#the shit I do for accuracy in literature

[chrimsone]

took a quick looksies at some Cayde dialogue to make sure I was writing him right, here's some interesting bits

I'm tempted to make this lil bit part of my character canon since my newest Warlock, Oasis, kept some kind of journal when she was with the exoscience.

I swear I've mentioned this before but I didn't see anything when scanning thru my blog, but this blurb really helps. reaffirm that I wrote Rin's pre-life right. she's technically a reef born but barely acts like it

[gretashand]

I don't want to sound like a boomer or anything but as more and more AI gets implemented into every day tech I implore you to pay attention to what it's correcting and not let yourself become complacent and lazy in your relationship with writing and literacy. I don't care if you use it, if its correcting your grammar learn what its correcting so you might not need it as much next time, if you're asking Grammarly to word something politely or in a different tone pay attention to how it does that. If its summarizing something to you take the time to read the full thing as well and pay attention to any disparities or anything you might have missed. Reading and writing is so important, and I think it's great that some of this AI can give you access to resource to help you improve it, but you actually have to pay attention and learn. Functional illiteracy is already a problem, and this kind of tech is only going to make that worse if we let it.

In the US kids still in school are becoming more technologically illiterate because tech came out that made using it easier/more mindless and so they stopped being taught how to use literally anything else.

So many people struggle with media literacy because they decided English/Literature class was worthless and writing essays was stupid even though its entire purpose is to make you media literate and give you tools to think critically and then express your thoughts with accuracy.

Progress is great, its fantastic, but we need to engage with it mindfully. Consumerism became an American trademark and we lost Home Ec. classes. Why teach you to sew, or cook, or garden (all great life skills that EVERYONE needs) when they can get you to pay for it to be done for you. Nothing is allowed to be fixed because they want you to buy a whole new version. They trademarked parts and tech for machines so that the people who knew how to fix things couldn't do it without them and the access to that kind of knowledge has gotten scarcer.

Reading and writing is the foundation of communication and understanding in the modern world. They are some of the most important skills you could ever have, do not let our vampiric, productivity money focused shit show of a society take that from you. The ability to read and write revolutionized civilization. It was gatekept from the masses because it makes people powerful. It makes you harder to control. Do not let them take this from you, and absolutely do not give it up to them of your own free will.

[olderthannetfic]

Flipside of own voice and authenticity is when the person wants to be viewed as THE source and top of the experience. Doesn't really need to be explicitly labelled like that either, it's often about how it's presented.

In queer space I noticed baby gays have a problem with that, even when covering things that they're not even affected by. Like saying that top bottom doesn't exist. It's heteronormative for a gay guy to like femme men. Etc, they wanna be the source for own voice/authentic so bad, but they just keep saying bullshit. Then you have a big reaction from the queer space calling it out, and then it gets messy.

Alice Oseman is Imo an example in literature. I don't think she's labelled herself as own voice, but she has the atittude of accuracy in her own writing, and I've seen it tagged own voice in some reviews. She praises her own ass for how she wrote two gay characters, shits on everyone else, especially Yaoi for how female-oriented it is, but then gets mega butthurt she got feedback that actual gay men categorize her writing as "written for women".

Then her big mad moment when someone asked about how the gay teens would experience their sexuality and sex, because she thought it was gross as an AroAce woman... who claims to be writing for gay guys, and more accurately than any other woman at that. Gay teen boys at that. It feels like a hallmark problem with "queer own voice" and "queer authenticity" where the queer person in question has nothing to do with the queer experience they wrote about, and gets angry when that's pointed out.

Same can happen with POC authors, or honestly anyone writing a thing that they're not actually into but think they understand. But the queer thing was easier to give an example for.

--

[godnectar]

How do I becum a good writer like you

wouldn't know if 'm actually a good writer tbh,, but ig that if you wanna improve, some things u should try to do are:

♡ ── (obviously) write because you like to and want to, and definitely not because you feel obligated to 😭

i know it's impossible to always be happy doing the same thing over and over again and always be inspired, but as much as it sucks whenever author's block gets to you, don't push yourself to go and finish that work that has been sitting on your drafts for weeks because, 1) I can assure u most of the time it still probably won't convince you completly even if it's already finished, and 2) it's ofc bad for your physical and mental health >:

♡ ── have at least some basic knowledge on the topic you wanna write about and spend some bits of your time learning more about it 🫶

this certainly depends on what is it that you specialize on, in my case being yandere babes :D evidently, I wouldn't be able to write about yandere archetypes and everything that it involves if I don't know shit about what that is– and even after knowing the essentials, you will have to make some research and learn about it in a more developed level to add depth and accuracy to your writing. doing this can help you understand better the nuances and intricacies of the subject matter, which will def make your writing more engaging and compelling.

♡ ── expand your vocabulary, correct on grammar and spelling mistakes & make sure it sounds nice 👆

👏 literature 👏 is 👏 a 👏 form 👏 of 👏 art 👏 and yeah, this might probably sound cringy and obvious and whatever bs internet uses these days to describe everything,, but I learnt about it since I was seven and it never went away — art is made to express, communicate and entertain. in literature, a writing will appeal more to a reader with it's coherence and cohesion, with it's fluidity and with it's artistry. by correcting those things, you will not just make it more attractive, but will also develop a certain style depending on what tone u use while writing.

