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drill-teeth · 10 months ago

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Sometimes I think about like. When I first really got access to the internet, so much of what I liked growing up suddenly became dirty.

I was raised as a girl. And I liked plenty of girl targeted media. Kim Possible and My Little Pony were some of my favorites. I also watched some media targeted more at young boys. Primarily anime. Like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto. Because my dad liked those, so he didn't really have an issue with me liking them too because it was cool to him to share some interests. Which was nice.

And eventually we got a family computer and I was allowed to use it pretty regularly starting mainly in middle school. And I wanted to draw all my favorite cartoon characters.

It was really easy to find reference images of the Naruto characters and Dragon Ball Z characters I liked. Most of the image results were screenshots from the show or cool fanart of them using their powers to blow stuff up. And I figured finding images to reference for Kim Possible and My Little Pony wouldn't be any harder. I had started watching Friendship Is Magic recently. Pinkie Pie and Rarity were my favorites, and I wanted to draw them. And Kim. And Shego.

And it did not take a long scroll down the Google image search results to see more than just a little suggestive or outright explicit porn art of all of them. And my curious mind wanted to know why that was in the search results. It didn't seem to me like that should be so easily available. But it turned out a LOT of people. Mostly grown men. Decided the ponies and Kim and Shego were sexy and decided to draw and post on many many non-adult catered websites a lot of porn.

And suddenly my pony figures and Equestria girls dolls felt like sex objects in my bedroom. And my Kim Possible fanart sitting in my sketchbook felt dirty. And the shows weren't as fun to watch anymore. I didn't end up finishing all the seasons of Friendship is Magic.

I sort of just threw myself into the boy things I was allowed to like since then. People didn't really have any questions about that, especially since I socially transitioned to male in highschool. I bet plenty of them just assumed I liked boy stuff to go with my new boy gender lol.

I wish I had still enjoyed Kim Possible and My Little Pony when I was younger though. I missed those medias but felt like I couldn't even touch them anymore. Especially after I went through a sexual trauma in highschool that I honestly don't want to publicly recount. I want to rewatch both series for fun. But I still can't work up the nerve.

And I think a lot about like. How I was lucky to have boy interests to fall back on because I know and knew plenty of people raised as girls who weren't allowed to watch boy targeted media at all. Who probably went through something eerily similar and then had nothing at all that felt okay to watch.

And sometimes I wish this was more important to people when they discuss media consumption and fandom. Sometimes I wish people were more interested in adult centered fandom sites for their horny art so at least some kid on the internet knows it's going to be porn before they choose whether or not to click. Sometimes I wish some of the first things I heard about when engaging with fandom centered around kids media weren't the top ten most disgusting porn fics. And even though I don't post explicit NSFW on my art Tumblr, I try to make it clear I find Transformers characters attractive so that people understand that before deciding to follow me even there or view more of my art. Because I actually think open and up front disclosure of "I am an adult who finds cartoon characters attractive so keep that in mind before you choose to view my work" is important. And honestly the least I can do.

And I'm not like. Saying you have to stop drawing cartoon characters sexy or whatever. I know I'm not going to stop finding Transformers robots hot. And I'm not out to advocate for censorship. I just think like. People are too used to pointing and laughing at sites pushing "kid friendly" fixes to their apps that don't do anything but frustrate users and just mean porn goes untagged. And are too used to just. Seeing cartoon character porn unfiltered cross their dash. That even well intentioned people don't really stop to pause to be like. Hey maybe I don't want my horny drawing of a kids show character to be at the top of Google search results. And maybe I should filter the image appropriately with the sites' filters or choose a more adult site for it in general.

Because honestly kids should be allowed to enjoy media without adults' sex fantasies being constantly inescapable to them.

#otto thoughts

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microcarbo · 5 months ago

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ohh 1, 7 and if u want 11 for the Durge creator asks? I'd love to hear more about your Durge!!

Aaaaaaa thank you a lot it makes me so happy to know you want to hear more! Answering this ask game What or who inspired your Durges design the most? A particular idea or vibe or perhaps another hottie or baddie? Character design comes a lot more easy to me if i think about characters in terms of their lived spaces so my first steps when i'm making up a guy are almost always a) doing a bit of research about the general setting (this blog has a ton of useful posts about D&D lore, i spent a lot of time reading them and the wiki!) and b) using the information i gather to imagine their room/workplace/usual haunts. I knew about durge's child of bhaal's bit already because i happened to see a very cool fanart of the temple before i started playing, so from there on it was a matter of asking myself: what would this dude i got a very general idea of put in a room to make it "theirs", what would fit their vibe? I liked the idea of them keeping a lot of scattered paper, scrolls and books around and from there i made up their interest in history and magic. The temple is home to a murder cult, it has corpses lying around and blood running all over the floors so i went on by wondering how they would react to the smell and found out that i liked the idea of a killer being squeamish about it, someone who would hang censer burners to the walls and obsessively scrub out every bit of gore after a kill, maybe even keep a little collection of perfume vials. There also are a lot of candles down there and they were my main inspiration for their clothing lmao head to toe flowy, wax-white robes. Once i managed to get all these little bits down, i developed further from there while playing and adjusted the details on the go (: Is their personal story represented in their overall design? Do they carry any mental scars or physical alterations from the shit that happened to them? Yes! Their pre-tadpole design features very long robes and a veil and if i'm drawing something related to that phase of their life i never represent them without it (i've read that bhaalists are known to wear it to cover their faces, though i've taken the liberty of making it white instead of black/purple). Even their slayer form retains some scraps of it over its eyes and body. They lose it post forced lobotomy and during the events of act I and II they only retain the robes, which they discard completely after the duel in act III to adopt civilian clothes. Rejecting Bhaal also changes their class from the canon storm sorcerer to wizard, because i like the idea of their magical talents being directly related to their demigod status. I feel like this last bit is particularly relevant to their development because it puts them in the position of only needing to rely on knowledge they have gathered by their own volition (something they start pursuing and studying post nautiloid incident but can't quite indulge before that), and because they actively have to keep nurturing it if they want to keep making progresses and sustain themselves on it. What's your go to medium for their portrayal? Google Docs, a niche notes app, perhaps one specific for writing, Procreate, Clip Studio, MediBang? Hit me with those recs. Do you sometimes mix em up? It truly just is my head and a questionably legal version of PS i got back in 2021.....i can't even say that i have a moodboard or something because while i like researching lore through texts i absolutely loathe gathering references lol I DEARLY WISH i hadn't completely stopped writing for pleasure after high school and that i had put more effort into learning english because sometimes i feel like wanting to portrait something that would work way better in a written format than how it would with illustrations...i want to make it up for it eventually but it's a slow process, so for now art it is hehe

#thank u again and sorry for the late reply i had two busy days 😔#these are two of my favourite questions i started a character sheet bc of them LOL #also this is miles long i hope it doesn't sound too much on the nose i just love to talk...........#durge ask game

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thesweetestsupervillains · 3 months ago

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What is your opinion on AI?

// Truthfully, I love it and wish the community would engage with it more so that they'd understand the real problems that it has and the real threat it poses, which is not and never was about 'small artists.'

Let's be frank here, if you have ever tried to train a LORA or finetune a model, you'd understand that you need two things: good data and good tags. And no offense to small artists, but 99% of art just doesn't fit this bill online. Just pull up Pixiv and DeviantArt and scroll the first page; if you were trying to teach a PERSON about art, how much of that would you use? Not much I imagine. Even if you were trying to teach it a style or concept.

