#got a dmca (i think

[couch-house]

Fleebay Beepo playlist! [youtube link] [zip link]

it's been foreverrr since i finished a character playlist--i missed doing this! tracklist and director's commentary under the cut teehee :)

if you disagree with any of my choices, just remember: 1) this is my playlist for me to listen to made of songs I like for me 2) you just don't see my vision 3) you don't know him like i do 4) make your own so i can disagree with yours too.

WDKYWMYAK -- Rabbit junk

This is a Killing Game After All -- Gadgetor

chance bought this cd from the comic store. i think the album is Doom-inspired? pretty cool! check it out! anyway this first section is pretty obviously all violence killing and maiming etc

3. All Futures -- The Armed

4. Bears -- Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

5. You Know What You Are -- Ministry

6. 1969 -- Boards of Canada

we're coming down out of the chaotic songs into some confusion for the amnesia arc, starting with ministry and boards of canada. 7 references an unwilling change of the self, and just fits the vibe right now. 8... should be obvious lol.

7. Long Road Home -- Oneohtrix Point Never

8. I Don't Remember -- Peter Gabriel

9. Come Back June -- Pussy

sorry i heard a psychedelic rock song that starts with a big cat meow and blacked out. EBONY MOMENT!!! this and the next couple songs are again more about contributing to the Feeling of the groovy train than a direct relation to the lyrics. though 10 can be justified by the fact he's british.

10. Hey, Mister Sun -- Bobby Sherman

11. Baby All the Time -- Julien Love (NOTE: NOT IN YT PLAYLIST)

12. Handlebars -- Flobots

i didn't think i would end up keeping this song when i threw it on here but it just... works really well structurally. sigh... okay well it kind of works thematically. we're moving into some merger au territory at this point, which is my way as a fan to give fleet more of a self-actualization arc. establish his own identity, make friends, accept his existence a bit more. 13 is again more focused on the caring environment of groovy train (and the idea that this won't last forever) but we'll come back around to merger in a second.

13. Cursis Melodías -- Natalia Lafourcade

14. Flagiolletes -- Billy Mahonie

15. Wake Up To Be You -- The Aesthetics

i'm so obsessed with this as a song from fleet to sonic. esp focused on the idea of fleet being the trauma dump that everyone wants dead and sonic being the one who gets to keep their friends. another lucky cd find--this time thrifted. this band still has their old website up--you can contact them if you'd like to get ahold of your own copy!

16. Every Home a Prison ft. Jello Biafra -- DJ Coldcut (Inevitable Alien Nation mix)

i'm in love with this song. we're back in merger au btw. fleet is now a goddamn hooligan in the street (teenager socializing outside with his friends).

17. Default -- Django Django

we're getting to the end of his life! canon, not au. once again on the idea of fleet (dying, cringe) being a comparative failure. the next two songs are our big explosive end! 18 is another band i found from a thrifted cd. lucky!

18. Werewolf -- Progger

19. light speed drift ft Kasane Teto + Adachi Rei -- frog96

the end! thanks for listening! ^_^ as a treat, YOU get to see the special bonus track: The Adventures of Little White Baby -- No Soap, Radio.

[anchovy]

Nothing pisses me off more than a repost account that has “dm for credit/removal” as their bio like are you seriously that lazy and brain dead

[sciencebees]

We need to try harder to make Nintendo acknowledge the CDi games. I think that'd be funny

[jadebread64]

imagine how fucking rad it would be if somebody made a pc port for Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (gameboy colour) in the same style as Sonic 3 AIR, that adds widescreen and custom settings plus mod support, you would immediately have the definitive edition of SMB 1 and The Lost Levels and it wouldnt even come close

[welcometoteyvat]

wahoo finally “”””caught up”“““““ on fontaine leaks

[sillysymbol]

hey i just found out some website has been stealing and putting up my art for sale. i think it IP blocked me so i got these screenshots from someone else but this really sucks. apparently its been stealing a lot of other peoples art too.

i really dont know what to do, this has never happened to me. i dont want to file a dmca because it requires a lot of personal information. i just want to spread the word. try to find if your art has been stolen too.

[kingofthering-two]

Hi guys, Maïna / kingofthering here. You might have heard or noticed that I got my account terminated yesterday (and had the joy to discover you don’t just lose your sideblog but all the blogs associated with your account).

What happened? As I mentioned last week, I received my 2nd strike for copyright infringement on the 11th of December and I protested it (sent a DMCA counter notice) on the 12th. Tumblr forwarded the counter notice to the claimant on the 16th, leaving them 10 business days to answer before I could get the strike taken away and the content restored. Unfortunately, yesterday, on the 19th, I received my third strike and it came with the termination of my account. 

How is it fair that tumblr lets you receive a new strike so soon after the precedent one, when you couldn’t even have the time to finish fighting the first one? I legitimately don’t know. I’ve tried to contact them about this but they don’t treat the messages since it’s coming from a terminated account. I think I need to send the message with another email address, which I might do later.

Could my account come back? In theory, from what I’ve read online, yes, but that remains to be seen from my end for me to be completely sure of that. My only current hope is for the blog to reappear when I get my first and second strikes removed (the first is from January but I never thought of fighting it before because it was videos so I thought they didn’t stand a chance but now I genuinely believe the type of content doesn’t matter). 

