#its copyright^2

[eumetopia]

well. maybe not all of us are cut out to be spies

[jjcocker]

his ass WOULD pirate the shit out of nintendo if he was real

[munchboxart]

Word of advice, do NOT join Tarot zines

[sessju]

Hmm. I kind of want to make a post or series of posts about the production of the Kotor games and their relationship to other Star Wars media, especially the comics.

I think since they are lesser known, the ideas that Kotor drew from them are interpreted as unique to Kotor. It's a bit of a shame, because both Kotor games were absolute love letters to the comics and I like seeing sources of inspiration get credit.

To be clear I'm not saying the comics are something you need to read or that they are even particularly good by today's standards - I think modern Star Wars fans would feel alienated by them. Star Wars was just a different beast back then. However, their role in the creation process of Kotor is neat and maybe other people would be interested? I dunno.

[princessfishy]

not 2 be rude but we need 2 as a species stop just making direct rip offs of canon characters but just as animals and putting them on TH.

Just draw the fucker as a animal and call it a day.

Also IF YOURE SELLING ADOPTS THAT ARE JUST CANON BUT ANIMAL LEAVE LEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE youre so lazy DAWG.

LAZY.

I made both of these examples so no one could bitch that i was putting people on blast. Know that if your toyhouse has these looken mfs you are annoying.

[starlos-art-stuff-lol]

I experimented with some concepts with my character Suitcase.

Canonically this dude is a hyper-realistic Suitcase. Part of his art style is the fact that he's a photo of a Suitcase. That's non-negotiable.

But I wanted to draw him more easily. So I invented the concept of doodlecase. For when I want to draw him but I don't want to do work drawing him.

Also, that version of him that looks jaded and glitchy is actually based off a different AU made by @samthecookielord.

So basically, sam likes this character from Professor Layton called Clive. She like him so much that she started throwing him into AUs and other works of fiction. This evolved into an AU called Time!Clive. As in Timeline Hopper.

So I basically just stole that and called it something else

I forget what I called Time!Suitcase but it wasn't Time!Suitcase. Uh. You can call him Slider!Suitcase. Like sliding between universes. He's not a timeline guy, more of a reality-hopper.

[cerealandchoccymilk]

Trigun Bookclub: Trigun Vol.1, Chapter #07 (Part 2)

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I’m doing a deep-read of the Japanese original print (reread) and Overhaul 1.0 (first read) side-by-side, and writing down everything I notice from small details, version differences, translation differences, etc.

This one’s divided into two parts since it surpassed the desktop image limit of 30. whoops

Here are the ME BEING GAY panels:

And the rest is under the cut.

[link for if the images aren’t in horizontal rows]

This part is significantly more text- and analysis-heavy than Part 1.

I know this part isn't supposed to be funny but I can't get over the way they exchange glances. Kaito is just absolutely jaw-dropped. I can't tell if he's shocked by the fact that there were gang members where he didn't expect, or if he got scared by the fact that he heard the #1 thing you don't want an adult to say during an emergency.

Also... Vash raising his voice... hello..........

This angle of Kaito kind of reminds me of Gag Manga Biyori... (this really stupid '00s anime with like. Monty Python humor)(please tell me if you know of gag manga biyori. it's my entire childhood. i can quote so many bits)

In Japanese, Kaito's phrasing is more like "You've been missing vital organs on purpose!?"

Does Vash keep first aid on him at all times, in case of situations like this?

The nuance here is a bit different - Kaiyo says "However skilled your arm is... this is ridiculous!!" (real kids don't talk like that but. yk what i mean)

I forgot to transfer the Japanese annotations onto the English version... whoopsies

He's taken a hit...!! Despite having taken quite a lot of damage, he's still more worried about his enemies than he is of himself... Take care of yourself more......(second time saying this)

YAOI SHOULDERS He's so damn cool augh...

The "dame dane" in blue is because he says "baka mitai" lmao

I initially corrected this line (to "I probably look stupid, don't I?"), but it becomes redundant with what he says after this so I crossed it out.

This is the first (direct) connection between Vash, Rem, and the Big Fall. The space imagery is of course representative of the setting of the Big Fall and Vash's backstory, but it also shows the sheer scale of Vash's trauma and love for humanity. This will be expanded on in a bit.

Here you can also see the self-hatred that Vash has....

Rather than a matter of forgiveness, Vash says that he's "sure [Rem] would be saddened."