The other thing is, it's not theft. A style can't be copyrighted legally, and if you're posting gifs or using comics/anime/tv/movie screencaps for icons or the like, congrats you're also 'stealing.' If you draw fanart, you didn't pay Disney for that, if you write fanfic, you didn't pay the author for that, and those of use who remember the early fanfic.net days will remember when authors sued and won to stop fanfic from being put online.

The environmental impact is also grossly distorted. You can train and generate images on your home computer using 4gb vram. Unless you think that having your personal PC plugged in is destroying the environment, it's not. The giant amounts of water you see cited are to the run the giant server farms, and if you're going to talk about that you need to accept that the internet requires massive amounts of power to function structurally; that's why there are giant cables running across the ocean floor to connect the world's DNS.

No, the real problem with AI is two-fold:

how it's going to change copyright enforcement

how it's going to change the nature of the internet itself

You may have heard that the Internet Archive recently lost it's case in regards to allowing people to borrow books on it's platform that were copyrighted. That's the tip of the iceberg.

The reality is that what you see GPT do right now with google (where it mimics a human by randomly scrolling the pages on its first page and then guesses what was there ) is still in the realm of human possibility. It's also not different from people looking at WebMD and thinking that they can self diagnose. In other words, it's not being used in a way that's scary, yet.

But they recently started on the first leap forward, where a model can 'consider' things. Ergo, it can understand context. Now, let's apply that to how say, algorithms police content online. Now let's let the government decide what gets policed. A human being can only reasonably see so much, a lot falls through the cracks. But a computer is only limited by computational power.

So imagine if, say, Disney had a model that could search the internet for every instance of someone drawing and posting fanart of spiderman and then send the hosting company like Tumblr a cease and desist and demand that it be removed, pending prosecution. The reason that companies don't do this right now is that this requires a LOT of manpower and time and effort and it's just not worth it. But a computer that was capable of automating that could do it easily. And suddenly, posting spiderman online is illegal, because it's already illegal, because you're violating their copyright by reproducing a copyrighted image.

And no, 'fair use' won't matter, as that's been A. gutted to hell, and B. is actually a game about who has more money and time. Are you going to go to court with Disney to say that your drawing of spiderman is actually fair use, potentially taking years of your life and going bankrupt due to legal fees? No. You won't.

In other words, the internet we have is going to look a lot more like the great firewall of china, where posting a picture of winnie the pooh gets you thrown in jail because it's slang used to refer to dear leader.

But that's just one aspect to it. You'll still be able to have spiderman. But you won't be allowed to post your own drawings.

What companies are going to do is train models based on their own legally owned works, and then sell access to them to you, the consumer. There's nothing illegal or stolen about that. If Disney, which owns Marvel, wants to train a model to generate spiderman pictures, it 100% can, and without violating any copyright laws. In so doing, it can then say that if you want to have spiderman pictures, you have to use their app, and if you don't, you're breaking the law, and they'll know about it, because surprise, their models can now police the internet for any and all posts that violate their rights.

In other words, AI has shown that the current system of copyright is untenable and impossible to maintain. Thus, we have two paths forward. One, which is what I've already described, which resembles a dystopian nightmare where the internet is nothing but an application that you pay megacorporations to use, or one in which we entirely disassemble copyright law entirely.

Now, doing that would also hurt lots of artists; if you come up with an OC and there's no copyright, anyone can do whatever they want with it. They can make all the Winnie the Pooh horror movies they want! They can draw porn of your precious characters and there would be nothing you could do about it.

But remember, any laws that you create, any restrictions, will be used by people much more powerful than you with legal teams and lots of money. So there's no such thing as a 'middle ground' here. AI has changed things.

Of course, even without AI this would happen. Lots of major characters and franchises are running up against public domain in the next decades; Superman becomes public domain in 2034, and Batman becomes public domain in 2035, but spiderman not till 2057. And that's if there aren't carve outs; remember that while Winnie the Pooh is public domain, that's only the original version, not the version with the red shirt. That's still copyrighted. And of course, parts of Sherlock Holmes are still copyrighted.

So really, AI didn't create any of this. We were going to face this bridge eventually. We're just facing it now as opposed to in a decade. AI, I think, is a great tool; but I also think that people's ignorance and lack of knowledge cause them to focus on out of date or minor topics in how it works and will be used.

While people complain that twitter might scrape for their fanart, the US government is training facial recognition model that can compare any photo taken from a drone to every single photo on the internet, ensuring that you will be instantly identifiable wherever you go at all times. That phone with a gps you have? It'll be able to tell people what places you frequent and then a model will be able to predict where you're most likely to be at what times based on that.

Again, AI is not magic. It simply takes tasks and makes them easier which means that more things become possible. Things that are too expensive, burdensome, or complex become easier. And that cuts both ways. It will make your life easier. But it will also make your life less yours, in the same way that social media and mass communication turned your life into a public spectacle for mass consumption for strangers.

#ooc

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sponseredbybadlifechoices · 11 months ago

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I hate my art style, it feels too claustrophobic, I always have ideas but when I get anything out I either can’t execute it or my mind blanks, then there’s the absolute lack of motivation I’ve had the same sketchbook since like November 22nd and I am not even half way through with it, and the rotting ohhh the rotting

Rotting is just being in that stupide adhd x Depression combo where you have so much to do/want to do but physically can’t get up and do anything due to the affermentioned adhd and depression and so you lay in bed for the rest of the day or all day where you scroll through social media and are so consumed with everything that’s wrong with you and how stifling your room is and how much you want to go outside to a place you’ll only ever see in your daydreams and you’d give to be there or anywhere that isn’t here but you can’t because it’s not shower day yet and if you shower today you’ll have to shower on Monday which is the day you go back to school and you need to brush your teeth and floss because god knows when was the last time you did that

and you want to draw SOMETHING but doing anything is so physically and mentally taxing and when you ARE able to move to draw you can’t draw ANYTHING because despite having so much fanart and references and shit saved none of it inspires you OR it DOES but all your ideas are bad or your hand just can’t produce what it wants and it hasn’t been able to draw anything interesting and that wouldn’t be a problem because there’s so many filters you can use but you can’t utilize ANY of it because you have never been able to think outside the box or do anything interesting because you’re you and nothing you’ve ever drawn has been fucking worth it because it’s all so. Fucking. Boring. It doesn’t say anything new it doesn’t say anything interesting it doesn’t even make you think. At least before October it made you happy and you were actually satisfied with your art but you haven’t felt that feeling since September or July

And that’s another thing you physically can draw anything that doesn’t interest you, and that is heavy blow to your ego when literally NOTHING interests you anymore

When not even your old and dear hyperfixations can save you because you’re so beyond saving because you never had anything interesting to say even with your old interests and so you put your art supplies or iPad away and go back to your phone and you can’t even read fanfic cuz you’re not at school and that’s the on,y time your brain will let you so you go on twitter expecting to see gay fanart but nooo the past month has been full of just radfem bullshit or discourse that does matter yes but is not what you want to see and then you wonder why there’s so much radfem shit on your tl and ofc it’s because someone your following is liking their shit of you must’ve accidentally liked a tweet from a radfem and so now you’re thinking which tweet it was and reevaluating your ideals but you don’t know which ones because you don’t know which fucking tweet you liked that caused this whole downfall andyou just want your timeline to go back to fanart for shit you didn’t give a fuck about and updates on Palestine