In September, there were 14 days between the counter notice being sent and me getting my content back (10 business days + weekends) and I suppose we might have to take into account Christmas here. I think that in the best case scenario, I might hear from tumblr on the 30th of December, maybe the 31st.

What now? I briefly considered using this as a (forced) break from tumblr. I tried to have one earlier this year and failed miserably. I think that the older I get, the less patience and tolerance I have for things that annoy me (and get past the filtering system) (but also things outside of tumblr, seeing my gifs get reposted to twitter, something that happened again recently, really annoys the fuck out of me). But, at the end of the day, the good outweighs the bad (annoying) far much, when it comes to this website and this community. If I check my tumblr app screentime on my phone, I might cry at how bad it is. I do want to finish the projects I have ongoing (the RPF survey answers will be studied and treated and shared) and keep in touch with everything happening on here.

I’m going to use this current account to browse tumblr at least until the end of the year. I’ve already seen glimpses of stories that I need to catch up on and I’ve seen you guys being very supportive already (thank you) so I felt like making myself reachable here was better. Posting wise, I’ll probably post about things that I know are safe i.e. things of my own (stats, my progress on the 2025 journals) and gifs of things not coming from Dorna (e.g. reels/tiktoks, podcast videos).

What then? The only thing I can tell you for sure is that no matter what happens next, I’m going to create an archive blog on a separate account (with a dedicated email address). This blog will not have posts of its own but only reblogs of content I originally posted on kingofthering. If I can have my old account back, the job will be made much easier (and will obviously be more complete). If not, I’ll have to rely on a lot of research to get things back as best as I can. Don’t worry about this for now, I’m going to wait until I know for sure about my old account to start the process (since the method will be very different depending on the answer on that).

For 2025, we will see. The thing is, even if I get my account back, I know that I will keep getting strikes (even if I’m not posting anything because old posts of mine have been targeted as well) and honestly, even if fighting them works, it’s both stressful and exhausting. Also, people have been winning the battles against the strikes for now but who knows how long that will last.

And like I mentioned, it’s a sideblog connected to all my other blogs which also depend on kingofthering’s faith. That includes my main blog that I’ve had since 2011 (I don’t use it much but I use it to keep all the useful stuff like the photoshop tutorials, writing prompts, etc), my hockey sideblog (not been using it much either lately but it does have some history I’d like to keep) and a bunch of others.

A solution to keep those other accounts safe would probably be to move everything motorsports related to a new account (maybe this one if I can get my main back) and delete the original kingofthering. It would pain me because of the history of this blog and what I would lose in the process (mostly the asks I haven’t gotten to answer and obviously the following that I had grown but I suppose that I can grow back little by little). It would also mean I couldn’t see anymore the posts in my notes and the tags people add to their reblogs (which is like half the purpose of posting in the first place) and that’s annoying as well but I suppose I could grieve that too, in theory.

If I don’t even get the account back, well. I talk about creating a new dedicated account but if it also gets striked (which I suppose will happen), it will be equally exhausting to fight fo it so, I don’t even know if I want to do that.

At this point, I know which content is safe for sure (or what has been safe so far for me) and there are still a lot of stuff that I enjoy sharing with you and getting your opinion on but giffing race weekends was the major part of my blog and I don’t know how I feel about giving that up. Anyway, much thoughts to have still.

Can you do something to help? I don’t think so. Or, well, not with recuperating my account. In regards with the copyright issue as a whole, though? I don’t know what to say because I don’t know what’s the best course of action there. I’ve seen some discussions around about emails and a petition and involving other social media and bigger people but I genuinely don’t know what’s the best thing to do. I’ve personally always considered tumblr as this little (safe for everything) bubble and I don’t exactly feel comfortable “exposing” some of my content here to the rest of the world (some people on tumblr are already mean enough about RPF, I don’t need to see what people not on here have to say about it). That’s obviously just me and I’m not going to keep anyone from doing what they think is right. Part of me wants to believe that things will fix themselves once Liberty Media take over but that’s not a sure thing and the frequency of strikes lately has been quite worrying so I understand the need to do something. Some thinking over to do there too.

Where can you find me? For tumblr, on here for now. I’m going to post this on the motogp tag and I’ll try to follow my mutuals (from memory so, going to miss a lot of people for sure, sorry in advance). I might appreciate a reblog of this post to spread the word. I still have my twitter (mostly talking stats), the blog and my tiktok (barely being used but still in existence).

If I do the set ups correctly I’ll have my DMs open here and askbox open to anons. I am still bad at answering those, though, so apologies in advance there as well.

(Also, I just got home for the holidays and literally learned about the news when I was in the train yesterday afternoon, so, worst timing ever.)

[sachisei]

arcanistsanctum is gone. we're back.

Update here.

Message below the cut is outdated.

Depressing news. I wake up today to not find the blog. I expected it to happen some time, but not this soon. If it got DMCA-ed, I'm supposed to receive a notice of the claims but I did not. So I plan to reach out to Tumblr Support soon regarding this.

