#we're basically the same person at this point
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I agree with this comment here so hard, I remember getting blasted for calling readers who don't comment "leeches" on R/Fanfiction and I'm glad people are seeing that for what it is even if it's four years late
So, I'm gonna share my own little story here because discord has actively ruined communities for fanfic (and art too I'm not gonna leave y'all out cause my bestie @zoetiger-1106 is an artist who deserves way more praise than she gets!!) The reason why authors and myself see the "I'm shy" shit as an excuse is because the same people will type long ass tirades on Discord without a single thought. YOU CAN EDIT AO3 COMMENTS PEOPLE! If you make a mistake, read it back over and edit it. I've watched it happen in real-time with one of my favorite commenters on my one-shot where they left a short gushing comment and then came back and wrote more, you have no excuse much less reason to go "Man fandom keeps telling me to not critique and I might make a mistake so I will say nothing and consume like the average TV and Streaming consumer who thinks there doing something!" YOU have a lot of power with comments and even those bookmark tags hell just copy-paste what you put into those bookmark tags as a comment I DON'T CARE AT THIS POINT USE THAT LIL BOX TO VOICE SOMETHING!!!! God this is all over the place idc but I read back at those bookmarks, and saw people call my works the best and super cool and I APPRECIATE THAT but tell me! Stop taking the easy route, I been blasted for misunderstandings over comments multiple times cause people take my "tone" terribly cause it sucks being black and emotive online yay and for some reason people think !!!! Is bad? yes, I've been hit with that but I keep on trucking cause fuck whatever some weirdo thinks about exclamation points! Anyways back to discord and why I hate it now, I was in a small fandom, KFP got invited to a discord cause ONE person commented on my works and saw they talked about my fic, and at first, I was happy and people TALKED about my chapters at length in the fanfic channel. I basically was the ONLY ONE posting consistently in that channel and it was great but also I wanted that on my fic to show I improved so guess what I did? I went all in trying to one-up myself to be noticed, to have the acclaim my peers did so it would evolve outside of discord channels but it never happened. And Imma tell y'all now; it never will. Readers prefer convenience over your hard work, they are not gonna take time for you no matter how much you improve. People told me over and over while I looked for solutions for this; "We can't make commenting look like an obligation." "Add more prose, space these paragraphs better" all this just for no one to take the initiative and say something SINCERE towards a work they love on it. I've had to tell my own ex-friends now to go leave comments on works they called Masterpieces while ignoring me. Despite the fact they wanted Gen content in which I WROTE. Or met people who have very weird "I don't review" rules for themselves despite getting motivated by reviews themselves!! We're in a shitty time for creatives much less community cause we don't see each other as humans much less want to treat each others as we desire to be treated. Fanfic readers want to treat authors like showrunners and I hate it. But then your peers will tell you 'not to worry about engagement" and no I am because why is my hit count going up every day but ain't no one saying shit? Make it make sense!! I sat in that community commenting as much as I could, especially on long fics; it wasn't all perfect but I TRIED. I didn't expect shit back but hey it would have been nice but it never happened and again I learned; it never would. That's the real issue, no one wants to give no more; just take and take and take til you're sucked dry of passion worse than any corpo out right now. It's why I thankfully switched fandoms. I got ONE consistent commenter and they are better than that ENTIRE SMALL CLOSED COMMUNITY!! So, to any discord reactor for fanfic you better skip on to that message you made and copy and paste it in this box right here and never utter "I'm shy" ever again cause we see you, our friends tell us about you. You are not as anonymous as you think! 🫵🏽
A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.
My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.
My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.
This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.
Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.
I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.
So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.
#fanfiction#fanfic#god I hate talking about that ol fandom shit#i sound like a vet whose seen some shit#but im sick of other writers and readers downplaying how we feel#taylor talks
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So... twst anime—
I feel I should be much more excited than I actually am. Don't get me wrong- I am excited ( for Leona animated content ) to see how they'll handle some things- but apart from the worries you listed, I just... I know this sounds a little gatekeepy but an anime will mean more ppl will know and talk about the story and I fear that they won't go into the game/other content and thus have a limited opinion on characters/events and misunderstand them. Basically I fear that characters will be even more mischaracterized than they already ( sometimes ) are by the current fandom 😭 ( specially Leona- gunshots )
[Referencing this post!]
I feel like there's for sure been mixed reactions to the recent anime news. The general consensus is excitement, but occasionally I've also seen skepticism or worries that the anime won't be as good as the long period since the initial announcement would have had us believe. That's to be expected; we won't know the quality of the anime until we watch it ourselves.
Mmm, there's that age-old sentiment again 😅 The thought of, "More people will be exposed to Twst because of this; I'm worried they will misunderstand the story/characters." It always seems to make a comeback whenever a new major piece of Twst media is announced... It happened when the official EN localization was announced too. People were jumping to conclusions and worrying that the influx of "EN-only" folks and/or a sub-par localization would lead to newer fans not seeing the story and characters the same way as the JP side did. I'll repeat what I said back then (as I think the same logic applies), along with a few additional points/expansions, as are relevant:
As you've said, mischaracterization happens, even now. This is normal in fandom, and it doesn't necessarily make fandom a "bad" space. Variation in thought is a normal human thing in general and I don't think it should be discouraged. If everyone thought the exact same way, life would be boring and we would have a limited number of ideas circulating.
This thinking sort of presupposes that the Twst fandom is currently without issues (or has few of them) and that it is the growth of the fandom that will cause problems. From experience, I can tell you that fandoms always have their toxic pockets. Fandoms growing larger just exposes more of those pockets because, statistically speaking, with more bodies present, there's a higher chance something will come to light, be it a personal squabble, a cultural difference, actually serious allegations, etc. It's a natural part of a fandom's lifecycle.
How other people interpret the story/characters should have limited or no bearing whatsoever on your own enjoyment. It does not erase your own views on the story/characters either. If you find that your concerns about others are becoming overwhelming, I'd encourage you to take a step back and think about what in this fandom makes you happy.
I feel that the mentality I mentioned earlier stems from an "us versus them" mindset. We're viewing current Twsties as the "in" group and everyone else as the "out" group... when, really, I think it might be healthier to perceive the "out" group as potential Twsties. Like... instead of fearing them as strangers coming in to "taint" the fandom, let's try to think of them as "friends we haven't met yet". After all, these anime-first or anime-only Twsties could end up being your next buddy, someone cool you meet at an event, a Twst content creator you enjoy, etc. Try to reframe your thinking!
Lastly!! We have no idea how the anime will go. They might not make it solely the main story just because it’s a manga adaptation. The team might have weaved in vignettes/event stories or bonus content exclusive to the anime which helps flesh out the characters.