♡ ── read as much as you can and keep whatever feedback you receive (as long as it's constructive) in mind! 💬

it doesn't matter if what you read are just smutty fics on this hellsite or if you adore collecting and having entire bookshelves filled with classics. the thing is that, even if each author is different, we all want to reach an audience if we publish our works. if you find someone who writes about the same topic as you, if you pay attention on what makes them successful, or what does their audience and followers like and dislike, you will learn about small things that will make your own work more pleasant and entertaining. of fucking course, this doesn't mean nor refer that you can or should plagiarize anyone's writing.

♡ ── make drafts and take notes,,,, a big ass amount 🤡

don't be afraid or think it looks awful having +69 drafts unfinished deep in your acc,, absolutely all practice is good practice. even if you don't have your phone or laptop around, if you're on class or at your workplace or something, if you have an idea – no matter how small – write it down wherever you can and develop it as much as you want. it's impossible to improve without practice 😭

[seishun-emergency]

ACTUALLY. HOLY SHIT okay it's soooo topical that i was studying victorian literature this year because. there was a huge debate in the victorian era around the "condition of england" debate as it related to industrialization and art and its so unbelievably fucking applicable to what's happening with valkyrie during the war, with shu's view of art and perfectionism

so a big talking point during the victorian era was about industrialization and the role of the working class and how, effectively, they were being turned into materials or machines for the sake of "progress" - namely, the progress or benefit of the elite few at the cost of their humanity. this eventually extended into art . there's this guy john ruskin that wrote an entire thing called the stones of venice about the debate of perfection/imperfection in art, and how he believes that imperfection in art is necessary, because perfection in art/artisan craft (as was prized during the victorian era and in england) was achieved by "geniuses" at the cost of the humanity and individual creative spirit of "regular" people who could help them achieve this perfection in their craft by splitting the load. effectively, turning these humans into tools or machines for the "genius" creator to wield in order to achieve the perfect art.

sound familiar?

some quotes from ruskin's stones of venice:

"Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one [...] and to carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision [...] but if you ask him to think about any of those forms [...] he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong [...] he makes a mistake [...] but you have made of him a man for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.

And, observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them [...] you must unhumanize them."

ruskin also has a few paragraphs talking about the idea that art or goods can be made both genuine and perfect by having a gentleman or artisan or genius design the form of the art/goods, and "common workmen" do the actual creation process, allowing for "design and finish". ruskin challenges this, saying that it's founded on "two mistaken suppositions" that 1) one person's thoughts can be accurately executed by another person's hands and 2) that the kind of manual labour necessary to actually make the finished products is a downgrade from the creative work of design

"We are always in these days endeavoring to separate the two; we want one man to be always be thinking, and another to always be working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative. [...] As it is, we make both ungentle [...] and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers."

"It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect. [...] For since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing in all perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either make slaves of his workmen [...] or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will involve [...] imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the intellect of the age can make it."

and finally: "But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand of perfection is always a sign of misunderstanding of the ends of art."

"but leo! shu makes all the costumes and songs and stuff for valkyrie the argument you make isn't true because it's not like shu ISN'T doing the work" I MEAN. OKAY. SURE shu IS doing a lot! but also it isn't necessarily the creation of the songs or the costumes or the choregraphy that's the focus here, the final "product" to be consumed. its the PERFORMANCE.

and mika and nazuna, during the exvalk days, essentially function like tools. their goal is to be honed to perform perfectly by shu's hand, in order to present the completely perfect final product that shu wants for his art. the analysis through ruskin's view of tools and perfection still applies, i think

anyways. i dont know if akira meant This much of an anything but it's really interesting to connect shu's victorian aesthetic of valkyrie and perfectionism at all costs to actual discourses happening in victorian england around art and perfection and industrialization and dehumanization. i hope it was meant as this much of a something i think that's a really fucking smart way to incorporate victorian debates into valkyrie and shu's characterization and i had fun pulling all this apart and putting things together

[tolstayas]

in one of the babysitters club books, the girls babysit for this autistic kid who's nonverbal and really good at playing the piano. he can play any song after hearing it only once with perfect accuracy; if the record has skips in it, he'll play the skips too. this is supposed to demonstrate that he doesn't "really understand" the music he's playing or whatever.

anyway. this post is not about autism representation in the babysitters club. this post is about adaptations, especially film adaptations of "classic literature".

sometimes you see an adaptation and you can tell that it comes from a place of complete obsession, veneration, self-identification, projection, etc. with respect to the original work. and sometimes, if the adaptation-maker has the right kind of obsession, you'll catch them "playing the skips". you'll notice flaws in the adaptation that seem like glaring technical mistakes, or egregious philosophical failings. and maybe only then, you notice that those exact mistakes were also present in the original work, also undermining it all along. where the prose of the original is too purple, the visual language of the adaptation is scattered and overcomplicated, and so on.