Unfortunately, I didn't back up the blog. Not the contents nor the codes. I feel devastated. I regret not backing it up. I almost couldn't find the energy to claim it back. If we're not getting it back, honestly, I don't think I will be motivated enough to re-create it again. I'd say it was a good run and all that. But before that, I will try to get it back for you guys. And again, if not, I think the arcanistsanctum blog will deviate from archiving official media, especially if the reasons of the shutdown is DMCA or Copyright Infringement. I read the Reverse:1999 terms before, and all I can say is that they have ambiguous terms there, especially relating to copyright. Basically, they mentioned they reserve the right to take down content related to Reverse:1999 without explanation and warning. That may be the case here. I won't press too hard on that matter. It is their IP, after all. It is what it is.

This is the first time I had a tumblr blog taken down. I'm new to the processing and stuff, so (sigh) bear with me y'all.

Nothing changes for me uploading Reverse 1999 reaction videos in youtube. I'm still editing my reactions to 1.7 Version Update. I'll notify here once I publish the video.

I wish you guys well, and I apologize for the lack of preparation on my part. I'm not sure how soon we'll hear back from Tumblr. Until then, I can be contacted here. Of course, I'll update you guys on the status of arcanistsanctum here.

[ad-caelestia]

✧ 𝔞𝔟𝔬𝔲𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥 ✧

[title: about the witch]

hi, this is an introduction post if you want to know what this blog will consist of and also a little about me. my main blog and the one i follow from is @viginti-tres.

minors please do not interact! thank you.

✧ basics: ✧

✧ luna | 32 years old | she/her | u.s. | neurodivergent & chronically ill | astrolatry | celestial magic | witch for almost 10 years

my practice has been built from the ground up using the influence of ceremonial and planetary magic with a mix of history, science, and folklore (much of which came from texts such as the three books of occult philosophy and the picatrix).

i enjoy writing about it and coming up with correspondences based on science (such as correspondences for the planets based on their elemental makeup).

i also enjoy learning about magical practices that inspired various scientific and mathematical discoveries and theories over the years (astrology, alchemy, the scientific method, etc.).

i think i'm probably best known on here for my bullet point correspondence lists because i am not a fan of reading giant walls of text and i bet some of y'all aren't either.

aside from that, i am very much just a witch in love with the cosmos who likes to research.

here you will find mostly witch stuff and maybe some personal stuff but most of that will be found on my main blog.

✧ important notes: ✧

i am not wiccan and i do not support or believe in the "rule of three" or "threefold rule"

i don't work with deities per se but i do refer to them as a concept or archetype at times

i am not a ceremonialist or traditionalist

i don't identify as a pagan

i don't perform spirit work unless it's related to family

i don't perform or write spells for others

i am against love spells - i promise i have only ever seen them end badly

i don't do readings for others

i don't use astrology for divination but for spell timing

✧ some more notes: ✧

don't steal my posts - while i fully understand that a good chunk of my posts are compiled correspondences that are deemed "general knowledge," the compilation and presentation of said material is my work, research, and time spent: if you copy and paste my posts, i'll find out and do the dmca thing and i'm sure it'll be annoying for both of us so just, don't.

please go away if you are republican or conservative in any way - i don't have time to list all of the atrocities that y'all are responsible for.

don't bother me if you're trying to start drama or be mean. i know i used to be a confrontational, aggressive, petty little menace on here but i've calmed down and changed a lot so, give me some grace please.

anyway, that's all i got for now - i may or may not come back and edit this if i see fit.

if you have a question and it wasn't covered here, send me an ask (remember, MDNI).

♡ luna

[floatingcatacombs]

So Help Me God, Lucky Star Is Actually Good

12 Days of Aniblogging 2024, Day 5

As someone who was hard-filtered by the choco cornet during my first attempt a decade ago, some part of me still finds it hard to accept, but I now believe Lucky Star to be a great anime. Veneration is in order.

The real miracle is that I was probably watching the same upload both times. For whatever reason, Lucky Star has been on Youtube for as long as I can remember, in perfect HD quality. Unlike other anime uploads, which persist only through a widespread game of DMCA whac-a-mole, uploads of Lucky Star remain untouched, as if divinely blessed. The one caveat being that you will be watching the dub.

Some background is in order, for the archaeologists and the young. This is a “cute girls doing cute things” anime, which aired at the peak of the “moe boom” in "2007". Market forces had shifted away from the hypermasculine gorefest that was the OVA era and the psychodramas of the late 90s to early 2000s. Now the people demanded moe. Anime girls became ever more neotenic and proportionally compressed until their default designs resembled the chibi and super-deformed sketches you’d previously only see in gags and parodies. The cuteness of the characters themselves began taking absolute precedence over plot developments, as more mundane and relatable settings grew in popularity. It was a perfect storm and generated unfathomable profits for the studios willing to cash in on it. Exactly why this all happened is up in the air, and everyone you ask will have their own answer, guided in part by their own emotions. Weebs with old-school taste view the moeboom as a monstrosity that ate the entire industry for a moment there, from which it never truly recovered. Cultural critics and psychoanalysts will be sure to point out how the artists and directors were knowingly pandering to lolicons by accentuating the innocence and purity and youth of the girls through their designs and demeanors. The more business-oriented might point to how the genre lent itself to heavy merchandising through viewers developing attachment and loyalty towards specific characters, and the later success of idol anime being built directly on the backs of CGDCT.

But watching Lucky Star in 2024, that's not where much of my focus goes. Mostly I’m thinking about whatever the hell is going on with Konata’s gender.