So you goto tumblr but that quickly ends because you check all your faves blogs and the dashboard is so fucking boring so you goto tiktok which just, makes everything so much worse, cuz you’ll lay there scrolling through TikTok’s for fucking hours worsening the rotting and yet still being so goddamned bored despite every video but you can’t stop because watching something anything is better than laying there looking into nothing except your shitty fucking room with your queen sized bed tht takes up 90% of the room because your mom wanted the stupid thing to go right smack in the middle and you just wanna sleep upstairs again because upstairs has the most natural light with a big window facing the other apartments but your sister sleeps up there now and she never uses that window because “people can see inside” and you get that shes incredibly paranoid but you’re so fucking jealous and pissed off that she gets all that beautiful natural light to save her but she never fucking utilizes it while you’re stuck on the first floor where your room has two windows on opposite sides, one facing the patio the other facing the street and the patio window while great does not get the ray of sunlight that upstairs does and god knows I’m to scared of another face bejng on the other side of the street window and that’s why you hate the bed being in the middle of the fucking room. At least one of the reasons

Because if your mom could just move it all the way to the patio window you can get so much more natural light and a lot more room, but your mom doesn’t want to do that because of the stupid fucking matching drawers she got and how she wants our individual drawers on each side of the bed and you get it but godgodgod you fucking hate this lack of space how the bed is basically the entire fucking room and since you are absolutely awful at picking cleaning up after yourself there’s basically nowhere to walk and your mom complains about this and it would be so much easier if the bed was just on one side or if you just got a smaller fucking bed,

oh and because of that big ass bed if your mommy isn’t in bed with you you have so much more trouble sleeping like a fucking child but whatever it’s fine you just won’t bring up how much you hate this room you won’t get irritated when your mom always grumbles and huffs and puffs and mutters under her breath passive agressive shit about how dirty the house is because of you and you sister but she only ever does this in front of you so you’re the only one having to take the brunt of it and she’s right of course but it’s the muttering and the huffing and the fucking puffing that pisses you off so much and you just can’t stand it that you have to hold yourself back from splitting your moms head open with your bare fucking hands

And you’re still laying in bed but at this point you’ve sat up and looked at your side of the floor, except there is no floor there’s just all your shit and you can’t even see your floor and you wonder howd it get this bad when you just fucking cleaned it, will you get up and clean it? No! Because you’re so exhausted from either the day at school you had or from the entire week and you never actually heal from school even if you’re on break because you need so so much more time than 2 weeks or 2 days to repair everything and the only reason you survived the first semester is because you kept going and didn’t look back despite how the entire semester when you go home you just spend the rest of the day rotting and you continue to rot for the rest of the week and the weekend and the fucking breaks, and you think to yourself that taking these tiny little breaks will recuperate you just enough to keep going another week and it does but when you reach winter break you come crashing down amd don’t even get me started on how anticlimactic finals were and Christmas and literally everything despite Christmas being your favorite holiday every year every fucking holiday gets worse and worse but that’s not the point is it. Through the rotting although it recuperates you just a tiny bit what it doesn’t let you do is fucking draw like said before and drawing digitally/actually focusing on bigger pieces either traditional or digital is the most enticing part of the weekend or breaks.

But it never comes. Because youre too busy reeling from the day, week, hell months you’ve had and you’re so fucking depressed and it’s gotten so so much worse ever since school started again and you wish you could be one of those low functioning depressed people because they look like they have it so easy but they probably don’t and you’re being so fucking judgemental again but you just can’t help but there’s no one who publicly talks about these parts about their depression

And of COURSE they wouldn’t but you wish so hard someone would, because despite your selfish desires to be the only person to feel what you’re feeling when you get that “wish” and you don’t see anyone talk about it this way you feel so so alone despite you desiring that and you hate it you hate all of it and no one even knows that you’re struggling like this not even your therapist because you were so focused on surviving each week that you couldn’t focus on this slow burn decline and of course you had alot of other shit going on that were more urgent to discuss w your therapist amd even they noticed how you’ve been lower in mood and you noticed too. In your sessions you’ve been so much more tired and so much less your exuberant excited self. It’s not all gone of course you’re still your hyper fixated autistic self and you still get excited over your hyperfixations. But you’ve noticeably been more tired in sessions and probably outside of sessions but no one notices except your therapist and when they ask about it you don’t know what to say.

You’re so well aware of the rot and your art decline which coincides with your mental decline but you bring those up in passing. Because you don’t realize how bad the slow burn is, like putting a frog in water and slowly heating it up until it dies without realizing it. And this is all because you were convincing yourself that you couldn’t be this exhausted you don’t have math this year. And that’s what keeps you going. Not having math. And you notice, you notice how you’re still so so fucking exhausted but you tell yourself to keep going or how it’s not that bad because you don’t have math. This was supposed to be a better year for fucks sake but it wasn’t. And you can’t tell why. I got rid of the biggest contributor of my misery so why, why has everything gotten so much worse? Why have I gotten more miserable? Why has my art gotten worse? Less recognizable? So much more claustrophobic and boring and so so awful? It’s not fair

It’s so not fucking fair why do I have to go through this. Why do I have to deal with periods, why do I have to deal with boobs and a disgusting voice and hips and thighs of a fucking woman why do I have to deal with this body I didn’t even fucking want. Why do I have to deal with this mental decline. Why do I have to deal with my artistic decline while everyone else has “Highschool problems”. But you know that’s not true. You know your friends only want you to see what they can make light of, you know they’re problems are so so much deeper than they let on but you’re always such a vindictive and selfish person you think their problems aren’t as bad as yours and that’s so so untrue so you keep those thoughts in your head and ohhhh you can’t even get started on your physical pains your knee still hurts from when your dog and this German Shepard collided with it and it’s been months.

But it still hurts and when your at a dog park and a bunch of dogs start running at you you feel the panic and the indescribable pain you felt that day. But that’s not all, your knee hurts but it’s gotten to hurting your leg as a whole too, in your aerobics class you can’t do certain things anymore because your stupid fucking knee hurts too much and uts not fucking fair because it happened months ago so why why why fucking why does it still hurt. And then there’s the headaches oh the headaches and so much more health issues you can’t even fucking remember and the doctors did nothing about but make referrals to check SOME of them. But it’s whatever! It’s not like I feel like I’m constantly fighting for air when I’m at school, it’s not like the inhaler that I have barely helps it’s fucking WHATEVER.

And all you want is for someone to take you seriously, to not joke about any of this, to actually fucking see you but everyone is a emotionally stunted teenager and you can’t even blame them because you’re the one who constantly makes jokes and deflects and who can’t put your feelings into word

Until the last fucking second

When all of it has happened and will continue to happen

Who will save you from this fucking depressive episode. No one because you didn’t tell them anything but at least you’re writing it down now so next time you see your therapist you can finally. Finally. Work on this whole fucking issue

What’s the point of me going through this? The first half of 2023 while by no means perfect was such a wonderful time of artistic expression. And of course the rotting was still very very there at least at that time my art felt good. It felt amazing. Will it be like this again this year? An amazing first half and debilitating second half? Is it because of daylight savings? I wouldn’t be wrong in that assessment I’ve said multiple times how much night coming quicker severely depresses me. If I was somewhere that actually snowed I wouldn’t mind as much because then I can have a winter moment or fucking something butNO I got to be born in cali fucking fornia where there’s no seasons and by the time I move out there will be no seasons left in this fucking world because our world leaders and corporations will have fucked it all up

