#unless you have your own work

[greater-than-the-sword]

This sounds like a great alternative to using generative AI for refining vibes and such.

Hey guys, you know about the Same Energy website right? has someone made a post about that? Cuz otherwise im gonna sing its praises to high heaven for its artistic references

[amygdalae]

i think what people tend to forget is that laughing at modern art also counts as having a dialogue with it. like as long as you're respectful of the museum space and whatnot. you are under no obligation to take any of it seriously. when i go to a modern art museum I do engage with every piece and read the blurb and think deeply/discuss its intention and its execution but it doesnt stop me from having a giggle at the ones i think are stupid. often the artist is equally aware that it may be stupid. sometimes that's the point also. it's fun!

[puppppppppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[theposhperyton]

All evidence suggests yes

[weatherfey]

I think a lot about the way Dorian used to see Cyrus as the perfect older brother, the perfect prince; the way Dorian felt free to go and find himself because Cyrus was capable and dependable and ready to be a leader. That isn’t the Cyrus we see! But I think it’s a lot more interesting, for both Cyrus and Dorian, to take that seriously. They’re princes, and we don’t know what that means because we haven’t seen their home, but socially a court is an elaborately constructed farce. And of course it can be easier to be competent in any familiar environment, but I also think it’s easier to know how you fit within a court environment specifically because there is an overwhelming number of factors to define yourself against and they all have expectations of you, and if they aren’t suffocating you like some kind of spider’s web then it might be perfect, like being a star in a constellation, or just the right puzzle piece. I think it’s reasonable to think that Cyrus was something like who Dorian thought he was, at home; except that Cyrus, like Dorian, wanted to choose the things he’s defining himself against. And I think it’s meaningful that he got swindled in the immediate aftermath of discarding that constellation of puzzle pieces. He was a fool (beloved), but it happened in the first blush of freedom, when he was just starting to figure out who he was or wanted to be without all that defined expectation, which is also - not coincidentally - the state Dorian was in when the spider queen sunk her fingers into his heart and twisted his alignment. The ‘hello world! uh oh’ of it all is something they had in common.

(Something they both had in common with Opal, too.)

I do think it’s interesting to look at Dorian’s sense of responsibility in light of this. I almost think Orym was a kind of north star for Dorian through parts of EXU prime, and I ship them, but it really felt like one of the things that made him able to reject the spider queen is that Orym needed him to. I think he wanted to be someone Orym could rely on, but I think Orym’s regard mattered to him because they genuinely had that protective urge in common - the pathway the spider queen used to skitter in was Dorian’s desire to protect his friends. And that drive to protect added a lot of poignancy to the in-universe reason that Dorian couldn’t return to bell’s hells after Cyrus’s debts were repaid, not just because Cyrus was still getting his legs under him but also because Opal needed help. That’s responsibility, again - he’s finishing what they started. Duty, obligation, but this time he’s chosen who and what he’s beholden to. Like maybe he’s chosen a new version of a puzzle piece that he might have thought he was throwing out entirely when he chose freedom and walked away from home.

I loved that Fearne’s vision also haunted Dorian; he misses her, and it also feels like a solid way to illustrate the spider queen’s effect on Dorian, that the danger of his own corruption has rarely been something he had the luxury to think about. His friends have always needed him. I don’t know if he had time to process his aborted fall during his time in Zephrah, or if there’s still something underneath, but I think it’s telling that this fear doesn’t look like Opal, the one literally bleeding ichor from her forehead; it predates that, it started before Opal was the one to worry about.

And I think he knows he didn’t fail them - Cyrus, Opal, Fy’ra - accidental thunder damage notwithstanding - but, with the way he felt through that suggestion spell and its aftermath, I don’t really know what to make of his abandoning Dariax. It’s a little hard to look at that and not see a drive to isolate. Determined to leave him with a good memory, but most of all, to leave. He started that one-shot interlude having just admitted to himself that he was longing to be Somewhere Else, but I almost wonder if he still would have gone back to bell’s hells if Orym hadn’t asked.