You see, Konata has all the traits of a stereotypical male otaku from this time period, transposed onto a moe girl. That’s it. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. If you’re the type of person to put on Lucky Star in the first place, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of kinship, regardless of your gender. She’s the kwasatz haderach of weebdom.

Konata is the obvious star of the show, and the whole anime would fall apart pretty quickly without her. Her best friend Kagami can be fun, but her snappy personality only works because of her chemistry with Konata framing them as a comedy duo. The other two girls in the main four are kind of nothing, conceived of as helpless by design to appeal to people who are into female helplessness (I can and will judge). There’s a bit of meta charm to Miyuki because she’s being actively pedestalized as a moeblob by Konata herself, whereas Tsukasa’s whole deal can just feel downright patronizing at times.

Between calling her friends moe to their faces, dishing out otaku-based insults left and right, and emotionally leading on Kagami, Konata is a bit of a shitlord! She’s got a real dirtbag voice in the dub, which absolutely helps sell her character, especially compared to the universally shrill Japanese voice acting. It is very, very rare that I watch dubs, but I considered Lucky Star’s survival on Youtube for this long to be a sign, and it mostly paid off! It does its best to treat cross-cultural references as totally mundane which goes a long way for the atmosphere, and the casting thankfully predates the Funimation monoculture that got to dubs a few years later.

Of course, in this day and age, “having the traits of a guy” more often than not means something. It’s impossible for someone like me not to want to poke. And what I propose is that Konata is a lad.

Let’s jump over to some other anime to illustrate my reasoning. One of my favorite games to play while watching CGDCT is “Which girl in this anime's main group is transgender?” It's important that this question cut both ways. Bocchi from Bocchi the Rock is something of a modern classic when it comes from transfeminine headcanons, due to her sublime mixture of hypercompetency and anxious failgirl patheticness. But I've honestly always thought that she makes more sense as a closeted transmasculine character. Hear me out. The boy band sketch, the intimidation around Ryo’s somewhat androgynous demeanor, her insistence on wearing her party outfit with a fake mustache for a liiiitle too long, until someone asks her what’s up with that and she panics…. It’s as if she views herself as a guy on some level, but has no idea how to integrate this into her psyche, and certainly does not have the mental and social acumen right now to work through it sanely. Poor Bocchi.

Sometimes, you even get series like Hidamari Sketch, where my question actually has a somewhat official answer: Hiro was conceived of as a boy who wanted to be a girl. Though this idea was ultimately shot down by the mangaka's editor, it still seems like fair game to parse Hiro as a trans girl when going into the series.

But I digress. With regards to Konata’s gender, what seemed like simply a tomboy’s gap moe back in 2007 now feels like a signal that Something’s Up. We know she plays the same bishoujo games as her dad and projects onto the male protagonists. She RPs as a boy in MMOs, and in-game-marries a guy playing as a girl. Her anime taste skews heavily towards the male demographic, and we know she’s also familiar enough with shounen ai to tease Kagami about it with specifics. But she also expresses comfort, maybe far too much comfort, with her role as a short and cute high schooler capable of being objectified by the otaku gaze. There’s something going on, and that something makes her a crazy power fantasy for people in pretty much every position of the great web of gender, cis and trans alike. Konata as The Divine Moe Androgyne. Seeing the Macross Frontier crossover photo that fuses her with beautiful girlish boy Alto Saotome only furthered my conviction in this.

look at them

Anyways, Konata is clearly genre-aware and uses this to torture her tsundere bestie. Kagami, being what she is, will never admit to anything ever regarding romance, but it seems pretty likely that she’s in love with Konata. The OVA practically spells it out by depicting a particularly psychosexual dream of hers. The Lucky Star mangaka is famously against pairing off his characters, but even he admits that Konata and Kagami have a one-sided love. Most importantly, HE DOESN’T SPECIFY WHICH WAY. While definitely the less likely option, it would be extremely funny if it turned out that Kagami’s tsundere mixed signals were actually just genuine confusion and disinterest, and that Konata’s joke-flirting was real and unrequited all along.

The mangaka may not be interested in shipping, but the staff at Kyoto Animation working on this show were Trve Yuri Warriors. The animation director even drew them married, with Kagami as a butch in a suit and Konata her femme (Maybe I need to re-evaluate my gender takes, but also, dressing as a girl is clearly still a sex thing for Konata). Sakamoto Kazuya, I hereby award you the title of Furtive Himedanshi.

KyoAni understands the importance and hilarity of leaving those two unfulfilled, but goes all in on the underclassmen instead. Konata’s sickly cousin Yutaka is introduced halfway through the show, a plot development which immediately threatens to break everything. The background moe concentration of Lucky Star is already at somewhat dangerous levels by default, and throwing in even more childish designs can quickly make things feel uncomfortable. But they thread the needle and it genuinely turns out fine. Yutaka quickly befriends Minami Iwasaki, a butch kuudere who instantly and silently vows to Always Protect Her. Their dynamic would be just as passive and unaddressed of a crush as Konata x Kagami if it wasn’t for their pervert friend Hiyori, who constantly draws art of them as takarazuka couples. She exists in a state of perpetual agony and self-torture from of the shame of shipping her buddies in secret, even if they probably are gay. Obviously, I think she’s great. She and Konata only get a few scenes together but it’s so funny to see how they’re two sides of the same evil pervert lesbian coin, with shame as the dividing line.