i'm particularly obsessed with modernisations of historical works which seamlessly modernise the flaws of the original. the racism of the original would be jarring in a modern context, but the adaptation slips in completely modern racial anxieties in its place. the subtle self-involved pretentiousness of the original would stand out too starkly, but the adaptation manages to produce something which scans to modern viewers as still just on the fence between "clever" and "trying too hard to be clever".

i can't help it, i love this shit. not just because it highlights what literature is doing for people as a tool, but because it's so exposing. it's like walking in on the filmmaker sleeping with the author.

this post was inspired by orlando: my political biography, which i saw today, but also more importantly by bbc fucking sherlock

[the-lady-writes-what]

Warning: Long essay below the cut

Real talk about Harry Potter for a second. As a millennial who was into HP when I was younger, I have to honest and say that I did not see the problematic shit the J.K. Rowling put in her books. For a lot of us, growing up as a white kid in the early 2000's, we were not educated enough to see the anti-Semitism, racism, and lukewarm feminism that wasn't really feminism because Rowling made fun of Hermione for it. Watching the spiral of Rowling into TERF territory and aligning herself with people who reference Hitler in their TERF speeches and literal fascism breaks my heart. HP played a huge part in my childhood, as it did for many people. Sadly there are HP adults who continue to enable Rowling to use her platform for evil. Instead of looking back and dissecting the literature that formed our current mindset, there are people who grew up to be nasty people indirectly because HP taught them that anyone who complains about the system is doing progressive social justice wrong. Harry Potter became a wizard cop for the system that helped put Voldemort in a position of power. Hitler didn't rise to power out of the blue. He worked the current system in his favor and won support. He wasn't just some manipulative well spoken mastermind, he was using rhetoric that already existed. The criticism about the politics in the HP universe came far too late. We currently have numerous adults who are now currently voting to repress Black and queer history from schools, LGBTQ+ education, and criminalize being trans and gay in several states in the USA.

Not every adult who read HP became a fascist, not every adult who is fascist read HP. I'm certainly not saying that HP is solely the reason why anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are currently on the rise again and legislations are trying to get passed. What I am saying is that this is what happens when you don't think critically what you read. Critical analysis about what books are produced and by whom can help deter or enable the kind of ideas that Rowling associates with. Her brand of "progressiveness" is seen through the lens of an upper middle class and upper class white British woman. She largely benefits from a system that will come to be the shoulder for her to cry on when the internet "bullies" her, i.e when the internet and former fans try to hold her accountable for the inflammatory things she's said and written about trans people, women, Jews, POC, etc. I am not a saint in all of this either. My first book that I wrote which will never see the light of day again contained an Indian servant because I thought about historical "accuracy" which looking on it now was a load of shit. What I should have done in the first place was do critical research and properly acknowledge the racism and discrimination and imperialism of the British Empire. That character should not have existed and I deeply regret writing a story like that, even if my intention was not to further enable a white-washed history of the relationship between the British aristocracy and the people of India. Whether it was my intention or not, the fact that I wrote it was not okay. I am sorry for that. That book is no longer available and the remaining physical copies will stay with me. They aren't going anywhere. Moving forward, I will do better research and listen to the voices of people of color when it comes to writing characters outside of my own race.

Rowling has yet to learn that lesson towards trans people and keeps using the debunked conspiracy theory that "men dressed as women" will sexually assault someone in the ladies' room and take up female-dominated spaces. Transwomen are women. End of story. It seems that the more she is criticized for upholding anti-trans beliefs and conspiracy theories, the deeper she digs her heels in. She doesn't want to be corrected or told she's misinformed. The die hard fans of hers follow suit. Adult fans of HP have gone to assault and abuse transwomen, forgetting the soft-spoken message of the books they claim to love so much, that you should not hate people for who they are. I say soft-spoken because HP's message of anti-bigotry can hardly be called as such. It is spoken through the lens of upper class wealthy white woman's perspective of social justice and feminism. I say soft-spoken, and even limp-wristed, because its anti-bigotry message falls flat when discussing the numerous problematic and racist undertones in her writing. She wrote house elves as sentient creatures who want to be enslaved and made fun of Hermione for fighting for their freedom. She wrote the main characters to be all straight, white, and cis who later become part of the very system they fought against as children. The magical races in the Wizarding World universe are frequently looked down upon as if they're lesser than the human wizards and nothing is done for them. She did little to no research on non-European naming conventions and named the one East Asian character Cho Chang, combining a Korean and Chinese name as if the cultures are synonymous, named a black character Kingsley Shacklebolt, and allowed the Fantastic Beast franchise make Nagini (a South Asian name with cultural and religious significance) an Indonesian woman played by a South Korean actress. As if insult wasn't enough, Nagini is portrayed as a submissive Asian woman (stay classy Rowling!) who later dies at the hands of a white character to move the plot forward.

