#speaking of killing off

[themthistles]

was s2 of sweet home sponsored by the korean army whats going on

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[homielander]

i'm sorry but hotd positing that all women are innately cautious and peaceful and compassionate while men are rash warmongers is not a feminist win! i could see the value in everyone being hesitant to go to war at the onset of the story because it intensifies the tragedy of this house tearing itself apart, but at this stage, rhaenyra has as much reason for bloodlust (if not more) as the men on the show. it's pretty heavily implied that the shock of her usurpation killed her daughter, aemond killed lucerys, and one of aegon's kingsguard snuck into her quarters with the intent to assassinate her. most importantly, she has felt entitled to the throne since she was named heir as a child. she should be incensed! rhaenyra's inaction in the season 1 finale due to a sudden aversion to violence was already stretching believability -- this is the same woman who expressed nothing beyond mild shock at vaemond's beheading, who plotted with daemon to have an innocent man killed to facilitate laenor's escape while declaring that the realm should fear her. to have rhaenyra insist on peace at this point in the story, when war is already well underway, is incredibly irrational.

this problem is not limited to rhaenyra. alicent ordered larys to kill mysaria's network of spies and any suspected traitors in the red keep, presumably without any due process, and neither of these decisions was depicted with the gravity they deserved for a character who was once horrified by any bloodshed. meanwhile, aegon had a few extra ratcatchers executed, and not only was the direction sufficiently ominous, but we also got a lengthy monologue from otto about how it would spell his doom. it is probably pointless to bring up rhaenys because she is written less like a believable human being and more like a mouthpiece for the writers to assert whatever political opinion they believe is correct in a given episode -- but she did very much kill dozens if not hundreds of smallfolk last season. she did do that and very clearly did not care. why is she an advocate against war? for both alicent and rhaenys, there is a strange dissonance where their actions are at odds with their attitudes about opposing large-scale war for the good of the realm. i'm not saying this dissonance cannot exist, but it should at least be acknowledged.

helaena raising concerns about the losses suffered by the smallfolk might have worked in isolation, but for it to accompany everything above is exhausting. can none of these women be allowed to feel for themselves?

[wasabi-gumdrop]

oh

i am. unwell.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Love how Fig canonically wears the hairnet of a woman they brutally murdered (as fishnets), the jacket of a man they brutally murdered, and the whistle (I can’t exactly remember if she took Daybreaks whistle but I swear she did) of another man they brutally murdered

[qiu-yan]

MDZS and asshole victims: thoughts on the second siege of the burial mounds scene

this post is not about morality judgments. this post is about reader sympathies only.

one rather clever rhetorical trick MDZS employs is putting all the more background "surviving victims of wei wuxian's actions" into one big angry mob at the second siege of the burial mounds, instead of letting them crop up anywhere else in the story. it's easy for a first-time reader to write off the guy who lost a leg at nightless city, or the guy whose parents died at nightless city, because both of those guys are being dicks. they're part of an angry mob baying for wei wuxian's blood--unfairly baying for wei wuxian's blood, because this time he didn't even do the thing they're saying he did. by putting these two victims into a mob of not just fellow victims but also unaffected individuals (ie. sect leader yao, who just showed up for kicks), the story can effectively equate these victims' grievances (ie. "you killed my parents") with unreasonable mob rule--even if these two things might not actually be equivalent.

the effect of this rhetorical trick, then, is that the reader can at once perceive the themes about mob mentality MXTX wishes to convey, and also effectively write off the victims' complaints. "yes, i did that to you, but i literally died already, what more do you want me to do? shall i walk on my knees repenting?" becomes easier for the reader to accept. and more importantly--wei wuxian's likability as a moral and just protagonist is not impacted.

ngl tho. it would be a bit more difficult for the reader to write off these victims' complaints if, instead of meeting said victims in an angry mob, the reader instead met these victims almost anywhere else. imagine if, instead of meeting mr. "you killed my parents" at the second siege of the burial mounds, we instead met him getting smashed at the local bar and crying about how his parents are dead. imagine if, instead of meeting mr. "you chopped off my leg" as a member of an angry mob, we instead met him begging for alms on the side of the road because his disability rendered him unable to work in a wuxia-esque setting. or imagine--if either of these background characters, overcome with survivor's guilt and trauma from nightless city, hung himself in his bedroom, and the next day his body was discovered by his 15-year-old daughter.

all of these scenarios are entirely plausible. you could easily include any of them into the story without changing the main plot at all. but suddenly shit just got a lot more depressing.

however, no such scene would ever be included in MDZS. the reason is that, as a work of fiction, MDZS's single most ardent goal is for us the readers to conclude not just that "we like wei wuxian as a character," but also that "wei wuxian is ultimately a morally righteous person." when the narrative focus shifts onto the people who were actually helped by wei wuxian's actions (mianmian and her family, lan sizhui, the few months of dignity the wen remnants were afforded) this becomes much easier for us to conclude; wei wuxian does indeed look like a hero. but the more narrative focus is given to the negative impacts of wei wuxian's actions--the more the "victims of wei wuxian" (whether actual victims or not) are given a face, instead of abstracted away by broad summaries--the more the reader might side-eye wei wuxian instead. every new victim given a name, given narrative attention that isn't just focused on making them look like an asshole, arouses the reader's sympathies in the opposite direction--and thus increases the risk that the reader might ultimately disagree with the novel's conclusion of "wei wuxian is a righteous person."

tbh, this does not seem like a risk MXTX particularly wants to take. instead, she's mastered the art of writing Asshole Victims.

which is an entirely valid writing decision, because imo basically every work of genre fiction out there does this to some extent.