From a yuri perspective, the underclassmen round out the upperclassmen well. We’ve got unrealized, possibly one-sided love, and some unfulfilled hazy feelings of dependence and warmth being observed through a terminally yuribrained third wheel. I’m very satisfied by their efforts here. I expected the yuribaiting to be fairly half-assed, but it’s incredibly fun for the most part, and my goggles are lily-tinted enough that I simply see it as the truth.

Speaking of characters that threaten to shatter Lucky Star, everything surrounding Konata's dad walks an extremely fine line considering that the punchline is that he's a total creep. Miraculously though, it never goes too far, and he even gets some sad and sweet character moments in a episode towards the end.

I was kind of surprised by the visual quality of this show! This is a late SD-era anime, but the Youtube uploads I watched are all full 1080p. How is that possible?  Basically, they threw it into a late-2000’s upscaling program which generally produced terrible results (the Haruhi BDs are famously rough) but works alarmingly well for Lucky Star’s ultra-simplistic, solid-color designs. You start to see jaggies at the edges of character’s hair, and some background detail is blurry upon examination, but in motion it works really well, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at all for the first few episodes. Also, it was entirely animated at 30 frames per second??? That’s why the footage in the Out of Touch Thursday meme still looks surprisingly smooth even when slowed down like that – most of the Lucky Star OP was animated on the ones, so at half-speed you still get 15 frames of animation, as opposed to a maximum of 12 frames from the customary 24. Neat! Otherwise, the increased framerate is largely unnoticeable. Thank God it doesn’t do the jarring 30fps panning that a handful of productions from the mid-2000s are guilty of. Looking at you, Haibane Renmei.

Lucky Star showed up in my life at an important time. I first started putting it on as something to watch during lunch, but it ended up serving a far greater purpose. Lucky Star helped me survive a terrible vacation where everyone immediately got covid and we were fully bedridden the whole time. Having a tablet on hand and the show already sitting there dubbed on Youtube genuinely kept me going. The English voice acting was much easier for my covid-addled mind to parse, compared to trying to follow along with subs, as keeping my head up was already a full-time activity. It was also so much more logistically accessible than having to hunt down torrents or DVDs or pirate sites. I suppose that’s the appeal of Netflix and Crunchyroll, eh? Unfortunately for them, I have far too much of a chip on my shoulder to ever pay for streaming anime.

it was like this minus the stuffed animals because I was away from home ;_;

Lucky Star episodes are typically cozy affairs, but the episode where they visit the KyoAni studio is kind of heartbreaking now. The director of Lucky Star was one of the ones caught in the fire, alongside countless other contributors.

Well, the second Lucky Star director. The first one was unceremoniously fired four episodes into the production after a deluge of complaints and chocolate cornet memes regarding his middling introductory episodes. His current hobby is being racist online.

Lucky Star ends as it begins, with the whole ensemble cast of girls working out how to perform the hectic opening theme. It’s an act of eternal return, and provides some nice closure to the show. CGDCT anime often struggle with capping off their seasons, so it was very welcome here.

Somehow, Lucky Star might go on a list of my ten favorite anime??? Even months after finishing it, this is still hard for me to accept, being a weirdo elitist with antiquated weeb prejudices. But I think it’s true. It’s been fun to observe how Lucky Star’s second life in the 2020s has been split cleanly between “webcore” aesthetic collages with nostalgiabait revisionist memes, and a general critical reappraisal of the moe-boom now that we’re so far away from it. I’m obviously in the latter camp, but I’m here for it. This show was a dive into the deep end for me (I avoid shows from the SD era 2000s like the plague, and CGDCT isn’t my thing unless it's explicitly yuri), and it paid off splendidly. One could even say that it saved me.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

As much as copyright law sucks, its unfortunately one of the only legal venues with any sort of real power for artists working in creative industries to protect their livelihoods and colleagues. Unionization alone isn't going to stop companies from scraping people's work, especially not people who are non-union or freelancers, and unions like SAG-AFTRA keep throwing people who aren't making top-dollar under the bus for "ethical" AI startups they partner with anyway, even when said members call them out for siding with corporate over their own due-paying members. When corporations who normally try to shut down creators with DMCA takedowns are now violating the IP of countless creators themselves, why shouldn't we at least hold them accountable to the same laws they already use against us?

because it will not work. I truly cannot stress this enough, whatever meager personal gains that some industry artists are able to acquire in isolated cases against startups and other boutique tech ventures will set the precedent for which the corporations that actually control your country (who have infinite resources to expend on legal ventures) will use to push the law further in their favor. disney already does so much to prevent their IPs from entering the public domain! if you give them an avenue to exploit, they will do it! and it won't matter who was actually right because they have they have so much more money. artists and indie animation studios that could pose any threat to corporate monopolies on art will get C&D'd out of existence for superficial similarities. karla ortiz' lawsuit was so vaguely worded that you could hypothetically pursue someone legally if they had artwork of yours saved in a pinterest inspo board since CLIP models were framed as "trade dress databases". this entire movement is more concerned with potentially obstructed opportunities to rent-seek than it actually is about workers rights- or even simply art that was not created with the intent of being 'content'. and the same industry artists who spearheaded this frenzy will side the the corporations when it comes to it because they've already got theirs.

copyright is never made with the interests of individuals in mind. like, i can't even begin to explain how historically, the little guy is the one getting fucked over by copyright law! how so much of what shapes our culture exists in spite of copyright law as opposed to because of it. what drives me insane is how ai is the thing that artists end up rallying around in unity; not anything to actually improve the quality of life working within the arts, but instead a fad technology. i've seen people describe working in animation as being like a form of debasement and act like nothing can be done while i'm witnessing an entire movement unfold to protect that because a lot of artists seem to think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed small business owners over workers.

