#it’s also COMPLETELY OP. like i acknowledge it and it’s intentional

[percexe]

WOOOOOOO MASSIVE W FOR THE SAWYERHEADS 2DAY!!!! i love them sm <3 luck powers are both a surprisingly powerful and hilariously goofy gimmick

SAWYERHEADS STAY WINNING RAHHHH it really is such a fascinating power. i need to figure out a way to showcase it earlier than on my silly plot timeline because it’s sooo fun

[maoam]

What do you think of this post

https://www.tumblr.com/saski-uchis/740996293540954112/an-analysis-on-sns-and-their-fans-treatment-of?source=share

I stopped reading when op brought up "the truth about itachi?" panel as proof that Sakura can't be judged for not knowing. But okay, I will explain this in more details AGAIN.

1. The difference in how Kishi portrayed Naruto/Sakura reasoning with Sasuke

Naruto's reasoning why Sasuke shouldn't go to Orochimaru: "He will kill you." Naruto is concerned for Sasuke's well-being.

Sakura's reasoning why Sasuke shouldn't go to Orochimaru: "Revenge won't make you... ME happy." And Sasuke says "I knew it (yappari)" because he realizes Sakura is making this about herself. That's why that line is isolated with Sasuke in the background.

She specifically claims she understood what Sasuke meant yet she compares her pain to Sasuke's entire clan being massacred and taken from him, and takes her own parents for granted.

Then when it doesn't work, she starts to confess her feelings (why the hell she always looks angry when she confesses?).

And then she completely flips on her arguments. So much for "revenge won't make you happy" like she cares about Sasuke's happiness. Unlike with Naruto, whose arguments were very simple, Kishi chose to portray Sakura in this insincere and hypocritical manner. This is a writing choice.

He actually says in Japanese "I knew it (yappari), you really are annoying." Notice how Sasuke always uses "I knew it" with Sakura, it's because his first impression of her being ignorant, selfish and childish was correct. So despite him giving her chances his first impression continues to be right.

2. Naruto's reasoning stays the same

Kishi acknowledged that Naruto didn't quite get Sasuke yet at this point, but his intentions were good nonetheless. He just didn't want Sasuke to die/throw his life away.

3. Kage arc and how Kishi again portrayed Naruto and Sakura differently:

Yes, Naruto reacts like this at first.

Kishi showed that Naruto did care and did understand Sasuke's love for his clan. He also showed Naruto was completely fine with letting the massacre be exposed. He did not care about how it would make Konoha look, even when he didn't know it to be true yet. Kishi wrote this for a reason. Kakashi then stops Naruto.

Sakura, who supposedly "loves" Sasuke, heard how much Sasuke loves his clan, was aware that Itachi had been killed, yet she didn't bother to ASK Sasuke, something Naruto was planning to do, why he is now acting the way he is since Itachi had been killed. She just didn't want to feel guilty about the promise between her and Naruto (because her ego really made her believe Naruto was only chasing Sasuke for her). So she decided to kill Sasuke.

Sakura then hears all this (after her failed attempt to kill Sasuke) which means that there is more to Itachi's case than meets the eye, and that Sasuke thinks Konoha is responsible for what happened to his clan. Yet she still doesn't ask anyone what all that was about because she does not care. Her main motivation was always to get into Sasuke's pants, she never cared about Sasuke's feelings or him as a person, that's how Kishi wrote her. The fact op used this last panel to defend Sakura is baffling to me. She was specifically given an opportunity here, and she just shrugged it off.

4. Portraying Naruto and Sakura differently yet again:

Sakura is given the chance to understand Sasuke wants CHANGE and yet does she care?

Nope, she starts yapping about her feelings and how things can go back to the way they were if Sasuke just stays with her, completely discarding Sasuke's desire for change. Which mirrors the confession she made in part 1. Kishi was showing how she has not changed in ways that matter. She is still selfish, and she still doesn't listen/nor care about Sasuke's feelings. This is why Sasuke calls her annoying yet again.

But Naruto, regardless of the shitty ending, does want change. He was shown over and over again to want to change things for the better. You can't possibly use Boruto to deny this part of his character.

Guess who again discarded what Sasuke wanted and asked to come with him on his journey he wanted to take alone, just for romantic purposes? Guess who later CHASED Sasuke just to be with him, once again discarding his wants?

"Naruto forced Sasuke to come back to Konoha" no he didn't. At no point did Naruto say Sasuke needs to live in Konoha. He let Sasuke leave at the end, and didn't force himself with him because Sasuke wanted to go alone.

People who act like Sakura would be revolutionary when Kishi over and over again showed that not only does Sakura not grow as a person, she also does not care about Sasuke's feelings or change.

Same way, Kishi had Shizune tell Sai that Naruto is not chasing Sasuke only for Sakura's sake. Yet Sakura still thought it was just for her, and thought her confession would make Naruto stop chasing Sasuke, and was shocked when Naruto said the promise doesn't even matter. Sakura constantly discards the information she receives because she just does not care if it's not about her relevance or her being together with Sasuke.

"People celebrate Naruto for doing the same things they hate Sakura for" no we don't, we just read the manga and understand what Kishi was trying to tell, hope this helps.

[connect404]

So I saw this tweet earlier Abt the dynamic between Stanford and fiddleford during the partnership and how similar it was to Stanford and bill's dynamic (incoming essay)

AND I COMPLETELY AGREE

As much as I love fiddauthor (or just ford and fiddleford in general) , fiddleford doesn't deserve the type of treatment he got from Ford.

Throughout the entire partnership,ford treated him poorly and only ever cared about him if it was related to the portal. Fiddleford was willing to work with him even though he knew he was being treated poorly,not to mention he didn't know abt bill or his intentions yet (at the time) and still had his suspicions while working with ford. He remembered to give ford a gift (hand-knitted special gloves for him to wear with several failed attempts beforehand AND a snoglobe of the shack) yet forgot to get a gift for his own wife.

He does all this but the second he tells ford that the portal is dangerous and should be destroyed,ford gets angry at him and says he doesn't need him ???

That's not to say ford isn't completely a POS , he does enjoy fiddleford's company and his partnership with him. Ford even gets closure with fiddleford and actually apologizes to him for all the shit he did to him. Ford gets character development for the most part and actually becomes a somewhat decent person. He's terrible but that's what makes him a great character. He does horrible things but also acknowledges he did said things and actively tries to not do that,even if it's hard to avoid it.

(op said he's objectively an awful person for what he did but also loves him anyway because that type of writing is what makes his character compelling and honestly I relate)

It's a shame that ford favours results over sympathy/empathy. He only ever cares people when they are of use to him and when they say something he doesn't wanna hear,he throws them to the side and searches for another.

Another thing Abt ford is that he tends to be stubborn and an egoist. No matter the situation,he always puts himself before others. This can be a good thing sometimes (like when he gets electrocuted instead of just giving bill the equation) but it's always shown in a negative light. Stan dedicated almost his entire life to bring back his brother after several decades and he never even got a thank you or when instead of hearing Stan out on that invention he broke in highschool, he just let his brother get kicked out (Ik the twins are kinda crappy people but Stan breaking ford's perpetual motion machine was an accident damnit. It's been 30+ years and he still won't let it go 😭😭)

DESPITE SAYING ALLAT....ford isn't completely to blame for his behavior and how he treats other people around him to the point of being manipulative. Sure,his main flaws are what make him act this way (insecurity,need to be better than others,doesn't really think of others,etc.) but I think the only reason they've become worse is because of bill and how he manipulated ford,basically feeding into his ego and validating his beliefs. That, combined with his occasional selfish urges makes him want more.

More knowledge.

More praise.

More fame.

And this need for more makes him impatient. So much so that he starts using the same manipulation tactics (whether intentionally or unintentionally I'm not sure) bill used on him on fiddleford to try and get the same results,since said tactics work on him,so it would makes sense for him to do the same.

TL;DR yes,ford is a bad person but he's a bad person with layers and that's why I love him sm. Also fiddleford deserved better treatment

Anyway this'll probably get like 5 likes but uhhhh I'd love to hear any take on this really.

Agree,disagree I'd love it hear it

[outmakingmoonshine]

I wrote this in response to this post about Adam Shapiro but I didn't wanna hijack OP's post as I was replying to @freedelusionshere comment anyway so i'll put it here instead.

I agree the way Shapiro's character has been presented seems suspicious. Like a lot of things on this show it's portrayed subtly and indirectly but purposefully.

It's interesting to me that Syd had no idea who he was even after she stopped to look at him, until he said his name and she recognized it as a chef from Ever. But he knew who she was and seemed to know enough details about her role at The Bear to ask her to do an almost identical job for him the next time they met. How did he know she was capable of all that?

All the articles we've seen about in the show don't mention Syd, they don't credit her with helping to build the restaurant or even mention that Carmy is partnered with another chef. As far as we know her work isn't being publicly acknowledged and nobody outside of the staff and Emmanuel (and possibly Claire) know how much Syd's done there, so how does Shapiro seem to be aware of details you don't just pick up eating at a restaurant "under the radar" one time?