I wrote this fucking essay because Rowling is hurting so many people. Her kind of rhetoric which is a pandemic of hate towards trans people is hurting those I know. Two of my dearest friends are transwomen and I would fight tooth and nail for them. Hearing the author who wrote the books that got me interested in reading say things that accuse my friends of being men and wanting to assault women hurts them more than me and it infuriates me. She is one of the many reasons why diversity in reading is important so her mistakes don't get repeated and regurgitated. When you're a dumb white kid in the 2000's, you don't see the problematic stuff because you're not personally affected by it. Nobody can be racist against a white kid. And when authors like Rowling get praised in spite of the insensitive stereotypes and problematic shit in their books, it really is no wonder that we have a resurgence of hate crimes and rhetoric against LGBTQ+ folk and POC. The books didn't materialize out of thin air. There were so many editors who have had to go through the books and said, "Yep. That's fine" when she was writing offensive names for POC characters, anti-Semitic goblins, and having the white main characters join the system that put wizard Hitler into power.

It hurts to let something like HP go and die a slow painful death. It was a huge part of my childhood and got me into reading books. I might not be the reader I am today without those books. Because I will never be affected by the system in which people of color, trans folk, and the Jewish community are oppressed and I admit to being very privileged, I did not recognize the numerous red flags in J.K. Rowling's body of work until it was too late. For that I am sorry. The damage is done, but I'm trying to do better by listening and protecting my friends, trans or otherwise. J. K. Rowling can go fuck herself.

[letsrilakkusu-blog]

Favorite recent reads - Part 1

I was an avid reader as a child but once I got to middle school and high school, there was so much assigned reading that I no longer did it for enjoyment, and once I got to college and didn't have any English or literature classes, I pretty much stopped reading altogether. The pandemic and the passing of a close friend who loved to read motivated me to start again. So, following up my post about A Little Life, I thought I'd share some of my favorite books that I've read in the past two years.

Note: I get overwhelmed when I have too many choices available, and there is an infinite amount of books. So to narrow my options, I focus mostly on works by Asian authors, whether they are translated or originally written in English.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

An absolutely breathtaking story of a writer (Ruth) who finds the diary of 16-year-old Nao washed up on the Canadian shore as part of what she believes is the aftermath of the March 2011 tsunami. I love the way the narrative switches back and forth between Nao's diary entries and Ruth's experience reading them. Nao's story is ruthless and touches on everything from assimilation issues, school bullying, suicide, Japanese nationalism during WWII, and Zen Buddhism. I felt myself as an extension of Ruth, getting heavily invested in Nao's life and her fate. While I may not have gotten the answers I wanted from the novel's ending, it was magical and open-ended enough to leave me feeling hopeful and uplifted.

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

One of my favorite anime series is Bungou Stray Dogs, which follows a group of individuals gifted with special powers who solve mysteries and protect Yokohama from dangerous organizations, but the characters are all named after real Japanese authors or poets and derive their powers from their respective works. My favorite character is Dazai, based on the real Osamu Dazai, and whose power "No Longer Human" neutralizes all other powers, so naturally when I started my reading journey I knew I wanted to check out this classic.

Shit is dark. It follows one man, Oba, who feels that he is disqualified as a human being because he is so different from others, which results in a fear and anxiety that plague him and his relationships as he heads toward a downward spiral of drinking, drug use, and mental instability. It's fiction but pulls heavily from events from Dazai's actual life. It is unflinching in its depiction of what were most likely his true feelings of alienation in this world that he felt he had no place in, and he took his life shortly after it was published. I felt incredibly uneasy while reading but couldn't stop.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung, a woman, a wife, a mother, starts experiencing a strange phenomenon in which she impersonates other women in her life with eerie accuracy, with no memory of doing so. Her concerned husband decides to have her get psychiatric help, and the novel gives a straightforward history of her life up until that point.

Mostly, this book made me mad. As a woman, reading about the things Jiyoung experienced because she is a woman - a stalker who insisted that she must have been interested in him because she smiled at him in class one time, discrimination during job-hunting, the pressure to have stop working and have a child - was truly upsetting and I'm thankful that I haven't experienced such things to the same extent. Still, as wife anticipating having a child in the future, I really felt Jiyoung's question to her husband: "You said don’t just think about what I’ll be giving up. I’m putting my youth, health, job, colleagues, social networks, career plans, and future on the line. No wonder all I can think about are the things I’m giving up. But what about you? What do you lose by gaining a child?"

Part 2 to follow!

[prairieprayer]

I’m not defending the use of AI in creative writing (it kinda sucks) but I will say this seems a bit like a misunderstanding of what a natural language model is and does. It’s not the same thing as a visual art creator that scraps art and just mushes it together in different ways. Where you can get AI art that looks just like a copy of an actual artists art, because it’s really just variations of art clipped together, natural language text generators do not work that way.

A natural language model does have to be fed large swaths of data, but a natural language model like chatGTP does not simply cut and paste things together. It is learning how to predict the most likely and most correct response to your input; so, if you put “Good morning” it knows the most likely to be correct reply is going to be something like “Good morning! How are you today? I am a natural language model and I am here to assist you. Let me know if you have any questions!”

If you ask it instead to generate a paragraph of text to what comes next in a story- it’ll do it, but you’re asking it to “be creative” and what it comes up with is not going to be other people’s fanfiction cut and pasted. It’s going to be what it thinks it’s most likely (most “natural”) to be the correct next turn of events- it is working out what the pattern is, what has been the most likely thing to happen in that scenario in the last. For example if you said “my friend opened a box and screamed when she saw what was in it! What comes next in this story?” It might say “She saw something that scared her inside of the box.”

