#tool discourse

[foxbirdy]

Monty I love you so so dearly and you are a brilliant shining light in my life ❤️❤️❤️ and you are also so delusional and wrong I fear there is no help for you in this 💔💔💔 the pick mattock and pulaski are brothers in arms....why are you pitting two bad bitches against each other.....

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

but also like. guys you don’t need to leave the minecraft youtube community bc one person is bad to clarify. like. shelby is a minecraft youtuber. a lot of her friends are minecraft youtubers. those friends are supportive and as far as we know all believe her. the vast majority of minecraft youtubers are like. fine. this shit is something that Happens because Abusers are Manipulative, going to another hobby will Not shield you from anything and you’re not immoral for liking something bad people also liked. which is. one of the biggest video games ever. like in this situation no one was knowingly harbouring an abuser and it seems everyone was supportive. this is just a case of some people being shit, not anything to do with mcyt. hell, the guy hasn’t been on minecraft in like a year lmao.

i fully understand why the content might be uncomfortable to you guys now but like, please don’t self flagellate and cut yourself off from an entire genre of media because of one guy again. i saw that happen after the dream stuff and a lot of people ended up losing important things because they made rash decisions and felt like they Had to leave. but please. take one deep fucking breath. this has happened before. this has happened so much before, and in ways far worse than this. because abusers, unfortunately, exist. you should not feel guilty for being manipulated by a manipulative abuser, don’t blame yourself. do what you have to, but please, please keep in mind that the majority of minecraft youtube is fine. it is fine to continue engaging with it. it’s fine to be manipulated by an abuser and it’s not your fault. please don’t make rash decisions and end up losing things you care deeply about and being unable to get them back. distance yourself all you want, but please be careful to not do so out of emotional self harm from the guilt. that’s something this fandom encourages far too much- even outside of this- and it’s unhealthy and anyone expecting it of you is cruel.

[violet-moonstone]

waiting for the day that people in a certain fandom learn that you can express a dislike for a ship without insulting people who ship it.

insinuating that someone is mentally unstable for shipping something you don't like trivializes mental illness, and it's ableist as hell to use that as an insult (funny how people's so-called progressiveness goes out the window in fandom discourse)

anyway I'm talking about some specific posts i just saw but honestly this applies to fandoms in general

the people playing pretend with fictional characters can't hurt you, nor are they trying to. but you going out of your way to make sure that everyone knows you're good person because you play pretend in the correct, good, wholesome way makes being in fandom spaces fucking exhausting

more ranting under the cut

The ship in question isn't even one of those "illegal" ones; it's an age gap between an adult and another adult. Would this gap make me wary IRL? Yeah...but these are not real people. What's more, there are real couples with significant age gaps and you cannot convince me that all of them are inherently toxic.

The fact that the ship is enemies to lovers also made them upset (because of implications of abuse) but people are unfortunately not good at separating what people like to explore in fan works from what people think is healthy in the real world.

I'm always annoyed when I'm just trying to look for my ships in peace and come across those kinds of posts -- not because it annoys me that there are people who don't like it, but because the way they do it is so irritating. There's no real conversation or critique going on. It's just "eww that's so yucky! Anyone who likes this is sick!"

They are absolutely not interested in discussing complex (and sure, even unhealthy) relationships between characters in an in-depth way, because it's icky. And anything icky must be avoided at all costs because if you think about the icky thing for too long that must mean that you are actually bad person.

Anyway, turn your brain off and only consume good, wholesome things. Prove to the fandom gods that you are holy and unproblematic.

[shippingmyworld]

My Veilguard hot take is that Davrin's companion quest ultimatum should have ended with the choice to save either Assan's life or the lives of Assan's siblings. Let me explain.

Davrin's narrative is constantly a pull of self vs. community. He left behind his entire clan because doing his duty to his community and preserving history didn't bring his self any fulfillment. The first time you go for a walk with him he tells you that he found fulfilment through hunting, which eventually turned to monster hunting, which led him to the Grey Wardens. However, this came with the unexpected consequence of hardening his personality. With death around every corner, he could no longer be true to his kind and caring personality (insert over-cited evidence of Davrin singing to Halla as a child). Members of his community could disappear overnight, and would do so regularly because of what the Wardens did. That's why when Assan came into the picture, he tried to keep the griffin at arms length. After Weisshaupt however, Davrin lost nearly his entire community and was only pulled out of his despair and anger when Rook reminded him that Assan needed him. Davrin let go of his community willingly again, and was able to find joy in being true to his self again and raising Assan.

The Wardens were still there, albeit broken and scattered for the time being, but Davrin stepped away and focused on Assan. That's why Isseya is the perfect foil for Davrin. She's also a Grey Warden elf that made the opposite choice in this instance, she chose to fulfill her sense of duty to her community instead of herself, and then lost herself after her Calling.