Richie worked at Ever for a week in S2 but he wasn't exactly Syd's biggest fan then so if he did talk about her I doubt he made her role at The Bear sound like a good thing or said positive things about the changes she'd made to make Shapiro want to poach her.

Shapiro said he ate at The Bear with friends, maybe one of them told him. But again, how do they know? The show makes it seem like Syd's full role at The Bear isn't public knowledge. Especially not the kind of details Shapiro seemed aware of.

Syd told a couple of chefs Carmy's her partner in S2 and judging by the lack of Syd mentions in the articles, I'd imagine they're probably thinking "I told you so" right now...but this does seem like the most plausible way he could know. It's still a flimsy connection imo bc the show has given us no other outside acknowledgement for Syd's work at The Bear. No other chef mentioned it or congratulated her in 3x10, even Chef Terry who congratulated Carmy then partied with Syd at her apartment didn't mention it to her. I assumed Luca would have an idea through Marcus or Carmy but he didn't say anything about it either and there was plenty of opportunity in their conversation. Shapiro is the only other chef who's congratulated her or mentioned it.

Knowing this doesn't necessarily make him a bad person, maybe he just noticed the negative environment of The Bear and decided to offer Syd an opportunity but it does make you wonder how he knows so much and no one else seems to. Maybe the show just does a bad job at portraying that it's public knowledge but judging by their usual level of attention to detail in storytelling, I don't think that's the case.

I guess Shapiro could know other chefs Syd's worked with in the past but getting info from them then approaching Syd the way he did without mentioning that is also just weird. And how would he know she can single handedly build a restaurant from scratch to the point of giving her complete creative control?

If it was sudden for Carmy to offer Syd such a big role in building his dream restaurant after months of working together in S1, it's very strange for Shapiro to offer Syd an almost identical offer but even better, after only meeting her twice.

Plus he says he doesn't want it to be "a gross poaching" but what else do you call asking someone who's already trying to build a restaurant with a chef he personally knows to basically abandon that project to come build his business full time instead? A decent person with good intentions would've spoken to Carmy and Syd together or at least gave Carmy a heads up that he planned to offer his CDC an opportunity to work for him instead. And Shapiro made that offer hard to refuse, even Syd knew it seemed too good to be true. That in itself is such a shady thing to do.

The definition of poaching in business: "Poaching is when an employer actively approaches, or 'head hunts', someone who is already employed by, or working at, another organisation, as opposed to advertising a vacancy and going through a usual recruitment process." [Source]

Shapiro can dress it up all he wants, poaching is the literal definition of what he's doing and the way he's gone about it is "gross" bc it's not like Carmy is a stranger to him, Syd was a stranger though.

His character has been subtly presented as someone who shouldn't be trusted imo. Kinda like Claire in S2. There seems to be no reason to dislike them on the surface but if you look beneath the surface there are plenty of reasons, too many to be a coincidence. Maybe Shapiro's not a good guy or maybe it's deliberate misdirection, either way I think he's been presented as a slightly suspicious character on purpose.

[itsclydebitches]

CLYDE. I was thinking about the RWBY vs Ace Ops fight again because it's one my least favourite moments in the entire show and I realised that Qrow/Clover/Robyn weren't part of the conversation prior, nor were they ever acknowledged. Nothing of the effect that "Hey, maybe we should wait for Qrow/Robyn/Clover's opinion on this plan before moving onwards, considering their experience and leadership skills?" before being shut down that time is of the essence and they can't wait for them. It just feels illogical to have the Ace Ops leader, Mantle's primary representative and the leader of the Happy Huntresses and one of James' closest allies be completely absence from one the most impactful turning points of the Volume. It feels they were either purposely left out arbitrarily for the sake of two poorly conceived fights or the writers just forgot...which wouldn't be the first time. This show is very...frustrating to say the least.

YEAH. The other day I was thinking about RWBY and ludonarrative dissonance in video games. Specifically, the number of action/adventure games I've played that have a, "OMG COMPLETE THIS MISSION IMMEDIATELY TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE SOMEONE IS GONNA DIE!!" narrative paired with a "Look at all these fun side quests populating the map, you should totally spend a month of in-game time leisurely exploring them" gameplay. RWBY feels similar to me (minus the interactive elements, obviously). The narrative continually pushes the urgency of the situation, but what the characters do don't align with that. Waiting in the mansion is the classic, go-to example of this, but it's also seen in questions like, "If the group is so concerned with the safety of the Relic why don't they.... put it in the vault?" and "If Qrow needs to speak to Ironwood so badly, why doesn't he just... go to Ironwood in handcuffs rather than starting a fight that, unforeseen airship crash or not, is gonna SUPER delay him getting there." Importantly, these moments go beyond the characters simply making impulsive, fallible, human decisions. It always feels like the writers haven't thought through the situation, or are so focused on one (badly chosen) outcome that they'll ignore all logic to get there.

So, same idea with this fight. I completely understand Ironwood's position because there is a clear line of logic here. Salem is about to attack, the group has consistently lied/undermined him, ergo he is removing a potential threat by locking them up until this battle/escape is complete. No one has to agree with him, but I think the reasoning makes sense both in general and for his specific character. (Which is also one of the reasons why I think some fans are willing to hear consider his side: his writing, however messy in other places, is leagues beyond the group's, particularly in the first half of the Atlas arc.) The girls though? They're all over the place. They don't want secrets but they're going to keep them from Ironwood. But they're also going to spill them all to Robyn, someone they don't know and shouldn't trust. They want to save everyone but have no idea how and can't/won't troubleshoot an answer. They're determined to unite the people but are simultaneously determined to solve their problems with a fight. They start said fight and then Ruby immediately tries to talk her way out of it again. And, as you say, they ignore that unity/experience/help available to them by not looping the others in because, supposedly, there's just no time... but then we have long scenes where they just sit around the mansion, tearfully bemoaning the fact that they don't know what to do and getting angry that no one has magically shown up to help.

I can EASILY picture a better-if-not-perfect scenario where the girls' decisions in that fight actually follow their proclaimed intentions AND the not-actually-very-critical timeline they have (because remember, even after all this Salem just sits there for an extended time.) What if Ruby ordered the team to let themselves get arrested and then we got a cool break out of jail scene? (I mean... Ruby blasts through Ironwood's steel doors that are meant to keep people in + they sneak into Atlas HQ. Clearly this would not have been difficult for them.) What if they ran into Qrow and Robyn while in their cells? Or what if they escaped, realized they needed their uncle, and started a help Mantle/find Qrow dual mission? What if instead of broadcasting a horrifying and near incomprehensible message to the whole world, they spoke to all their allies in Atlas about the plan they'd come up with, calling them together? Maybe coded so Cinder wouldn't understand. Maybe bluntly honest like a gauntlet throw-down: we know you're here, but we're ready for you this time.

Instead Ruby forgets she exists...

There are just SO many things you can do with that fight/the aftermath that don't completely undermine the themes, the tension, the proclaimed desires, and the narrative expectations. If there has to be a battle of ally vs. ally when Salem is on her way and half our villains are roaming the streets (god I can't emphasize that enough), why is everyone with the wrong person? Why isn't Robyn fighting the Ace Ops, her political enemy long before the girls showed up? Why isn't Qrow fighting Ironwood, the guy he (stupidly) blames for Clover's death? Why isn't Clover with his team? Why isn't Ruby facing Salem? Why the hell would you have Qrow team up with Tyrian?

As a side note, I've seen a resurgence of discussion about Ruby's breakdown in Volume 9 and everything above re-emphasizes for me just how much she HAS demanded this power and responsibility. "Hey, maybe we should wait for Qrow/Robyn/Clover's opinion on this plan before moving onwards, considering their experience and leadership skills?" is one of MANY considerations when weighing the question of whether Ruby has truly been burdened with the unwanted expectations of others... because they've never been unwanted and she has never down a thing to lessen that burden. She doesn't wait. She doesn't ask. She doesn't lean on others' experience and leadership. And this goes all the way back to Ruby responding, "Yes, I want to attend Beacon and take on all the responsibilities of that despite not being old enough," but there is also a LOT in the Atlas arc - right before her Volume 9 breakdown, literal hours in-world - where Ruby stood her ground and said, "No, we're doing this my way and my team, whether they've disagreed with this decision, or suggested this course of action in the first place, will ultimately follow me because I am the leader." She told Qrow to stand down and let her continue fighting Cordovin. She made the decision to lie to Ironwood and talked the others out of coming clean. She made the call to attack the Ace Ops instead of submitting to arrest. Using the Relic and dropping Atlas was a group suggestion, but Ruby sanctioned it. Based on literally 8 Volumes of content, if anyone HAD said no to her Ruby would not have listened to them. That is an overt, consistent characterization of hers.