… also never take what a natural language model says for full truth. They don’t know everything and will “deceive” you by filling in gaps- basically making shit up if they don’t know it, and being confident about it. Bing is hooking a modified chatGTP up to their search engine, so it’s accuracy will be improved, but it’s still just a more articulate Siri from your first IPhone. This is why it says text generated responses for homework are obvious :p the bot is a liar but doesn’t know it’s lying

That said.. even if it isn’t cut and pasted from stolen written work and is just a glorified text predictor, it’s lazy as shit and completely kills creativity to use text generation for fanfiction. The bot does not know the context of your story, it does not know the context of the IP it’s coming from, and it is going to be shit as spacial awareness and story consistency. By all means is it a great soundboard for bouncing ideas off of when you need ideas but no one is awake, but chatGTP is a dumb robot with severe creative restrains (content filters) who, half the time, sounds like a lobotomized 1990s PSA.

Unless you are using it as an accessibility tool for helping you be creative, don’t be lazy… natural language bots are useful tools, not end-all-be-all generators for making quick “give me likes!!” content that shits on your fellow creatives. Using chatGTP or any NLP bot like characterAI as stand ins for your own work is so passionless……

Tl;dr: you have nothing to fear from a natural language processing chatbot (can’t fully speak for NovelAI or TavernAI) when it comes to fanfic or literature theft, because even if they were scraping fanfiction, they are learning how to speak like/pretend to be a human, NOT copying your art and tweaking it slightly. They are a different AI than visual AIs, but both use a neural network.

kind of wanna reinforce this here. because i’ve seen ai writing become so popular on tik tok.

ai writing is not okay.

it’s literally theft. just like how ai art steals, ai writing steals. it’s using authors’ very real work to generate whatever you type in. and this also needs to be said as well.

writing is a form of art. fanfiction is a form of literature.

seeing this all over my fyp is REALLY discouraging. fanfic itself is already a labor of love and we love it when you interact. but please do not use ai writing for your fanfic needs when this writing literally steals from fanfic authors.

genuinely don’t know if this post will go around because my interactions outside of hcs are shit, but i hope it does.

[theorizer-sleepyhead]

I write a post abou college being full of shit and IMMEDIATELY my English literature teacher, a woman with a master’s degree AND a doctorate, gives an entire class about how the black queen from Bridgerton is totally historically accurate and “Shonda Rhimes absolutely knew what she was doing”. I was so shocked I couldn’t even open my mouth to correct her (and because I knew the rest of the class was gonna glare at me and call me a racist). It’s! Not! Racist! To! Tell! The! Truth! Bridgerton is a silly romance tv show with no history accuracy!!!! Don’t be a fucking idiot!!!

[saltysalmonkid]

Thinking abt the time i saw jim adressed as gentlethem in a fanfiction completely unironically. Anyway personally i think jim should be allowed to round all those bitches up and shoot them in the back of the head point blank as reparations

[theywithnoname]

for me personally, i identify with the eye. i’m nosy as shit, but also hate when people are nosy to me. i want to know everyone’s secrets, but want no one to know mine. i want people to be open with me, but have a hard time being open with others.

i also weirdly have premonition-ish deja vu. i’ll get deja vu about a situation that has never happened and then in the future it will happen exactly as i remembered it. i also can predict what people, even strangers, are going to say and how they’ll act with accuracy.

i’m also an academic. i’m an art historian and work as a collection processor in the archive of a research library. i do deep dives on random subjects at 3 am. i analyze media and literature to understand it’s exact meanings and intentions.

i think being an avatar of the eye would be comforting to me. also a little hypocritical of me, as i don’t like people digging into me (especially psychologically) to get information from me.

sometimes I like to think about the differences between the avatars that chose their fears willingly and the ones who were forced into it. an interesting question to ask yourself is 'is there anything that could make me choose to be an avatar?'

for most people the answer is probably yes. everyone's scared of something enough to do practically anything to escape it. and sometimes fears can seem real damn alluring.

I make a lot of jokes about how I'd become an avatar of the corruption, the buried, the spiral etc., and that is partly because goddamn that worm lady (/pos) but it's also because if faced with that option I can't one hundred percent guarantee I'd say no.

I think the only ones that couldn't make me hesitate before saying no are the vast and the lonely. this is probably because I have issues with self-isolation, and the idea of a frigid, empty void calls to my nihilistic side a little too much for comfort.

anything else, even the 'grosser' ones have their unique appeal. there's a sense of belonging there that nobody can ever take away from you. you don't have to be scared of anything anymore. (unless you meet gertrude, in that case rip.)

I haven't really talked to anyone else about it irl (there are no tma fans around me, it's very sad) but I do notice in the fandom that most people have a specific fear that they're fond of. some of them are less common than others (it's not often you see someone who goes all in for the flesh), but they're all there.

I mean, you can probably guess that mine's the corruption, for the same reason the lonely isn't my favorite. (as a concept and narratively it's cool as hell, but speaking in terms of real life, no thank you.) a few of my other favorites are the spiral and the stranger but that's mostly because the vibes are immaculate and I'm a sucker for some classic creepy shit.

I'd be really curious to know what people's reasons are for preferring their respective fears.

