#as if it were a huge fandom

[enolezdrata]

[sainz100]

2024 Brazilian GP | x

[ohhgingersnaps]

I'm seeing some frustration over fandom creatives expressing anger or distress over people feeding their work into ChatGPT. I'm not responding to OP directly because I don't want to derail their post (their intent was to provide perspective on how these models actually work, and reduce undue panic, which is all coming from a good place!), but reassurances that the addition of our work will have a negligible impact on the model (which is true at this point) does kind of miss the point? Speaking for myself, my distress is less about the practical ramifications of feeding my fic into ChatGPT, and more about the principle of someone taking my work and deliberately adding it to the dataset.

Like, I fully realize that my work is a drop in the bucket of ChatGPT's several-billion-token training set! It will not make a demonstrable practical difference in the output of the model! That doesn't change the fact that I do not want my work to be part of the set of data that the ChatGPT devs use for training.

According to their FAQ, ChatGPT can and will use user input to train itself. The terms and conditions explicitly state that they save your chats to help train and improve their models. (You can opt-out, but sharing is the default.) So if you're feeding a fic into ChatGPT, unless you've explicitly opted out, you are handing it to the ChatGPT team and giving them permission to use it for training, whether or not that was your intent.

Now, will one fic make a demonstrable difference in the output of the model? No! But as the person who spent a year and a handful of months laboring over my fic, it makes a difference to me whether my fic, specifically, is being used in the dataset. If authors are allowed to have a problem with the ChatGPT devs for scraping millions of fics without permission, they're also allowed to have a problem with folks handing their individual fics over via the chat interface.

I do want to add that if you've done this to a fic, please don't take this as me being upset with you personally! Folks are still learning new information and puzzling out what "good" vs. "bad" use is, from an ethical standpoint. (Heck, my own perspective on this is deeply based on my own subjective feelings!) And we certainly shouldn't act like one person feeding a fic into ChatGPT has the same practical negative impact, on a broad societal scale, as a team using a web crawler to scrape five billion pieces of artwork for Stable Diffusion.

The point is that fundamentally, an ethical dataset should be obtained with the consent of those providing the data. Just because it's normalized for our data to be scraped without consent doesn't make it ethical, and this is why ChatGPT gives users the option to not share data— there is actually a standardized way (robots.txt) for website servers to set policies for how bots/crawlers can interact with them, for exactly this reason— and I think fandom artists and authors are well within their rights to express a desire for opting out to be the socially-respected default within the fandom community.

[utilitycaster]

I definitely need to observe this more but I feel like in a lot of actual play or adjacent (ie, sf podcast) fandoms there's like. a particular fan mindset that takes almost every action from secondary characters in the worst faith possible with the exception of villainous/deeply morally ambiguous characters, and so you get people who will assume everyone is out to get the protagonists EXCEPT for the person who has shot at them 20 times while kicking a puppy; that person is misunderstood and deserved a redemption arc.

[locusfandomtime]

A (somewhat) genuine “What your favourite hermit says about you” chart because my joke one was so popular

Obvious disclaimer: do not take too seriously! these aren’t necessarily true! this is like 50% a joke! i mean everything here positively!

i am still right though. anyways let me know who you are I’m a zed fan

[shrikeseams]

Okay I know I have a whole post about how Doriath was screwed no matter what Dior did, and I stand by that! Nothing I say here is I tended to dismiss those factors.

But when you compare the kinslaying at Menegroth to the kinslayings at Alqualonde and Sirion, it's like. What the fuck happened.

Alqualonde makes sense because it was a surprise and a mistake in a culture that had no expectation of being attacked--and even then the teleri damn near won that fight.

Sirion makes sense because it was a hodge podge refugee settlement with, one presumes, minimal time or resources to dedicate to defenses. And even then they killed at least one maybe two of the feanorian leaders, and Elwing managed to escape. Under the circumstances, they did great.

But if you compare those two to Menegroth... damn, the Iathrim do not look good. I don't think they were ever likely to straight out win against or beat the feanorians (see the post referenced above), but they were fighting an enemy they knew damn well was coming*, on their own home turf that's been nominally defensible since before the sun rose. It should have been a seige. Even if you assume that half of their fighting forces died with Thingol (which seems excessive tbh), they should have been able to seal things up and buy time! What the fuck happened. What did they do, that they were so underprepared that a refugee camp could do just about as well???

*I cannot buy the argument that the iathrim were taken off-guard by the attack. I just cannot. If you don't buy that Dior considered the feanorians a threat, at absolute bare minimum they should have been on high alert for an attack from Morgoth. If they're not braced for attack then they're too stupid to survive first age belariand.

[sibylsleaves]

if you could see the writing on the wall for bucktaylor but not bucktommy well um. i think maybe you just dont know how to read.

[mxjackparker]

OOC: Exploring Online Fandom Roleplay - Coming Soon!

Art by piscesdisco.art.

OOC is a book that deep dives into online fandom roleplay, across fandoms and platforms and decades. It covers why people roleplay, the connections they make doing it, and the etiquette and subcultures we see in different roleplaying communities.

I've interviewed dozens of roleplayers, surveyed hundreds more, and I've been a roleplayer in fandom spaces myself for over 15 years. If we don't write and save information about our niche internet fan communities and how they worked, we'll lose it, and I've realized there's such a huge lack of literature on fandom. I decided to put together this book to cover the topic of online fandom roleplaying, to preserve that history.