And then Volume 9 expects me to feel bad because she's going, "Everyone expects me to take the lead"??? Like sure, in a very general, "That's indeed stressful no matter who's at the helm" sense, but Ruby has spent years at this point loudly yelling, "I'M THE PERSON YOU SHOULD LOOK TO AND I'LL FIX IT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY PLAN I'LL FIGHT YOU :)" Not roping Qrow and the others in is a part of all that. Not overtly on screen - we don't have a scene where Ruby goes, "We don't need to talk to them" - but the story doesn't think their input is important. We get the closeup on her smiling face when she thinks of using the Relic and then the others just inform Winter of what is happening when she happens to call. Major decisions in RWBY have often been collaborative when it comes to suggestions, but the final call is always Ruby. Whether we're talking about "This is my fight too!" when Qrow warns her to stay back, or using the Lamp's question when Ozpin is begging her not to, or shrugging off Yang's concern that she lied to Ironwood, or telling the whole damn world about Salem when numerous people with more experience than her have said, "That's a terrible idea" for generations, Ruby forcibly takes the lead and will not back down no matter who is asking that of her, or how they're asking. In fact, I'd say that is the most OVERT and CONSISTENT way in which she displays agency in this show (which, ugh).

[ms-all-sunday]

im such a zoro/nami liker i think ive mentioned it was my first ship before in op but it was (also the realization that i shipped every character at the time in arlong park was very real) (and then i said id never ship sanami but im a liar. and a fraud) but like ignoring the sexual part of their dymanic inherently invalidates the important character writing being done. nami and zoro and sanji are supposed to be a trio, thematically. im not saying you have to ship them just acknowledge whats there in the text (zoro being a brat who wants attention and gets jealous towards sanji holding namis attention) and youll have better zoro characterization. its like if you completely ignored how sanami affects sanjis characterization.

zosan people i am looking at you. looking at you very intently. if you acknowledged more how zoros relationship with sanji is affected by his relationship with nami and how zoro and nami are similar i think you'd have better zoro characterization than is standard AND bonus- you'd stop reducing namis characterization down to "sanjis heterosexual love interest". which do not get me started on how that affects sanjis characterization as well.

[monstersinthecosmos]

I know you probably don’t want to dwell on the show and the negative but I absolutely hate what has happened on here and how hateful people are in the VC fandom it’s just very demoralizing and makes me want to retreat from anything besides the books completely. The discourse was spicy before the show but everything is just even more divisive now and it has sucked the fun out of it. Not really an ask more of a vent sorry

Hi there!

You’re correct that I don’t particularly find it fun to dwell on the negative stuff – as you said yourself, SOMETIMES THE DISCOURSE SUCKS THE FUN OUT OF IT. But I do understand how you feel and I want to say a couple things and I hope this helps you find a groove.

First of all, I did my best not to acknowledge it too much because I didn’t want to validate the folks who were being cunts to me lol, but please know that this fandom (at least on Tumblr) has ALWAYS been kinda fucking violent towards me LOL. I started VC tumbling back in 2016 and it’s ALWAYS been a fucking trash fire. It is hard out there for Marius stans lmfao.

Like, when I was first posting on Tumblr and acclimating to the Tumblr culture it was so much of like, me feeling brave enough to share meta only for someone to be RB’ing me to tell me I’m wrong, or me talking about how much I liked something about Marius only for someone to vague me, or it was me hosting the huge fandom Discord back in 2017 only for people to then come on tumblr and complain about how the Discord was way too Marius Friendly as if like, a drama-free space where we can discuss the books makes it a harbor for predators.

Of course I also had the gaggle of fucking morons who were constantly stalking me, catfishing their way into my servers to try to take screenshots and write call outs and cancel me, who would not stop preaching about how “all these big blogs” are “actually such terrible people” because “look at the things they ship” even when I’d never been unkind to them, even occasionally donated to their GFMs. These are folks who think they’re morally in the right for protecting the virtue of Armand’s poor teenage asshole and executed this justice by stalking and harassing an ACTUAL PERSON LOL. Like, listen. I’m sorry to burst ur bubble, but Armand doesn’t exist. He’s letters on a paper. I’m actually a real person and you’re up my fucking ass because I don’t’ even fucking know why, you’re jealous of my fucking Tumblr engagement or something? Which one of us is actually the creep here lol?? Is this a race to the bottom to be the valedictorian of clown school on the website for homeschooled clowns?

I’ve also had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of acephobic discourse, being told I don’t do enough to protect every individual in fandom from their own bullies as if it's my job to do that, being called ableist for how I wrote Daniel in my fics even though I was projecting and discussing my own personal experiences – I’ve also had a project collaborator have a tantrum and try to steal my work until I had to threaten with legal action, I’ve been put on block lists, I’ve had many people consume my fics in secret without actually leaving comments because I’m too toxic for them to communicate with in public.

BLAH BLAH BLAH.

This was all before AMC showed up LMFAO. It was not easy for me! It’s still not always easy!

And so yeah like, by nature of the fandom EXPLODING we are going to see more drama. More people is more drama. The nature of the discourse often hedges into real life issues that people are very opinionated and passionate about and there are conflicting needs inside the same space about how to hold conversations. Even just the other day I RB’d a joke about Anne Rice and OP got upset with me because they didn’t want actual fans interacting with it. Whoops! I didn’t know! I just thought it was funny. ;.;  

Even in good faith and with the best of intentions we’re going to step on each other’s toes, and we’re gonna find people we don’t vibe with. And that’s normal and it’s fine.

What ISN’T normal is this inability to disengage that I think we see often in online space, and I don’t want to get into a whole side essay about all the reasons why I think that happens. But sometimes you gotta be the bigger person and take it on the chin.

Like, yeah, it sucks. It sucks the fun out of the room when you share a space with such bitter people who can’t be kind to each other. But like. THAT’S A THEM PROBLEM, YOU KNOW? And I think we gotta remember that sometimes people like that do it for the attention or the spike of dopamine when they can pick a fight and honestly like, you don’t need to waste YOUR OWN time on it, but you’re also doing that person a kindness if you don’t enable the bad behavior.

And it sucks that Tumblr’s mute tools are awful!!!!! It would make navigating so much easier to be able to curate the dash a little better and keep the bad actors out of your space. I sometimes just fuck off and don’t even come online for days if I know I’m not in a good headspace and won’t have the strength to just fucking ignore it, because sometimes drama catches my eye and I get nosy and go down the rabbit hole, too – having ADHD makes it really hard to avoid sometimes LOL – but like I try to be reasonable and love myself enough to avoid it when I can help it. I’m not willing to make my own problems everyone else’s problem, and I hope that some of these shit starters in fandom will get there, themselves.

So yeah it blows when the vibes are fucking atrocious, and it REALLY blows when it’s a fandom this small where you can’t avoid it. Even when it’s a vocal minority it really just kills the fucking mood.

BUT WHAT I WILL SAY.

Whenever I say shit like “write what you want to read” and we’re talking about fanfic, or even meta or even silly headcanon posts or jokes, that also means draw what you want to see, it also means make what you want to hold, apply it to any creation you can think of. Put the thing you want to see into the world. And it counts for fandom, too.

I don’t want to be part of a fandom that’s constantly infighting and attacking people, so I don’t fight and attack people. I don’t want to be called a predator for being a Marius fan and so I don’t engage in posts that say as much, not even to argue, because I don’t want my followers (who might also be Marius fans!) to have to see that on their dash. I want us to protect our peace and create a space we want to be in.

Like I have a policy that any time someone says I’m a freak or any time I see truly godawful word salad discourse, I go out of my way to post something kinky and offputting about Marius LMFAOOOO  because I want to be surrounded by reasonable fun people who share my sensibility for fiction. AND SOMETIMES IT’S CRICKETS, AND SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO WORK HARD TO FIND YOUR PEOPLE. But at the end of the day I know I’m being my most sincere self and I’m trying to have a good time and just post fun things that I enjoy. And like, the book fandom is small as fuck and we’re all famished, but I think if more of us did that, we’d build a much more productive and tolerant space.

And for all the shit I’ve mentioned, all the drama and attacks and all the times people have harassed me or tried to make me feel small, you know what? I just got back from @apoptoses & @cup-of-lixx 's wedding and they met in VCblr! We spent all week with our VCblr friends! We all went to New Orleans together last Halloween !

When I used to work on ships it was like a fandom friend world tour! I had so many coffees in port with my vampire friends!

I’ve learned so much about writing from all the time I’ve spent here and the community of writer friends who supported me! There’s folks I met on VCblr that I talk to LITERALLY every day! They are such huge parts of my life and genuine life-long friends!!!!!!

Sometimes it seems like the ROI is garbage but like, so much of finding the joy is also learning to protect yourself from the negativity.

It IS out there. It DOES suck. And it’s lonely when you haven’t found your people yet. But fandom doesn’t have to be the 500 angry assholes arguing with each other about a fucking TV show, it can be your 3 besties in a private group chat having a great time.

Like I just drove @hekateinhell to the airport (met THROUGH TUMBLR!) and on the way back I was listening to an episode of Last Day and they were discussing the concept that “community is a life raft” and it hit me so hard man!!!!!!!!!!!

Find your people! Block the shit starters! Mute discourse buzzwords that you know are going to upset you!

Keep! Posting! What! You! Want! To! See!!

Fandom is self-generating, we can do this!