It’s not fair, none of this is fair. I shouldn’t have to deal with any of this, why me. Of all people, out of every person in this world. You could have given all this baggage to some rich person who would be able to make it all go away. But no. You just HAD to give it to someone in poverty! And not only that you made them trans and gay and to add insult to injury you gave them depression anxiety adhd autism and so much trauma they can barely function. What was the point of making me like this. I know I’m not kind to my ocs, but why did god have to be a 12 year old girl? Can she even hear me, does she even care. But blaming everything on an entity that isn’t even sure to exist is such a pussy move. Those to blame are those who have hurt me, those who made the school system like that, those who downplay mental illness. Everyone. Except me. Who’s to say all of this isn’t my fault, was I that bad of a child that I Inadvertently gave myself all of this

I hate all of this, I know I’m responsible for everything but goddamnit

This body this mind this psyche is so fucking repulsive these hands can’t even draw anything interesting. This voice isn’t mine. This face isn’t fully mine. This chest is not mine and never will be. These thighs and these hips are so woman like but I’m not a woman I’m a little boy I shouldn’t have this body I should no chest and tinier hips, less womanly thighs

And it’s funny because this body is that of a grown woman but this voice and face is that of a little girls. It’s disgusting. This almagamation of a child and adult on the cusp of being a woman but still just a little girl but I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not I don’t want to be a girl I hate being a girl I hate it I hate it I hate it why do boys at my school get to be born as boys but I’m stuck in this mature body I didn’t want to start puberty at 11 I should’ve started at 13 or 14 or whenever cis boys start. Why do I have to develop early.

Why couldn’t I have it later, why couldn’t my mom put me on puberty blockers why why why I shouldn’t have had to deal with a puberty that was never meant for me. I need to start testosterone I need it so bad I can’t handle this anymore I hate being a girl I hate being a woman it was never meant for me. I want to be feminine in the way cis twinks are, do cis gays even realize how lucky they are? Will they ever? Being able to live comfortably in a body that was meant for you. Why do you get to have that but I don’t. You don’t deserve it. I deserve it. Why do I have to fight for everything that was given to you I hate this body so much i hate you so much I hate you I hate you I hate you

And how jealous I get when you and blue or literally friends I spend a lot of time w spend their time w other people. It's such a disgusting desire to want to be the only person that my obsessions ever talk to I hate it I hate it so so fucking much, and I want to be loved so bad and I am loved so why why is it so difficult to see that I am. Is it because of my immense depression and trauma that makes me feel like people don't mean it or my disassociation disorder that makes it feel unreal or.

Is it because my standard of love is so so high because I'm such an obsessive piece of fucking shit that I want people to practically worship and adore me. That I want to be the only one who matters in someone's life even though I hate HATE being the sole person who's focused on in a relationship? What is it that I want. is it in the middle? That I want to be the most important, fun, interesting and good friend anyone's ever known but they still have others that they love but never as much as they love me? Is that it Evan? You just want to be the most important person in the world to someone? But aren't you already? I am but it doesn't feel real, how can I know they're being honest Evan? How can I know that they're even real? How do I even do it Evan.

I know theres many people who love me and matt loves me so so much he's said it multiple times so what's stopping me Evan. What is preventing me from accepting it fully? Evan, it's your ego. That stupid good for nothing fragile wall that is your ego. That's the reason for all of this. But wouldn't it also be my disassociation? Evan, it's my belief they're connected.

Your disassociation was set up by your ego to make it stronger against the very real threats you were going through at home. I get that but, that can't be it can it? There has to be more factors in this, but so what if there is. All we need to know is that you'll never be capable of truly believing and feeling people's love

It will come to you sporadically, and you'll be able to fully believe you are loved. But it'll never be permanent. Yet you expect people to believe you when you say you adore them or love them, just like with people telling you they love you, but at least with your love you know it's true and while some moments feel more normal you'll always get those (much less) sporadic waves of adoration and worship. It's funny to me how badly you want them to cut you and hurt you and how badly you want to do the same. How you want to isolate them and yourself from everyone and have it just be you three.

You never want them to leave you, and who knows what'll happen if they do. It's not like you'd kill yourself of course, or hurt anybody. But I know losing them, due to their own decisions and not through death will break you. You'll never recover from it, or maybe you'll completely deflect from it and lead a normal life but years later youll sit in your apartment and it'll all come crashing down and youll be so useless and pathetic in those next few days, weeks hell even months. But that'll only happen if you're able to see them in real life right? I mean.

Even with your sister as much as you despise her you still love her. But no matter how much you love somebody I just, I can't see you being the type to really care that much when they die. You'll feel a gaping hole sure but, you'll maybe cry at the funeral and just move on. Or is it just that the ego wall with the disassociation has made you feel numb and nothing. Is that how you got through this semester? The "it's not that bad" and "gotta keep going" attitude mixed in with the numbness? It's late, you're not making sense Evan. But I will, once you figure out how to tie everything together. Just like you always do, my little starlight. I hope you die Evan. Y yo a tí, mí estrella

What a disgusting waste of two hours, how shameful am I undeserving and better left for dead. I'm glad you hope for the same thing as I do, even though you're just me talking to myself like some edgy freak. God we really don't deserve anything, I don't know why I'm still talking Evan. You're asleep, Matt's asleep. Evan when will I get to see you again, I know youre just figment of my imagination, the personification of my opposing thoughts. I'm surprised you didn't come as asuka, hell you don't even have a physical form just my name.

I'm still confused about what happened between me and asuka me, it was so much more... involuntary than what we did. It felt like a deep part of my subconscious was ripping me from the inside out, but you. You're just...you're what I'm used to I guess. Ohh three hours talking about all of this, what a load of bullshit matt is gonna wake up to. That one line about how bad this year was really just made me realize huh. Evan? I don't know why I want you to respond again, I know I probably can since you're not real.

Just a part of my thoughts, but I can't. I can't bring you fully back out like I did earlier, I can still hear echos of you calling me starlight but that's..that's it. Why aren't you coming back, wake up man come on you can't. You can't just leave me, you were supposed to keep me company while matt slept. Whyd you go back to my subconscious Evan, you should be here with me. with your opposing views, and shit. This is such edgy teenager bullshit, you're not even real. I hate you so much. More than anything. Is it because you're me? Or is it because you left me?will you come back to me soon Evan? What a shameful waste of three hours we are

#vent

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trishzerothree · 4 months ago

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Also, Tamakuz wrote in her telegram channel about people who say that she is a pedo: "I scrolled through the comments on YouTube under the videos, in addition to a bunch of cuteness and warm words, I still went to puke again from your favorite topic, so I wrote this sheet because how much can I:

Dear West, and the followers of its quiet totalitarian regime based on shame and fear, keep your pedo-vision to yourself.

I understand that the West now has serious problems with pedophilia and child trafficking, I understand that this is a terrible difficult topic, which cannot be dealt with in any other way than to transfer your horror and anger to everyone in a row, and except to look for the reason for this in the work of other people. But understand that drawn cartoon-stylized miniature girls do not make the author a pedophile. I do not understand where the logic is here, it's just my style, I draw like that. You want to believe so much that everyone around you is a pedo, including me, that I, returning from YouTube comments, barely recover from your gaslighting (to use your language), that I am a pedo Nazi author. This is fucking bullshit.

I don’t want to play by your rules, I will not tell some pitiful story from my life, about abuse or other more terrible things that automatically make you untouchable and give you the right to terrorize others. I want to say that this exerts the same strong pressure as a close relationship with a person who reproaches you for every little thing, and calls you disgusting for simply expressing yourself without any sticky or evil intent. This is literally mass psychoviolence.