I think that about wraps up my thoughts. I hope that helps alleviate some of your concerns. Hang tight, keep an open mind, and pray that the L*ona content in the anime is good 🤡
#disney twisted wonderland#twst#twisted wonderland#disney twst#twst en#twisted wonderland anime#twst anime#twisted wonderland en#notes from the writing raven#advice
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it feels like a lot of people have given up on fully connecting ISWM/Engie Mark to the wider lore (aka WKM) since IRL Mark straight up told us he wasn't Actor.
but not only am i a stubborn son of a bitch, but yknow what Mark also said?
"Engineer Mark isn't Actor Mark, but Actor Mark just might be Engineer Mark."
so hear me out, y'all.
preamble; if you saw this in a yt comment section, no you didn't. (that was also me i didnt steal this i prommy-)
i have this entirely insane theory about iswm that Engineer Mark is actually Damien, but only sometimes.
the most obvious places i can spot him is in the abandoned ship with the candles ("captain needs their sleep" and whatnot), as Old Mark (specifically in the empty diner), and most definitely as the "Mark" we see as part of the finale, the one who realizes he was wrong.
Actor is allergic to admitting fault so I Don't Believe That's Him.
this explains the thematic focus on sleep and rest in these scenes, things told to Damien and told to US by DARK several times.
("Don't remember" anyone?)
speaking of Dark, it explains why he isn't there. we DO however see the suspiciously Darkiplier-esqe Ms. Whitacre, which it isn't controversial to say atp is CLEARLY Celine.
that is, until the universe does its final kablooey and Dark as we know him, Damien attributes and all, comes to take the warp-crystal.
and besides, think about it.
given Actor's whole goal in all this, as laid out in the Damien Project, do you REALLY think he would write a story in which all problems arise from HIS OWN NEGLIGENCE? NO!
that would make him a villain, and all he ever wants is to be portrayed as the hero, literally for eternity!
but you know what i think he would do? set up a farce for the most troublesome of his "co-stars".
you, the viewer, want genuine choices? you want to have some real control over the story? some responsibility? FINE.
everyone looks to you, but under your leadership everything goes wrong, no matter what. you don't know why, but you're actively villinized and the harder you try to go back and fix things, achieve an "ending" on your own, the more people HATE you. the more the thought that maybe there IS something wrong with you specifically will stick in your mind as a possibility.
all these options, but none of them "right", creating MORE suffering instead of fixing it just to find that ever elusive end.
damien wants control of the narrative? he wants his old friend, you, the District Attorney to be released from his eternal story and given back to him? FINE.
here's his role back in earnest, given the possibility to engage and choose instead of intrude and twist like usual.
(yes, i do think Damien/Engineer is genuinely going down his own hopeless path while we find our own. in one of the descriptions leading to the final "Hold On/Let Go" confrontation, it says "you're not the only one making choices. you're not alone, you never were".)
he is allowed to fight for the safety of others, side by side with his closest companion, just as they did when they were alive.
BUT, the twist is Damien becomes a genuine villain. in his quest to do the altruistic thing and help at all cost, he is personally responsible for the death of LITERALLY EVERYONE EVER.
this is a personal hell for someone like Damien, as seen from WKM, all he ever seemed to want was help others and guide them towards peace.
for his actions/leadership to fail so unthinkably catastrophically, seems like the exact hell a bitter Actor would want to subject his "old friend" to for meddling. :/
Actor sets the stage for a theatrical punishment game. Mayor and Attorney, together again, taking an impossibly long stay in a personally crafted hell for the horrendous crime of ever even thinking they'd be worthy of ✨️staring roles✨️.
Actor turns you two against each other, and once Damien is brough down to the depths of despair and you have finally learned that true responsibility can lead to catastrophic, painful results, we're brought back to our proper places.
you go to a proper ending, with the Engineer role now being played by Actor once and for all, and Damien once again becomes part of Darkiplier, pocketing the warp-crystal to plant on the box in Heist.
Engineer isn't Actor, it's a role he plays when it suits him and his goals, to make his enemies suffer. he's willing to be Damien's understudy, if only for this purpose.
but at the end of the journey, Actor becomes Engineer to take in the fruits of his labor. ..and maybe invite you to a Heist while he's at it.
BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST A
very long winded """theory""" that is pretty much only insane fanfiction-
#this makes perfect sense in my own head and thats all that matters to me#mark returns to tumblr to tell me personally that im wrong lmao#NO THAT WOULD BE SO FUNNY#yall i rewatched the damien film after i wrote this and when he said “aye aye cap'n” my eyes popped out of my head like in a looney tunes#took all of my strength to not add that to my points bc its so flimsy but goddammit if its not in my hcs now#ramblings#markiplier#iswm#iswm theory#head engineer mark#engineer mark#mayor damien#wkm damien#darkiplier#in space with markiplier#yes this relies on other theories like “adventure viewer is the da” but thats basically canon atp#could go on abt how the capns ordeal kinda mirrors the actors journey to do “the right thing” while also fucking everything up at every tur#obviously we're more benevolent. but im certain the actor thinks the same of himself#hes just like “you have no idea how hard it is being so handsome and misunderstood :'( this is just a TASTE of my pain!!”#then i punch him in the face 10 million times#engie mark
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Out of everything that traumatised Neville, Snape isn't one of them. If he is, that's not because Snape is abusive, it's because Neville is literally weak. That's not an insult, that's his flaw- being unnecessarily scared of everything. The other children are not afraid of Snape himself. They're more afraid of the consequences of angering Snape (house points lost, detentions, scoldings) rather than Snape as a person.
Neville's feelings are shockingly enough, not valid. Those feelings of fear, that cowardice? A flaw. Just as much as arrogance, spitefulness, being overly afraid is a flaw and in his case makes him a danger to others, as does his clumsiness and forgetfulness. Now, forgetfulness isn't something you can choose, I'd call it a weakness more than a flaw, but at the same time there are ways to manage it. But the cowardice? That's a flaw that needs to be corrected.
Neville's trauma comes from his family. His uncle is awful to him, as is his grandmother, and seeing his parents in such a state is enough to mess anyone up. He comes from a messed up family. It does not come from Snape.
People also like to say that "Oh look his boggart is Snape even though his parents were tortured!!!" but here's the thing: Neville was probably never even present.
He probably never ever even saw his parents tortured. He knows what happened, but was most likely never a witness. If he was present would he have actually lived? Of course not. So of course he's not going to have that as his worst fear. It's not going to come to mind in school. Not when he just got grilled by Snape.
Neville's been through traumatic events, that's undeniable. But Snape is not one of them. Snape isn't obliged to be nice to Neville. Snape's job when it's Neville is, by some point, just making sure Longbottom doesn't kill them all. Neville's cowardice and clumsiness aren't reasons to coddle him. If I was teaching Potions, I'd have kicked Neville out by second year- no way am I risking a whole class because one child can't follow basic instructions.