In the Japanese version, Kaito's echo of "She?" is in brackets/quotes.

More interspersed space imagery.

There's something about these occasional shots of space that *gets* me.... Vash's thought patterns, ideals/values, etc. vastly transcends anything of a regular human's, I think.

Most of what I want to say can be summarized into that. I probably have said this before and will say it many times in the future, but Vash's stubborn pacifism and determination is something that can only be achieved because he's inhuman. His physical abilities are ridiculous, either because he's a Plant or due to his training and long lifespan (or both), and he has experienced things far greater than anyone can imagine. No idea where I was going with this but...you get it.

I think the ガッ bubble on the top right is onomatopoea , possibly for the gunshot or the bullet hitting something? Vash's pose must be ridiculous here. I can only imagine how insane he would be at Twister. And he shot that guy's arm completely without looking too!? This guy's insane. like we knew that already but damn

Honestly I'm not smart enough to understand what the rest of these commands are saying, but I think they're referring to "the three teams" in the port passenger section, rather than "team 3".

We can see Vash's wound slowly getting to him...

Here's the only time we see Kaito's backstory!! It looks like after his father died, his mother left Kaito? Or she left her family for another man and his father died after that.... He ended up being homeless.... He either killed someone or found a body??? Is that the stepfather his mother ran off with??? NIGHTOW GIVE ME ANSWERS!!!

The scene...... I can't help but imagine where Vash thinks he falls in this. It's something he has been doing for the past however many years it's been since July, the century and a half since the Big Fall, or even [trimax vol.7] during his childhood. But I don't think he ever counts himself as deserving of this, to be on the recieving end of the forgiveness.

More weak Vash... It's just so rare to see Vash in such a state. no other reason im putting this here no sir this is purely analytical (←me when i lie)

The way this page's panels are arranged really highlight how slow each action is and that Vash is running out of energy, which I think is a neat detail.

And that's the end of my Japanese copy of Trigun Volume 1!! I wanted to do at least rough translation of the omake, but my Apple Pencil died (and this chapter had so many images) so the omake will be a separate post, probably all 3 at once.

The Japanese annotations for this chapter are reblogged from the Part 1 post. (There are less than 30 of those, so they're all in one reblog.)

[obviouslyinvisible]

Im catching up with 13+ years of Remedy content right and I think I've had the reverse order reaction everyone had to Tim breaker in Alan wake 2.

Which is I've watched through A.W 1 and got to seeing Tim in AW2 and seen a bunch of fanart of jack Joyce and gone who is this???

Who's jack and looked up quantum leap to go !!!! TIM oh hey Tim.

Needless to say it was very funny to then watch Jesse Cox play aw2 and immediately lose his mind at Tim and goo ohhhh thats the reaction id have have had if I'd had watched everything in order of release lmao

[toxifoxx]

henry lore doc coming along nicely :3

[thedevilsrain]

ok kind of a silly rant coming

[supersuperdupersecretnerd]

Pressure is such a good game, but good lord what the hell have they done to Roblox.

[the-acid-pear]

Sometimes I forget Hans Landa is a character from the hit movie Inglourious Bastards directed by Quentin Tarantino and not just some.guy living rent free in my head in a shitty apartment who I go bother at least once a week and who takes care of.my daughter while I'm gone.

[thekuraning]

im not really excited about the prospect of gamefreak "we made a romhacker into an indentured servent once" having a copyright on round headed blue creatures with platypus tails. personally speaking

That's cool! Neither am I! I'm not really sure where I ever said they should, frankly. I'm also pretty sure that's not how copyright works even if people wanted it to, but then again I thought platypet was from coromon, so who knows with me.

Like I said, there are differences that do make fuack relatively distinct from oshawott, and personally I do think if there were any legal grounds for the Pokemon Company and Nintendo to do anything, we would have heard about it already. (See: the pokemon mod for palworld they took down in what... hours after it went live on Nexus?)

I think based on the tone of the game there's also grounds to call it parody (I have no idea if parody is protected under Japanese law and im still researching that, but I do believe in protecting parody on a personal level.)

I do think it's pretty obvious that a good chunk of pals took direct inspiration from Pokemon to the point where I and people I know can look at some of them and point out which specific ones they used design elements from. Things like Melpaca's virizion boots, incineram's zoroark hair, lifmunk's leafeon ears and dot, kingpaca's empoleon horn, direhound's lycanroc head..... No one is going to mistake them for the pokemon they've referenced, obviously. They are not exact copies and I'm not claiming they are or that there should be legal consequence for looking similar.

