHY they were no longer friends, and so this effort backfired spectacularly. 

One of the things that really jumped out at me in their confrontation at the end was how quickly Kawi responded with "and unsafe" when Pisaeng asked him if he made Kawi uncomfortable. I feel like that was probably the most absolutely honest moment on Kawi's part, and also the most likely response to be misinterpreted. It's been all of what, a day? for Kawi since Pisaeng out of nowhere kissed him. We don't know anything really about Kawi's history before uni, or what has happened between uni and the wedding, but from what we've seen... he's likely never even thought about being gay, or bi, or anything. He's been so focused on Pear, for better or worse for like a decade, and his complete lack of social skills and social life probably means that if anyone else was ever possibly interested in him....... he didn't notice? Or never interacted with the person in any way where it might eventually become obvious, just like we see that Pisaeng already saw him and liked him before they ever really interacted, but it is clear that Kawi had less than no idea before the kiss. So, Kawi has just been kissed, and he reacts badly and runs away, and then decides that that is too much for him to think about and he needs to withdraw himself from Pisaeng's presence instead of (but also, accidentally, giving himself time to) dealing with it in the immediate (to him) aftermath. And he sees a chance to do that with Pisaeng and Not. If he can help patch things up with the two of them, *he* can get the space he desperately needs. Misguided, yes. Selfish, yes. Necessary, yes.

Misinterpreted?  Abso-fucking-lutely.  Pisaeng takes it the way anyone not in Kawi’s brain would take it - Pisaeng is a queer man who has spent the last few days deliberately inserting himself in Kawi’s life because he sees their interactions through his own, infatuated, rose-colored glasses when Kawi starts responding to him.  He has interpreted all of their interactions up to the moment at the lunch table as some form of flirting, not realizing until Kawi flat out tells him that Pisaeng’s “messing with you” isn’t funny, isn’t nice, is hurtful.  That I think is really the moment he starts to second guess himself, but even then, especially at the moment Kawi invites him for drinks, he doesn’t let himself see it as anything more than awkward flirting.  Kawi has gone from this quiet, loner person Pisaeng liked from afar to someone who has inserted himself into Pisaeng’s life, how else is he supposed to interpret it?  But... then Kawi says that he feels unsafe around Pisaeng.  And, well...  it’s not like there are a lot of positive outcomes for the gay community when the straights feel “unsafe” around them.  Maybe that isn’t what goes through Pisaeng’s mind, but that is DEFINITELY something that hit me hard.  Pisaeng doesn’t know that Kawi doesn’t really mean that he feels physically unsafe around him (and, well, maybe Kawi doesn’t quite realize this either?  Who knows), and is really more referring to emotional and mental safety.

And we do see Kawi... maybe not backtrack, exactly, but he doesn’t understand at all why Pisaeng reacted to his response the way he did.  This is what made me interpret the “and unsafe” as NOT meaning that Kawi felt physically unsafe around Pisaeng, but instead being more of the “he just doesn’t know how to deal with all the emotions and thoughts and reactions he had to kiss and it’s all so far outside his wheelhouse that he doesn’t even know where to BEGIN to process it so the best thing he can do is just... distance himself mentally AND physically from Pisaeng”.  He doesn’t understand what a supposedly completely heterosexual man telling a gay man that he feels unsafe around him could lead to in other circumstances.  I don’t see any of Kawi’s reactions in this episode (yes, even the pushing Pisaeng away hard enough that he hits his head) as homophobic or unreasonable.  He was just kissed against his will by a drunk man he has only ever interacted with over the course of... two days?  The drunk man isn’t really responding to him, and he’s so overwhelmed by it all and the time travel and everything that, like...  he just needs to get away.  

These two communicate in very different ways, and there have been a lot of assumptions on both sides, and a large lack of awareness on Kawi’s part.  But he is starting to realize that the others around him, Pear, Pisaeng, Max, Not, his father, are not NPCs in a video game that just do what he wants them to because he has a goal in mind.  He has spent so much time not realizing that he does, in fact, have an effect on the world and the people around him, that of course he isn’t going to be great at it when he finally starts to look away from himself.  He’s socially awkward, very aware of his standing among his peers, and overwhelmed.  He’s not a perfect, completely empathetic lead.  He’s an asshole, in a lot of ways, but an asshole who has potential to be better, if he can start paying more attention to the impact he has on the world and the people around him.  We see flashes of it, already, in ep 3, that we did not see in eps 1 and 2.    