[antiloreolympus]

8 Anti LO Asks

1. I am, personally, of the opinion that you can rewrite the myths as much as you want (as long as you keep the characterization of these gods consistent, acknowledge that these are people's religious figures, and are respectful of the original myth/god's characterization). I personally am writing and entire story where 0 to none of the original backstory for the children of Kronos are used. In fact, most of all the god's backstories are changed. The problem comes about when you're a mythology expert, when your fans claim you're version is the true version, when you demonize gods and cause pagans to get harassed, when your fans change the wikipedia page for different real life religious figures to match your story, etc.

Greek Mythology is a playground for writers, since there really is no limit to what you can do with it. But you have to remember that these gods existed before you, and will exist when you leave.

2. I mean, Harry Potter is a badly written mess from a transphobic white lady and she still has fans claiming its the peak of fantasy and redefined literature over actual good series like Lord of the Rings or the Discworld books. LO fans are basically the same in their blind devotion, which is funny bc can't you guys can just like something normally? They don't need to claim it reinvented the wheel to be enjoyed. We all like trash from time to time, no shame in that, in my opinion.

3. @ the redesigning video: if LO fans cant tell who anyone is when someone tweaks even the tiniest thing from RS' designs, then she failed as a character designer. A good character design should be able to fit in multiple styles and still make sense even if they're in different outfits or not exact 1 to 1 in accuracy from the source material. That's such an unintentional burn on LO fans to admit they can't tell anyone apart in their own comic unless its heavily spelled out.

4. I can't not imagine LO Thanatos going home to his cave with Hypnos and just shit talking Hades while Hypnos just nods and cringes. "He's dating a 19 year old Hypnos!!!! A 19 year old!!!" "Fuckin, ew. What." "THANK YOU!" Sorry it's just so funny, and the only thing that gets me through reading LO.

5. On the an ask about Daphne's ears not being pointy in some panels, my theory is that a LO editor couldn't take RS' Germanic elves style and corrected it for once! RS does such a bad job at differentiating characters that she gave nymphs pointy ears - which was never a thing for nymphs in Greek folklore! - so we can tell who is who.

6. i think my big problem with lo is that i would not hate it NEARLY as much if it was just... an original story. with original characters. and maybe, at most, being INSPIRED by greek mythos. but because its meant to be seen as a ~faithful retelling~, i can't help but get super upset. these aren't the gods i worship, these are ocs with the names of the gods pasted onto them. (staying anonymous so i don't get harassed <//3)

7. God the mixed vibes of LO give me a headache! Are we supposed to see the story as one of corporate greed, indifference and death, or as a sweet romance where the characters go through bad times? Rachel please make up your mind before mine explodes.

8. it definitely was less refined and could often get a bit messy at times, but the early LO art at least had some charm and seemed to have thought out choices put in it, but now it's very flat and and even generic looking, even the colors arent aiding in making it look unique. where the early style used interesting color choices and dynamic long panels to tell the story, its now replaced by flat, static images that look like rushed first attempts over something done by 5+ people. its sad to see.

[i-did]

hi mlm here. so i want to write andreil smut but im a virgin so i have no idea what exactly sex is like. but i do not want to write it for the.... straight women gaze. what are some things that are accurate to write about. this is prolly super nsfw but i dont know who to ask.

Okay so this response took me literally months, and I'm sorry about that. I honestly was so excited when I got this question. I don't know why I put off responding?? But here I go: 

CW for discussion of NSFW, STD’s, and a lil homophobia

I bet a lot of people who write smut are virgins tbh, that's not to insult anyone or anything, but like writing is a non physical way to explore sex and fantasies by yourself, so you’re definitely not alone lol.

So you're MLM and want to write smut, (and others who want to get my opinions on writing non-fetishistic smut).

Porn is porn and can have unrealistic circumstances to fulfill said fantasy, such as anything from people messing around in locker rooms to tentacles.

To get a general sense of what is common in MLM sexuality, (rather than the typical feminine gaze that is seen in smut) looking at gay porn and gay porn categories is good insight. 

Bear culture, muscle culture, leather culture, etc. 

These are obviously still porn and unrealistic, however being attracted to sweat, jockstraps, and muscles is very common outside of porn. 

Bear culture is a body-positive movement that started because of the gay community's fat-phobia, age-phobia, and overall shittyness about body hair. 

Leather culture is also really big, it started because of the belief that gay men couldn’t be dominant or “masculine”, even in bed. So in America, leather culture was a way a lot of MLM embraced themselves. 

Going to pride, you will see many men wearing those leather harnesses, it doesn't indicate a preference of topping or bottoming necessarily, they're just something mlm wear and has grown quite popular in the culture, I've known some men to say it feels like a security blanket for them. 

And I think it’s very important to understand these cultures or at least be aware of them on a base level if you’re going to write gay porn. 

Also looking at erotic MLM art made by men, there is Tom of Finland, who was very historically significant, and is the most famous erotic gay artist. There is gay literature, one that openly talks about sex quite frankly is the book “We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan” which is a series of diary excerpts from a real gay trans man where you follow his life up until he died during the aids epidemic. He talks about sex with partners and discovering himself as well as what being a gay man means to him. He has a real love for sex in a way that is very unashamed and interesting to read about. We know that he wrote the latter half of his diaries with the plan of compiling them and publishing them but he passed away and people in his life carried out this wish for him. He is considered a significant part of gay and transgender history because of this, and his diaries are in LGBT museums. 