Neville's family is the real problem in Neville's story. They're supposed to look after him and care for him. If we're going to be talking about this boy's trauma, we need to discuss how he was more alarmed at the thought of his grandmother being his boggart than Snape was to the point that he didn't mention her, Lupin just mentioned her to give Neville an idea of how to sort out the boggart
And let's also talk about why Lupin decided to essentially completely humiliate a colleague that is already not respected by the children. Making his likeness look ridiculous is so petty and unprofessional. Lupin could have easily told Neville to do literally anything else that would have made the situation funny without making a mockery of Snape, but he didn't. He chose to suggest the grandmother's clothes to humiliate the real Snape- look at what happened at Christmas when Snape got that hat from his cracker, he was clearly upset by it, he clearly knew why the boys were laughing-and not only that, he prompted Neville through the entire thing. He didn't simply say "imagine Snape in your grandmother's clothes", he dragged out the entire thing to make it as ludicrous as possible (like, why the handbag? Why did he prompt Neville to also describe her handbag? Obviously to add to the ridiculousness). That's his colleague. He's leading the kids to disrespect his colleague, their teacher. When you read that scene, it's fairly obvious Snape was likely to be Neville's boggart due to him literally making a remark that embarrassed Neville seconds prior that Neville visibly reacted to (and in all honesty, it was a fair warning. Sarcastic, but fair- Neville should not be entrusted with anything dangerous and DADA involves doing things that could hurt others). If you want to talk about the boggart scene, acknowledge how Lupin had a full conversation with Neville to prompt him to imagine something to humiliate Snape with. "Oh, it's just a boggart" But it's not. Something like that is going to be spread, gossiped about, it will ruin whatever little respect the kids have for Snape. Lupin was behaving absolutely unprofessionally and honestly when I looked at it just now, it made me feel a little sick the way Lupin was talking.
And I'm not even going to discuss Trevor The Toad, I've already gone on about him multiple times before. It's probably the most misunderstood and misused scene against Snape. Like, it only takes two seconds to realise that if Snape's intention was to hurt or kill Trevor, he would have just squished Trevor when Trevor was reduced into a tadpole (was it a tadpole?). As it was, he didn't even leave Trevor as a tadpole and make Neville make the counter-potion, he administered it himself and was specifically mad that Hermione helped Neville after being told not to. Once again, Snape's not being abusive or a bully for the sake of it- he's trying to be a teacher. It's the kind of thing you hate as a child but grow up to realise that actually, the adult had a point. Even if it seemed unfair at that moment.
Anyway, people geniunely don't give a shit about Neville's trauma, and when they do, it's to use it against Snape without acknowledging that actually, it's far worse that his Boggart could have easily been his grandmother but Lupin didn't allow it (he didn't even question why he was so afraid of her). It's far worse that his uncle treated him so badly. It's far worse that the people who were supposed to raise Neville were cruel to him. And it's far worse that McGonagall, who IS supposed to care for Neville, is just as mean to him as Snape is.
The fact that people (Marauders Stans) only care about Neville's trauma to bash Snape. It's always Snape was his boggart never McGonagall risked him dying twice and humiliated him in front of everyone. Or his grandma treated him like shit and his great uncle nearly killed him several times. They literally don't care about Neville. It's Snape fans who actually care more about him (even if they don't care about him) because they don't treat him/his trauma like a tool (which is a very low bar). I feel really sorry for him. After everything he went through, his trauma is not talked about enough.
#neville longbottom#pro snape#anti marauders stans#i love neville. i do. he's a sweet boy#but he's also very flawed#and his trauma is completely misunderstood#no he isn't traumatised by snape he's traumatised by his freaking GRANDMOTHER
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Had the extremely upsetting experience of a mutual of like 6 years going off on me for occasionally making posts about supporting Harris because apparently that makes me a g n cide denier who refuses to learn and grow, with all of my views just being assumed not even from what I've told them I believe or what I've posted before, but just because I DON'T post particularly the kind of things they THINK I should be. When I pointed out how much they were just completely assuming about stuff I'd never talked to them about, I was told it doesn't matter what I do in real life or "care" about if I simply disagree with their conclusion and vote for her anyway. Like they were absolutely not sorry for the level of maliciousness they not just assumed of my character, but for some reason thought appropriate to bring directly to me before unfollowing me. No apology whatsoever for how discomforting or upsetting that might be and certainly no acknowledgment that I could disagree with them and still be a good person. I just got another even longer rant about how they fundamentally can't fuck with me because of this one thing, no matter WHAT else I do in my real life (which I pointed out that they do not know), and how I'm directly supporting fascism.
Like seriously what is it about Tumblr that makes people think they know someone based off of occasional posts? There were just such DEEP assumptions they were making of me and going off of very little or absolutely nothing. Around the time I first became mutuals with that person I used to express my personality and beliefs and talk about what was going on in my life a lot more openly, but I've significantly scaled back on doing that in many ways for many reasons. One of my major ones is privacy and the way I've had strangers outside my followers and following circles just find random things I say and dogpile me for it. I was fundamentally changed after some T Fs did that to me like 3 years ago. I also just didn't have many conversations w that person anymore (I message people in general on here like 10x less than I did circa 2018-2019, which I'm somewhat sorry about!). My point is to say I think this person felt comfortable assuming that they knew me, especially who I am in 2024 at the age of 25, much better than they actually did.
One of the specific things they accused me of was being afraid of learning and growing (because I don't perform social media activism on here like they think I should). Like AFRAID to take criticism. When again I've never received criticism from them or had to respond to any criticism on here before as pertaining to my views on... well, absolutely any of the issues they accused me of not caring about. They essentially treated it as if the only thing in the world I cared about was the US election and characterized me as the most out-of-touch liberal they could possibly imagine, because I'm not "pushing" Kamala Harris to be better (Oh?? Should I do that on here?? Does she read my blog??).
And most hypocritically what they said was that I only *sometimes* *vaguely* post pro-Harris things (I often post like 5 or fewer things in a day though?). But here's the kicker. "Because I know I'll get shit for it. And rightfully so."
Really????? Not a single person, anon or not, in my messages or in a tagged post or anything, has ever given me shit before for saying who I'm voting for. I'm actually NOT afraid of "getting shit" for that opinion, I just don't start fights with people who are anti-voting. And why should I??? I genuinely don't believe in trying to change the minds of strangers on the internet about that sort of thing. I'm just not confrontational about it; that is so not the same thing as being "afraid of getting shit." I'm not posting ENOUGH about my support for Harris, therefore I'm afraid. But therefore they can also make all these assumptions about me being their strawman for an ignorant Harris supporter.
I'm afraid of getting shit but I still post anyway? But if I weren't afraid of getting shit I'd be posting a lot more?? This is ALL based on their assumptions of what my blog *should* look like, based on what I really and truly believe. My level of posting every now and then is an accurate gauge of my feelings on complex, sensitive, global issues. Because I'm voting for the Democratic presidential candidate and I'm ok sharing pretty much just that little glimpse of myself.