I really like this show, a lot.  

[anamericangirl]

The amount of antisemitic filth spewed by Christians daily is beyond nauseating. Only with Christians could I be called a christ killer, be accused of drinking the blood of babies, be told I'm somehow secretly a lizard person and be implicated in an absurd number of conspiracy theories all in the span of a single sentence.

Doesn't matter what sect or branch or denomination or whatever of Christian you are. Western Christianity by design and virtue is antisemitic. Martin Luther called for the mass execution of Jews who refused to convert and was directly cited by Adolf Hitler. The Catholic Church was complicit in the Holocaust. Baptist Preacher Steven Anderson recently released a documentary called 'Marching to Zion, where he makes some very bold claims like having scrip­tural evi­dence that the Jews are no longer God’s cho­sen peo­ple” to claim­ing that “Judaism’s Mes­siah” is the Antichrist to the “blas­phe­mous teach­ings of the Tal­mud and Kabbalah.”

And the list goes on. Christians cannot remove themselves from their antisemitic history. I am a jew. I am proud of being a jew. I will not be gaslit into ignoring how Christians wish to harm Jews.

First I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this - trying to get my older asks responded to.

And I’m sorry for any negative experiences you’ve had with Christians but I have to say the things you mentioned in the first paragraph is not something that can be independently verified but i can assure I have myself seen some similar things espoused by people who are certainly not Christians. And also, even if some Christians have said such things, it is not fair to judge Christianity or all Christians by such things because those are certainly not the feelings shared by the majority of Christians and does not reflect christian values at all.

Western Christianity is not anti-Semitic by design and virtue. You have a very narrow and misguided understanding of Christianity. And if you want to use Martin Luther as an example then it’s only fair, as well as important, to understand the historical context. Martin Luther actually started off as very sympathetic towards the Jews and condemned those who degraded and disparaged them. He was very optimistic in his views towards them and hoped to see a massive conversion of them to Christianity after attempts to bring the gospel to them. Much later on he became disheartened and pessimistic in his views when this conversion wasn’t happening. And back in the Middle Ages, which cannot be judged through the lens of today, there were very different ideas on the roles of church and state. Luther’s adversion to Jews was not racial, it was theological and he believed, as was already the norm in practice, it was the role of the state to deal with blasphemy. And Luther believed the teachings of Jews were blasphemous and was calling for the state to deal with it. He was not encouraging Christians to wage war against their Jewish neighbors. And he did not, as you incorrectly stated, call for their mass extinction.

And, I’m sorry, but I’m so over this “Hitler cited them therefore they are a bad person” rhetoric that so many people cling to. Hitler was a bad person. And he did very evil things but people should not be judged based on whether or not they were cited by Hitler hundreds of years after their death. They should be judged on their own merit. We all know Hitler was wrong on a great many things so why, when we look at who Hitler cites, is there no room for the idea that maybe Hitler was misusing someone’s quote to his own advantage or interpreted someone. else’s ideas incorrectly? Why is how Hitler decided to use the ideas of someone else (often incorrectly) the ultimate judge of whether or not that person is good or bad? Why can’t you open your mind to the possibility that maybe Hitler misinterpreted or misused these quotes?

And furthermore Christianity does not follow Martin Luther. We follow Christ. Yes, he plays an important role in church history but no branch of Christianity views him as a perfect person who had the right ideas about everything. Modern Christianity, including the Lutheran church, has explicitly rejected Luther’s later comments about Jews in writing.

Your third example is someone who is very bluntly stating things that surmount to theological differences. And yea, surprise, Christianity has some pretty significant theological differences with Judaism that we do think need to be called out. Like for example yes Jews initially were God’s chosen people but now we are all His chosen people. And also citing one pastor hardly makes a case against Christianity as a whole.

It’s not gaslighting. It’s adding context and explanation to things you have gravely misunderstood or used to unfairly judge us as a whole. Christians do not wish to harm Jews. Quite the opposite, actually.