[solradguy]

hi! thank you for all your hard work. two questions: 1. can i hotlink the gg wiki, or is that discouraged? 2. do you know how japanese fandom feels about scanning and putting out of print stuff online? i'm trying to make a fansite/archive for something, but i'm also trying to figure out if i may get in trouble and how to avoid said trouble... i dont wanna get snitched on 😭

If by hotlink you just mean like sharing the link around then go for it, but if you wanted to use it as an image host for like Neocities or something then don't do that, please haha The wiki is legal under fair use laws and Arc System Works NA knows about it. We are NOT affiliated, they just know it exists and seemingly do not mind.

The Japanese fandom will get pissed at you for scanning out of print manga from like 1975 as much as they will something published just yesterday. The archival culture is totally different over there. I just do it anyway. Especially if it's rare or out of print.

My only rule is that I don't scan/upload indie artist stuff (ie., doujinshi) from 2010 to now (2024). After about a decade the artist that made it probably wasn't going to get any more money from it anyway and after that much time a lot of artists don't even have a copy of that work saved anymore. This is just my own personal rule though and I've bent it a few times in the past but only for very specific cases.

In any case, I've only ever had one DMCA takedown request and it was on Twitter because hubris got the better of me uploading scans of a brand new GG book so publicly. If a doujinka asked me to take down scans of one of their works (or I found out that they posted that they were unhappy about my scans) I would delete it, but that hasn't happened so far. Japanese fans don't really browse non-Japanese sites either, so if you just don't post about it on Twitter then they won't see it. In my experience they'll also just block you before confronting you. Though, like anywhere else, Japan is a big country with a diverse population and a lot of people also just won't really care someone's posting scans online if it's not actively hurting anyone. Scanning an artist's brand new doujinshi will get you on a multi-lingual shitlist though. Don't do that.

Depending on the IP you wanted to archive stuff for and how new the works to be archived are, I think you'll very likely be fine in almost all cases. If it's owned by Nintendo or Disney be soooooo damn careful though. The newer it is, the riskier it is to upload. IIRC sites like RetroMags also have a 10 year rule like I do and they've had very few takedown requests

Sorry this got kind of long it's 2:30am and I should've gone to bed like an hour ago lmao so I'm sleep deprivation rambling. Ok. Bed time now. Good night & good luck with your archive

[prettyboybuckley]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

tagged by @saybiwithme @bi-buckrights @zainclaw

How many works do you have on ao3?

160

What's your total ao3 word count?

1,070,239

What fandoms do you write for?

I've mostly written for 9-1-1, though I started off with Shameless (6 fics) and I have written some for Teen Wolf (5 fics). There's one 9-1-1 crossover with Schitt's Creek.

Top five fics by kudos:

parents always yelling (telling us to get our acts together)

i just want something to hold on to (and a little of that human touch)

I will come to you (even in my sleep)

open up again (i believe in second chances)

exes and the oh's

Do you respond to comments?

Always, even if it takes me months. I actually just caught up again (there's still a bunch to go, but right now the oldest is 17 days ago instead of 250 days...). It's just a rule I have for myself, and even with the backlog I've kept it up so far, so I'm not going to stop doing it now.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I'm not a big fan of angsty endings, I generally try to at least make it a hopeful ending or, in the case of the college au, use an epilogue to fix things.

But I guess sunny skies & summer highs qualifies as an angsty ending simply because of the cliffhanger (and yes, there is still going to be a continuation, I'm working on it 🙈).

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Choosing one out of 160 is really hard, but I think tell me, will you stay or will you run away is definitely one that deserves a mention here, because it already has a happy ending and then the epilogue just makes it even better 🥰

Do you get hate on fics?

Not commented on the fic itself, no. I've had some people talk shit about my fics on twitter, though, and not even vaguely but calling me by (user)name.

Do you write smut?

Is grass green? Yeah, I write smut 🤭 Thanks to two times kinktober, I have 95 explicit fics, by far the most used rating for my fics.

Craziest crossover:

let's have some fun tonight is my 9-1-1/Schitt's Creek crossover fic for 9-1-1 Rarepair Week, and my only crossover fic

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

My head over feet Buddie valentine's two-parter got posted as one chapter in Wattpad work with over 30 fics once. Filed a DMCA and Wattpad took it down within two hours.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Two of my fics have been translated into Russian afaik, one on ao3 and one on Ficbook

Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Nope. It may be a nice challenge for the future? Not sure who I'd do it with.

All time favourite ship?