My inbox is always open and BELIEVE ME I have been motherfucking persona non grata in this place before and I know how rancid the vibe can be so please come talk any time it's grinding you down, I got you!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fleshdyk3]

Why don’t you like the pills that make you green comics? Not meant to be passive aggressive or anything, I’m genuinely curious.

intersexist and transmisogynistic implications, the original creator is clearly too starstruck by getting so much attention and "fans" to think critically about the comics ppl are submitting (many of which are blatantly transmisogynistic). the original comic was fine but it really should have stopped after that bc the creator as well as everyone else making their own comics are trying to illustrate real nuanced issues which you just cant really do with stick figures that are different shades of green, especially as the simile clearly wasn't made with the intention of it evolving to be able to make these nuanced points and trying to use it anyways is just clunky inefficient and confusing when you could just talk about it normally. i could be wrong about some of the specifics of the individual comics bc i never kept up with them and havent seen anywhere near all of them but last i checked there was only one comic which acknowledged the existence of intersex ppl (which is crazy) and in this comic the intersex person, who was trans too and talking abt how their experiences as an intersex person affected their gender/transness, was purple for some reason? that just kinda rubbed me the wrong way like why are we so other? even though this person is also trans why are they completely different? idk it just felt weird to me. there are multiple comics that address transmisogyny within the trans community, both by the creator and "fans", and they all have a vibe of "these hysterical trans women are making up problems to get mad at when i (the reasonable transmasc/non transfem) am smartly pointing out that we should be focusing on the transphobes instead". theres one with two people using the shades of green that represent trans women and trans men respectively arguing about who is going to be put in the contraption first and the smart reasonable protagonist is like ☝️🤓 actually i think we should dismantle the contraption all together and then all their problems are solved after that. which is just weird. i dont know anything at all about the op so i could be missing some context and also its really not much of an issue at all i just dont like it bc of this. like not to be the smart reasonable protagonist but there are bigger problems within trans communities to focus on than the pills that make you green comic. i just dont like it

[lightandfellowship]

What would you like to see for Naminé’s story going forward?

Definitely like, more acknowledgement of her self-esteem issues so she can start working through them...I think the games kinda already address this every time she's like "no one loves me u_u" and then another character (I think usually Sora?) is like "NO!!! What!? Of course someone does!" But she's been friendless for so long and around Marluxia + Larxene + DiZ for so long I think it's going to take more than that to truly make her believe that she's loved, y'know? Having her body back and making friends and hanging out with the cast also isn't going to be enough to heal those wounds completely, I don't think (as cute as her scene with Xion at the end of KH3 is).

I think it would be cool too if Namine had a talk with Roxas and Xion about what she did to them. "To them"—in Xion's case not really, since Namine gave her a choice in the matter, and in Roxas' case also not really, because DiZ was the one truly pushing Roxas towards that fate, but Namine still had a direct hand in it. She's still one of the people who convinced Xion that this was the right thing to do. She's still the one who reassured Roxas that losing himself was going to be a good thing in the end, actually. And I feel like Namine probably feels a lot of guilt about this, so her talking about it to Xion and Roxas serves a dual purpose: she can acknowledge that her choices maybe weren't the best, and Xion and Roxas can decide if they want to accept her apology or not (which, of course they will, Namine had no malicious intent towards them and was stuck between a rock and a hard place.)

Because like, that's one of the things I find interesting about the Namine/Xion ship: they have a lot in common and make a cute couple, but how do you reconcile the fact that one of them essentially led the other to their death? It's kinda messed up. And I think that past history between them would make for a really interesting dynamic/relationship arc with them. Having them talk that out, maybe Namine's guilt about it creates problems in the relationship, etc.

Oh, also: I would love to know if Namine still has her memory manipulation powers or not! I would assume no, since her powers were the result of the strange circumstances surrounding her birth as a Nobody, and now she's in a Replica body, but who knows! If she still has her powers that could end up being important in future plot developments...but then again, her powers were always pretty OP, even with the limitation of "she can only mess with the memories of people connected to Sora", so maybe it would be for the best if she didn't have them anymore? (Plus, then no one could try and abuse her powers).

*EDIT* Oh, and obviously Namine deserves some apologies to her as well. AtW for one. And recompleted Lauriam and Elrena assuming they become good guys at some point.

[crowpolitics]

Lol, okay, so the previous blog responded to me saying they don't know what a genocide is by calling me a dipshit and an antisemite. Specifically, they said:

"I know what a genocide is, you dipshit, I think you need to brush up on the actual definition. All bad things do not always have the same name. What’s happening in Gaza can be horrific without it being a genocide. Begone, antisemite."

However, reblogs appear to be turned off so I can't respond to that... so... here's what my response would have been I guess?

Well that escalated quickly. I know what genocide is, too, thanks. You are correct that not all things that are bad are also a genocide, but when Israeli officials are outright saying their plans are to flatten a region and everyone in it, that's pretty telling, and doesn't even begin to get into the "soft" methods of genocide they have been employing, alongside the killings, for decades.

This century long genocide has brought about horrific amounts of islamophobia and antisemitism on pretty much all sides, with people either spouting bigotry out of ignorance or because they are bigots and are using these atrocities to justify their views. The existence of bigotry does not negate the existence of genocide (please see pretty much every genocide that has ever occurred - while my primary case studies were Bosnia and Rwanda, I am pretty confident in saying that).

You said in another comment to someone else, "Literally there are specific and quantifiable thresholds that have to be hit in order for it to be considered genocide. The situation in Palestine, while awful, does not meet those thresholds. There are likely far-right individuals in the Israeli gov’t that may WANT a genocide, but the actual military action currently happening is not one at this time. So by calling the current situation a genocide, people are watering down the term and are diminishing the horrors occurring in actual CURRENTLY ONGOING genocides in other parts of the world."

This suggests to me that OP only understands the first part of the definition of genocides, the part that discusses the method that uses death. That leaves out the "soft" definition, however, which describes all of the other methods. Not to say the Israel hasn't also been using the "hard" method - intentionally slaughtering families, neighborhoods, and towns to eradicate as many Palestinians at once as possible, but they have most definitely been using those "soft" methods as well.

I'm used to having to argue that part of the definition to people who don't know the definition is, so it's odd to see someone acknowledge the atrocities that are occurring, claim to know what the definition of genocide is, and then just bury their head in the sand.

OP also stated that the reason this can't call this a genocide is that Hamas is not an ethnic group, which completely ignores that Hamas is a resistance/ terrorist group that rose out of a century long genocide and the Israeli government has said on numerous occasion over the last century that their end goal is not the eradication of Hamas but of Palestine. Given Hamas came out only a few decades ago and this has been going on for much longer than that, this is a really asinine take.

The one argument that people on the "this is not a genocide" can potentially lay claim to is the intent clause. This meets every other part of the definition as described in the UN's convention on genocide, with intent always being the hardest part to prove - and why the international community has Never intervened until it was too late to make much of a difference, or until after it was already over.

Of course, given the government has been just saying the quiet part out loud since... well, the beginning, I would argue this is also a pretty clear case. They have stated on dozens of occasions - in interviews, in letters/ correspondence, in memos, etc - their intent to eradicate the people living their to make way for settlements.

You can't argue against the methods that have been used for a century, you can't argue against the documentation they have not tried very hard to hide, and frankly I don't really understand why you would.

Anyways, TLDR: what's happening in Palestine is a genocide, as per the UN's convention on genocide and according to pretty much every genocide scholar for the last century. I highly recommend people at the very least read the convention before talking about genocides - it's a baseline, but it's probably the best place to start, given it's the basis for the international law surrounding genocide.

And, referring to the original point of the post that this all spawned out of, USAmericans who chose not to vote this election are fucking awful and should feel ashamed for their actions. They have made a choice that allowed a racist, homophobic, islamophobic, antisemite to take control of our government and I hope they sit in that shame.

I hope it twists in your stomach, and you fucking do something to help put out this fire you helped spread. After all, the whole reason you decided to surrender one of the few tools you have in this democracy was to help Palestinians, right? Hope you have a plan to do just that.

[reasoningdaily]

How Microaggressions Relate To Systemic Biases

Inclusion, like privilege, is invisible: we only notice it when we don’t have it. As a fully privileged White man, it is extremely rare for me to feel excluded, and when I first started working in the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) space, it was not easy to recognize (or acknowledge) the telltale signs of the privilege that impacts virtually every aspect of my life.

As I embarked on my new career, I first began noticing some of the more blatant examples or racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and all the other -isms that impact individuals because of various personal traits: the men who would never let women get a word in during a meeting; the Black women who were mistaken for servers and asked to get coffee for a business meeting; the careless people who parked in front of a curb cut that someone in a wheelchair needed to get to their home; I even witnessed police brutality at the expense of two young Black students.

But just as our sensitivity increases when we learn a new skill, it didn’t take long to start noticing more and more situations in which perfectly nice people—often inadvertently—said or did things that, while seemingly harmless, revealed a lack of caring or awareness about people from different backgrounds. These are often referred to as microaggressions, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups.”