[butch-reidentified]

i know it’s none of my business, but if you mind sharing, why did you get top surgery? i haven’t heard of any woman who has gotten it for reasons further than being transgender (or medical ones)

I dont mind; it's just a bit complex and hard to communicate. I've found that whenever I try to on here, people end up misinterpreting a lot of it. I'm willing to try tho, esp since I've previously talked about it only in specific contexts and not just discussed all the reasons.

I had a few reasons, and part of it was medical (primarily bc of constant painful cysts), and I did have what I think may be a version of "sex dysphoria" (tho I'm not 100% bc other ppl describe sex dysphoria so differently & I didn't have body image issues or care how I looked to others or in the mirror) where my breasts felt (felt as in a literal physical sensation) like a prosthesis that I was wearing all the time. I had genuinely gorgeous, ideal-by-societal-standards breasts, and I actually quite liked them aesthetically. but they got in the way a lot and caused all the usual issues that large breasts do, so I was gonna get a reduction regardless. I was kinda like, why not go all the way and then I won't have to deal with cysts or that odd sensation I mentioned? I think it kind of comes down to that + the fact I knew I'd enjoy being a butch woman with a flat chest.

but then I also kind of got this sense of amusement from the idea of removing from existence a pair of breasts that sooo many people who saw them called flawless, just because they were "too perfect for this world to have." that's now the reason I give men who ask me about it, bc the reactions are honestly priceless.

I did a whole ton of research, including a lot of exploring stories of women who regretted doing this for the pupose of checking my motivations for pursuing it, my external and internal contexts around it, and my thought process and actual process I had designed for myself to complete before "clearing" myself to go forward with it - the idea being if any of those were a match with anything I read in a regret testimony, I would not move forward. I did therapy as well, specifically not affirming and with the woman who was my therapist after surviving the Pulse shooting in 2016, who I trust and respect deeply and who is not particularly on board with trans stuff or the new brand of "feminism." And I waited over 4 years from when I first thought about it to do all the above, and so it wouldn't be at all impulsive as I'd had a lot of time to dig deep, analyze, try other options, and really think hard about it/how I'd feel. And so I'd be old enough that my prefrontal cortex was more or less done cooking 😅

I'm not really sure either way if I would do it now if I still had them, but that's only bc I'm informed about the cosmetic surgery industry now in ways I wasn't then, and as a result, I'm opposed to giving that industry my money. But it would still be a tough call if I'm honest. I really like the way my chest is now. I'm quite happy with it and find it much more convenient in several ways, so I couldn't honestly say I have any regrets about it.

I truly had zero desire to be viewed as a man or "nonbinary" and went a bit overboard making sure people knew that for a while after my surgery. My misandry runs too deep to ever not love being a woman, no matter what the world is like, if I'm honest. I am so madly in love with womanhood and sisterhood and being a lesbian and female solidarity and devoting my life, body and "soul," to women's liberation. It's my cardinal raison d'être. And I do think there's some good can be done by an extremely gnc woman with no breasts who's loud and proud about being a woman.

[melonsharks]

btw i see the "we might have to kill this guy" panel shared out of context like all the time so i dont think u nor anyone else participating in the trend r being dickheads , but the original comic its from is called "Steven universe VS Hitler" & it is insanely insensitive & strange . As a jewish person it makes me kind of uncomfortable to see it spread around as like a cute redraw without ppl knowing what its from yk ? <- Not trying to like harp on you specifically or anything i dont think you are being a dickhead on purpose at all, just dont want it getting silly redraw-ified without people being told the full context & all that

I didn't know the context, and from what I could see, a lot of people didn't. i understand why it is an insensitive comic even if, from my perspective, it is mostly a bad criticism for a show's constantly misinterpreted message. If it's a huge problem, i can delete it, but i think out of context its pretty far enough removed from the source material to just be a meme redraw spawning from the original tweet, if that makes sense...? correct me if im wrong, though. I'll delete it for real if it causes too much discomfort. The last thing I want is to be insensitive. please just let me know.

[hivepixels]

Personally I think just because a big chunk of the fandom wildly misinterprets canon and/or is hyper aggressive about headcanons and ships (← absolutely a thing), it doesn't mean fans of a certain character or ship have less nuanced takes! It all boils down to preferences, so I would not say people "understand" Sollux better :0 In fact, I see a lot of fan content reducing his character to "gamer boyfriend" no matter the ship!!! Waughhhh!!!!