Reading gay poetry, looking at gay art, erotic, romantic, grungy, whatever, and you will find and see how they portray things differently than when it’s not portrayed by gay men usually. I mean there is a clear difference between yaoi and bara and that's the audience and authors. Some yaoi are made by MLM, (well technically their called gei comi, or gay comics in Japanese)

“Also known as ‘gei comi’ or ‘men's love,’ bara comics are by men, for men. There is a yaoi equivalent to this, and it is called ‘gachi muchi’-- it is written by women, for women.” – myanimelist.net (lol)

 but more than 90% aren't. I haven't ever heard of a non-MLM bara artist, but I'm sure there's at least one. 

Of course, I've seen things depicting MLM just together pretty realistically that didn't feel like it was written by someone who definitely wasn't MLM, but these scenes tend to be more writing in the general sense of art in the general sense rather than porn, which has a huge gap in characteristics between stuff usually written by MLM vs when it's written by women. (sorry about the binary language here)

I know some people don't like any realism in their porn, but I personally really like small details such as prep being mentioned, foreplay, even acknowledgment of the existence of condoms even if they choose to go without.

Especially as an MLM who lives in America currently, the ever-present acknowledgment and stigmatism of AIDS is around us. We think about it, even when we don't want to. An entire generation of MLM, trans people, and a lot of POC were wiped out. Not necessarily a PWP detail, but including discussion of prep, PrEP (the anti HIV medication) and/or getting tested, even for diseases besides HIV, is a small detail that I think is nice. MLM often have to have a moment when opening up a conversation about sex where HIV is mentioned, our dating apps and hook up apps have sections where you put positive, negative, non-transmissible/undetectable, or prefer not to say. The books take place in 2006 so PrEP didn't exist yet, but also the aids pandemic was happening when they were being born and as young kids, so it wasn't that long ago in society's mind. It's still illegal for many trans people and MLM to donate blood despite that the blood is screened for diseases after donation. 

Also, some realism I like is when a character isn't getting their ass ate first in the morning. Like, for me that's a huge turn-off because I think “holy fuck hygiene.” specifically with anal play I just really think even casually mentioning “washing up” or basic prep, or if you want more accuracy/details mention time between last meals or “x only ate a salad, so he would be fine”. It's like a joke in the gay community to eat chili fries or some shit on a date to indicate that either there will be no anal, or if there is you’re not going to be the one to do it, because you just fuckin ate those fries to say so. 

A cock just going in without prep and no condom is going to A) hurt very bad the body does not do that naturally and can cause injury B) get shit dick.

An also not sexy detail that is common for sex is just laying down a towel so you don’t have to wash sheets. Lube on hands? Wipe off on the towel that you’re on rn. Laying down a towel is pretty normal especially for anal. But this is if you’re going for a much more playing for accuracy sex scene. 

Honestly just writing fingering and prep and stuff like that in my opinion goes a long way and also gives the audience more to read. 

Also, sex is way more than peen in hole. Get creative, frottage, mutual masturbation, docking? Idk like thigh fucking, fucking buttcheeks but not hole, handies, blowies, anal oral, Neil doesn’t have to be the only one who gets his ass ate and things don’t have to follow formulas, in fact, they’re better when they don’t. 

Sex comes in many forms, and like I’ve definitely been with someone and he took off his shirt and I was like what, because he was skinny and clean-shaven and I didn’t expect him to have nearly as much chest hair as he did. I bet honestly Neil has a massive bush, like fuckin, massive. 

Andrew and Neil don’t have to like everything the same amount, Neil could be like “I wanna lick your armpit” and gets really off on it, Andrew is neutral but likes that Neil likes it and agrees even if it does nothing for him physically. Honestly, Neil having a sweat kink imo is pretty fitting lol. 

Try not to categorize the characters into “the bottom” and “the top”, or “the man” and “the woman”

This is something I see a lot and pay attention to how “the bottom” tends to adopt traits that are seen in straight porn that are over-exaggerated. I’m not saying it's inherently wrong to write someone as slim, but we know Neil isn't delicate, but I personally wouldn't categorize him as slim. He's a college-level athlete and is definitely muscular and defined, he has some bulk at least, he isn’t model lean for sure imo. You also often see PWP where the bottom makes a bunch of noise and the top makes none, or the top grunts and the bottom mewls, these are things I personally feel gives the bottom the role of a woman in porn. I don’t think Andreil have rough sex necessarily, but I do think when Neil does make noise, it would be because it was practically punched out of him by the feeling, and would sound more like a gasp than a kitten or whatever. There's nothing wrong with writing them both grunting, both of their voices being lower. Someone bottoming doesn’t suddenly magically not have secondary sex characteristics and stubble and body hair or a deep voice or however, they’re like everywhere else. 