That's why the final 'ultimate' call with no good ending for Davrin should have been a choice between saving Assan or saving Assan's siblings. Imagine that Isseya is moments away from finishing her ritual to successfully blight the other griffins. Davrin sees Isseya's struggle, sees himself in her eyes and understands her plight of self vs. community, and still wants to believe and appeal to the kindness that he knows is somewhere deep down inside her. The same kindness that he's carrying himself. Isseya did what she did out of love for her community, however her love for the griffin's of her time was just as strong, which is what twisted her into the Gloom Howler. As we see in-game, Isseya's been too corrupted by the Blight, become too devoted to her crusade to 'rescue' the griffins from the Grey Wardens to give up and Davrin's final appeal to her fails. So, paralyzed and broken, Davrin turns to Rook and Rook needs to make a decision; either charge in with Assan and risk the young griffin's safety to rescue the rest of the clutch, or hold back for the ritual to start and give themselves and Assan a safe window of opportunity to strike down Isseya.

If Rook charges in, Isseya will abandon the ritual and turn her full attention on Rook and Assan. This would end with Assan giving his life to protect Rook, allowing Rook to strike the fatal blow. The other griffin's are safe, they won't go extinct, but now Davrin has to mourn the loss of the griffin he came to see as his own son. He wouldn't blame Rook of course, Assan lived as a Grey Warden should, preventing Darkspawn from taking the lives of others and fulfilling the final part of his vows, 'In death, sacrifice.' However the pain of losing Assan will never fade and should Davrin survive the final battle, Davrin will sacrifice his self fulfillment again to fully devote himself to his community in order to honor Assan's memory as a Grey Warden. The griffins remain with the Wardens, and Davrin makes sure they're always treated properly, however never gets close to another cub again.

If Rook holds back, Isseya will be too focused on her ritual to prevent getting struck by a surprise and fatal blow from Assan and Rook. Assan is safe, however his siblings are now either dead or blighted from the ritual, meaning they have to be put down. This means Davrin has failed his duty as a Grey Warden since he couldn't keep the griffins safe. Now Assan is the last griffin left in existence and once Assan dies, the griffins will be extinct once again. He wouldn't blame Rook in this scenario either because it kept Assan, his son, safe. Should Davrin survive the final battle in this scenario, he'd sacrifice his place in his community since he'd never able to forgive himself for failing to save the griffins. He'd instead devote himself to raising Assan and taking care of Arlathan Forest, like his Uncle Eldrin.

I think that personally I'd just like to see something that has more immediate and recognizable consequences then what the game gives us. The negative aspects of bringing the griffins to the Wardens vs leaving them in Arlathan just seems too vague to really feel like the choice has much of an impact. Sure, history could repeat itself and future Wardens might take advantage of the griffins, but that's big 'what if' that's just looming in the distance. And if you leave the griffins in Arlathan, you're just letting nature take its course and letting wild griffins live their lives without any sort of force to protect them, which is another big 'what if' regarding their future. Plus if some big bad blight-related threat did appear on the horizon, the codex entry from Ghilan'nain implies that griffins are already natural predators to the blight so no matter where they are they'd likely come back to fight it off, Grey Warden trained or not.

[problemnyatic]

We're never getting out of this as long as tumblr keeps trying to be Woke 4chan

[ceaselessbasher]

I should probably just avoid fandom discourse altogether but the mischaracterization of Toshiro is really starting to get to me (and this isn't a case of "my poor precious blorbo I'm the only one who understands you" because tbh I don't think he's in the top five of my dunmeshi faves)

The main issue comes from his relationships with Falin and with Laios. "He loves Falin for everything he hates Laios for." No, wrong. Does he maybe romanticize Falin a bit as a manic pixie girl with a refreshingly original personality and interests? Sure, yeah, but the thing is, he doesn't hate Laios for his monster special interest.

One thing Laios and Falin don't have in common is their way of expressing themselves. While Laios is very outspoken and talkative, Falin tends to be more quiet and reserved. Just think about the flashback to magic school when she first met Marcille. If that had been Laios, he would've also been the kid who shows up late covered in dirt from chasing grasshoppers, but he wouldn't have kept to himself like Falin did until Marcille approached her. He would've gone around the room saying, "Hi, I'm Laios, let me tell you about my project and why it's weird."

That's why Toshiro is upset/annoyed/envious around Laios ("hate" is the wrong word to describe their relationship methinks). He finds him abrasive and insistent and blind to the hints that maybe he should shut the fuck up for a second please.

[jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear]

I don't know who else noticed this, but several of the poses used in the comic are direct rips of poses from BTAS, these three being the closest I could place a screenshot to

Several others were less heavily referenced and more loosely defined, so I didn't include those but if you're like me and have already screenshotted BTAS, it's very obvious the artist used that for study material.