I really don't think that person knows just how inappropriate and insulting that is to just say all of that to me. Like they really know what's going on in my head. Their first message began and ended with like "I'm sorry I love you I just can't take it anymore" but they clearly weren't sorry enough to try and be more respectful to me, and they didn't love me enough not to default to extremely ungenerous assumptions and attacking me based off of those instead of any actual words I've said that they take issue with.
Online radicalization is real and it's not necessarily bad because your political views can start to fall well out of the contemporary Overton window. The way you find it appropriate to treat people whose views, however common, seem to fundamentally misalign with yours... that does matter. You can't just assume the worst of everyone and then act on that in how you approach them as individuals. And then be shocked that you don't stay friends with them. You can't be confrontational with someone about an issue you've never had an honest conversation about, and then expect them to take your bad faith in them as reasonable well-meaning criticism.
I'm afraid of criticism??? I'm afraid of criticism. No I'm not. This person and I have never had an issue before where they criticized me and I got harshly defensive. It was ALL projection. The entire tone of their messages was as if all their anti-voting posts recently were somehow in communication with the occasional go-vote-for-Harris posts that I make. That's not a conversation. I don't post for your satisfaction. I don't post in "response" to my mutuals I disagree with. I just post what's on my mind, sometimes, about some things. I really again can't stress enough how baffled I am by this
#tales from diana#long post#this is not really a post about voting this is a post about online etiquette#i also remember that this person at one point when we were teenagers had a crush on me#so they might have somewhat idealized me or maybe just had respect for the good times#good conversations we had over the years etc#i still held them in regard even though some of their anti-voting posts i took serious issue w#again i really don't care to argue w ppl against voting bc really i mainly only disagree w that one conclusion#the systemic critiques that were made in those posts i don't think make them bad ppl#i sympathize w why someone might think that way#i just cannot pretend that i think nothing changes if we have dt as president again#i can't act as if im not anxious at the state of the world we're in where we're seriously at risk of that#i don't have that same level of concern about harris. i don't. i don't think theyre the same#i think they diverge in so many meaningful ways but im usually not writing detailed long thoughtful posts about it#do i have to??? for TUMBLR?? id rather not...#but i don't wish to be confronted as if these are nuances i MUST not hold in my opinion#can't stress enough they were basically calling me a g n cide denier like that's just a cool ok thing to do#i have literally never made a post about ppl not voting for harris bc of the war in gaza#i specifically haven't not because im 'afraid' but bc i don't believe in comparing those 2 things#there was gonna be a presidential election this year anyway and there does not have to be this war#if u think dems aren't doing well enough on the war for u to vote for them. i can't argue w u#but i was always going to vote anyway#again im afraid of getting shit?? ONLY this person has EVER given me shit until now#im not pushing harris enough? how tf do u know that? bc im not reblogging ill-informed posts from ppl like u?#im not PUSHING this woman running for president enough bc im not writing critical posts she and her advisers will never see#about how im threatening to withhold my vote from them. something id never honestly do considering the opposition#they kept stressing to me to about how they weren't a trump supporter when *i* never said as much to them#i do agree that not voting for harris 'supports' trump in that it benefits him overall#but i don't attack ppl who just aren't voting in that way. ok?#damn i hate being on the defensive like this
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We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.
#we speak#writing#we grew up with pmd games and we feel like the way that pmd pokemon's dialogue tends to be excessively... direct?#should be a feature and not a bug when any pokemon that you meet might be totally unfamiliar with your species and biology#it's probably very polite to start up front with some basic facts about yourself so they know how to act going forward#the very upfront feel to dialogue also very much helps with keeping the dialogue feel more... pokemon#people mock the series for weird npc dialogue a lot but we think that taking these things literally makes for more fun society building#it doesn't all have to fit with socially acceptable for our world we think. polite in our world isn't even consistent by household.#sometimes a polite interaction sounds like “hello! i'm poochyena! i like to chase people and bite!”#name and immediately socially useful information. now you know about the chasing people and biting so you don't assume it's rude#of course poochyena bites and chases people. it likes to do that. you can say you don't like that and it might stop doing that to You#but it will not stop biting and chasing people because that's what it likes to do and it will probably only befriend people okay with that#it makes a very specific dialogue feel that's very fun to do. we like how the pokemon world tends to treat any sort of like#disability or “weird” things as something that you just say out the gate and everyones like “oh okay”#and then treat that as Part Of Interactions going forwards. there are a surprising amount of parts of the pokemon manga#that are dedicated to working around a character's disability after one or all of their means of dealing with it get taken out#admittedly we aren't that caught up on newer content but we find the way that it tends to be just Accepted as very refreshing#making the dialogue this direct does also tend to make it read as more “childish” in english and particular because a lot of Maturity's jus#learning how to dance around what you're saying or phrase it in different ways to get your idea across differently#whereas here everything is just as direct as possible. “i don't like charmander”. “i like roasting berries”. “i want to dig things up”.#all pokemon dialogue tends to go towards being exceedingly simple and it makes for some very distinct writing#especially when you have to tackle complex situations with characters who probably dont employ that sort of vocabulary#though we personally enjoy doing this sort of stuff your mileage may vary ofc#we are biased towards this sort of thins because we find it MUCH more fun to build up what we're talking about from blocks#than to like. try and use more indirect wording that may lose things in translation#unfortunately this is not fun in irl conversation. everyone has to be on the same page and you need to use the same playbook to communicate#we REALLY wish people said what they meant though. we're really tired of being asked shit like “is this accessible”#when what they mean is “can you climb these stairs” a question which depends on the day our energy level and how things have been going#there are a lot of things we could say that would make us feel like some sort of anti sjw type guy and a lot of em boil down to just#"for the love of god dont dance around a Sensitive Topic just get to the point and ask us about it this just makes things harder for everyo
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Hi friendo 💚
14, 71, 95, 124, 127, 131, 148, 150 🌸
heyyy 🌻
14. Do you believe in luck and miracles? I do, yeah ♥
71. Craving something? What? forehead kiss
95. Last movie you watched? Django Unchained
124. Do you believe in love at first sight? short answer: no slightly longer answer: I believe in vibes at first sight - the feeling of "this person is special" but not love, no. love is sth that grows over time ♥
127. What makes you happy? my husband, nature, music, art, being able to just be in the moment, animals, friends, people being kind and loving .. so many things really ♥
131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? uhhhh that would really depend on a few things: I appreciate people being honest, especially about their feelings but I am in a very happy relationship so nothing will change that. so how I would react would depend entirely on how the person would confess and how pushy they'd be about it. - if they just need to get it off their chest and are otherwise chill about it, we're cool. yes, my partner will hear about it but we'd still be friends and things are fine. - if they push for sth more than friends? done. no discussion, that friendship is over that very moment. do not disrespect me and my relationship like that.