I must confess that, when I first learned this term, I found it hard to believe that microaggressions could be as pervasive as some people suggested, or that they could really have a significant negative impact on those who suffered them. But as I heard stories from more and more individuals and read about the material, negative toll that microaggressions exact on their targets, I began to understand why it is so important to become aware of microaggressions and to know how to react to them.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at a large medical facility near New York City, accompanying a family member who needed a surgical procedure. While waiting in the pre-op area, our nurse, a White woman, was also helping a patient directly across from us, who happened to be a Black woman. After asking us several standard questions for the admission process, the nurse started the same procedure with the other patient. One of the questions was to confirm the patient’s address, which we overheard to be in New Rochelle. Next, the nurse asked for the name and address of the pharmacy. After the patient mentioned the pharmacy and gave a street address, the nurse asked “so, that’s in the Bronx?”

If you are not from New York, you may not realize that New Rochelle is a very affluent suburb just north of the city, boasting some of the most expensive real estate in the area and a high median household income, with about 65% White residents. The Bronx, although geographically close to New Rochelle, has less than 30% White residents, and ranks among the lowest in terms of both median household income and real estate values.

The nurse actually seemed like a nice, open-minded person, and I suspect she was completely unaware that she had said anything inappropriate. And if someone had pointed out to her the bias implicit in her comment, she probably would have shrugged it off as a simple mix-up. The fact that the nurse subconsciously associates Black people with low-income neighborhoods, does not mean that she is racist; but it does mean that she is unaware of her biases and of the negative impact that her careless mistake probably had on that patient. Would you want to feel insulted just before going into surgery? What other mistaken assumptions might the medical staff make based on the patient’s gender and skin color?

It is useful to ponder the relationship between the type of microaggression we witnessed in this specific context, with the staggering racial disparities that exist in America’s healthcare system. It is common to ascribe these healthcare disparities to “systemic racism,” but what is systemic racism? And what is the relationship between microaggressions and systemic racism?

I suggest that systemic racism is not a cause, but rather an outcome, and that microaggressions and other subtle forms of bias are the visible symptoms and, often, the cause of the disparities we observe at the systemic level.

Systemic racism is what we observe when we compare healthcare outcomes across the population and find, for example, that the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black women in the U.S. is three times as high as it is for white women, a gap that increases with age and, perhaps surprisingly, with the level of education (the ratio jumping to a factor of five for college-educated women). But what causes these disparities in outcomes? In a recent video for the series Real Talk, Real Change, host Carlos Watson interviews a number of experts and people who have been impacted by racial inequities in healthcare. What is clear from the poignant experiences shared by Watson himself and by several of his guests, is that it is often the (consciously or unconsciously) biased behaviors of individual healthcare providers that leads to individual problems, which, aggregated across populations, contribute to the observed racial disparities.

Of course, there are other factors that contribute to healthcare disparities, such as the small number of Black doctors. But while increasing the number of Black doctors would be great, it would not eliminate the problem that exists today—and much of that problem arises from a lack of cultural awareness and appreciation that leads healthcare workers sometimes to be dismissive of Black patients, or to fail to understand some of the cultural norms that are reflected in the way Black people, and people of color in general, interact with the healthcare system.

In the two days during which my family member was hospitalized, we witnessed other examples of microaggressions and cultural insensitivity, targeting not just people of color, but women in general. For instance, in one case we saw two male surgeons react very dismissively to a female nurse’s concerns about some bleeding from a surgical incision. Although the issue was probably inconsequential from a clinical standpoint, the surgeons’ dismissive attitude is another example of microaggression that can have significant ramifications: making nurses feel disrespected can only have negative consequences on their ability to care for their patients or to speak up about other problems they may notice.

While these particular examples were in the context of healthcare, the same kind of reasoning can be applied to other contexts, including corporations. In any organization, microaggressions and other negative experiences have a deleterious impact on individuals. When aggregated across a company, we see these as systemic biases, such as women and people of color having lower promotion and retention rates than their White, male counterparts. Here, too, systemic biases are the outcome, not the cause.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t systemic biases in organizations, such as the way performance evaluations are performed, which can be prone to bias. But even in those cases, it is often the individual biases, when they are allowed to accumulate and impact individuals, that lead to the inequities we observe at the macroscopic or system level.

Failing to recognize that systemic biases are the effect rather than the cause is, in itself, very dangerous: managers and leaders can always shrug their shoulders and point out that they are not racist or sexist, that it’s the system. In other words, blaming systemic biases as the cause of disparities essentially creates an excuse for individuals to behave inappropriately, and it blinds us to the true causes of the disparities that plague so many organizations.

Only by learning to recognize microaggressions, acknowledging their impact on the entire organization, and putting measures into place to prevent these biased behaviors from impacting others, will we be able to achieve greater inclusion and equality in our organizations and in our society.

[fakedisordercringe-debunked]

DO NOT COMMENT ON THE POSTS SCREENSHOT OR SEEK OUT THE CREATORS OF THE POSTS.. THIS IS HARASSMENT REGARDLESS OF INTENT!!

In this post I want to illustrate an issue of users assuming what they know of the world to be true even though they're one search away from information that would challenge their preconceived beliefs. I was curious about the claim that "a huge majority of "systems" are fakers" so I went to my search engine looking for answers.

First off, I want to state that if you read over results, you will repeatedly come across statements that true rates of factitious or malingering disorders cannot be determined because it is obviously incredibly difficult to tell the difference between: people who lie, people who believe they're telling the truth, people who are telling the truth but are subject to unconventional circumstances, and the people who are telling the truth and fit conventional circumstances. Someone who does enough research can fake the disorder to such as extent they will test more "accurately" to the disorder than someone who actually has the disorder, and it needs be remarked that people are misdiagnosed or ignored by professionals all the time even in cases of physical sickness that you would think have more "objective" proof to distinguish between them. I for one once went to the doctor for a sickness that tested negative and was thus dismissed by the doctor, even though the people around me later caught and tested positive for the sickness, displaying the same symptoms as myself. I'm sure most people would agree this sickness was completely unnecessary to endure - there were ways to treat my sickness while remaining wary of my test result - but because I did not "test correctly" I was left out.

Next off, the answer is NO, malingering and factitious disorders are consistently in the minority. It takes a single search to check this- the first answer with varying search queries always shows a percentage in the MINORITY. Maybe you could say that it's going to be more frequent in certain populations (the population here would be "users claiming to be systems who use PluralKit Bot"), but that would require a professional study which is unlikely to occur when there's already limited studies into this regarding populations in clinical environments. So. There.

Funnily enough, reading over the screenshots, there is a better evaluation of statistics there than "a huge majority of "systems" are fakers".. Honestly, the entire screenshots are worth reading because they're so well put, much more well put than whatever the OP presumably wrote.

So first, it is not "faker-focused", and any claims to that effect very much do undermine and dismiss real cases. We acknowledge it's likely that many folks are misdiagnosed, but at the same time, at least some of the increased frequency in claims is also the result of increased information and decreased stigma allowing people to identify and be open about their experiences, like many disorders. For example, autism was not long ago considered "very rare" despite being a relatively new diagnosis and poorly understood by the public, and even today it's only gotten a little better. Regardless of the actual rarity, doubting every claim will absolutely dismiss real cases too. Furthermore, a very common cause of people mistakenly (but genuinely) believing they have alters is maladaptive daydreaming, which is still a coping mechanism, not just people "faking" for attention or fun. There are also likely cases that include some genuine experiences leading people to misidentify and exaggerate other, non-alter experiences, especially when comorbidities come into play. In the end, while there is a chance for downsides, there are also guaranteed benefits. Encouraging people to treat systems with respect helps normalize the idea. It isn't our place to scrutinize every claim, and it would be incredibly cruel to force genuine cases to "prove" themselves, as well as risk pushing them to doubt their own perception and struggle more. We don't want to do that! Ultimately, we would rather risk that people who don't necessarily need tools might also use them than guarantee denying people who do need them.

Now with the next point I do admit I partly agree, but not to the same ends of the commenters.

These users are right, PluralKit is not a necessity, but that doesn't mean it isn't helpful and convenient. Let's consider what benefits PluralKit has for a system.

The larger the system is, the more information there is to share with others. In smaller systems, making individual intros (intro channels are common across Discord servers) are easier to keep condensed.. But when you're pushing up into the realm of 10 alters or more, giving personalised details as basic as what your name, pronouns and likes are starts to clog up channels. PluralKit is good for organising information in a way people appreciate.

Switching between separate accounts is more feasible now, but before would have required much more effort. Note, there ARE systems who opt to separate their accounts entirely for a sense of privacy - it's worth mentioning those systems do indeed exist - but there is a lot of hassle to having 12 different sets of accounts when many systems are fine sharing one in the first place.

Some systems are far more distinct in the above way in that they act as entirely separate individuals who do not overlap frequently, but others will experience far less distinct lines between each other and often find themselves talking to others simultaneously. In this situation, having separate accounts when you yourself are unable to tell if you are one individual or multiple at once makes separate accounts impractical.

There are other ways for systems to distinguish between their members as they type, such as using sign-offs or integrating typing quirks into the way they type, but these can end up less accessible and be confused when translated to the format of Discord messages.