(God, the suggestion spell. The way they processed it was hurtful to me personally. Dariax immediately shifting from ‘won’t leave Opal!’ to ‘let’s go! Opal has a plan’ kind of broke my heart, and I actually think that the spell could have worked on Dorian by just making what was really happening feel reasonable - the last shred of your friend is trying to save you, and you can’t save her from anything except becoming your murderer, so you should do that. But the spell can’t make sense out of abandoning Cyrus’s body, so Dorian just goes numb with grief and rage. Mass suggestion is 24 hours. That is 24 hours of numbness, and rage, and walking, and walking, and walking, and every once in awhile Dariax’s voice, friendly and steady and sure, ‘Opal has a plan.’ And at the end of it the ability to feel returns, but he’s so tired, and he hurts, and everything hurts too much to think about, and poor Dariax probably stops in his tracks, just ‘Dorian? What was Opal’s plan?’)

And he really was so angry. It’s interesting to wonder if that’s still under the surface. He immediately turned to levity - for their sake, and his own - but that moment where the group tells him who killed Will and Derrig, and Robbie instantly wrote down Otohan’s name, didn’t just read like a player taking notes, to me, it read like Dorian putting a name in a ledger. I think it’s easy to let that go because he learns that she’s dead in the very next moment, but I think Dorian felt a weird kind of relief for that half-second, because so much of his anger at what happened to Cyrus and Opal was from being forced to acknowledge that there wasn’t anyone easy to blame, except perhaps a god; and blaming a god is like blaming the universe. What a relief, however short lived, to be faced with a problem you can solve.

[elllteo]

Creators I love you but it's time to wake up

Among rumors about our tumblr user data being sold off to Midjourney/Generative AI, recent Extremely transphobic events (that have been ongoing) coming to a head, another extremely concerning internet censorship bill being pushed in upper levels of government, and a general air of frustration over how the site belongs to and is operated by perhaps the second stupidest CEO (second only to twitters own) of our age, I'm very done with the last few vestiges of what the old internet held for artists.

And if you're reading this, you probably are too.

I know we're tired. We are all tired. It is not always viable to pack up shop and move, again and again and again.

From tumblr to twitter to anywhere else we've ever grown up posting, things no longer work. Our audiences are kneecapped by aggressive and hostile algorithms, our reach is abysmal - if we aren't shadow-banned or silenced for one (transphobic) reason or another, we're thrust into an ever growing pit of hostility where the only thing that drives clicks is fighting and contention.

We're tired. We're so fucking tired. We aren't businesses, we aren't content mills, we cannot keep this pace that modern social media has set for us, to wring every ounce of creativity out of us to profit from and leave us rotting.

The key to staying afloat here, and I cannot stress this enough, is to stay connected to your peers.

Pack up and move as units if you must. Exodus from the sites that are killing us. Push your entire friend group of artists to move from one site to the next that promises you a kinder experience.

Art drives movements, it drives change, it is all that encompasses being human. If you take that away from the shitty places, they will be left with nothing but a cesspit of inhumanity and the people who follow you will be more incentivized than ever to move with you.

Yes, this is terrifying. There are no guarantees. There never was, and never are, and never will be.

But stay connected. Stay human.

Support each other and be willing to hold hands and jump when we all - as a group - need to jump from the flames we're all trying to convince ourselves wont kill us before rescue comes.

Rescue isn't coming, rescue will be found hand in hand with each other. I'm offering you my hand, please take it. There's always a new start, there are always helping hands reaching for you. You have to look up from the doom-scroll long enough to see and take them.

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[isa-ah]

one of the best things about getting older is hitting the point where you look around and realize you arent legally bound to be nice to anyone. it doesnt matter if youve known someone all your life or if you met them last week, if you decide someone is too immature, unevolved, annoying or just plain uninteresting to you, you can simply tell them you dont want to talk anymore. you can just break it off and walk away. you dont have to stay in meaningless or frustrating friendships or relationships. you can decide you dont like someone and it doesnt have to be moral it can be any reason you could ever think of and you can simply say hey. i dont think were compatible and id like to go our own ways. and then you can clean your hands of it and never have to stress about it again. its fantastic.