148. What’s your favourite quote? oh that changes a lot depending on the mood, but I really like sth the streamer / youtuber Xisuma said on one of his streams: "always assume the best". he was talking about people often assuming the worst when others do sth that bothers them, but so many times the other person wasn't being malicious, but rather just unaware. so if you go through life generally assuming people do their best, but sometimes just not knowing better, dealing with others will be a lot more pleasant.
150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page? I literally have 2 books in my bag so I will give you both options: - Take a hint: WHAT WE ARE DOING IS DANGEROUS. ( Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt ) - "And Madeline?" He gave me an opaque look. "That poor Usher girl." ( What moves the dead by T. Kingfisher )
thank you so much for these, friendo ♥
#ask game#hella cute questions#lovely mutuals#asks#also because someone was confused recently: my husband and my boyfriend are the same person - I just refer to him as both#as we're basically married at this point haha#answering these made me realize: I do not watch many movies#and I need to finish Hex finally#but adhd brain be going brrrr
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This an interesting angle. I've never been particularly taken with trying to determine True Art from False Art on the basis of specific qualities of the piece.
(I did ok-ish but not exceptionally on the AI art quiz, probably with a slight bias for misattributing human pieces as AI ones - like many other respondees, I found the Impressionist pieces hardest to distinguish, since they very much play to the AI's strengths.)
There are many different ways you could describe "art" as a human activity, I'm sure there's a post somewhere where I make a list, but a really big one is its communicative function - one purpose of art is to somehow pass on some aspect of our 'inner world' to another person, through a lossy and limited channel.
That a signal can be easily imitated doesn't mean it doesn't carry contextual information. For example, I could ask a yes/no question of enormous emotional importance - "should I take the shot", "has the baby been born", "will you go out with me", "am I a good girl" - and be answered with either "yes" or "no". It would be trivial to generate a machine which randomly substitutes for this communication - that's basically all a magic eight-ball is.
The amount of information that can be contained in an image of a given size and colour depth can also be calculated. For example, the number of fullscreen images that would fill my current monitor at 8 bits per channel would be 2^(3440 × 1440 × 24) ≈ 3 × 10^35788372 - about 15 megabytes uncompressed. It's a number that seems astronomically huge, though effectively the amount of information is much less than you'd calculate since all the likely pixels are correlated. The same goes for other art forms, like novels (encoded as, say, UTF-8 strings or PDFs) or pieces of music (encoded as sound files, MIDI, MuseScore files, etc.). The exact number is complicated, you end up getting into Kolmogorov complexity and shit like that, but the point is that it's finite.
If we want to claim that all the information about a human life that Hofstadter describes (grief, despair etc.) is in there somehow, we're claiming that this finitely many bits is adequate to capture all the nuances of a human life. I don't know that that's true!
This, however, doesn't really seem to align with how we interact with art. Human production and exchange of "art" is a social act - I would describe it as being continuous with "play". When we observe a piece, we are opening a communications channel - at least a one-way channel. The person on the other side sends some information into the channel, and we process it somehow.
Since it is a lossy channel with limited information, we must infer various things about the other mind on the opposite side of it. If I show you an artwork that I made, we might have a conversation about how I did it, why I made the choices I did. If I feel something looking at the work, I might imagine that you felt something similar, and designed the piece to evoke it intentionally (a guess that will often be wrong but sometimes still productive). I might also look at what specific choices you have made, compare them to the choices others have made in the same medium, etc etc.
We form these inferences on the basis of experience - the more you learn about making art, the more you learn to appreciate other peoples' art and vice versa. And we project these experiences, usually plausibly, onto other artists.
(Perhaps I am saying all art is in a sense performance art? Seems like a tasty soundbite, though I'm not fully sure I wanna commit to it.)
I'm not meaning to claim that a computer couldn't simulate this kind of 'how did you make it' interaction too. This line of argument was anticipated by Turing in his original 1950 paper on the 'imitation game' that someone links in the comments above, where he describes a poet undergoing a viva voce test interrogating their word choices, and argues that a computer might be programmed to give convincing answers to such a test. I imagine he's right - for a paper written in 1950 he makes some surprisingly sharp predictions for how future AIs might be made, such as the idea that an AI could be built to be 'educated' like a child. (He also thought the evidence for ESP is 'overwhelming', but hey, can't win 'em all).
A lot of the context around art would be quite easy to forge, had you a mind to. For example, suppose I go to a film screening, and someone is introduced as the director so we can all clap them. Did they really direct it? I don't know! You could totally send an actor. Less conspiratorially, if someone says they made an artistic choice for x or y reason, they could be lying about it, or misremembering, or most likely oversimplifying a complex and inscrutable process down to a simpler story.
At some point you have to take something like that on trust, or else simply accept that being lied to about it is part of the game you're there to play! (c.f. Oshi no Ko.)
Anyway, the sudden arrival of a new process that can produce, at least sometimes, near-indistinguishable output to various types of communication, throws a spanner in the process. If we're feeling uncharitable, we could call it something like a DDOS attack, stuffing the channels with spurious inputs that don't fit our design assumptions. I think that goes too far, though. AI gen doesn't preclude communication, but it does need we need to think differently about what is being communicated.[1]
So to consider that last question, if art is like a game, could you train an AI art to produce art that is meaningful to humans only by 'playing against' itself, like AlphaGo Zero? I don't think this is so likely. The rules of Go are strict and well-defined; the rules of what humans find meaningful are inseparable from the history of interacting with other humans, which is why art constantly evolves. Training an AI on existing human artworks is training it to compress and interpolate/extrapolate that dataset; training it to optimise for "making novel art that expresses something in a form that its interlocutor could understand" requires it to be interacting with someone.
You could imagine a training process with an "artist" AI and a "critic" AI (a sort of more sophisticated GAN, where the adversary is optimising not to distinguish human/AI art but to judge it on aesthetic grounds) - but how would you get the "critic" AI? Whose taste would it express?
Admittedly, the developers of image generators are constantly refining their models in response to users, so they are being optimised to appeal to someone, not just interpolate existing artworks. But I think it would be very hard to remove humans from the equation entirely. And the present means of providing feedback to the AI are very crude.
For an AI to learn from interacting with other AI (and the world), I feel like you'd need a whole new process that isn't about minimising loss against input-output pairs. Romantically, I imagine it would be closer to how humans learn from life, but I don't really know what will 'work' in the end.
below: some other remarks that were excised from the main post.
[1] We can view AI image gen as another channel for communication between humans, with its own set of inferences to make. If someone shows me a picture they've generated with AI, there's no point asking why they painted this bit that way, but I might approach them more as a curator and ask why they chose this generation over others, or how they went about prompting it.