Discord, unlike other messaging apps, groups together messages sent in a short span of time together. Systems will switch at varying speeds, so systems who have fast switches may send walls of text that are comprised of different members' input but look to be unified upon a glance. This will look visually incoherent.

Also, when using Discord you become used to looking at the top left to recognise what user is sending a message, so sign-offs are inherently unintuitive being placed in the bottom right of any given message.

So no, nobody NEEDS PluralKit. Systems have existed before PluralKit was a thing and they would find ways to manage if PluralKit one day disappeared never to be seen again.. But you shouldn't argue that just because something is unnecessary that people aren't allowed to use it or ask that a helpful tool be integrated into a server. And I'll conclude this post here.

DO NOT COMMENT ON THE POSTS SCREENSHOT OR SEEK OUT THE CREATORS OF THE POSTS.. THIS IS HARASSMENT REGARDLESS OF INTENT!!

[frostiifae]

OK, I tried to put this in tags but it got away from me. OP you sound like you would be interested in a discussion but don't feel obligated, this is kinda half internal thought experiment, half me musing with mutuals.

anyway I want to like this point but I feel a lot of dissonance with the way it's specifically presented.

To get it out of the way, I already don't know how I feel about suggesting collage is totally clear of the "art theft" hurdle. When a stonemason makes you a thousand bricks and you use those bricks to build a house, you clearly made the house, but that doesn't mean you made the bricks. This difference obviously doesn't matter for houses, but I'm not sure I can put it aside so easily with artwork. How wrong is it to suggest that the person who created a piece of art is important to it? I'm not sure I'm willing to agree with a collage artist trying to ignore or downplay the creators of its constituent parts. But, the main point here is inspiration. I get what you mean by comparing AI generative art with the notion of inspiration, generally. When you are inspired by another artist's work, you are likely to want to imitate their style. An AI is merely a tool that lets you do that, no different from a brush and canvas and a steady eye. But I'm not sure I'm willing to equate them totally. When we say a person is inspired by art, the specific "act" of inspiration involves multiple steps - the observation of the inspiring art in question, the musing of its meaning and its relation to the observer, and the generation of new intent and meaning based on this musing, which can finally be output as new, "inspired" art on behalf of this budding artist. Generating images via AI works in reverse. I'm sympathetic to the argument that a person who curates an AI's generated works is, themselves, still an artist; taking a swath of AI-generated images and choosing ones that resonate with you and your intended message is an expressive and creative act. My problem is that it's optional. You don't need to do that. The images have already been generated, and the act of selecting them is superficial. This isn't a complete condemnation of the tool itself; if you were to train an AI on an inspiration, curate its works, and then train it again recursively on its own curated results - which I assume is, or will be commonplace - that feels to me like a much more artistic approach. Recursion distances you from your inspiration, at least in theory. My concern is much more practical: are people doing that? Can you blame me for being very suspect of a tool that does not require you to take this additional step (or steps) in order to produce something you can recklessly throw out into the world and call a finished, original work?

Intrinsically lost from the artist? Yes - originality. Is that worth caring about? Depends on the artist. There's a compelling, implied argument in your post that maybe it isn't, or shouldn't be. Unfortunately, this process doesn't happen in a vacuum, but in an oppressive capitalist landscape where one's art is also their brand. If your art has a unique style, it is unfortunately but undeniably real that you can find commercial success in your uniqueness, satisfying a niche interest in an audience. If a person trains AI on your work, they are threatening your market, and doing so at a fraction of the cost you paid - by using your work "against" you. I think a lot of protest against AI-generated images comes from this capitalist framing. It's right and proper to interrogate this conflation of artistic merit and the idea of what art "is" with an artist's ability to market and sell their artwork. But, at the same time, we have to acknowledge that that's the landscape we live in. The existence of AI art generation threatens the ability of the artists it's trained on to retain their economic stature. When an established business struggles against a rising competitor that thrives off of a more efficient process, we don't consider that a problem in the abstract, but I don't know that we've ever faced a situation where business B decides to compete against business A by taking A's publicly available sample products, reverse engineering them, and then mass producing the result, skipping all of the work that went into producing A in the first place. I think you would have a very hard time convincing a court that this is not theft of intellectual property in some degree.

Are photographs art? Feels a little bit like a "yes, duh" situation to me, but in a way that further reveals the capitalist motivation of the original argument. Does a piece of art need to have intent to be worth protecting from "art theft", or does it simply need to have a strong sense of original ownership? Maybe the idea that AI artists are "stealing art" has nothing to do with the merit of the results, but instead everything to do with the process by those results are created.

I don't have the original post being referenced as context and this is long enough as is, so--

This, again, feels kind of like a "yes, duh" situation. Do you believe it's morally acceptable to rob graves? Do you believe it's morally acceptable to take things from the house of the deceased? Nobody owns those things anymore, so? But for these rhetorical snarks to have any bite, you have to already agree that AI generation is theft; it's tautological. So we have to again ask why it might be theft, or what might motivate someone to care about stealing it. Does Rembrandt care that his art is being fed into a computer to generate "new" work in his style? Almost assuredly not. He is very dead. Does his estate care? Probably - but you aren't hurting them by hanging your generated art in his style in your living room. Is that theft? Do they have the right to impose their definition of theft on you? Do they have the right to own an artstyle? I'd lead this in the direction of similar questions about data preservation and "piracy", but I think the implication is good enough. At some point we have to question whether it's even possible to own something like a video game, a musical work, or the idea of a dead man's artistic style. At some point we have to acknowledge that enforcing or caring about that ownership is silly, if not outright harmful. No one is being hurt by you being proud of an AI-generated "Rembrandt" in your home, that you happily explain to your visitors was created by an AI that you trained, because you wanted to see what it could do. The best argument of harm that could be made is if you were trying to claim that you had made it "organically" (Rembrandt's second coming!!1) or that it was a lost original Rembrandt that you found. Those are both much more obviously immoral acts called "lying".

(& also 7) The very specific and limited terms of this question compel me to say, through gritted teeth, that sure - I can concede that the novelty of AI art sold with pretext as AI art is interesting. But, again, none of this happens in a vacuum. There is no harm done to me, the observer, directly or indirectly, by a commercial entity creating AI copies of Rembrandts, doing their best to make them look as faithful and accurate as possible, and then marketing them as AI copies. I love the potential this thought exercise has to force the debate over how you can even properly own an intangible idea into the public space, though I'm not sure it would resolve in the way I would hope for. However, there is harm done to other artists, for whom a precedent is established that it is commercially viable for an AI to be trained on their work, then sold separately from them. See #2. If we're going to say it's acceptable for an institution or commercial entity to train a dataset on a dead man's paintings without permission or compensation (because otherwise it clearly wouldn't be theft, would it) and then sell the resulting works, this opens the doors for smaller, less academically-minded commercial entities training their AI on niche living artists without permission or compensation, too. Anyone with a successful Patreon is suddenly, in theory, at risk of having their art business usurped by someone else who can, in theory, create art in their style but significantly faster.

The framing of AI generation as a tool, particularly as a misunderstood tool that can help create interesting artistic works as part of a longer process, is philosophically interesting, but -- I would argue -- irresponsible. We have to also directly acknowledge how it can be used against artists, intentionally or otherwise, and how it is much easier to do economic damage with it than it is to fulfill these intriguing what-ifs.

I made the comparison in #5 between generating AI art of a famous painter for one's own personal enrichment, and data preservation being considered "piracy" - or more precisely, Is It Morally Wrong Of Me To Have A Copy Of Pokemon Red Version On My Computer Hard Drive. But there's a difference here that I think is telling, too; when someone theoretically creates copies of a digital movie, or the ROM of a video game, or any digital artwork of any kind, the original intent has not been changed. Anti-piracy sentiment wants to claim that a "sale" has been "stolen". Using technology to create a perfect copy of a data pattern circumvents what businesses used to believe was the value they provided to society - the ability to mass-distribute a product of art - and so they claim that it is "theft". This is core to the social idea of theft that's being discussed in this post: when you use technology to circumvent a process, what are you devaluing by doing so?

When an AI generates images trained on an artist's work, it has done something very similar - technology has been used to circumvent the creative process of the original artist, not merely the act of putting a pen to a tablet or a brush to canvas, but the planning, the sketching, the framing and composition. The result is often absent the value of these elements, at least in the technology's current form, so they have to be added back in through curation or alterations at the end... but you don't have to. How much do we value those steps of an artist's work, then? How much do we value the time that is spent creating something "organically", through one's own brushstrokes?

There is already clearly room to argue that you don't need to manually sculpt an image from mere lines and colors in order to create art. Photography is art. An arrangement of everyday objects, displayed on a pedestal, can be art. Whether or not AI generated images can be art is not the core of the debate. Whether or not we value that art - and what value is being "stolen" from the artists it is trained on, by circumventing their effort - that is the debate.

nice job supporting ai stealing artwork dickweed 👍

First, let me start with a disclaimer:

I don't like AI art personally. Subjectively speaking, it just doesn't feel like proper art to me.

I just think that the rhetoric behind why, from an objective standpoint, AI art in particular is bad (i.e. immoral) deserves more thought.