[somecunttookmyurl]

all the while society conflates "being an adult" with "having a proper job" and "having money to make arbitrary Adult Purchases" disabled people who can't work - or can only work part time or can only do entry level baby jobs - will never be 'allowed' to be adults

you can say "being an adult is looking after yourself you don't have to have a job!!!" all you want but most people who say that will still assume anybody who doesn't either can't or won't 'look after themselves' actually. and every 'marker' of 'adulthood' that's observable and thus actually counts or whatever loops back around to... having a job and 'contributing' something

[kennyomegasweave]

Beam's parents taking everything but the cat from Jim is direct commentary on why gay marriage needs to be legal everywhere. It's not just a piece of paper. It's legal protection in the event of a tragedy.

But let it also be a lesson to never let another person have EVERYTHING in their name, especially if it was both yours, married or not. You gotta have your own stuff y'all. There's no reason Jim should have been left with NOTHING after years, marriage or not. Unless he just let Beam put only his name down and that's not a good move ever.

[hailthegodsong]

just had the absolute worst day of my life does anyone have any fic recs for me to absolutely lose myself in

[where-the-water-flows]

If you know how to do it you can use someone’s phone number to find their full legal name and home address. It’s just a bit of Google and knowing what websites stores this kind of info. Saw your tags asking how a phone number could verify someone’s age

So, I appreciate you dropping into my askbox to pass that info on - genuinely, it's kind of you - and I can see how my tags came across, but what I actually meant wasn't 'how can you find info on someone just with their phone number??' -- I actually do exactly that kind of thing in my day job pretty regularly, and I have to conform to a lot of real strict ethic constraints that uh, bluntly, random discord moderators...do not.

What I was actually getting at is the fact that, assuming the hypothetical server is just using a phone number as age verification (and doing data broker/google search on that), how in the hell is it controlling for someone doing what people under the arbitrary age limit du jour have been doing since we started implementing this sort of check, ie, lying like rugs and supplying info for someone in their family/social circle instead who is older than [whatever age].

like. sure. maybe you get a phone number for age verification. awesome. plug that into your data broker/google/etc of choice, run your searches, and ok, it belongs to jane smith, 38 years old, accountant who lives in ballarat, she's totally fine to join the 18+ server! come on in jane, the smut is plentiful and the doves are extremely dead. Jane smith has a kid. jane smith's kid is 15. jane smith's kid isn't allowed in the server, because it's an 18+ only server.

jane smith's kid almost certainly knows their mum's mobile number.

how the hell can Hypothetical Server Mod control for 15 year old jane smith's kid putting in jane smith's mobile number instead of their own? and also, separately, how the hell is HSM dealing with the many -- many many many -- different privacy laws around the globe?

not just in terms of handling that sort of information on people (and also requesting it in the first place!), but also just. some countries you can get so much fucking info on someone! (the US. I'm talking about the US.)

some you can't. because privacy laws, because the info isn't publicly accessible, because it's not online and is only in hard copy at the local government office, because it's collated but only in a nonenglish language, because it's geolocked-- etc.

also, like. even if the hypothetical phone number brings up someone in the US, and also your hypothetical mod team has decided, y'know, fuck privacy laws, security of information and data ethics can take a long walk off a short pier, we're keeping this server 18+ or dying trying!

data brokers aren't...actually consistently what you would call...super accurate, or like, accurate at all. if you have a unique name, yeah, sure, you're probably kinda fucked! (assuming you're in, again, somewhere the data brokers focus) but like. if you're named something a little more common - say, james smith, or maria sanchez in the US- uh. well. there sure are a lot of people you could be, and some of them - most of them! - are over 18.

