#especially when it comes to music

[bandzboy]

I work in IT and also did my thesis on AI, only now in the masters degree we got a subject on the ethics of AI, which (fortunately) is mandatory, but I was so disillusioned when the first discussion on deepfake and its exploitation started none of the male students saw this as an acceptable justification why deepfake should be heavily regulated and forbidden for individual use a distribution. And their explanation? "Because it is fake after all, what is the harm?". I was so grateful to our professor who grilled the guy who said it for like 10 minutes asking what if someone did that of him. At the end many others took the subject and him (the professor) more serious.

But that really makes me think about the solutions for that problem. Because usually I'm not an "eye for an eye" kind of person, but when it's about distribution of artificial pornography especially of that kind I really want to doxx those perpetrators and just give them a taste of their own medicine, also making such horrible humiliation rooms for them so others will be deterred. I know in practice that is probably impossible and would require a lot of group effort but I just want those people who did stuff so nonchalantly understand what it's like. Because I deeply believe that anyone can be rehabilitated. Of course doing it by doxxing and creating deepfakes of the perpetrators is kind of against that but I really don't know how else those people can be broadly and efficiently corrected in their behaviour (meaning without wasting so much time single talking to each of them and convincing them to stop).

What are your thoughts on that? Do you think if possible there should be a vigilante like response to that or rather rely on (inter)national media pressure to get the governments to pass useful laws AND implement them?

first of all, thank you for sending this question. second of all, i am glad your professor grilled that guy because truly i remember when ai started to become more popular and i remember seeing a lot of feminists and women online say that this could eventually become dangerous and become a tool to harass women even further and with all of these deepfake ai cases happening around the world it's proving just that. taking someone's likeness to generate something should not be allowed or you shouldn't get away with it without consequences and this is a hill that i am gonna die on because i hate the fact that it's something that is becoming more and more utilized to do things like this and since there aren't any regulations or laws around ai, people just get away with doing the worst possible things like deepfakes of sexual nature.

honestly, i feel there will be time that governments will have to do something about this since this is becoming an issue, especially towards women and it's being talked about more and more as of recent so i would like to believe something will be made but it's obviously taking a lot of time for anything to happen. so i mean... i do believe that people who do these heinous acts should be exposed and shamed publicly since, like you said, feel so comfortable doing this to others surely they would like to be exposed to do world right? (sarcasm)

but anyways, i believe there may eventually be a law of some kind around ai and deepfakes of this kind. still, the truth is people, especially women, have to do everything they can to protect themselves even if it means going to such lengths to expose whoever did it and also keep this subject alive and look out for each other which is also important. we live in a deeply misogynistic society and make up ways to oppress women even further and truly i don't blame women for doing something radical to protect themselves for the time being

[sirazaroff]

If I don't find out what happens to Glinda in your Scarecrow AU I think I might scream, please tell me! (just don't tell me she's dead)

IM SORRY I swear I don’t mean to leave you guys in the dark about either au on purpose! I was working on a scarecrow project before being forced to take a break, but I’m getting back to it! There’ll be answers soon enough~

Glinda takes a…sabbatical from life for a hot second but she is around! She takes on a new form for a bit but eventually Elphaba will fix things the best she can in the end. Not always constant doom and gloom it’s just frequent✨

See look, here’s a tender moment from the same au wow!

[lyculuscaelus]

So lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts asking people to stop trying to make Odysseus look nice in their works cuz he’s a ��messed-up person in the mythology”. Your opinion is valid however I have but one thing to point out:

You want to know who started all this? Who started to “make Odysseus look nice” in the first place?

It’s Homer. It’s nobody else but Homer himself.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would try to murder people out of his own interests. He’d murder Palamedes without remorse (and we’d be cheering over this but it’s a murder after all), he’d attempt to murder Diomedes just to get the Palladium himself, he’d volunteer to kill Astyanax…meanwhile you wouldn’t find any mention of either Palamedes or Nauplius in Homer’s poems, neither did he mention anything abt the Palladium heist (and Diomedes necessity did not happen until Conon’s version), the death of Astyanax, the distribution of war prizes, etc. And all the details in the Odyssey seemed to deny the existence of Nauplius’s vengeance at all, so Odysseus would not take any of the blame.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be depicted as “cruel, treacherous”, meanwhile in book 10 of the Iliad Odysseus was not mentioned to have killed anyone during the marauding, neither did he promise Dolan anything at all. The negative interpretations are denied by these details subtly put by Homer.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be widely known as a “coward” for only shooting arrows from afar. But Homer gave him a spear and had him absolutely slaying in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. That part of Ajax’s speech was invalid already.

Most importantly—a non-Homeric Odysseus would be having kids everywhere else, and the loyalty to his own wife as seen in the Odyssey is no where to be found. Meanwhile his lineage was a single-son line made by Zeus in the Odyssey, and his love for Penelope was one of his main drives, especially seen in book 5 of the Odyssey. He loved his family as a loving parent—something you don’t get to see in most of the non-Homeric writings—for most of the time they followed a different tradition indeed, in which Odysseus wasn’t half as nice as in the Odyssey.

TL;DR: in case you haven’t noticed, the characterization of the Homeric Odysseus was quite different from a non-Homeric version of Odysseus. It’s not that Homer didn’t know of the existence of other versions—he knew them too well, which is why in his version of the story, you don’t get to see any mention of them.

[pikkish]

been playing a lot of co-op classic doom with a buddy lately. doodled a couple of co-op guys for fun.

[danhowellz]

i need to know how dan listens to music. specifically new albums from artists he likes. is he going on a walk and listening to the album in full???? is he sitting in a quiet room with headphones on to full absorb the songs???? is he listening to it in the background as he does other things??? does he have a speaker he uses to listen to it out loud??? TELL ME!!!!!