Some questions which you might find worth answering:

Is there a means of explaining how AI art steals from artists that doesn't imply collage and/or inspiration are also forms of art theft?

For an artist, is anything intrinsically lost when their art is used as a sample in an AI's data model?

When it comes to AI generated photographs, is art theft still occurring?

Consider the post you're getting mad at me about. whompthatsucker1981's copy of the AI generated photo likely wouldn't have existed without an AI generated photo to copy. Is there no value to be found in the AI enabling the creation of the art?

Suppose I were to train a data set on, say, Rembrandt's paintings to try and generate my own "new artwork" of his - just to hang in my living room. He's famous and dead, so this action doesn't affect him at all - is anything wrong with me doing this?

Similarly, suppose a commercial entity or institution were to do the same, and sell or display it with the pretext that it was generated - would this novelty not at the least be somewhat intriguing?

How about if a team of experts assessed the product, and personally corrected and altered details to keep it consistent with his other works if necessary?

Many years ago, I met an artist called Doug Fishbone while he was doing an exhibition called "Made In China" at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. There was no clear piece on display as part of the exhibition; there was, however, an impostor. One of the paintings in the gallery had been replaced with a replica commissioned from the Meisheng Oil Painting Manufacture Co., who only ever saw the painting they copied as a high resolution photo - thousands of visitors were invited to guess which.

This both questions the value of originality in art (is the copy really less valuable than the original if you can't tell the two apart? How about if it's utilised as part of a philosophical point or artistic message?) and reveals, via the copycat painting's minor discrepancies, that even in careful replication, the preferences of the artist often shine through (perhaps this is a motivation in the encouragement of copyists by many old masters).

I would certainly agree that it isn't particularly desirable to study the "eye" of an AI all too closely - its own quirks will simply be the mean of other artists' idiosyncracies. But suppose that the image is then copied, modified, or used as inspiration - is its place in allowing for another artist to develop a concept not valuable at all?

To be clear, these questions aren't rhetorical; I'd like to hear your views. If you reply, I hope you do so in good faith.

[7-oh-ta1]

The other day I commented on a 3H tiktok I didn't agree with bec I actually DID agree a bit just not completely, and promptly found out op was a dimitri stan twitter user whose never played any other fire emblem so they thought Edelgard was complete evil with no critical thinking skills and I blocked them so fast so I would never unknowingly interact with them again. So here's me speaking out into the void that I don't think Edelgard is pure evil and I think Dimitri is fail cringe.

[fedzkun]

Villain Hunt Arc Meta: All For One’s Horrific Guide to Methodically Breaking Down Your Local OFA Holder

Ft. Turning the ‘Overpoweredness’ of OFA into a Setback, and AFO’s Successful Manipulations Of Midoriya Izuku

In which I also give AFO too much credit for all the pain he’s probably caused, and theorize that his plans to break Izuku actually started getting enacted even before he’d escaped Tartarus.

(A.k.a. me loving the angst because this is really good angst writing, but also hating it because the manga doesn’t come with a Angst with A Happy Ending tag unless you count Izuku’s ‘this is the story of how I became the greatest hero’ which isn’t really a guarantee of happiness )

So. What an arc! In the span of ten chapters (starting from the end of the War arc) Hori delivered a full-on Villain-looking, Vigilante Midoriya Izuku. Congratulations, Horikoshi, for finally introducing Akatani Mikumo!

The fast pacing and lack of breather panels are so fitting for this arc truly. AFO never gave them a moment’s rest. Yes, from henceforth as he’d promised... It’s always going to be his turn.

Izuku is making amazing progress with unlocking the full power of One For All. In his words, his abilities might as well already be on par with what a healthier All Might could do, and with no recoil to boot. Plus, there’s only one last quirk to unlock. For villain fights, I don’t think we need to worry about him losing, or him breaking anymore bones at this time.

Which, some might argue, makes Izuku too ‘OP.’

To start with, I want to talk first about the ‘overpoweredness’ of the One For All quirk. It’s a wonderful quirk truly, having inspired and amazed so many because of its sheer power. Used well, it could grant instant victories and restore the people’s wavering faith to the heroes. Because with a quirk like that on your side, everything’s going to be alright, right? There’s always gonna be that bit of hope that something is still strong enough to stand against the looming evil...right?

Yeah. That’s what the people who’d lived under All Might’s Era of Peace thought so too. History repeats.

OFA’s ‘OP-ness’ is both a great blessing and a great burden.

Here are some points on how the narrative has made OFA's 'overpoweredness' a setback:

1. All For One—that bastard—exploits the urge that comes with OFA. Just as ‘AFO the quirk’s’ goal is to steal OFA, OFA’s job is to defeat AFO, and Izuku is sacrificing himself to its cause.

Here’s another thing I want to point out: The conclusion that the heroes drew about AFO planning to capture Midoriya Izuku alive? In rereading, I’m starting to believe it’s nothing but a mere assumption of his plans. Aside from the deal made with Lady Nagant—of which I think AFO didn’t take seriously anyway and set her up for failure— (and while we as readers are already aware of his true intentions to wear Izuku down) it’s weird that nowhere had AFO directly mentioned to Izuku that he’s going to kidnap him and take his quirk from him.

2. OFA made Izuku so brilliant (e.g. Pros and former Pros alike going “This kid...”) that they really can't help but place all their hopes on him. Sighs. In an ideal world, this would be a dream come true of Izuku getting his due credit for all his heroic achievements Pro heroes have started to do to Izuku what they’ve done all their lives to All Might--which is to put him on the pedestal, while they fall back to cover him like guards/safety net. Hence, falling back to the One Pillar Model mindset.

3. OFA makes Izuku untouchable, not only to the villains, but also to his allies. Prime material to reinforce isolation. And if Izuku doesn't want to be caught, he won't make it easy for either side.

4. OFA IS SUS AF, OKAY? What are the Holders doing?! While gaining access to them makes it easier and convenient to have personal trainers in handling OFA, the vestiges prove to add a lot to Izuku’s mental load. If they’d allowed Izuku to come to the point of being caked with blood and filth, they’re not doing very well at guiding him. Realize that most of their arc interactions with Izuku is Quirk Talk. They, of all people, should know how AFO’s machinations work! Hey First, for the love of god, warn Izuku! He’s showing so many signs of being manipulated that you should be picking up on. please /sobs ;;

Tbf, like, I’m pretty sure that the Holders haven’t been as mentally okay either, which would feed into Izuku’s current mindset.

Now that the setbacks have been listed, let’s dive in to AFO’s plans to toy with Midoriya Izuku.

PHASE 1: Pre-Tartarus Breakout

Speaking of OFA being sus, there’s something that has been niggling at the back of my mind.

All For One basically tells Izuku: “You were my main interest that entire time I was in prison”. So, to pass the time in Tartarus (since he can’t use any(?) of his quirks), AFO has been doing nothing but apparently daydreaming and designing a personal hell for the Ninth Holder during that entire period. HOWEVER, it also made me wonder…

…Even before he’d broken out, had AFO made any moves at all in enacting his plans to break Izuku?

Yeah?

And here’s the kicker: he says that before Blackwhip bursted out.

AFO is a master manipulator. Assuming that Izuku doesn’t have any latent AFO quirk (for whatever reason *coughs* maybe dfo if you're a believer) or that Quirk Singularity has anything to do with it, what is the trigger to Izuku suddenly having access to Blackwhip?

I’d argue that it is All For One himself.

Why? What’s his goal? If you notice during the Joint Training arc, Izuku is feeling pretty confident about his progress. He’s rather happy and feeling blessed, and he is making leaps and bounds with base power OFA.

AFO can’t have that. He can’t allow the Ninth Holder to become too emotionally stable, or else he’d have a stronger will. So by somehow activating Blackwhip, AFO makes Izuku feel like he hasn’t made any progress with his quirk at all. During the evaluations, Izuku mentions that he still needs a lot to work on, and while not all of it is visible, with the way he behaves, it’s pretty evident that his self-confidence has taken a rather large hit.

But, wait! If AFO had tampered with OFA during the JT arc, paving the way to unlocking the rest (like he’d also done during the War arc when he tried to ‘steal’ it then), then wouldn’t AFO be sabotaging himself since he’d be making Izuku a more formidable opponent?

Sure. Except that the quirks inside OFA are mostly useless when it comes to the mental part of the fighting. The only thing they’re useful for is for the current Holder to be able to play keep-away in the physical realm. And AFO could easily just find counters for those through his work on Tomura.

You know how else the situation becomes advantageous for AFO? With every quirk unlocked, Izuku’s goalposts keep on getting away from him, and Izuku will always feel like he isn’t ready or prepared enough. Izuku will push and push himself to master OFA to its fullest, to become more powerful, at the cost of his mental/emotional stability and physical wellbeing as he wears himself down.

And every time Izuku grew more powerful, and became more ‘OP,’ he is burdened with all the aforementioned setbacks that came with it. He could be the most powerful person in the world, but it’s all for naught if he doesn’t take care of himself. This plan is both a high risk and high reward on AFO’s part, and as of the moment, with a bloody Izuku staggering all over, AFO is visibly reaping these high rewards.