Gotta go for Buddie on that one, lol. Especially if you look at my writing history. But I often tend to hyperfixate on one ship at a time (current reading obsession is McDanno)

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Buck's POV of if love is art then you might be my masterpiece. I really want to, but at this point it's been two years since the original so I don't know if it'd be worth it either. (I know not everyone was happy about how I ended it, but I doubt any of them are still waiting for more). Writing a different POV of the same fic takes an amount of planning that my brain just really struggles with. And I could pick up where the last chapter (before the epilogue) picks up, but I think that way there would be some crucial information about Buck missing.

What are your writing strengths?

I've been told quite a lot of times that I am good at keeping characters, well, in character, even when putting them in partial or complete AU's. Of course, what is in character or not is subjective, but I do always challenge myself to work as much of the canon backstory and personality into who they are in the AU as possible.

And I like to think I'm pretty good at writing smut.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm terrible at pacing, which multiple of my long fics prove. It'll be drawn out first and then suddenly rushing. And being ESL I do struggle with things like sentence structure and grammar pretty regularly still.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

As long as there is some kind of translation provided somewhere I like it, but I'm not so quick to use it myself. Not beyond a few Spanish words here and there (generally pet names between Eddie and his family we've seen on the show or the occasional curse word when I feel it fits better than an English one, but I usually need to employ help from Spanish-speaking friends for those).

First fandom you wrote in?

Shameless! I binged that right before I started 9-1-1 and combined with the creative writing minor I was doing, it was actually what got me back into writing in general and what made me write my first ever fic.

Favorite fic you've written?

My in your arms i feel safe-series (which I always lovingly refer to as the ace kink fic) is definitely one of my favorites simply because of how personal it is to me and for the reason behind me writing it in the first place.

Other strong contenders are i would've loved you forever (it's never enough but i wanted it to be) and i'm begging you, come home to me (Teen Wolf, Thiam)

tagging @monsterrae1 @rogerzsteven @loserdiaz @watchyourbuck

[cornflowerbluewrites]

Y’all, today has already been A Day and the more I think about it the angrier and more frustrated I get. I am having g to file a DMCA takedown for my fucking fanfiction today. The thing I do for fun in my free time, got stolen and put on YouTube for profit. I wasn’t asked for permission (which I super would not have given but the point still stands), and I’m obviously not the first person this has happened to. But I think the most ‘slap in your face’ thing about it all is that they’re claiming fair use, and uhhh, that’s not at all how that law works and it pisses me off so much that my hard work and effort is being so blatantly stolen with the most lackluster attempt to hide behind fair use and I just, I hope the thief steps on a fucking lego.

[missinconsistent]

You can tell people who don't watch Niji are really scrambling to find anything to hate about the AR Live because they just don't want any of the livers to celebrate any accomplishments. But if anyone is actually taking the opinions of those who didn't even watch the damn event at face value, here is my take on some of the "issues" these people are complaining about:

Long read.

THE GRADUATED LIVERS:

Pomu's, Nina's, and Mysta's voice were kept because it was a decision by the livers to be included for the fans. The remaining livers re-recorded their live stages after the others graduated, but some people actually think Niji was just showing 1-year-old footage, which would take some insane editing skills. The graduated livers' voices were part of the back track, not as part of the live singing. Their vocals were only heard for debut songs, too. There is also a weird narrative that the voices of the graduated livers should not have been allowed when there is no problem with it. Those graduated livers still support their friends and were more than happy to be included in AR Live even after graduating.

SELEN AND PASTEL STAGE:

It makes sense why Selen had to be cut from AR Live. There would be a lot more heat if they kept her in after her termination than to just roll with it since, unlike the graduated livers, Selen was terminated not long after already recording AR Live back in November last year.

I get it's upsetting many things had to be cut from Pastel Stage, but it's not just getting all the livers to Japan, but also booking the venue, getting the 3D riggers, stage staff, choreographers, and more. They'd have to push the AR Live concert even further after canceling the initial one. It honestly makes sense that they'd cut content rather than spend the resources to re-record it for a THIRD time. And since everyone wants the Niji to take better care of their livers' mental health, then not overworking them on this overdue project is a start.

3D MODELS AND RIGGING:

Apparently, someone paid the money to hate-watch AR Live so they could spread screenshots to make it look bad, despite the strict copyright rule not to share screenshots (which of course would lead to a DMCA). Frankly, if anyone is going to judge the quality of the whole 3-hour concert based on snippets and not actually bother to watch it, then they can't make the conclusion that the 3D models were bad. Although it's weird that someone did pay to sit through a 3-hour concert without having any intention of enjoying it to begin with.

I watched the concert, and the 3D models looked good, in my opinion. Nijisanji is known to have better 3D rigging compared to their competitors. The team that did the models and rigging did a perfectly fine job and it's pretty insulting to put it down because you chose to look at it under a microscope and pinpoint any instance where it might have looked off. A lot of the choreography (especially Shu's Shanti 🪑) and the variety games show how good the rigging can look, and it seems unfair to not look at those examples alongside the bad ones.

CONCLUSION

I feel like the Niji hate at this point is getting ridiculous. There's plenty of real reasons to not like Niji. If you want to "SiNk tHe yAtCht" so bad, you can boycott it and not spend money to hate-watch their concert, lol. Drama channels finding anything to talk about AR Live when they haven't even watched it is just another example of how little integrity they have to report hearsay. And it's tiring to always hear people looking at any possible negative thing to say when the livers and their fans are just being happy..?