The AI artists who go to the trouble of finetuning their models with LoRAs for a specific end goal, or using more involved processes with multiple stages of generation, probably have most to 'say', either through the work they generate or how they'd discuss it. (I find it very endearing when someone trains an AI to serve up a hyperspecific fetish.) And the more I know about how AI images are generated, the more I can probably have a productive conversation.
In this light, the "problem" of AI is mostly one of deception, insofar as it tries to look like something else and thereby tell a misleading story. That's probably a big reason why why it brings the rancour it does, although it doesn't explain all of it. It's not (usually) a forgery of a specific human's work, but it is designed to forge spurious communications in this channel in general, so the channel is 'noisier' - and this could be thought to undermine many of the contexts, i.e. the operating narratives and social games, which are why we exchange art in the first place. Over time, we'll presumably end up renegotiating the 'games', and spawning new ones, as humans always have.
And of course, the issue of provenance and plagiarism in art - particularly when prestige and money get involved - long predates AI and is full of all sorts of bizarre contortions when you look at it closely.
More intriguing is whether there is some possibility for "real communication" between humans and AIs - that is, could there be an AI output that does respect the 'rules of the game' in some way. This is harder to imagine! Like, if you ask why we aren't solipsists, we could point to how much we resemble other humans and say, all things considered, seems very unlikely we aren't the same type of entity. But I only know 'what it's like to be' a human. Conversely, while I know a reasonable amount about how AIs work, the attention mechanism and latent-space vectors and so on (thanks 3blue1brown), the analogy isn't so clear anymore, so I don't even know how I'd determine whether there even is a 'what is it like to be' under all the 'noise' of communications aggressively optimised to fit the patterns of something a human might say. If there is, it's probably very alien to all of my experience.
Ironically I feel like the current model of 'AI', which teaches us to regard any generated output with suspicion of having 'nothing behind it', would make it harder for any 'real', agentive, subjective-experience-having AI to make itself known to us. But perhaps it's good that we're forced to sharpen our criteria of what we're looking for out of these things.
Anyway, all of this is probably just idle imaginings, because nobody can figure out how to make anything like enough money to justify the exorbitant costs of training and operating AIs, so at some point this whole speculative bubble will go up in smoke and whatever AIs continue to be in use will likely remain about as good as they are today, or stupider - at least until the next 'AI summer' when a new paradigm emerges.
Thinking about that that "slop accelerationism" post, and also Scott's AI art Turing test.
I also hope AI text- and image-generation will help shake us loose from cheap bad art. For example, the fact that you can now generate perfectly rendered anime girls at the click of button kindof suggests that there was never much content in those drawings. Though maybe we didn't really need AI for that insight? It feels very similar to that shift in fashion that rejected Bouguereau-style laboriously-rendered pretty girls in favor of more sketchy brush work.
But will we really be so lucky that only things that we already suspected was slop will prove valueless?
As usual with AI, Douglas Hofstadter already thought about this a long time ago, in an essay from 2001. Back in 1979 he had written
Will a computer program ever write beautiful music? Speculation: Yes, but not soon. Music is a language of emotions, and until programs have emotions as complex as ours, there is no way a program will write anything beautiful. There can be "forgeries"—shallow imitations of the syntax of earlier music—but despite what one might think at first, there is much more to musical expression than can be captured in syntactical rules. There will be no new kinds of beauty turned up for a long time by computer music-composing programs. Let me carry this thought a little further. To think—and I have heard this suggested—that we might soon be able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile [sic!] circuitry pieces which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A "program" which could produce music as they did would have to wander around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music.
I think this is helpful in pinning down what we would have liked to be true. Because in 1995, somebody wrote a program that generates music by applying simple syntactic rules to combine patterns from existing pieces, and it sounded really good! (In fact, it passed a kind of AI turing test.) Oops!
The worry, then, is that we just found out that the computer has as complex emotions as us, and they aren't complex at all. It would be like adversarial examples for humans: the noise-like pattern added to the panda doesn't "represent" a gibbon, it's an artifact of the particular weights and topology of the image recognizer, and the resulting classification doesn't "mean" anything. Similarly, Arnulf Rainer wrote that when he reworked Wine-Crucifix, "the quality and truth of the picture only grew as it became darker and darker"—doesn't this sound a bit like gradient descent? Did he stumble on a pattern that triggers our "truth" detector, even though the pattern is merely a shallow stimulus made of copies of religious iconography that we imprinted on as kids?
One attempt to recover is to say Chopin really did write music based on the experience of fighting through the maze of life, and it's just that philistine consumers can't tell the difference between the real and the counterfeit. But this is not very helpful, it means that we were fooling ourselves, and the meaning that we imagined never existed.
More promising, maybe the program is a "plagiarism machine", which just copies the hard-won grief, despair, world-weariness &c that Chopin recorded? On it's own it's not impressive that a program can output an image indistinguishable from Gauguin's, I can write such a program in a single line:
print("https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gauguin,Paul-Still_Life_with_Profile_of_Laval-_Google_Art_Project.jpg")
I think this is the conclusion that Hofstadter leans towards: the value of Chopin and the other composers was to discover the "template" that can then be instantiated to make many beautiful music pieces. Kind of ironically, this seems to push us back to some very turn-of-the-20th-century notion of avant-garde art. Each particular painting that (say) Monet executed is of low value, and the actual valuable thing is the novel art style...
That view isn't falsified yet, but it feels precarious. You could have said that AlphaGo was merely a plagiarism machine that selected good moves from historical human games, except then AlphaGo Zero proved that the humans were superfluous after all. Surely a couple of years from now somebody might train an image model on a set of photographs and movies excluding paintings, and it might reinvent impressionism from first principles, and then where will we be? Better start prepare a fallback-philosophy now.
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"I know you keep saying you're doing stuff to help your mental health, and I know you try to track your moods and have a routine and stuff but you really need to try harder to not get so stressed about things" bestie when I say I'm trying to help my mental health, yeah I'm doing that stuff, but I'm also:
using DBT techniques to improve my emotional regulation, which takes a lot of energy because I have to focus on taking a step back and doing that while experiencing strong emotions that make that hard
actively unlearning unhealthy coping mechanisms and trying to replace them with healthier reactions to things, which once again requires catching myself doing stuff while experiencing strong emotions that make it harder to think rationally
working through shit like core beliefs to figure out why I act in certain ways and then challenge those beliefs to slowly fix things from the ground up (have you ever dug into core beliefs? it's a great way to end up sobbing for 2 hours straight while half your life suddenly clicks together and makes sense in a way it never had before)
basically improvising exposure therapy for various triggers because I don't have access to actual therapy so I've gotta DIY this shit if I actually want to get better at handling my triggers
having to work through processing years of trauma, abuse, etc, most of which gets brought up randomly and then I have to deal with it whether I'm in a good place to do that or not
and a whole bunch of other exhausting shit I can't remember off the top of my head because I'm brain foggy and have a migraine right now
and I'm having to do all this on top of repeatedly getting so ill I can't keep up with basic chores and experience the kind of symptoms and pain levels people would normally go to the hospital for on a daily basis and just having to try and carry on as normal anyway because I have no other choice, not to mention all the various stressors piling up in the background that I'm having to process and deal with.