"Oh, I'm a rape victim, lick my shoe then I'll forgive you for your poorly spoken words. Oh, I had a terrible childhood, how can you enjoy life and draw such things when we suffered so much? You're disgusting, and I'm an innocent victim, everyone owes me" You, victims, are no better than your rapists now.

If you decided that you have the right to call me a pedophile because of your inventions, I believe that I can share my sincere position that "lolibyte" is only in your head. I'm scared to go online and see that people find pedo where I didn't even think about it, and I'm not just talking about my work, this happens all the time. This happens to other authors, this happens in your toxic fandom environment on the basis of pairings and fanarts, this happens at the junction of different cultures with different norms (Asia). And I won't repeat again about the unfortunate loli figures that you jerk off to so aggressively at any appropriate and inappropriate moment, it's all the same topic.

You are the same as my classmates in the second grade, who saw references to sex in every little thing and giggled disgustingly. And after this fucking brainrot, you start looking around paranoidly and searching for a crime somewhere in your drawings and words that you didn't even suspect. Get out of the drawn pictures and remember about real life, if for you a drawn Nazi uniform is the same as the real revival of Hitler. If for you every drawing with a child, or with a stylized head where the proportions are slightly larger than realistic, is a real pedo crime.

This is not my problem, but your consciousness. I find it disgusting. You are the cause of paranoia and panic of thousands of people. You are shifting attention from real crimes to free art. Since when has being an author on the Internet become dangerous to your health? Since when have our children on the Internet called each other pedophiles and had nervous breakdowns? Stop this psychological terror in the sphere of drawn pictures, and engage in real support for the fight against pedophilia and help for victims, if this is your sore subject and you have nowhere to direct your pain. This is a very serious social problem and I cannot remain silent when I come across it every day.

You can translate this post and distribute it as much as you want and wherever you want I am not going to return to this anymore."

I just came across a video about an explanation of the iceberg on psychonyashki in English, and I decided to read the comments and a huge hatred flared up inside me. I don't know how people can be so stupid, so naive, believing any garbage that they are told in videos. I just want to tell all these short-sighted people - use your brain. People call Tamakuz a bad person, they say that she is terrible. Oh, but how did you know this? From a YouTube video without evidence? Or maybe they just wrote this to you, taking Tamakuz's words and drawings out of context? I hate and despise such people

#tamakuz #psychonyashki #psychocuties

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tittyblade · 4 years ago

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tumblr etiquette 101

a list that is nowhere near exhaustive, from yours truly.

First off, welcome! Whether you’re a twitter veteran looking for anything but whatever twitter is, or a new user just done signing up, glad to see you in our ranks beloveds! Welcome home. Refer to this quick tour to make sure your fandom experience (or tumblr experience in general) is a positive one!

Disclaimer: I know it’s long, but please try to read or skim through til the end if you’re new here! This is by no means meant to be a rule book (for the most part lol), only a guide to help you get settled easier!

1) Your blog

This is where people will see and interact with you, so put some effort into it!

Try to choose a name (url) that’s simple. You can see it as your brand, it’s how people will perceive you and remember you. If you’d like to interact with other users here (and not use the site just for the content) it’s better to have something short and sweet, preferably without spaces. (Of course, these are only suggestions.) Rest assured, you can change it literally any time you want.

Have a theme. Utilize the tool that lets you edit your blog’s color or the font of your bio! You can make it match your profile picture, or your blog if it has a theme of its own. Make it feel homey :]

Fill in your bio. People will be checking out your profile probably more often than you think. Don’t leave it empty! Put in any information you’re comfortable with sharing and isn’t too personal (like your age if you’re a minor, or other TMI that can be found on other people’s carrds). It’s always better to add a name/nickname people can use to refer to you by, but feel free to use your blog description to shitpost still.

You can have an intro post. More often than not, you’ll see a blog have a pinned post, a post permanently appearing at the top of a blog until you pin another post or unpin it. You can make one of those, if you’d like to introduce yourself in more length, link any other socials or a carrd, and show others visiting your blog how you tag things so it’ll be easy for them to navigate. Not an obligation.

Keep your anonymity and your safety. It should go without saying, but there’s no harm in repeating it just in case. Your comfort, privacy and safety has the utmost importance. Don’t share any information you don’t want to. Don’t share your age if you’re a minor, or any other incredibly personal info. I’d encourage you to go by a nickname that’s not your real name, (blog name, your brand, remember?) since there’s safety in anonymity, and that’s lowkey one of the big deals of tumblr, but that’s up to you still.

Choose what you want to be visible. Your liked posts and who you follow are all things you can set to keep to yourself and hide from the publics eye, how handy! You should go through all the setting while you’re at it, set it to your comfort.

Side blogs are a thing. You can have multiple blogs that you can use for different things (see: different fandoms, art blog, etc) to keep them organized or away from your followers. Just remember that the replies and off-anon asks you send will be from your main blog, as well as where you follow other blogs from.

2) Interacting with others

You’ve set up your account, now comes the fun part!

Follow to your heart’s desire. If you care about others seeing who you follow, fear not! In tumblr, usually only two types of blogs keep their following visible to others: newbies, and big blogs using it to point people on other good blogs’ direction. Just turn it off, and go ham following people.

Customize your dashboard. Gonna mention just two things here: this is another reason why it’s really important that you follow blogs without sparing, your dash will collect dust otherwise; and you should turn off “best stuff first” in your dashboard settings, to have a better community here and all.

Follow tags. You can set it in your settings that posts with your followed tags appear on your dashboard.

You can check the og post for edits and context. When you see a reblogged post you don’t understand the context of (or don’t recognize the character in case of fanarts), click on the profile so it will take you to the original post. From there you can check the original poster’s tags to get the context, or see if there have been any edits made to the post, since when you edit a post it doesn’t update any past reblogs.

Send people asks... This is how you make mutuals, people! Do it off-anon if you’d like them to know your blog, or anon if you’d rather not! (You can still end your messages with a signature to show you’re the same person, -[name] is one example.) Send them nice messages, ask their opinion on something, discuss things, or just straight up shitpost lol. Go wild. The sky’s your limit and it’s definitely more than 280 characters.

...and let them ask you! You can set your preference in the settings, do it on desktop tumblr to access more settings tho! What you can customize on mobile is limited (like letting people ask you things anonymously, that’s only on desktop settings). In my personal opinion, it’s always better to tag their username (or a nickname you give them, if they’re a friend) on that post, since you wouldn’t want your interactions with your friends to get buried in your blog forever.

Comment on posts. If you have something to say but don’t want the post to appear on your blog you can add a comment. The owner of the post will get a notif for it, but for anyone else you need to tag them.

For the love of god, reblog. People will only see your liked posts if you have it visible to public and they specifically go on your blog to look at them. You like something? You reblog. It’s already hard for posts to circulate properly, if you don’t reblog them literally no one will see them. If not for anything do it for the artists. Just hold and drag on mobile to fast rb.

3) Your Posts

Finally here! Don’t be a lurker, post and engage!

Make use of “read more”. If your post is long, add it. That’s what you clicked on earlier to expand this post. On desktop leave an empty line and you’ll see three dots appear, and on mobile type :readmore: on that empty line.

Draft a post to come back to it later. Pretty self explanatory.

Queue your post. Whether it’s your own post or you’re reblogging, make use of the queue feature to a) not spam reblog and fill up the dashboard of people following you and b) keep your blog active while you’re gone. Mess around in the settings, it’s fairly easy to set up.

