#seriously y'all

[honey-intherock]

So y'all think they were laughing at us

Like

Y'all think they saw how we were losing our collective shit over Arms and they were just sitting back and giggling about what was coming next

Because literally the second he started undressing my brain started making a noise like when you put a couple of shoes in a washing machine

[forsooth-verily]

"No matter what reality we're in, I could never hurt you"

[heretherebedork]

When Strongberry has to release a letter telling people that, no seriously, the actors aren't really dating and stop harassing one of them for having a girlfriend in real life... y'all, this is why I absolutely do not engage in most fan and actor related content. It's terrifying out there.

Also why I'm not a big fan of fanservice, honestly. As this letter proves, there are people out there that see fanservice and decide it's not just real but more real than reality and I see it all over and this is just... man, I do not get it and I don't want to get it.

I see posts recommended to me trying to 'explain' why Ohm and Nanon aren't acting together as them hiding their relationship or the huge amounts of people declaring that 'these two actors are dating for real' and just... again and again.

Actors are real people and everything you see of them in the public's eye is, to one extent or another, acting. Their private lives are just that. Private. And they deserve that.

The fact that Strongberry has to release a statement about this for something on an actor's personal instagram is just... painful. @absolutebl Why we both fall where we fall on fanservice exemplified.

[talesfrommedinastation]

Just read the ‘making of’ behind the scenes regarding the second season of House of the Dragon.

Taken from r/houseofthedragon

In between this, Eric Kripke’s gross behavior in regards to assault on The Boys, and, well, the behavior of the staff running the last season of The Bad Batch….

…I’m convinced it’s a combination of glue huffing, hubris, nepotism, and low bars that get people hired to write shows these days. I’m not even talking about The Witcher, which violated the Geneva convention with how much the writing gave fans physical pain.

Christ, during my dissertation process, I got annihilated by my committee over each word choice. I had to get rid of whole chapters*. I had to write memo after memo about chunks of word selections.

It was hard and brutal.

Still, I ended up with a PhD, and my work ended up being published in different journals when all was said and done. It was solid.

Why don’t mainstream writers deal with this?! FUCK!

*= I ended up taking one, polished it up, and sent it to a publisher. It’s now a chapter in a major textbook so there’s fucking that.

[what-eats-owls]

I had some thoughts about paying to feed your face into a generator built on unpaid work used without consent. Transcript and links under the cut.

So let’s talk about AI art, and how incredibly unsafe y’all are being with it.

First, most of these apps, including the avatar makers, are developed using a generator called Stable Diffusion that was trained on LAION 5B, a database containing 5 billion pictures scraped off the internet, including illustrations from deviantart and pinterest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion#Training_data

It also contains thousands of images of patients scraped from private medical records. And the database creators have refused to remove them or take any responsibility. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/artist-finds-private-medical-record-photos-in-popular-ai-training-data-set/ 

Many artists have spoken up about how unethical it is to use their work without their consent to make an art generator that is now being used for paid products. These generators wouldn’t exist without the work of thousands of artists around the world, but they never gave permission for their images to be used this way, they can’t opt out, and they are not getting paid even for apps that charge *you* to use them.

Maybe that’s enough to change your mind about the “magic avatars” and “time travelling portraits.” But I get that they’re fun, and frankly, people will overlook a lot of harm when they’re having fun. Which brings us to the “find out” part of this video.

When you are giving these apps 10-20 pictures of YOUR FACE, where in the terms of service does it say they won’t sell those pictures to police surveillance companies? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

When you are giving them your face, where in the TOS does it say they’re responsible if their databases get hacked? If their data is used to impersonate or stalk you? https://thenextweb.com/news/people-using-facial-recognition-app-stalk-adult-actresses 

Where in the TOS does it say your face can’t be used by companies training AI to help genocide? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55634388 

Where in the TOS does it say your face will not be sold to a service that will splice you into porn? https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/13/1035449/ai-deepfake-app-face-swaps-women-into-porn/ 

That will create an on-demand version of you for strangers to assault? https://vocal.media/viva/why-are-men-creating-ai-girlfriends-only-to-abuse-them-and-brag-about-it-on-reddit 

And you are giving some of them your payment info? You are giving all of them 10-20 pictures of your face? 

They don’t care about the people whose work makes their generators possible. Why do you think they’re going to care about you?