"you need to try harder to not get stressed about things" says the person who won't even begin working on their own deeply unhealthy behaviours that negatively effect everyone around them because "that's a lot of work and I don't want to have to do all that"
#personal#thoughts#🍬 post#vent post#posts made on pain meds#had a deeply infuriating conversation earlier and this comment was just one little thing in the middle of that shitshow#but it has really driven home the point that people don't realise that when I say we're doing a lot to manage our mental health#I mean we're having to teach ourselves healthy coping mechanisms and emotional regulation#while in an amount of pain that would have a lot of people in the ER screaming that the staff because they can't regulate shit in that stat#and then also being thrown straight into intensely triggering and stressful situations that we can't get out of and just have to deal with#like yeah actually I've seen how ''normal'' people react to the pain of a dislocated rib#and I know that on a daily basis for the last month I've been in significantly more pain that I get from dislocated ribs#quite frankly it would be perfectly understandable if I just laid on the floor and screamed for several hours a day#but instead I'm criticised if I can't regulate my emotions to the same level as a mentally healthy person who isn't in pain#regardless of how much effort I'm actually putting in#and the fact that it's basically impossible to regulate your emotions properly when you're in this much pain#the fact that I'm still using DBT techniques and taking a step back to figure out how to handle emotions in a healthy way#is quite frankly a fucking miracle but it's still gonna get treated like I'm doing the bare minimum
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help I'm having a case of "game got out, many complicated feelings, beer in a dingey hotel room by the highway on my own", we'll get through it but I might cry about it a little bit at some point
#thoughts#personal#these moments always make me ponder on the relationship of gamedevs and the audience regarding fandom and criticism#because it's sooo complicated#very often you will agree with the criticism wholeheartedly#perhaps in many ways the audience has not picked up (yet or at all because some information is just kinda out of reach)#but to see that criticism casually dropped on your lap by people who are... basically tourists to a situation you fought tooth and nail for#that can afford to say “this thing sucks haha lol” and move away and never think twice about it#it does hurt#it does hurt even when you agree and you'd be even more critical of the same thing#you're like “cool haha sorry you don't like the end result”#“me neither tho fun fact btw this exact thing you're describing was my tipping point into a major mental health crisis"#“but I guess you'll never know about that!!”#“so fun and cool have a nice day I'll handle your casual “End Result Bad Lol” emotionally in some way eventually”#(which is why I think good in-depth criticism is actually MORE cathartic for devs than shallower “well that kinda sucked”)#(but that's just me I think most of my colleagues would disagree)#cw mental health#might delete at some point because we're in dubious territory nda-wise even if I'm being vague#but UHHH yeah#yea yea yea
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the apartment we looked at today was really bad - like, one room was missing half the flooring and they (the landlord) just put carpet over it. luckily it was only the current tenant there, though - she told us about the landlord and that she's... not great. so even if the apartment had been decent we wouldn't have been interested after that.
#it also helped us further narrow down which places/villages we'll consider from now on#it's basically just down to three places now.#and they're the same ones we would have preferred the last two times we moved.#but damn I'm just really not willing to go through all this work again just to end up in *another* shitty village that I know I won't#really like.#I'd rather stay with my mother for a couple months if it means we find a good place.#(it'd have to be my mother and not my in-laws because we're pretty sure they wouldn't want our cats in their house. so)#like it'd SUCK but I can. not. keep moving somewhere new every fucking year#especially since it takes me a year to start feeling sort of at home#we've been thinking we *might* be able to start thinking about maybe possibly mayyybe buying a house at some point. if I find a job and if#it's one that pays enough and so on.#and we would really rather not move again until we can do that.#(if we can. it's only a very vague idea at this point. but we've realised it's the *only* way we'd actually feel fully comfortable somewher#we're bad at living in a house with other people 🙃)#(and there are *no* houses for rent that aren't absolutely huge and/or way too expensive)#personal
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not much i can do about or with people who have a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.
#mood#vent#we're clearly never gonna reach a middle ground here. i can tell you what it is a million times and it wont matter bc you've already#dug your heels in. and theres no way for us to healthily interact after that point. bc in many ways you perpetuate the abuse my abuser#put me through and *wants* other people to put me through. consciously or not.#and i cant just keep subjecting myself to people like that.#i hope some day you actually realize what your doing and actually try to like... be a better person n all but like until then you're just#gonna keep convincing yourself that abusing me and isolating me is morally just in some way. and i think i deserve better than that now.#i dont mean this to sound snarky tho ik its gonna come off that way but im genuinely sorry that you believe lies so easily.#bc ik what its like to struggle with that and not knowing what reality is so you just conclude something and not want to think about it#bc you never know whos telling the truth. if there was some way i could just *SHOW* you that im telling the truth I would but obviously#i cant. i just hope you believing those lies doesnt end you up in a shittier situation. or at least that the veil will eventually be lifted#i know how convincing they are and thats why im basically begging and pleading with you to be fucking careful#think whatever you're gonna think about me to confirm your bias's or whatever tf idc but at least fucking be careful around them.#at least fucking heed my fucking warning a little bit. it might save you from going through the same shit i did.#i mean- i do care. it hurts obviously. but i dont care enough to try to control and stop you is what i mean.