Schedule your post. Same as queueing, the only difference is you get to choose the exact time your post will go up. Handy if you want to schedule a post for certain dates like april fools, or 5 years in the future for some reason.

Format your texts. You can do all kinds of fancy stuff here (that’s a link, try pressing on it). Twitter doesn’t have this, make use of it. Changes depending on whether you’re on mobile or desktop. (Desktop has less features.)

Check your stats. If you’re trying to understand the algorithm better or want to look at some pretty graphs you can get your data on that on desktop tumblr.

@ people in comments. You’ll get all the notifs when people comment on your posts but they won’t see your reply unless you tag them in your message.

4) Tags, and tagging a post

This is where my earlier statement “this isn’t a rule book” stops being applicable. It’s not a war crime to go against these, I won’t come chasing you (don’t take my word for this) but you’ll work up a bad rep. Just saying lol.

Do NOT crosstag posts. It’s really tempting to add unrelated tags to increase your posts’ interaction, I know, but that’s not what tumblr is about. Don’t be a dick and make other communities’ experience worse for them.

Always tag your posts with “crit/critical/discourse/etc” if it calls for it. There’s no exceptions to it. This is the reason you see people migrating to tumblr. Let people enjoy things.

Don’t main tag a critical/negative post. If your crit post is about “Thing”, you add the “Thing critical” tag, but not the “Thing” tag. People block crit tags if they don’t want to see it, don’t shove it in their faces by main tagging it.

If you don’t want to see something, just block it. Another reason why people are able to survive on tumblr. You don’t start discourse, you don’t make call-outs, you block. You can find something for every community you can think of if you go looking for it. The worst of the worst probably won’t ever appear on your dash, but if you’re worried or feel the need for it, you know where the block button is.

Feel free to shitpost or ramble. More often than not you’ll see people rb a post with a comment, and their elaboration will be in the tags. The tags are only visible on your profile and the notifications of the owner of the og blog. Just a thing people do.

Reblog artists’ posts with nice comments in the tags! Commenting on a drawing is usually done through the tags (Not an obligation, again, just a thing people do. Feel free to add your comment on the rb itself if you’d want other people to see it tho!) and leave nice messages for the artists! It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

If you have more than a single follower, always use the common tw warning tags. You don’t need to tw everything, but tw’ing some common things is the bare minimum human decency. Keep it safe for others.

Tag a post “long post” if it’s really long. Pretty self explanatory. Don’t make people scroll through all that please lol.

You can use them to organize your blog. This is more of a pro tip, if you’d like to not miss a post in your blog, cause they will start pilin’ up soon enough.

#Liveblogging is pretty fun. If you’d like to talk to people during streams, don’t forget to add the relevant tags still! Again, you won’t show up on people’s dash otherwise.

Whew! That got out of hand. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much. Check out blogs like @heritageposts and @hellsite-hall-of-fame to honor our past o7. @mcytblr-hall-of-fame too maybe :eyes:. Anyways, don’t forget the most important rule of them all:

Enjoy your stay! You’re meant to have fun on here while also making friends (if that’s your thing). Just be kind and respectful of others, you’ll get the hang of the rest! <3

#mcyttwt #mcytblr #dream team #dream smp #mcyt #dsmp #tumblr #how to tumblr #gonna tag ppl now so more users will see it lol #dreamwasteken #georgenotfound #karl jacobs #technoblade #sbi #twitter #twitter discourse #sbitwt #sleepytwt #sleepy bois inc #HOLY shit this took so long omg my back literally hurts rn #the fuckin lengths i go to make sure tumblr doesnt get tainted w twt LMAO #anyways if youre seeing this you should follow me look at how sexy i am i spent the last 2+ hours typing this goddamn list out #also: ignore how i literally sound like its 2014 at some parts here lol i tried my best #also ignore how wack the paragraph breaks are tumblrs formatting hates me and its 4 am im too tired for this #third also: some bits here are supposed to be ironic keep that in mind pls #rolan.txt #long post #save #yes im tagging my own post as save what about it

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amporella · 2 years ago

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referring to your post about the ai generated art in the south park tag: why not? /gen

THIS ANSWER IS A LITTLE LATE I AM SORRY!!

Anyway, my reasoning: AI art is not art. AI programs don't create art - they copy what they think art is. AIs are getting increasingly advanced by the day, but they still lack nearly all of the things intrinsic to artists: one of the most relevant to fanart being actual love for the subject. To me, it doesn't matter if the person typing in the words loves it: the AI doesn't. There's no hidden meaning. There's no love in AI art, and even AI 'artists' can't wring water out of a dry sponge. Every piece of AI art I've seen is absolutely soulless, and in fandom especially - where art and writing is undoubtedly a labor of love - it feels like a legitimate offense even having it show up in the tag.

And even beyond that, AI devalues actual artists, even when artists in fandom usually aren't getting paid for their work - it normalizes pumping out shitty, heartless pieces of fanart at breakneck speed and disregards the artists who actually put love and care and effort into their pieces. Furthermore, AI inherently teeters on the edge of plagiarism - the AI can't manifest 'art' without knowing what that art looks like, which requires it to take in other art pieces first. And it gets much worse when people start inputting artist names, which is when it stops being borderline plagiarism and turns into actual real theft.

AI art is inherently unethical - and I'd argue it's even more unethical when it's done in fandom. We should not accept capitalistic, soulless work into our fandoms - it both undermines real artists and devalues the concept of fandom in general, which is supposed to be based on the love people have for their blorbos. The AI does not give two shits about South Park.

And tbh even beyond that the hands ALWAYS look mangled and horrible and they freak me out. I don't want to see Wendy with three arms when I'm scrolling through the tag. Stop that!!!

#i'm not an expert on AI so some of this could be inaccurate?#but generally I think these points are fairly accepted #as true #anyway fuck ai art #thank you for the ask though!!#i hope this cleared it up #asks #south park

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chipper-asks · 3 years ago

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Any tips on how to grow your own blog by chance?

Aah man I've written a response to this kind of question many times but I always delete it because I'm afraid of coming off as self centered or arrogant, but I definitely have some tips on what works and doesn't work (on tumblr.)

I will say that I never believed I would get to the "Big Fandom Artist" stage. I've seen people drop my name in conversations or descriptions and just assume other people know who I am and that's still incredibly wild to me. I never really pushed to get a big blog it really just happened.

But! I do have rules and personal guidelines that might help if you are thinking of actively building your blog!

1: Keep personal information and vent posts to a minimum

It should go without saying that its not a good thing for your personal information to be on the internet. Once its out there its near impossible to erase. This is for your own safety.

Vent posts give out more information than you might think, but also some people who are following you may be going through difficult times themselves. I go on the internet to get away from my stressors and problems and i've specifically catered my dashboard to reflect my desires. I have no doubt others are the same.

I've unfollowed mutuals because they vented too frequently. I enjoyed what they made! But it stressed me out to read their vent posts because I couldn't help. I realized it was taking a toll on my mental health and I made the tough decision to unfollow.

It is very tempting to vagueblog because its nice getting out all the angry feelings, but a blog with thousands of people following it is not the place to do it.

2: Shitpost vs Quality Foley

I could go into a massive essay on this alone (ive even written out an outline already) but i'll keep it as brief as I can.

Throughout my time on Tumblr I’ve seen a number of posts of artists complaining about the lack of notes on their serious work compared to the abundance of notes on their shitposts.

This is because Tumblr IS a place of shitposts. It's like squeezing a clown nose and expecting it not to honk.

However! It's more complicated than that and i've broken it up into four parts organized by importance.