[mark-gently]

don't forget to look at the moon tonight

[sparrowsarus]

I think what a lot of people miss about Ulder and Wyll is that

A) Wyll, by the standards of his society, was a grown man. He was an adult; and adult who spent a lot of his youth running a bit wild, with his father's encouragement.

and

B) Wyll, by the standards of his society, did something evil. Devils are evil. Warlocks with devil patrons are almost always evil. Without any actual evidence to the contrary, and with the knowledge that Wyll tends to be impulsive and not think things through, Ulder Ravengard (who, I note, is the leader of one of the biggest cities on the Sword Coast, was freshly elected, and was likely under greater scrutiny due to being a commoner) did the only logical thing with the knowledge that he had.

Did he do it the right way? Well, no. But people do not always make the most optimal decisions under stress. Did he dig in his heels? Yes--but the man had a concussion, had just gone through some massive trauma, and maybe wasn't in a great headspace to face yet another mistake he made!

But that doesn't make him abusive, or not love Wyll, or racist against tieflings, or whatever the fuck else people have attributed to him. He was a single father with a demanding job and a child who was wildly different from him in personality and temperament, and he tried his best to juggle those things.

(Also maybe some of y'all need to figure out why you've decided the only Black father in the game an abusive monster without any supporting evidence.)

[lauramkaye]

Attend The Tale of Space Javert

I finally got a copy of that one Boba Fett short story from 1996. ("The Last One Standing" by Daniel Keys Moran, from the Tales of the Bounty Hunters short story anthology.)

It is. A TRIP.

For some reason, given the space to make up a cool backstory for an iconic space badass, the writer decided to go with "Lawful Good Straight-Edge Virgin Ex-Cop".

Did you enjoy "sex between those not married is immoral"? Get ready for "drink and other drugs are an insult to the flesh" and "substances that are not addictive frequently lead to the misuse of substances that are." And he disapproves of the Rebellion because he thinks it's IMMORAL to rebel against the government, because it "threatened the system of social justice that permits civilization to exist."

He's freaking SPACE JAVERT, but extra puritanical and without the devastating epiphany that made Javert so compelling.

He does have a couple of moments/lines that are good; I'm especially fond of the line where he expresses disdain for Han Solo thus: "He's a brave man, yes; he's also a mercenary who's never done a decent thing in his life--never done a difficult thing that somebody wasn't paying him for."

Overall, though, it's just so deeply ODD when you compare it to established current (and even later/other Legends) canon for Boba.

[spymeister]

//Absolutely the one and only jazz portrayal. From his subtle danger, his funky grooving vibe, and his skittering gremlin hours. I love his FACE, plus the cryptid jazz energy goes hard

//you can't see my happy flailing from here, BUT KNOW THAT IT'S HAPPENING. Thank you so much! Honestly, you're one of the people that keeps me going. You let me ramble, do things with me and i'm just so happy you're in my life.

[kristsune]

my friends, if you have not listened to trice forgotten i would highkey recommend doing so. the entire show was absolutely incredible, but the finale delivered in such a beautiful and magnificent way. 

[sayyourprayers]

Byker fanfic prewf that maike whealer is only interesting when ooc. Bish he not a player. He's barely a videogame player rn. Not even a guitar player. Role player yes. But that dnd stuff. So listen. N DND the equilibrium of the universe. Y'all hate him so much omg. Poor boy. He's only 14. So much pressure to live up to these expectations of which he's measuring up to NONE atm. I stand by Mike. #MicOnStandby

[akumanoken]

Disability got approved

The documentation has the end of leave as October 19th instead of December 15th

[isit-isitreal]

I am once again reminding you that this is all AI imagery.

Wounds of the Earth

— by xis.lanyx

[chaotic-pulsar]

I sometimes get overwhelmed with how much love there is in my heart. If you're reading this, I love you, I hope you're safe, I hope you smile today, and I'm glad you're in my life. <3

[astral-the-space-traveler]

Listen y'all, I need y'all to understand that your head canon is, in fact, your head canon. That doesn't make it any less valid for you, however you must understand that it does not and cannot contradict the head canon of another. All these mothefuckers saying some dumb shit like "x ship is illegal" just because they don't like a pairing or someone else's reading of a character.

[sparklywaistcoat]

I am begging you, for the love of God, to stay as far away as you possibly can from Threads.