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roommate's partially blind(?) female turtle keeps doing this today to elevate her basking game
#it's possible it's a mating thing but they're both very young and again she's female so. less likely to me than#that she was like 'oh sweet more rock im gonna be so tall' but im also not a turtle expert#note: this turns into a rant about these turtles' conditions like 4 tags in#ive never seen her do this before#also don't blame me for the tub setup roomie straight up Does Not Know what she's doing at all#im trying to nudge her into like. proper care and stuff right. and trying to make sure they don't die#and with some things it's more an issue of being able to get the proper supplies rather than not knowing#but i told her to get a bulb that. yk. actually gives off heat (again) and gave her an approximate wattage yesterday#and i found out today that she was planning on getting a regular light bulb witt that wattage#i had to explain to her that heat bulbs exist and you shouldn't like. pick a bulb not designed for heating To Heat just bc it has the same#wattage. head in my hands i want to keep this lighthearted but it's kind of extremely distressing to me tbqh#did she not research at all before getting them?? she's had them for at least a year how has she not wondered why her turtle's eyes don't#open??? etc???? and she just lets them chill in an open tupperware and though she chastises rascal for swatting at them#she's gone like 18 hours of the day so it's not like she's there to stop him#guhh my point is if she had these time/financial restraints beforehand it was really irresponsible to get all these pets#and then not fucking take care of them!!! if you can't get them incredibly basic necessities then hold off on taking on the responsibility#of another creature's life!!!!!!! thank you!!!!!!!!!!!#ugh i know firsthand how depression can fuck with pet care in some ugly ways but she Keeps getting pets#this was a three time mistake not a one time mistake and she seems so unbotherwd#and she's fine with dealing with the problems she just Does Not Notice Them because (afaict) she's just not paying attention or wondering#but i don't know?!!! i don't know. very conflicted feelings about my roommate to be honest#i was terrified to learn that she would be my roommate and im very Not Cool with the animal neglect thing#nor the fact that she's apparently cheating on her bf (she blames him ofc) but idek what to do or say about that#but she's also very friendly? it's a really weird dynamic. we're on good terms but i wouldn't call her a good person#arghhhh whatever. whatever. i have since moved top turtle (😐) off since i dunno if she could get down on her own#+ i dont want bottom turtle (😐😐) to shake her off. shell or not im not risking it
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#(ramblings in tags. dont read if u dont wanna see criticism of female character writing in naruto)#(i think im pretty chill but it's still negativity so look away if u dont wanna see this)#my hot take (?) is that the naruto author is 100% a misogynist and that HAS to factor into your analysis of his female characters#im only getting thru the anime in increments bc the way theyre written is so frustrating#and fandom discourse surrounding them isnt great either#(i already know the gist of how it ends bc the ending is infamous for being hated so idc about spoilers)#from what ive seen everyone generally knows the female chars are written terribly and arent respected by the author#but dudebros hate them for gross misogynist reasons#and in contrast fans of those female characters get so defensive that they loop right back around to being misogynist#idk how to explain it but its odd seeing fans say “its empowering actually!” for the female chars to end up in miserable marriages#with less combat involvement than the male chars despite taking up the same profession/training#like yeah in a vaccum these conclusions are fine and completely neutral. but we're not in a vacuum. this was written by a male misogynist#how do i articulate that u can personally like characters w/out pretending misogyny didnt play a role in their development + conclusions#and critiquing the way female characters end up is not misogyny. its basic media analysis#like if i were to apply this to MHA i would say Midnight's death was poor writing in comparison to Nighteye's (narratively similar)#bc it supposedly was supposed to give development to the class. particularly Momo since Momo was the one she was rooting for#however hori did not bother showing more interactions between Midnight and her so it falls flat. her death even happens offscreen#and Momo wasnt there to confront the ppl who murdered her. it was Mina. so Midnight's arc wasnt completed satisfyingly#her death ends up becoming meaningless for Momo's development and purely for shock value so the war has stakes#as opposed to Nighteye and Mirio having a fleshed out relationship/backstory and a proper goodbye#there was a difference in the way the author wrote male mentorships and female ones. critiquing that is fine#now imagine if some Midnight fans went “its misogynist of you to downplay her death. she was noble and heroic and a girlboss”#it misses the point completely bc they interpret writing criticism as shade against her as a person#anyway thats what a lot of female character discourse in naruto feels like#and thats not even mentioning the cesspool of dudebro sexism but i avoid them so i dont see it as much#anyway in conclusion naruto would probably be a great series if the author wasnt a raging misogynist#sorry for the rant#my post
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For the rare coherent, rational thought: it's pretty unlikely this is actually about him or even me. He's sure as fuck not helpin but it's just a smokescreen.
#i started spiralin pretty suddenly at almost two weeks since any interaction w/ him & w/ seemingly no trigger#unless we look outside the system. cause it woulda been a couple of days after we broached some things in therapy#n i don't know what it means but i don't like it#was just the general topic too close n triggered some kinda emergency protocols? we've mentioned it before w/ no issues#or was it that what we've assumed to be basically just speculation w/ nothing tangible is closer to the truth than we think#we can't assume anything til we have either smth tangible or actually remember things but#it's all blocked away#what changed? would pointing fingers at the wrong person have caused this too?#is someone tryin to tell us smth or is this a sign to back off?#we can't keep backin off forever we can't fucking live like this but idk what we need to do to get past that block#n i know we can't go digging it just triggers more defenses n doesn't even work#but it's driving me fucking insane#i keep wanting to watch some specific movies or shows to see if it'd trigger a memory but i know that's not even remotely safe#i don't know what to fucking do#do i ignore it? obsessing over the same things over n over helps no one but i got nothin else to go on from#some things in val that we don't.....recognize. it's not rly source him it's none of the other people he introjected things from#it's no one we remember. who is it? do we even wanna remember?#cause sometimes i look at the shit i say n see the trauma holder who Knows the one who can't tell n only talked about it once#something we're replaying just w/ a different cast#who's feelings are these? whose words is he repeating?#n then we have the fucking dreams we never talk about but idk if that's just cause we think about it so much#is it just all of the shit mashed together or is it a memory#or more just fragments of one anyway#spdrvent
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Nails vc yeah the director burned some of my work to my face she must be so stressed out and sad :(
#rat rambles#oni posting#out of the shower and still thinking abt their log theyre so silly I love them#also thinking abt how much of a piece of shit nikola is (affectionate)#I need to put him and ellie in the same room so they can take jabs at eachother with increasing agression until they get physically violent#bonus points if they come out of it almost friends in a fucked up way#think 'I hate your guts and would gladly punch you but we're both going through the same fucked up shit so guess Id die for you' vibes#bonus bonus points if joshua is also in on the oh fuck were doomed arent we fun#like he probably doesnt know and would be horrified upon finding out and thats generally what I go for in my head#but. itd be so incredibly fun if he was just as deep in the muck as the other two.#or even better. deeper. but thatd likely just put him in a middle point between ellie and nikola#ellie is in the know enough that even if she doesnt Know she probably figured it out at some point#nikola is like the most knowing motherfucker in the world#and we don't see shit of joshua's actual work so god knows how much he knows#we know he and ellie work in the same department and handle a lot of important data#but we only ever see ellie be talked to about said data#so while she and joshua do the same type of work we dont know what joshua specifically worked on#which basically means he could know any amount of information about the shit going down at gravitas theres literally no way of knowing#I cant even make a personal character judge because nice doesnt necessarily mean strong morals#like for all we know he could have been actively involved with the dna stealing he most likely wasn't but we dont know#maybe hes a nails situation where he was blinded by optimism or blinded by his friendship with ellie#or maybe ellie goes out of her way to keep him not involved in an attempt to protect him#but ellie herself doesn't Seem to have realized how fucked shit was during what we see of her so idk#maybe jackie just has favorites and likes making ellie her lil grunt#and makes ellie stay quiet which ellie likely wouldnt find too out of place given her job#basically Im saying that while we do see a lot of these two we still know basically nothing abt them#which is a part of the appeal I think#anyways its almost 4 am rip#bed time here we go
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