[aroaceleovaldez]

im really not a fan of Rick's recent trend of recycling bits of his writing that got a good reaction the first time and acting as if that's a valid substitute for. actually bothering to write something original a second time around. It's clearly just there as a callback and nothing more.

It's "Nico's rage exploded" and "Percy's rage exploded" with the exact same paragraph formatting. It's CoTG having titles like "My Singing Makes Things Worse, and Everyone Is Totally Shocked" (reference to TLO, when Percy says he thinks his singing would cause an avalanche) or "Pretty Much the Best Good-Night Kiss Ever" (reference to TLO "Pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time") or any other number of near word-for-word references to the first series. It's Nico calling Percy "seaweed brain" in Un Natale Mezzosangue (when Percy says in TTC that anybody but Annabeth calling him that is a major offense). It's Nico and Will falling into Tartarus in TSATS word-for-word referencing Percy and Annabeth in House of Hades, despite it not making any sense for their characters (and otherwise being written as Percabeth 2™). It's the show making huge changes but keeping random "fan-favorite references" (mostly overusing "seaweed brain" and "wise girl" and emphasizing percabeth) only because they're popular in-jokes and considering that a faithful enough adaptation to market it heavily as such. It's lazy writing.

And it's a disservice to the series and to the audience, because it clearly shows Rick doesn't have original ideas anymore (though given all his writing is heavily derivative to begin with, it begs the question how much was original in the first place and how much he has difficulty when he doesn't have a structured mythological plot to work from) and that there is an expectation that the audience will just sit down and accept that behavior hook-line-and-sinker. Everything recently is clearly such lip-service to the audience, either in retcons that are overt speaking-to-camera acknowledgements of things he's been criticized on or wink-wink-nudge-nudges of community in-jokes that have no business in the actual text (see: over-use of ship names in canon). Especially since Rick tends to be about 5 years behind on the fandom uptake. It's just so disappointing to see.

[atissi]

okay very preliminary thoughts on mitski's new album BUT i think there's something with how "laurel hell" felt like a goodbye to the music industry (can't find the source but i remember reading that it was intended to be her last album under her contract) like i'm sorry anthony fantano but if you interpret the back half of "laurel hell" as being generic breakup songs you're missing like 80% of the context. to me TO ME it feels so clearly about her negotiating her relationship with fame, how she can't love her fans the way they love her, and how she feels like she sold her soul to her job, so the only thing to do is step away. but THEN "the land is inhospitable and so are we" was created after mitski decided to renegotiate her contract, specifically because she loved making music enough to deal with the negative aspects of the work. and then all the songs are about the ghost of love she can leave behind, despite the present pain or emptiness, and like. do you see it. do you see it.

[thewhizzyhead]

ya know, what made epic the musical such a joy for me personally is seeing it actually develop throughout its 4-5 year long history and I don't just mean like from the ground up and everything. I mean it in a way as someone who immediately clocked Jorge Rivera-Herrans as a fellow playwright heavily inspired by Lin Manuel Miranda's style - which fucking meant of course most of the early publicized drafts of epic were raps because of course they are (this is not meant to be a slight because like I totally get him)!

But like actually seeing Jorge apply the lessons in LMM's writing into his own original style that is befitting to the story he wants to tell - and not only that, he literally took his audience along with him on his journey with every tried-and-tested demo and audition and everything, and the actual pre-production and production process of writing an album is something we don't usually get at all, especially in something as extensive as a musical concept album!

Like what really had EPIC make it's mark on the internet and on musical theatre (especially INDIE MT) is that it was a literal Odyssey of sorts - the creation of this entire fucking thing was a journey from beginning to end and we were all invited to witness it from behind the scenes while also having many artists among fans be a part in its creation one way or another, while also observing how Jay had his own artistic development throughout - from someone whose epic was quite obviously heavily stylized after Hamilton, into an artist whose style he can call truly his own.

I have so much more to say on how and why epic became such an iconic piece of work and perhaps being the first MT work in 2020 to truly define the decade, but all in all let's just say I'm glad to have witnessed the growth of an artist - and I'm excited to see what art this will inspire in turn.

[synthshenanigans]

i didnt say it properly before but god you dont know how happy i am that [synth shenanigans] made a return like dude i put that as my name for a reason like DUDE it came BACK after so fuckin LONG MAN

funky banger synths my beloved....

[askchilchuck]

Rip Chilchuck Tims, you would of loved the Beatles

We have beetles here too, you know. Also, quit telling people I’m dead.

[twilight-good-yall-dumb]

the crazy thing about Liam is that I finally got to a point a few weeks ago where reminders of his death became a sort of sad exhale and a "shit. that really happened, huh?" But any time I allow myself to ruminate on it for more than a moment, his absence descends again upon me like a dark shroud. Because how can one of those boys be gone? Forever? How can this band that I've loved for so long be so permanently altered? It's so fucking wild and difficult for me to comprehend in that context. And in the context of age, the fact that I am still relatively young and have gone through the death of a childhood idol already? The fact that he was so young? It's just so immensely devastating in a way that feels so intangible because he is not and never has been a tangible part of my life. Parasocial grief is really something else, huh?

[zdechlyryba]

good day for me today, art-wise

[betsey-laurens-hamilton]

oh, my dear soldier boys.

[scalycabbage]

on a multiple choice test taylor swift fans will think whichever option has the longest sentence is the right answer

[ragsandrascals]

Ann in the stage musical is not the “mom friend”

Okay no she’s the fifteen-year-old babysitter who’s been left with eight toddlers and thinks she's the mom friend-

And she is Not.

[aq2003]

i saw a post saying boom was good bc it feels like it could be done with any doctor/companion duo and honestly that was one of the things i felt was wrong with it