[ricky-mortis]

Young man with potential…

[toobusybeingdelulu]

if you people think that steve, whose dream life consists of California beaches and surfing, wouldn’t have fallen head-over-the-hills for billy hargrove, the sun itself, if he had gotten the chance to know him beyond his anger then you are surely mistaken.

[spinef0ryou]

i think there might be something to be said about how arguably the three men who started the dance are all second sons. doomed to live in your older brother’s shadow forever so you devote yourself to him and make your own name through violence

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

THE TRAINEE Off Jumpol as Jane Episode 2

[shima-draws]

The fact that One Piece has CONTINUOUSLY done character death fakeouts to the point where when someone dies you EXPECT them to turn around and say oh actually haha I survived jk lol not dead. But it’s all just a setup. They’re doing this to me on purpose so that when someone ACTUALLY dies for realsies and STAYS dead it is going to Hurt. And I am not Ready for that,

[atthebell]

Mariana just became the 10th most followed streamer on Twitch with 9.34 million followers, just surpassing Pokimane, and I wanted to share some highlights from the article Stream Charts wrote up on him & on the Spanish-speaking Twitch community!

At the end of 2023, Streams Charts named ElMariana the fourth-most-watched Latin American streamer of 2023, having recorded 28.89M Hours Watched for the entire year. Not only is the creator highly watched, but his community is also one of the most active on Twitch. Earlier this month, we scoured Twitch chats across the platform to determine which streamers had the most active chats on the platform. ElMariana ranked within the top 5 channels by Active Chatters and was the only Spanish-speaking streamer to rank so highly by this metric.

Here is a chart from the most-watched Latin American streamers article (note: these particular stats include all platforms, not just Twitch):

You can see Mariana is in fourth place, just above Rivers and Roier at fifth and sixth respectively.

From the original article:

ElMariana is now the second Latin American Twitch streamer to rank within the top 10 most followed channels, falling behind Colombian juansguarnizo in 8th place with 11.17M Followers. Critically, the departure of pokimane and the arrival of ElMariana has tipped the scales for the biggest demographic of fans on Twitch. With ElMariana taking 10th, the top 10 most-followed Twitch channels are now majority Spanish-speaking. 

Super interesting! Below is the chart of the top ten most-followed Twitch channels, again from the same article:

6/10 of the most-followed streamers are Spanish-speaking, and two of them (ElMariana and juansguarnizo) are Latin American. The other four create content in English and from either the US or Canada.

I'll also note that Stream Charts does not include Brazil in their Latin American stats; they do separate stats for Brazil (Cellbit took 7th place if you're curious).

The article also mentioned QSMP:

This success only continued to snowball in 2023, when ElMariana was invited to the QSMP Minecraft server in March, becoming one of the original creators to join. Exposed to new creators and their audiences, the Mexican content creator continued to grow his brand and by the end of 2023, he was one of the biggest names in live-streaming throughout Latin America.

All in all I think it's incredible that Mariana has gained such a following, and that Spanish-speakers have blown up so much on Twitch. I'm hoping to see further linguistic diversity on the platform and in online content generally.

[soft5ku11]

i know this isnt what i usually post, "shut up fat kink blog" i dont fucking care sit the hell down and listen.

You're aware of the Huion New Year AIGI Tweet, right?

LEST WE FORGET, back in november last year:

If you want to buy a Wacom, Huion or Gaumon device, I'd recommend either looking into an alternative or buying secondhand/refurbished from 3rd party sellers on Ebay or something. Avoid Amazon for all the obvious reasons.

This is fucking disgusting. This is embarrassing. This is unacceptable.

most importantly,

They won't stop.

[the-bad-batch-baroness]

Crying, screaming, and throwing up over baby clones that got abandoned by their brothers 😭

[sammis-svsss-brainrot]

Many many many years after the events of SVSSS, Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu are celebrating their 10 millionth anniversary and Luo Binghe has somehow finally run out of ideas on what to give Shen Qingqiu to celebrate their union, because even the greatest of gift givers would run out of ideas after you've cultivated your way to immortality

So, begrudgingly, Luo Binghe turns to Shang Qinghua to ask for advice, after all, Shang Qinghua and his husband are always chattering away in that secret language of theirs and referencing strange things from their hometown, and perhaps if Luo Binghe has run out of things to gift his husband from this world he can gift him something from another

Shang Qinghua's eyes light up for once at the chance to help out his bro, and he tells Luo Binghe of a ballad from their hometown, one that was used by only the strongest of couples to showcase their commitmentment to one another and that performing it would be the perfect gift for Shen Qingqiu

Luo Binghe hurriedly agrees and Shang Qinghua teaches him all the words to the song and Binghe of course takes this and runs with it

Shen Qingqiu has no idea what his husband is planning for their anniversary but he knows Binghe has been very excited about showing it to him and so when he's directed to take a seat while his husband plays/sings an arrangement he crafted from Shang Qinghua's limited memory, he's very touched and enthused to hear what Binghe has in store

That is, until Luo Binghe actually starts singing

We're no strangers to love

You know the rules, and so do I

Shen Qingqiu is going to absolutely murder Shang Qinghua