(mischaracterization is one of the things that irks me the most about this fandom, but I wouldn't say the takeaway is "I don't vibe with this pairing = Fans of this pairing just Don't Get It, but rather that people dump their baggage and regurgitated fanon into the characters, essentially detaching them from their canon context and making them unrecognisable for the sake of shipping)

ayee that's fair any character/ship can be subjected to this, esp as a karkat fan i've seen him mangled all sorts of ways hckckhk

tropes do give people comfortable prompts to lean on when creating fanworks, but it's understandably exhausting to see a configuration you don't agree with constantly being spread around/repeated all the time

sollux's character has so many extensive subsections of lore it's not surprising people would prefer to focus on the parts they're familiar with, and sweaty gamer boyfriend comes much more naturally than homestuck-specific alternian physiology hsjaha

but yeah the baggage thing is rough bc we're all drawn to our fave characters for different reasons, so liking the same character/ship doesnt always mean you'd instantly click :') and getting too hyperspecific with headcanons can alienate other fans from just wanting to vibe and watch their faves getting together.

(though i do think the fandom is generally pretty accepting of canon-removed/far-fetched depictions, especially when the person is genuine and upfront about it 👀 with infinite possibilities it's natural to try everything once and decide what is and isn't for you. just... might be hard to avoid since the community is so small.)

not to mention there's a pretty distinct generation gap between modern fans who associate homestuck with current cultural trends of dark/shock/meme media, compared to older fans who've had previous experience engaging in early fandom culture and remember how it used to be done

i'm just glad i'm only on tumblr/youtube hjhj everytime someone mentions an outrageous opinion from a diff section of the fandom i just assume they got back from checking twitter/tiktok

[mxnsterbabe]

Lizard people are an antisemitic conspiracy theory created by David Icke, who posited that Jewish people were not merely not human, but not mammalian in nature. I cannot tell anyone what to write or not write, and I won't say that you should never write any lizard person. However, lizard people, reptilians who control the government from behind the scenes, etc. are all white supremacist dogwhistles and rooted in this antisemitic conspiracy theory, so I would kindly suggest you 1. not write lizard people as having control over any part of human government and 2. put up some kind of disclaimer at the start of your story so people don't get the wrong idea. Followers of your blog know who you are and know you're not the kind of person to believe in that kind of prejudiced nonsense, but when people on tumblr who don't know you see it, they don't have that knowledge. You must subsequently end up coming across as someone who you very much are not, and I would hate for you to have to deal with Neo Nazis thinking you're one of their own or for people to spread false information about you.

I gather that you're not familiar with these kinds of things because you don't hang out with bigots, so I figured this is a case of you simply not knowing this was a thing. I know you're not the kind of person who would write something like that knowingly. I hope this came across as a heads-up and not as a callout post. I know tone can be hard to read on the internet but please know the tone here is 'here's a heads-up in case you weren't aware' and not 'wow you suck'.

Hey friend! I'm assuming this is in reference to the latest poll? I've written for lizardfolk before, but this ask is timed pretty much in tike with the poll 😅

Anyway, thanks for the heads up! This is just my viewpoint and I'm sure everyone has different opinions, so take this with a grain of salt.

I think any bigot who thinks a random story about a fantasy species means I'm one of them would have to be reaching for the stars, and people like that will misinterpret anything on purpose tbh. I'd be much more worried about hurting/offending Jewish people because I care a lot more about them than assholes on the Internet. But!! I appreciate that you care about my reputation 💜

I promise that my lizardfolk are based on the DnD playable characters, and I think that's fairly obvious given the context of the blog. I've also written about goblins and some people say they have antisemitic roots too, but (and again, this is only my view) the modern take on them is so far removed that they're basically different things entirely.

Anyway, this is a long winded way to say thanks, aha! I hope my answer isn't too convoluted, I'm really just here to write silly stories and the last thing I want is to start discourse 💜💛

[enjolrasofficial]

i saw you’re currently reading the captive prince and now i have to ask: do you think it’s worth the read? like i remember reading it at sixteen thinking ‘what the shitfuck is this?!?!’, like i hated it, absolutely hated it. but i have no recollection of the plot or anything other than my dislike. and i have had people tell me that they like it a lot, so i’m considering a reread simply to either cement my dislike or change it. would love to hear your thoughts on it just out of curiosity!