PHASE 2: Post-Tartarus Breakout

He’s going to toy with Izuku until Izuku fucking breaks. What follows is his series of actions that instills the desired responses from Midoriya Izuku. Let’s see how the master manipulator plays this game of chess, shall we?

Izuku’s plan: Reach out to villains and try to save them.

AFO’s counter: Kill off those who turn their back against villainy and/or acknowledge Izuku as a true hero.

Izuku’s resulting response: Stop reaching out to villains. Gain an instant victory and move on.

After all, what do you get when you block a hero from showing sympathy? You get an unfeeling living weapon.

---

Izuku’s plan: Work with the top pro heroes to bring down AFO.

AFO’s counter: Make plans that will serve to highlight how the top pros are just slowing Izuku down. (e.g. Making moves while it’s raining, so as to divide them, but also to bring out No. 1 Hero Endeavor’s "slowness" in the rain. Nope, I don’t think that’s a throwaway line at all.)

Izuku’s resulting response: Grows more reckless, often leading the charge.

---

Izuku’s plan: Track AFO down.

AFO’s counter: Lead them to dead-ends. Or when they do supposedly reach something, endanger them.

Izuku’s resulting response: His tunnel vision worsens, as he grows more desperate.

---

Izuku’s plan: All Might following him around is okay since it would help All Might from worrying so much, and Izuku could simultaneously keep an eye on and protect All Might.

AFO’s counters: There are a lot to really fuck with this bond, damn you AFO.

Taint that passing the torch memory of ‘You’re Next.’

Declare that All Might no longer interests him. Liar. He outright stated before that he’s one for keeping a grudge

Send another assassin to Izuku [Underlying Message: You yourself are a walking danger zone to those whom you dearly care for.]

Izuku’s resulting response:

Interpret that memory of ‘You’re Next’ as taking up the position of being AFO’s shiny new plaything, and therefore supposedly sparing All Might from the torment (Unfortunately, making Izuku push AM away is just part of the torment ;A;)

Think that AM is no longer in the direct line of fire as long as AFO focuses on Izuku

Finally, push his last line of morale support away, and completely isolate himself.

Btw, I wonder how All Might feels about Izuku using Nana's quirk to get away from him.

---

The suffering doesn’t end.

Izuku’s plan: Save people.

AFO’s counters: (possibly offscreen) Send more villains and assassins to torment Izuku some more with the knowledge that he can’t save them. Sending villains out also puts innocents in danger.

Izuku’s resulting response: He won’t stop for anything. He won’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t slow down. He will always do his best to save as long as someone is in danger.

His body will keep on moving and moving and MOVING on its own.

--- All For One is very effective as a supervillain. He has managed to make the heroes think that his only goal is to capture Izuku alive for his quirk. He has Izuku right where he wants him: dancing to his tune at the palm of his hand, utterly toyed with, left with no escape in sight.

Psychologically vaulted.

.

.

.

PHASE 3

And so, if Izuku is being manipulated to drive himself further and further into self-destruction, what then is there left for All For One to do?

So much more. Because, my god, I think AFO has mastered the art of traumatizing the OFA Holders.

All For One once told All Might, “I will destroy all that you’ve protected.” And boy, is he delivering. He's definitely not done with AM btw.

First, he destroys All Might's image. And he is manipulating Izuku to drive himself to that point. To looking into his absolute worst.

And when that point arrives, AFO will hammer the final nail home.

Something like...

BEHOLD

JAPAN’S SYMBOL OF PEACE.

And oh, how it'll hurt. To see All Might's pride and joy be flaunted about as looking nothing like a hero to the masses, for him to be so utterly humiliated.

"See what I did to All Might's successor."

AFO will be banking upon the possibility that the angry masses will not want to be saved by whom they're tricked into viewing as someone that's the cause of all the pain. Izuku might have the willpower to stay true to his resolve, but with him on the verge of total breakdown, what would happen when he is shunned by the very people he is trying to help?

I once wrote a post about how the current events seem to be a bastardization of Izuku's wildest fantasies: he's working with the top pros, he has the most powerful quirk, and he's working with All Might (whom technically acts as a sidekick to him rn).

AFO has warped all that into a never-ending nightmare. And Izuku...

Izuku is really in need of saving.

Last thoughts:

Let me just say that it shouldn't be a competition about who gets to get through to Izuku. Right now, he’s gonna need all the help he can get, and it can’t be delivered by only one or two people. Saving Izuku is going to be a team effort, a solid support system that sees Izuku as their classmate/friend/student/actual person that they care about. And there’s sufficient space for that.

More hands reaching out means more chances to catch him if he falls.

[liquidstar]

hi this is evilmario666 anon. im ok now and i realized that despite the misogyny that does exist on account of genre and perspective re:zero actually understands the subaru archetype of guy very well and i was jumping to conclusions too quickly based on what i was seeing. it was impolite and unfair of me and id like to apologize both to re;zero and you, i am no longer on the verge of a blood rage. thanks once more because i am genuinely having a ball of a time . lost track of arc numbers but im on the one where subaru accidentally SPOILERS kills emilia becaus he tries to reveal return by death

NO YEA ANON ITS OK sorry i didnt respond to ur first ask last night i was too tired to read long things lol

but i TOTALLY get how you feel like subaru early on legit annoyed me with his behavior, and it was completely intentional. not that he didnt have his endearing traits, i think the first thing that made me really like him was the fact that he got to know the names of the village kids and legit cared about them a lot because before getting to know them he just considered them and everyone around him as "npcs", and the village kids in particular arent "important" characters. (also dont take all of what im about to say as subaru hate, having read most of the story now i legit love the guy but im just talking abt his portrayal in the show in the early arcs)

basically arc 1 just served to introduce us to characters and concepts so there wasnt all too much of an arc there, subaru is dense as hell so he still came out of all that thinking he was gonna get his Isekai Harem Fantasy and so when he arrived at the mansion in arc 2 he literally treated all the characters like tropes (even before that though he would assume emilia's behavior based on what the tropey response would be). he just didnt see any of them as people and thats where a lot of the conflict came from, in order to overcome in that arc he had to actually befriend both rem and ram in a way that actually mattered, and he really did start to care about them as people and we know that because of the story he tells ram about the ogres.

arc 3 though addresses his mindset about this hero fantasy he has a lot more bluntly, because while he may have grown some in arc 2, he still has a huge martyr complex and places emilia into this role where he gets to be her hero even though she didnt ask for that, and their fight about it is simultaneously really satisfying to see him called out, and hard to watch because hes being such a child about it, hes so incredibly entitled to her at this point. the show luckily frames him as completely in the wrong and shows us the nastiest parts of this mindset in him. one of my favorite scenes in this arc is the one where he accidentally kills her, but just before that. when he rushes into the room and yells at her about how shes useless and unable to save anyone and we focus on her face, and she just says "why are you crying?" and the cut zooms into her eye to reveal that he was staring at his own reflection in it, he was talking to himself. that just perfectly describes what she is to him at that point- a beacon to project all his insecurity and doubt. re:zero loves using those eye-reflection shots, and i love seeing them because my absolute favorite theme in the story is "self-recognition through the other"

subaru does legitimately learn and become better, he acknowledges how shitty hes been in his convo with rem and it gets turned into a really sweet moment between the two of them, and it gets memed a lot but "i love emilia" is honestly a really good line because its in that moment that he stops trying to either run away or project and face his feelings genuinely in a way that doesnt throw her under the bus. by the time arc 4 rolls around hes so much more likable, and his dynamic and relationship with emilia becomes honestly really cute, the way they talk is sort of dorky and charming (spoilers, but even when they have another argument that calls back to the one they had in arc 3, you feel its coming from a legit place now, and when he kisses her he does so only after getting explicit consent and telling her its okay to dodge). hes so much more sympathetic and you really root for him. i loved the choice to not show any of his backstory until arc 4, the point where youre supposed to be on his side completely.

all that being said though its NOT a series i think is perfect nor do i think its super feminist, i just think its a good deconstruction of these isekai tropes and calls them out in a blunt way that i enjoy seeing. there are lots of things about it that i dont like too though, some of the character designs sort of bother me and seem antithetical to this, part of that is that the writer and character designer are different people but it still passed. but i still enjoy the story and characters enough that it doesnt totally sully my enjoyment of it (some are more egregious than others tho). at the end of the day im so along for this whole ride, i love the way it explores its themes, again especially the whole "self-recognition through the other" thing but also suicidal ideation and of course the deconstruction of what the isekai genre has become.

TL;DR: the series perfectly understands the type of nerdboy that watches isekai anime and wants to be sent to another world just like their favorite blank-slate nerdy protagonist and it directly calls them out, saying "no. youre not gonna be an OP hero who saves the day and gets all the bitches with that fucking attitude. youre not gonna be able to escape your insecurities via this escapism, you treat the women around you like trash, youre not entitled to any of this, youre just pathetic." and though subaru is a character that gets better many of the viewers of the series straight up plugged their ears to its themes so they can jack off to rem lol.