A. Relevance/Meta: Is it something that people are already familiar with? Is it something that's currently going on?

People want to enjoy things they're already familiar with. For example, people getting into Hollow Knight are more likely to follow a blog that posts HK content regularly over a HK blog that posted a picture of Grimm once and then is full of original content. It's not that people don't like your original stuff, its just not what they're looking for.

If you like striking while the iron is hot, meta jokes are the way to go. Making references to games like Among Us during the height of its popularity for example would get you lots of notes.

B. Hilarity

Is it funny? Does it subvert expectations?

Shitposts will always be more popular than a well drawn post. People like to laugh and share things that laugh. A cool, well drawn post is more often than not met with a "hm, cool. scrolls down."

This is a polished comic I made 10 months ago. I'm very proud of it and i'm pleased with the amount of attention it got. It took me 2 days to finish.

This is a shitpost I made 3 years ago that I still haven't been able to top. It took me 30 minutes to make.

That's not to say a well drawn post can get popular! It's just that people enjoy a good laugh over something shiny. This is a factor of knowing your audience. Some things land better than others and you'll be better off if you just roll with what you get.

I will say tho I appreciate the people who reblog my oc posts 200x more than people who reblog my shitposts and fanart. Those are quality followers and you must cherish them.

C. Appeal

Is it cute? Is it fluffy? Is the design easy to understand? Does it make people emotional? Is it angsty? Is it relatable?

People like cute shit. People like things that make them hurt (albeit not too much). People like things that they can see themselves in.

D. Skill

There is some merit in being good at what you do. People do like funny things more than shiny things, but shiny things are cool too.

If you post things that are funny? You're normal horoscopes.

If you post things that are well drawn? (its really telling that I can't think of someone right off the top of my head)

If you post things that are funny AND well drawn? Well then you're iguanamouth

3: Know your boundaries.

There's a difference between being understanding/tagging things correctly and catering to people who want you to be someone else.

I know that many people get upset with others who gender the vessels in Hollow Knight. While it doesn't bother me, I can recognize the misgendering of vessels as a source of dysphoria and I tag accordingly.

If someone comes into my inbox and tells me to stop drawing a character because they're "problematic," I'm just going to block them and go about my day.

4: This is your blog, its your rules.

I'm apologetically myself on my blog. I post what I want and what inspires me. The reason why I have so many AUs is because its my blog and I like AUs. If a large portion of the fandom doesn't like my AUs, its their loss, I make great AUs.

In fact, its just a good mindset in general to have. If some people don't like what you make, its not your problem. It makes you happy and it makes hundreds of others happy then continue to do what you do. It's impossible to have a large following and not have someone who dislikes you purely out of spite.

Make stuff for yourself, not because you want numbers.

5: Don't feed the trolls.

If someone sends you hate, take a picture of it, share it with your friends, laugh, block the person, delete message, move on with your life.

It's really fun to feed the trolls, but feeding trolls attracts more trolls and soon its not fun anymore. Just laugh when you get your first anon hate, maybe frame it in your room, and don't even acknowledge them with a "fuck you."

6: Recognize your position.

This is more advice for when you do get a big blog. You get to a point when you realize you have a portion of your audience who value much more than a regular human being and are willing to take up arms for you.

Do. Not. Weaponize. Your audience.

It's incredibly shitty and can ruin peoples lives.

7: Post Frequency/Schedule

Now this is one I can't do. It's normal for me to become incredibly active for 2 weeks and then end up posting nothing for a month. I don't have the patience to build up a queue of new things.

However! If you have more discipline than me, posting daily or twice a week builds up anticipation for your next post. You're dependable and people have the chance to look forward to seeing something from you on their dash on Friday.

Thats all I can think of so far.

There's no TL;DR you'll miss my important advice within these tips.

#nofandom #long post

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raycatz · 9 months ago

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((//I think of tumblr discourse as referring to something negative like fandom arguments and drama so my response is in that vein. Sorry if that wasn't your intent here! 'x) ))

I haven't seen the idea of big blogs come up in the discourse often, actually. Have I missed something??? 'xD There are deffinelty some people who I notice are more involved in the fandom meta. When there's discourse I scroll through the main tag and read what everyone has to say, and then I'll check the more involved blogs or folks who have a lot to say to see if there are any side conversations going on that might provide more insight.

I'm not really following people who are involved with the fandom meta though, so while what they have to say might hold more weight for some, I dunno, I'm kind of out of the loop 'xD. Are there people / bigger bloggers whose opinions are given more weight when there's discourse and so that's what this post is about? For sure. But also, then I don't want to point anyone out because that seems like inviting trouble. Personally, I give more weight to creators and people I recognize who have been around for a while who are involved with the fandom- people who post on tumblr and AO3 and the people I see frequently in the comments, notes, and tags. Whose opinions I give more weight to is going to be different than someone else, though.

(unassociated with discourse-) I have a ton of people who I'd consider big names in the fandom and would recognise for their work! So many artists and writers and folks who comment and share their thoughts who I admire and appreciate. Though, a lot of them I found when I initially joined the fandom in 2020/2021 and many have since moved on to other things or have stopped posting or deactivated. My idea of who's big in the fandom is deffineltely skewed and probably doesn't reflect what's well known in the fandom nowadays lol. There are so many newer names too, though!

There's a lot of fic and art and mini-events and jokes in the fandom that I adore and would love to talk about again or make fanart for. New and old :D I also have ideas for new mini-events or fandom games or collabs and ways I could get more involved but asjhdgfsdf I don't have the time unfortunately. Though, for those interested, the weekly prompts on the main LU discord are a good place to start!

One of the things that keeps coming up in LU fandom discourse is “big blogs”. In your opinion, who are the big fandom names?

Who are the “heavy hitters” you expect most people to recognize by name?

#linked universe #lu fandom #rays random ramblings #I'd love to shout out the LU fan-creators and analysis folks whose stuff I love but separate from discourse!#once again fondly thinking of dfanart and the creator appreciation projects and the valentines day cards and the LU zine #(and the coloring book!!! that's recent!!!)#but things change #//I think I misinterpreted how the term discourse is being used here- sorry!!!#I think of tumblr / fandom discourse as something negative like arguments or drama and responded as though the prompt was about that #discourse can also mean just like- general discussion- which is a different conversation #sorry about that!

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do-a-reference-properly · 5 years ago

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AO3′s users alert! Unauthorised fanworks copying

26/09/2019. Important update on this mess: we found a way to delete fanworks via take down request to the hosting provider. Please check it here https://do-a-reference-properly.tumblr.com/post/187926459079/finally-some-good-news

Dear AO3 users,

We would like to bring your attention to an ugly situation with unauthorized copying of works posted on AO3.

A lot of works from AO3 have been copied to fanfics.me (we’ll call this site FFM for brevity’s sake) and are still being copied right now, either:

— automatically by a code specifically created by FFM’s owner for this purpose, or

— by unaware or unscrupulous FFM’s users via semi-automatic method (by inserting a link to a work from AO3 into a web-worm on FFM).

All works from AO3 — with a few exceptions (I’ll elaborate on this below) — can end up on FFM without authors even noticing. Even fanarts or podfics.

FFM doesn't comply with DMCA which means that such reposts endanger fanworks' creators in case the copyright holder demands to delete the fanwork.

Authors of the copied works do not have any control over them; if the work is edited it won’t be updated on FFM until someone manually updates it.