Heyyyy omg thank you for asking bc i have LOTS of thoughts about captive prince and i'm ALWAYS ready to rant about it!!

okay so i have very strong opinions about cp (and i need to warn you i've read it like 30 times in the past 7 years). the thing is. most people who say they hate it read the book with the wrong context notion. especially the first book . which is exactly why i give everyone who wants to read it and asks me about it the full trigger warning list and the disclaimer to NOT read the first book as a romance novel. (which is why i get very angry randomly when i remember that audible sorts the first book into the erotica genre which it decidedly isn't imo)

cp being sorted into erotica makes me so mad bc book one is a lot of things but NOT erotica. everything that happens in that book is to show the recipient the worst parts of both the akielon and vetretian cultures and societies and their practices. it introduces the reader the protagonists (well mostly damen but i will talk about that later) and outlines their struggles and motives. so i usually read the first book as something akin to a thriller and/or critique of the society bc nothing that happens in the first book is happy or sweet or erotic or lighthearted or romantic. it's all terrible, terrifying and just plain horror and i feel like that's also what the first book is SUPPOSED to convey.

book 2&3 are where the protagonists and circumstance both change. the protagonists learn and grow BECUASE they're removed from the awful court society and the circumstances they'd been thrown in by intrigues and fate. non of this change in them could've happened if they'd stayed in Arles. it shows the reader that the way they change each other and grow away from their respective cultures is a good thing bc both societies have MASSIVE FLAWS which are highlighted to excess in book one (and which is also commented on in the bonus short stories)

so yes if you read all three books as romance when you first read them i understand why you would've been disturbed by them as everything that happens in the first book is VERY disturbing and massive parts of the second and third book are quite disturbing too. However if one reads it under the prerequisite one would read let's say the hunger games (or any dystopian novel) under i wouldn't say it gets less disturbing but the reader suddenly uncovers a whole other layer of the book.

also i personally think that they get so much better (not in the sense of that it gets less disturbing but more so which makes the story better imo) with every reread bc you know so much more about laurent and his motives and his reactions and why he acts the way he acts whereas the reader now KNOWS the ways in which damen actively misinterprets laurents actions which is SO BRILLIANT bc it shows us that a) damen TRIES and he's a good guy but also that he's an absolutely unreliable narrator bc his experiences were so different from laurents and b) just how much laurent is struggling with the fact that he KNOWS and i love it i reread it SO OFTEN

also sorry this got a little longer than planned oopsie ly have a nice day 🤍

[holocene-sims]

hi! if you're still taking storytelling asks: 16, 18, and 20? ❤

hi minty!! ofc, i'm happy to answer more ❤️ anything for you, my friend!

16. what about the process do you enjoy?

aside from the obvious "i just enjoy writing!" answer that i could give, something i enjoy is creating a cast of characters (family, friends, etc.) around grant, whose narratives are completely inseparable from his story!

a few people have said they don't really care about the other characters' stories unless it obviously has to do with grant, but i think if that's your attitude, that's a fundamental misinterpretation of the story and even of grant as a character himself. he's someone very in tune with the world and with the people around him, and he very much cares about even the tiny details about the people around him and REMEMBERS them, regardless of whether he can relate to or understand those details personally.

another thing is this: no one comes about to their adult selves alone. people like grant who are deeply traumatized are that way, in part, because someone did it to them, and people who are kind and funny and generous like him are that way because good people in their lives encouraged those traits. in short, people are driven by generational, contextual, and cultural experiences.

and that all is a HUGE part of the story. like it is the ENTIRE thing. it is the story of one dude figuring out this web of emotions, memories, and stories that span time and space, and that web crumbles if you remove the other links.

i could keep going but ANYWAY that's just something i really like! i like getting to highlight those connections, big and small, and in the future, there will be more crucial and deeper expressions of those interwoven narratives!

18. choose a song that reminds you of your story

good news, i have a whole playlist for the story! i've thought about sharing it publicly because it's on spotify but idk if anyone is into that, so i haven't

nonetheless, my song choice of the day is mutter by rammstein 👿

20. choose a favorite shot from your story so far

probably this one 🥺 it's so sad in context but also just really sweet