and ok, sure, a phone number is (usually) only associated with one person, but. you can get a lot of false positives, false negatives, and straight up 'we don't know 🤪', the latter of which is sometimes hidden by the databrokers going 'our best guess is that this person is: An Age!! somewhere between 0 and 200 years old. 😇'

again, I use this stuff for work, I can tell you exactly how inaccurate it can get as soon as you throw something like 'not based in the US/UK' or 'uses a nickname/multiple name formats' or 'isn't super online' or 'older than 65 and not turbo wealthy' at some of these - I've had more than one confidently tell me that [my wallet name] is an accountant based in darwin who makes horror films in alice springs on the side, and also, is 26, and had 2-3 kids with her husband Lauchlan.

literally none of these facts are true. like. even vaguely.

and that can of worms doesn't even get into if someone has requested to be removed from data broker databases and/or takes online privacy Very Seriously and/or is just fundamentally ungoogleable, which is...more common than you'd think. less common than you'd like, but more common than you think, even before google started enshittifying itself out of existence.

which is why when you're trying to do things like prove your identity to uhhh goverments, banks, etc, they want multiple forms of ID, one of which is usually a photo ID, none of which anyone should be sending to a random on discord, or, frankly, asking for from a random on discord, both bc my god privacy and security risk but also like. handling that information can actually have legal requirements!

anyway. extremely long ramble on the failings of databrokers over, I appreciate you reaching out to help explain and it was very kind of you anon, sorry that I have. uhhhh kind of a lot of professional feelings about data privacy and basic social engineering, by which I mean saying 'no I'm totally 18 pinkie swear' in the grand tradition of teens wanting to get into age locked areas ever, your forebears lied on LJ so you could lie on discord.

[spinnysocks]

heyo spinny!! whats some of your favourite tlg ships? or just any you like in general

EHEHEHE rubbing my hands together. evilly. hehehe

well, kiburi is my pathetic wet cat blorbo and i happen to love all the crackships for him. kiburi x makuu? funny as fuck. kiburi x ushari? love them in nikki's pirate au they keep me up at night. kiburi x janja? the outlands brotp ever. my favourite character's stupid ships my beloved yknow?

in terms of other ships: reirei x goigoi obviously. baobabfruit ofc (thanks to you :] /pos). jasiri x kion because yeah. and as you could never tell (/sarc) i love poly ships so banzai x shenzi x ed, tano x nne x madoa, & kiara x tiifu x zuri are ones i really enjoy too. oh and i'll say timon x pumbaa too since they were my first tlk ship i suppose :]

[secretariatess]

.

[gay-artificer]

Okay I might not have anyone here whos able to contribute to this question but, in the past, I have used 'Hermaphrodite" as a purely scientific word, with heavy stressing that it is not to be confused with the definition of intersex or used to describe actual human beings under any circumstances. This is in part because I've never actually found a good term to replace it, as a lot of suggested terms are... unfitting or somewhat mismatched in a strictly scientific/biological sense. A lot of the suggested terms from more worldbuilding-focused individuals are used more (or strictly) for plants, or at least in 99% of contexts tend to be used for plants or describe slightly more specific things than just "Animal with both sexual systems at once." Plants as a whole have like... god, like ten different terms for various sexual setups because they can be stupidly complicated in a way that you just aren't likely to see with most animals, which tend to be more simplistic (at least slightly, lmao). There's also the slightly more niche issue that a lot of suggested alternatives address the topic from the strict goal of 'replace the word' and thus haven't yet spread to cover some of the specific forms that can apply too, although this would probably be a pretty easy fix if everyone can agree on a term, but at least as it is I still seems like everyone is split 5 different ways on which to use. In terms of fiction/casual use I've generally been defaulting to duel-sexed, which isn't an actual used term as far as I know, just because its pretty self descriptive and also wouldn't have some fringe specific scientific use- which is an issue I'd think you'd only really be bothered by if you were dipped in a lot of discussions about fringe animal biology- which is where I think a lot of suggestions from individuals more on the intersex activism side tend to fall when the terms they raise clash against niche situational biology things. Ive also used non-gonochoristic which is both clunkier and less easily picked up by less familiar individuals, but is also basically strictly 'animal' in use. Recently I've seen cosexual, which admittedly I seemed to have missed because yet again its a term where 99% of its use is isolated to plants, although it seems like there is a handful of uses cases that applied it specifically to animals (But still ultimately fall back on the other term in order to clarify the specifics). At least in terms of recent suggestions its probably the one I think would be most likely to pick up traction as a replacement, but its definitely still mired in the problematic terminology (In that basically everything I've seen use it only commits to using it alongside the other term, rather than attempt to replace it) and also still heavily plant related. Although not to the degrees of some of the popular suggestions like 'monoecious' which is a fairly common and well known word- but its specific relationship with other plant terminology makes it feel ill-fitted for the role when its not going to mixed with plant bullshit. Seriously look at this:

I've also seen bigenital suggested recently, which I frankly think is a much worse/weaker word both in terms of just, terminology and also its finer application. And then a handful of terms that just very blatantly have too much crossover with other things. Also a dozen other words that I've seen floating around over the years, but they definitely exist as mostly peoples personal suggestions/solutions and not ones with any real traction. It's a problem I've seen repeatedly brought up, but have yet to actually see any sort of formal correction take hold. And I think part of that is almost certainly a bit of a clash between nerds trying to maintain the specific definitions of things in an area where theres already a lot of confusing overlap, Activists who rightfully want get things changed but aren't clued in as hard to more niche scientific terminology concerns like "This is specifically for plants who have a specific type of reproduction system organization with their flowers, and thus doesn't quiet work for something that doesn't have multiple sets of genitals in different arrangements as most animals do" and well meaning scientists who want to avoid the word and try using alternatives but ultimately fall back on the one people know and that they know scientifically describes the thing they want to describe even if it also carries a historically negative connotation with it. Which is where I'm realizing I've kinda been sitting, because things really haven't shifted once you sit down and read the stuff that gets put out, and unlike some... other words its specific use case is a bit less easily swapped out with synonyms. So you just fall back in on the less ideal but accepted within the bubble youre working in term. So I guess the question is, has anyone here actually seen something make some ground past just sort of 'this would be a nice replacement'? I'd frankly love if I've just somehow missed a big shift in language in the scientific community, but so often I just see people claim that one term is the new standard when its like... standard in that its used heavily in botany, and there generally is a split between botany and zoology in terms of terminology that people would want to maintain. (God don't let anyone tell you 'male and female' are the only options or bring up that stupid 'its 1st grade biology' bullshit. The world is so stupidly complicated and this would not be an issue if it was so simple but unfortunately we need terminology for all the weird shit exclusively found in three species of cactus) Anyway, I typed this whole thing up kinda just to see if anyone else had yet more terms they've seen around or even used actually properly in a scientific paper, and its a whole mess thats been bothering me with specbio for years and at the end of typing this I'm honestly just hoping more that cosexed/cosexual catches on. I think it forms a nice trifecta with perisexed/intersexed/cosexed. And hey, maybe it has caught on more in the sex and gender side of things (let me know if so, if you happen to be more familiar with that) cause I certainly am more clued in to the non-human biology stuff which is where you get weird things one single species of rose has decided to do we now have to name. On a lighter note. God I hate plants. They give me headaches.

[iniziare]

Consider Yelan's facial expression to be my own in reaction to opinions shared on both X and Tumblr, and I guess I'm in the minority of the 'loud ones', but I'm pretty excited for Natlan since that trailer, actually. The previous teasers left me a little 'eh', but this definitely got my hopes back up, and I'm back in the right spirits for it (and ready to catch some Pokémon.)

Now I wouldn't be me if I didn't touch on the salt that I've seen scattered across the dash, so here I go. Listen, I read people's objections and I see what you're all aiming at, but in that light want to note that it's often incredibly easy to point fingers (arguably too much so) at others while being, quite honestly, hopefully rather aware that many of our own countries, cultures, and its populations across the board (and no, I'm not excluding anyone here) would likely be just as easily guilty as MHY is with these things. And no, I'm not blindly defending them, but I also won't point fingers at only one without pointing them everywhere else as well, including those you might think would 'never do such things', because I'm absolutely certain that they would. /continues on in the tags.