I am a little bit concerned about whether or not they've used assets directly from other games to make their models, which, look—I'm not going to shed a tear for TPC. It's one of the biggest franchises in the world. But if they did, it does make me wonder if they'd done the same thing to other indie monster catcher devs.

Which is why I keep talking about Platypet. I've been talking about fuack for two days now. Because I kept seeing people say "it looks like platypet." One person said specifically "platypet from COROMON."

So my original post anon. Was that no. Fuack does not look like PLATYPET. And that I was a dumbass for thinking platypet was from COROMON. Because platypet is from TEMTEM actually. And my reaction to my brain being infested with fuack all day and then starting a new legends arceus file. Was hey. Actually. If anything. Fuack looks like oshawott. Because it does.

TL;DR: saying something looks like something else is not a a call for TPC to own the rights to a shape—be it copyright, trademark, WHATEVER—or for paldev to face legal action or consequence for having a little dude that looks similar.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Fifty per cent of web users are running ad blockers. Zero per cent of app users are running ad blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that’s a felony. (Jay Freeman, the American businessman and engineer, calls this “felony contempt of business-model”.) So when someone in a boardroom says, “Let’s make our ads 20 per cent more obnoxious and get a 2 per cent revenue increase,” no one objects that this might prompt users to google, “How do I block ads?” After all, the answer is, you can’t. Indeed, it’s more likely that someone in that boardroom will say, “Let’s make our ads 100 per cent more obnoxious and get a 10 per cent revenue increase.” (This is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website.) There’s no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn’t install a counter-app that co-ordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold. No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete or, in other words, “IP law”. IP isn’t just short for intellectual property. It’s a euphemism for “a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers”. And “app” is just a euphemism for “a web page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to mod it, to protect the labour, consumer and privacy rights of its user”.

[txttletale]

What I don't get is that other your support of AI image generation, you're SO smart and well read and concerned with ethics. I genuinely looked up to you! So, what, ethics for everyone except for artists, or what? Is animation (my industry, so maybe I care more than the average person) too juvenile and simplistic a medium for you to care about its extinction at the hands of CEOs endorsing AI? This might sound juvenile too, but I'm kinda devastated, because I genuinely thought you were cool. You're either with artists or against us imho, on an issue as large as this, when already the layoffs in the industry are insurmountable for many, despite ongoing attempts to unionize. That user called someone a fascist for pointing this out, too. I guess both of you feel that way about those of us involved in class action lawsuits against AI image generation software.

i can't speak for anyone else or the things they've said or think of anyone. that said:

1. you should not look up to people on the computer. i'm just a girl running a silly little blog.

2. i am an artist across multiple mediums. the 'no true scotsman' bit where 'artists' are people who agree with you and you can discount anyone disagrees with you as 'not an artist' and therefore fundamentally unsympathetic to artists will make it very difficult to actually engage in substantive discussion.

3. i've stated my positions on this many times but i'll do it one more: i support unionization and industrial action. i support working class artists extracting safeguards from their employers against their immiseration by the introduction of AI technology into the work flow (i just made a post about this funnily enough). i think it is Bad for studio execs or publishers or whoever to replace artists with LLMs. However,

4. this is not a unique feature of AI or a unique evil built into the technology. this is just the nature of any technological advance under capitalism, that it will be used to increase productivity, which will push people out of work and use the increased competition for jobs to leverage that precarity into lower wages and worse conditions. the solution to this is not to oppose all advances in technology forever--the solution is to change the economic system under which technologies are leveraged for profit instead of general wellbeing.

5. this all said anyone involved in a class action lawsuit over AI is an enemy of art and everything i value in the world, because these lawsuits are all founded in ridiculous copyright claims that, if legitimated in court, would be cataclysmic for all transformative art--a victory for any of these spurious boondoggles would set a precedent that the bar for '''infringement''' is met by a process that is orders of magnitude less derivative than collage, sampling, found art, cut-ups, and even simple homage and reference. whatever windmills they think they are going to defeat, these people are crusading for the biggest expansion of copyright regime since mickey mouse and anyone who cares at all about art and creativity flourishing should hope they fail.

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)