Additionally FFM’s owner makes money out of reposted free fanworks from numerous Google and Yandex ads on each and every FFM’s page by having people go to this site when searching for fics on Google etc. So we recommend using an Ads Blocker when visiting this site in order to prevent the owner from earning more. Ghostery or Adblock Plus work just fine, but you can use any other Ads Blocker that is convenient to you.

Oftentimes FFM even shows up before the original post with the work on Google search results.

The owner’s e-mail: [email protected].

The owner at AO3.

We are trying to bring AO3’s users attention to this situation and help authors with taking their works down from FFM.

Briefly about the website and its owner

Let me start from the very beginning as it will bring into the light the nature of FFM and give a good example of its owner characteristic behavior.

At first, some person with nickname Refery created FFM as a web archive where authors — mostly from Harry Potter fandom — could publish their fanworks.

Time passed, the site grew and added some features (blogs, pre-moderation and etc.), and all was good and well up till the moment when Refery decided that it would be a great idea to copy to FFM fanworks published on other Russian fanfiction archives — among them from the biggest and most known site ficbook — without asking authors for permission. Even those works that had “Ask me before posting the story somewhere else” mentioned in its text or summary were copied.

For some time nobody noticed, but when finally and inevitably this came out the authors were outraged. It took a lot of time to finally persuade Refery to at least not to copy fanworks bearing a special tag “Уточнять у автора” (Ask the author first).

But after some time Refery — without giving any notice — violated his own promise and resumed copying to FFM fanworks that had the agreed upon tag. The authors complained again, so very reluctantly and after many painful discussions this feature was reinstalled.

So FFM has been notoriously known, mostly amongst Russian fandom, for claims on re-posting fanworks without the consent of the authors.

We're mentioning this situation just to give you a detailed portrait of a person we are dealing with here.

Not only fanworks are copied to this website, but original works, too. Even those which were already published. There were all 7 of Harry Potter novels (both original text and translation), The Hobbit: There and Back Again (translation) and Vorkosigan Saga (translation) available for everybody to read and download. They were taken down only recently due to the attention this whole situation had drawn, but nothing ever goes away once it’s posted online and you can access the proof via Internet Wayback machine. We know for a fact there are other books on FFM and some actions have been taken in this regard, but still it takes time to find published books on this site.

Recently Refery decided that Russian archives are not enough for him and started copying all fanworks into FFM without any permission from the authors from numerous sites, like AO3, fanfiction.net, fictionpress.com, fanfiktion.de and likely other web-archives.

Moreover, the authors of these works can not delete their works from FFM and/or manage them. The site is in Russian only and, hence, we strongly believe that non-Russian speaking authors even do not know that their works are reposted somewhere else.

As a Russian fan-community, we have tried to stop such activity of FFM many times; however, we have not been successful in achieving our goal completely. Our most recent achievement is that the FFM’s owner implemented the "Don't copy to another site" tag created specifically for AO3 (here is the link to FFM’s owner post on his personal blog regarding this tag. Please use Ads Blocker!). This tag should be added to each work presented on AO3 in case the author does not want their works to be copied to FFM.

We are of the opinion that no work should be taken without permission in the first place, but this tag is all we’ve got.

Please note that it seems that some time ago there was similar case of unauthorized copying with other site. Please check this link, they give useful advice.

How to prevent copying from AO3

If you check AO3 you may notice that "Don't copy to another site" tag has hugely emerged in the recent weeks, but mostly amongst Russian users and there is a good reason for this: the owner of FFM announced this tag only in Russian and only on his private blog, so naturally there is no way for non-Russian speaking AO3 users to know about this — albeit non-satisfactory — solution.

There are no guaranties that the FFM’s owner won’t change the rules again as has already happened numerous times before (few examples we described above) and that works with this tag won’t be reposted in the future, but for now it’s the only quick and working solution besides making your works visible only to registered users, which is not ideal.

This situation is highly unpleasant, but we ask you not to delete your works from AO3, because if the work is deleted from AO3 it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM: we won't be able to refresh it manually and remove the text.

Please note that adding this tag won’t work for texts that have already been copied. Only users who have accounts at FFM will be able to delete them. Each work needs to be deleted manually.

However, the Russian fandom — except for the owner of FFM — strongly condemns reposts without the consent of the author, so feel free to contact our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing the links to the works stolen from AO3, so we could delete them for you.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to cover all authors and works manually. So, we contacted AO3’ Technical Team with the aim to bring their attention to this situation and inform about it all AO3 users, and hope that AO3 team will find a general solution to resolve this problem, possibly, in collaboration with the AO3 lawyers.

We are trying to warn as many authors as possible and recently started spreading this information via comments on AO3; but considering the number of works copied to FFM informing all authors will take considerable time, and we can easily miss someone, especially since the copying is still in progress and new works from AO3 are appearing on FFM every day.

Please help us spread the word!

We tried to make a comprehensive FAQ about this. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear!

FAQ

Q: Can I check if my work was copied to FFM?

A: Yes, you can.

FFM makes money on Google and Yandex ads, so we recommend turning on the Ads Blocker of your choice before visiting this site.

Please follow this link, insert the title of your work or your AO3/other web-archive nickname into the field containing the words "insert-title-nickname" and hit "Искать" (Search).

For works rated Mature or Explicit you will be able to see only the caption "Текст произведения доступен только зарегистрированным пользователям старше 18 лет" ("The text of the work is available only to registered users over 18 years old"), but FFM users are able to read and download the story.

Q: My work from AO3 was copied. How can I take it down?

A: First of all add the tag "Don't copy to another site" (without “ “) to the stories you want to be taken down.

Actually we would recommend adding this tag to all the works you don't want to be copied.

Contact one of our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing links to your works or send an e-mail with your deletion request directly to the FFM owner at [email protected] or at AO3.

There is a third option: to register on FFM and delete the work yourself by hitting the refresh button, but considering that the site is in Russian we do not think it will be very convenient to those who do not speak Russian language.

Q: I got the message that my work has been deleted. How can I check if it is true?

A: You can go to FFM, search for you work, click on its title and scroll down.

After the summary there is a field that should look like this for those fics that have been deleted.

Basically it says that the author of this particular work has forbidden its copying and that only the information on its title, author’s nickname, rating, pairings, summary and the link to original post on AO3 are available.

For works that are still available on FFM this field looks like this (if the work is open for non-registered users).

Q: My work copied from AO3 was deleted, but FFM still shows some information on it. Can it be deleted?

A: Even though the text of the fic is not going to be on FFM anymore after it has been deleted, the fic's title, author's name, rating, pairings, summary and link to original post on AO3 will remain there.

The deletion of this leftover information can be done only by the site owner himself.

Some Russian authors tried to make him to delete it, but in most cases the FFM’s owner refused them mentioning that publication of such information is in line with fair use concept and doesn’t violate authors’ rights.

We are yet unsure how to delete this leftover information. In case you need it as well, try contacting the FFM owner at [email protected] or at AO3. Maybe e-mails of a large number of authors will work, but unfortunately we can’t guarantee anything. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Q: My work from fanfiction.net/fictionpress.com/fanfiktion.de/other web-archives was copied to FFM. How can I take it down?

A: Unfortunately, there is no possible way for us to delete from FFM the fanworks that are copied from web-archives other then AO3. Only FFM’s owner can delete these works, please try contacting him at [email protected] or at AO3. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Please do not delete your works from the web-archive it was stolen from, because if the work is deleted it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM.

Also it seems that some time ago there was similar case of unauthorized copying with other site. Please check this link, they give useful advice.

#ao3 #archive of our own #alert #fanfiction #fanworks #fanart #please reblog

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