Don't get me wrong, I have my criticisms of the company. I've aired it out before. Especially after Selen's termination. Hell, it's not like I don't have my own critique of AR Live. I also wish fans got more Pastel Stage. I also wish the first AR Live wasn't canceled. But by no means do I think the AR Live we got was bad.

I left the concert feeling elated and overall had way more positive thoughts about it than any negative ones. And it has me looking forward to future AR Live concerts. Other 3D debuts. And other projects like NijiEncounter.

Anyways, Niji antis can and will keep obsessively bitching about Niji, and then say "cope and seethe" when someone tells them to take a chill pill. But Niji AR Live did really well. The fans are proud of the livers' hard work to make it happen. There will be more positive things to come for Niji enjoyers. But if antis want to keep writing their own fan fiction that tells them otherwise, there's no point in changing their mind, lol.

For fans that want to keep supporting their livers, or any sane person that wants to see Niji better themselves, please don't let the hate keep you from celebrating any wins, big or small, that the livers are accomplishing.

[tyguy275]

Chromebook Tech Literacy Masterpost

I've seen a lot of posts about the systemic death of tech literacy in schools with the advent of ChromeOS, and instead of responding to them one by one, I want to create a masterpost to destroy the system. First: FUCK CIPA. The Children's Internet Protection Act is a United States FCC act that standardizes internet safety across the country. Public schools are not required to comply with this act, but they will lose discounts offered for the E-rate program. In short, if you don't want to put up web filters, then you don't get government grants for technology and Internet. Fuck that. Many of these workarounds bank on my personal experiences, so some solutions may not work with your web filters, but they definitely are a step in the right direction. For talking with friends: chat rooms are your friend. Many chat rooms for professional use act just like Discord, and many are just a single text channel. Several I've used include: Google Messages, Rumbletalk, Slack, Element, ClickUp, Pumble, and... in a pinch, Google Docs can give you a shared document that's practically impossible to block. For watching videos: some chat rooms, especially Rumbletalk, allow you to directly embed a YouTube video. This is rare, however, so we found some workarounds. Canva has a video search and embed function that allows you to play YouTube videos straight from the editing page of their slideshows. For anime, a website that I don't think is maintained as well but should still work is AnimeTribes. It is a .ru site but it is perfectly safe, as long as you don't click on ads. I've never seen it redirect you otherwise, and the owner used to be commonly found on the chat page. Another piracy site is 9Anime, which doesn't work on Chromebooks but is an infinitely better source in general. A non-anime video piracy site is Arc018, which is my favorite. It does redirect you decently commonly, but just take care to avoid those redirects and follow piracy suggestions that I will lay out further down. For adblocking: the easiest method is to use uBlock Origin. Though, with all the stuff that Google has been doing, I'm not entirely sure if it works anymore. I gave up on Chrome the second I could get away from it and I suggest you all do the same. For playing games: so. I'm a nerd. I play Pokemon games. SO if you do too you're in luck. The only thing I could come up with was to download GPemu, a ChromeOS based emulator. Unfortunately it's pretty bad, but apparently there's an alternative called EmulatorJS. I never used it myself, but if someone wants to try it and let me know how it goes, that would be appreciated. HOWEVER, none of these work without the games to play them with. I'm going to detail piracy safety later, but for now: Vimm's Lair recently got axed by Nintendo's DMCA, but some ROMs may still be available. Another source (which is admittedly undergoing some major changes) is The Internet Archive. I haven't done a lot of searching on the Archive, and I don't know if it works on Chromebooks, but try it and let me know :).

Circumventing the web filter: While those solutions work for specific things you can do online, these present a general solution, capable of multitasking and providing you much more extended freedom. The first is CroxyProxy, a completely free proxy service that can be added through the Chrome Web Store. If the Web Store is blocked, it can be accessed via the direct website or through specific IP addresses. These change frequently, and I’m absolutely positive the ones that I have access to are blocked or simply go nowhere useful. The other option, assuming you have a home computer connected to the Internet at all times, is Chrome Remote Desktop. It will work as long as both computers are signed in to one shared Google account and both are connected to the Internet.

But Ty... none of this works for me: Oh boy. I guess it's time for my trump card. The pinnacle of my Chromebook workaround career has culminated in this. The ultimate destruction of ChromeOS, all without jailbreaking the computer and getting in a LOT of trouble (don't do that please). My magnum opus came from my blossoming understanding of emulation and, specifically, Windows images. During my senior year, I successfully used a trusted and necessary source (unblockable) to emulate a Windows computer entirely through a single Chrome tab. This source… Microsoft Azure. This cloud computing service allows the creation of a remote desktop that will save data when offline. The biggest hurdle with Azure is that… it costs money. However, when I did it, I got 200 hours of emulation FREE, and I would highly recommend you find the same deal, if it still works. Things to note: you can make multiple accounts, but you will need to also have separate payment cards, as multiple accounts with the same card will flag and not be usable. The frame rate is decently shit, and there is no physical graphics card, so the vast majority of games will not run. I mostly used it for Discord. However, feel free to experiment and make it your own. Use this knowledge wisely, and run free, my friends. Fuck CIPA, and fuck ChromeOS!

Please feel free to reblog or comment with more suggestions, because I would love to add them!