Our communities are full of trans and queer people, and the ways we use roleplay to explore gender and sexuality are highlighted in the book. Other topics covered include: the safety of minors in roleplaying spaces, the death of Omegle, how Homestuck and Sherlock and Star Trek all had big impacts on the way online roleplay works, why roleplay attracts neurodivergent people, and a lot more! There's an entire chapter covering roleplay over Tumblr.

Check out a few of the quotes from roleplayers I interviewed here.

A lot of people are embarrassed by their history of online roleplaying, keeping it to themselves, and I think it's about time we overcome the cringe associated with roleplay and treat it like the vibrant expression of creativity that it is.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please share this post and sign up here to be notified when the Kickstarter launches:

This is a small project, so any interaction and support helps a lot.

[youling-the-ghost]

GUYS WE FINALLY HAVE SFTH LONGFORM CHARACTER TAGS ON AO3!! :D

(we still don't have any canon relationship tags as far as I know but this is still pretty cool!)

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[gwyns]

it's actually quite amusing watching people discuss jurian like he's some disgraced youtuber over a comment that doesn't matter and that elain ultimately won't give one shit about because she wasn't around to hear it

[jalluzas-ferney]

I don’t think this is an unpopular opinions but lowkey fannon kailor is sm better than cannon kailor.

(Read the tags)

[hooked-on-elvis]

Those are absolutely two of my favorite pictures of Elvis. Of course I like the details and all the info I can get on the pictures. One thing I have to say is that in that moment Elvis was in his 7th season at the International Hotel in Las Vegas (August 4th - September 4th 1972), and it was the first time he brought Linda Thompson to accompany him during the concerts (prior to that she had only accompanied Elvis during rehearsals in July). You can imagine how jealous I am of her because, well, just look at Elvis! 🫠🥲 Anyway, here's a little story about the fans with Elvis in those pictures:

Las Vegas, NV. Monday, August 28, 1972. Elvis with two Italian fans. The woman is Nicla Crippa and the man was the President of the Italian fan club, his name is Livio Monari. Livio Monari started the Italian FC in 1962. Together with Nicla Crippa, a personal friend and member of his Fan Club, they met Elvis just after the Midnight show on 26th August 1972. Photos taken that day didn't come out, so they asked to see Elvis again... to have new ones taken on the 28th August (2nd meeting) which are the ones shown above. They had just attended the Dinner & Midnight shows on the 28th Aug: when a waiter approached them - that Elvis was waiting for them.

Nicla said the following about the meeting:

1972 was a special year for me, I picked up all my saving of a year and together with Livio Monari at that time president of the E.P.F.C. of Italy, I flew to Las Vegas in August to see Elvis performing. When we arrived we were so excited that we started immediately to ask anybody of Elvis entourage if we could meet Elvis, crook Col. Parker was at a gambling table with his cigar and he said very rude "NO, you cannot met Elvis", then Joe Esposito who said No too, and when I told him "Hey Joe you are Italian like us" he answered "I'm not Italian, I was born in Chicago" very rude too... until I saw the name of Emilio Muscelli on an office door, I knocked and entered and I said with all my 18 years old enthusiasm (in fact I was not yet 18, I would have turned 18 on December 30) "Hi Emilio, we are Italians and we are here to see Elvis concerts and meet him"... well he took it good to his heart and from that point on he treated me like his daughter - he was 50 years old. We saw 14 concerts in 7 days and we met Elvis TWICE, the first time on August 26 but the pictures Joe Esposito took with Livio's camera did not come out as Livio due the emotion charged an already used film in the camera... the second time on August 28, this time we called a professional photographer to take the 2 pictures to be sure. When I saw Elvis the first time coming out of his dressing room I ran towards him and I almost jumped on him, I hugged and kissed him and he returned the hugs and kisses to me and he asked me "Hey baby how old are you" I answered "18" and he said "And you came all the way from Italy just to see me?" "Yes Elvis" and he "Oh baby..." and he hugged me again very tight. We stayed with him for 15 minutes, we gave him a trophy we brought from Italy unfortunately we have no picture of Elvis with our trophy but I saw it at Graceland Trophy Room in 1987. He wrote a dedication to me, and one to Livio, on 2 LPs we brought with us, he gave us a yellow scarf each, but especially I held his right hand in my hands for a long time, and he did not withdraw it, on the contrary he caressed my hands. He was such a gentle, sweet and tender person, he made us feel at ease and he slowed down speaking English as at that time I could not speak English well. We asked "when will you come to Europe?" he said looking at Joe "I definitely wanna go, after a project I have for January 1973 (Aloha from Hawaii) I'll ask Parker to organize a tour to Europe". The night after Emilio gave us seats in the first row, Elvis saw me from stage and he stooped down and he put a red scarf around my neck... and on August 28 we met him again same place backstage and he said "Hey you are still here, good", he had such a sense of humour. Those 2 meetings with Elvis still are the best moments of my life!

Credits: elvis-collectors.com

[arcanegifs]

[intermundia]

so i think stats on ao3 stories say more about the size and activity of the fandom at the time of posting rather than anything terribly meaningful about the quality of the story in particular, and as a result i don't take my own numbers very seriously, but i think taking them instead as a metric of the community, it can be very fun and meaningful to see certain milestones passed. i just saw my obikin stories have more than 750k hits from over the last four years, and that's amazing proof of community to me, like it's so cool that i could be in the right place at the right time to be a part of that movement, something so much bigger than myself. the fandom has been through so much, from the pandemic activity boom and the end of tcw to the kenobi show doing its propaganda work, so many brilliant people coming and going, it's been a real journey haha it's got me feeling nostalgic and proud to see proof of just how many people over the years have explored the ship and loved it as much as i do!!

[darth-grips]

has anyone done this for star wars yet?

anyway. I'm right.