Now, I don't know how to feel about this. For one thing, comics have hella tight deadlines and shortcuts are taken all the time, also BTAS Scarecrow's design is not easy to draw. The mask alone is pretty confusing. But still, direct tracing with minimal changes for a comic intended to be sold rubs me the wrong way. (learning artists lightly tracing for doing screencap redraws is always chill with me, but a professional doing it??? I'm not so bothered by the other poses in the comic, but this is kinda pushing it)

I'd like to hear the fandom's thoughts on this

[khattikeri]

honestly as an adult i hate that even stories for adults are turning into therapy speak mouthpieces with moral lessons and explicit verbal making up at the end of every conflict. like congrats you reinvented the 1950s american family sitcom but somehow even more annoying

[foxbirdy]

Hi fellow seasonal worker here and frequent trail worker. I get the Pulaski thing, they’re a gorgeous tool and little is better then a good pulaski, but with the utmost politeness, how could you hate McLeods? They’re so good! Nothing packs a crush pit better.

MY BOOT!!! My boot packs crush better! A grubber packs crush better! And neither of those thangs are nightmares to pack for mule strings or lay flat in a tool cage or get rocks jammed in the prongs! Smh

[buntress]

have had a wild thing while scrolling through mogai stuff lately of random mogai blogs being marked as anti-trans via Shinigami Eyes and I am

Imagine being so annoying about your exclusion that you purposefully misinform a bunch of community members just because you dont like the way their transness presents itself. Shinigami eyes is for shit like terfs or idk, actual transphobes. Not your petty label discourse. Grow up dude :///

[thosemintcookies]

I think there's a huge disconnect these days where images are communal when it's about saying right click save to nft bros but somehow protecting the sanctity of image ownership when talking about artists online. Like follow the thread. Thinking you Own an image or idea just because ypu made it does a disservice to the idea of art-as-sharing including engaging with remixing and recontextualizing and replication.

Like yes artists deserve recognition over the products of what they make but monopolizing something intrinsically shred is so wrongheaded. IP law will not protect you when it's always the richer culture producer who can gird up with lawyers to defend that your works are derivative enough to be considered theirs not yours.

Like yes talk about injustices and bad usage as they exist but it's not a problem with ai. Same shit can be said about using Photoshop or something come on now

[vfdinthewild]

A Vigorous, Forthright Declaration

A few weeks ago, this blog turned ten (10!) years old. If you have submitted, liked, reblogged, or just plain enjoyed seeing these VFDs over the past decade, thank you for your attention and contributions to this weird little chronicle I've kept.

Your very fervent devotee,

VFDinthewild

[tim-official]

thought experiment

imagine there was a generative text bot called AlphaGPT* whose abilities were on par with ChatGPT's. instead of being trained on an enormous dataset comprising all human writings, though, AlphaGPT was trained by giving it a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and hand-crafted rules of grammar, syntax, conversational dynamics, courtesy, ethics, etc.**, all carefully tailored by a team of linguists and philosophers and math people***. no risk of plagiarism, no web scraping. of course, it knows a lot less about the world.

(***no joke, at points in the 60s and 70s, before backpropagation was a thing, this is how most researchers assumed "artificial intelligence" would come about. i doubt this would actually work. but its a thought experiment.) (**what rules of ethics? what conversational dynamics does it prefer? much like with how the company openAI works, let's assume you don't get to know that and you just have to trust them) (*after the program AlphaGo, which learned to play Go at a higher level than any human player in much the same way). reblog for sample size i guess. or dont reblog if you want a lower sample size. thats your prerogative

[annmariethrush]

Not sure how this take will hit, but I find ABO fics that include male omegas to be really gender affirming as a trans non-binary person. Particularly when traditionally rather masculine characters are omegas. there’s something really validating about exploring the interplay between an interest in being the “mothering” life giving figure to children and being loving/caring/other feminine coded roles and attributes while also managing to maintain a sense of physical masculinity and identity that is not undermined by the urge to be a caretaker.

I’ve always sort of struggled with my trans masc identity because of the way that it socially conflicts with the ability for child rearing and caretaking generally which is not an aspect of feminine socialization that I’m disenchanted with. (Obviously in a perfect world this wouldn’t be an issue, people who have a desire to care for children should be able to regardless of other aspects physical or social)

Anyway, none of this is a fully formed thought, but this is just spurred on by the fact that Dean is so gender to me. the ABO fics I’ve read where Dean is an omega have managed to capture the “I had to be a mother and a father” of his character really well and give him the space to explore and accept his biological capability to be a mother and embrace it voluntarily while not giving up his traditionally masculine and therefore “alpha coded” traits that conflict socially.

[straightforwardpolls]

if someone used AI tools while writing, from which stage would you consider the final product as "not their own work"? - at any stage at all - brainstorming/research - drafting - revising - proofreading - after completion (e.g using it to write a promotional blurb)