When I read an over-emphasis on Neil’s slim waist and swaying hips and ass I’m like,,, okay someone please mention Andrew looking at Neil’s dick or bulge or shoulders. As an MLM, what do you find hot about men? I like stomachs and arms and shoulders, jawlines, collarbones, asses yes but like in a different way than how I like women’s asses (I’m bi lol) they are smaller and I like them muscled and squared almost. I look at veins on hands and noses and shoulders and backs, I look at a lot and I honestly don't have a type. But yeah so think about what you like, why you like it, what you might want. Or look at what others like, and why and how they want and like it.

what would Neil like, how would he feel about it? And Andrew. I kinda feel like Andrew is low-key masc 4 masc but that's just me lmaoo. Anyways, good luck writing. 

[animejanaihontounoeigasa]

Sukiyaki Western Django - Miike

For this blog post I will be discussing Sukiyaki Western Django by Miike. Well, as one of my friends put it, this movie was certainly one of the movies of all time. One of the characters in this movie said it best, “Shit just happens”. A lot of this movie felt like “shit just happens” the movie lol.

The movie was so over the top and silly. It felt like I was watching someone play one of the Yakuza (龍が如く) games because of how ridiculous the fight scenes were. I remember when Yoshitsune was trying to retrieve the machine gun from Kiyomori, he literally was sniping him with a revolver. Considering the accuracy of a handgun, especially a revolver of that type, it’s unbelievably impressive. On top of all of that Kiyomori gets hit like 3 times and is completely fine, unlike all the other characters who die after one hit. Then there was the fight between the gunman (who from what I know has no official name) and Yoshitsune. The gunman duel wielding fires at Yoshitsune who deflects all of the bullets with his KATANA. Then the gunman parries Yoshitsune’s katana with his REVOLVER and pulls out a THIRD gun. These two scenes do a good job of showing how ridiculous the fight scenes were and why they were so much fun to watch. I was always on the edge of my seat waiting to see what thing would happen next.

I also never expected to see otaku Quentin Tarantino. I was wondering why at the beginning of the movie there was just some random white guy in the movie when everyone was Japanese until I remembered someone mentioning that Tarantino was in the movie. When Tarantino said that he liked the name Akira because he was an anime otaku I couldn’t help but laugh a little because it was so random. Since this was a fictional universe, I didn’t think they were going to make a reference to stuff in the real world, plus Tarantino being an otaku is funny to me. The scene were Tarantino yells at Ruriko for making bad Sukiyaki and tearing her dish apart was hilarious to me. It was just so bizarre to see the white and western Tarantino go off at a Japanese lady for her subpar Sukiyaki while actually having a high level of knowledge on the dish.

Another scene that made me laugh was when Kiyomori was reading literature to the Heike clan. Kiyomori comes to the conclusion that because the red roses win in Shakespeare’s Henry the 6th, they would win against the Genji clan, and he changes his name to Henry. It was just the silliest logic, but somehow worked in the context of the movie. Watching the sheriff play dead to avoid dying was also humorous since he survives so many times lol.

I felt like the movie’s greatest strength was it’s visuals. I really enjoyed seeing the fusion between the traditional samurai aesthetic with the stereotypical cowboy western setting. It felt like a weird alternate universe where Japan settled America instead of Europe. It gave me Shin Megami Tensei IV vibes, as they did a similar thing by blending a Medieval European setting with Japanese Samurai. You can really see this in the beautiful set design, backgrounds, and costumes.

Overall, I liked this movie, but I would not say that it is one of the best movies we’ve watched in this class. It was honestly hard to take this movie seriously, especially with how over the top it was. I also couldn’t help but notice how unnatural the English sounded in the movie, which was understandable considering that English was probably not the first language of the director or actors. However, odd phrasing and bad line delivery did take me out of the experience from time to time. Despite its flaws, Sukiyaki Western Django is a fun watch.

[kookyburrowing]

For the bookish ask game--2, 14, 18, and/or 27! I know I'm piling on, but I'm so curious!! 💛-@riding-with-the-wild-hunt

Oh you are not piling on ily!!

2: What are you currently reading?

I am currently rereading the Hobbit because of an au!!

14: Name a book where the movie/tv adaption actually was better than the original

Oh damn.  Uhh.  I can’t really think of any?  I think one that’s really and truly as good as the book is Disney’s Mary Poppins, which is such a gorgeously done movie I would have changed nothing (except the accuracy of the costumes).

18: Which character from a book is the most like you?

This is probably going to make many people laugh, but Owl from Winnie the Pooh.  We’re both very absent-minded but very smart.  Other than that, Aragorn.

27: If you could change one thing about mainstream literature what would you change? (i.e. more diversity, better writing, better plot etc.)

The treatment of even the most “badass” of female (for lack of a better word) characters.  I remember in one series I read, they refused to teach this girl to shoot a longbow because she wasn’t strong enough and uh…no shit, that’s what strength training is for no man is picking up a 112 pound longbow and shooting it perfectly.  Hello.  Also how almost every female protagonist (the only exceptions I can think of right now are Mary Poppins and Ellie from Elatsoe) winds up in a romantic relationship by the end of the book.  If not every male character needs romance, then neither do the women!  It’s that simple!  Ugh.  Anyway.

Thank you for the ask: these were so much fun to think about!