#I think there are a lot of issues that should be discussed and having a blog focusing on that is very valid and good

[infriga]

One piece chapter 1153:

I know I've already brought this up but I feel like saying it again, I really like the way Oda is deconstructing the Elbaph myth that he's spent so much of the series building up. It's made very apparent in this flashback that back then Dorry and Brogy were actually exceptions to the rule in their fair treatment of humans. The spirit of Elbaph we see in them that inspired Usopp and caught the reader's fancy turned out to be more of a reflection of who they are as people, though their kindness does better represent what kind of country Elbaph wants to be now. Harald himself even says that they have an "unusual disposition" in that regard, which I think is really interesting. And it makes what they've been turned into even more tragic with that in mind. Like I've mentioned before, Oda doesn't seem to be saying that there's anything wrong with having a warrior culture, or enjoying a good fight, but he's no longer separating that idea from the reality of violence and its consequences when used selfishly and needlessly. Dory and Brogy are violent and rambunctious and loud and irreverent, to each other, because they know the other is fine with it and reciprocates, but they were always gentle and kind and respectful to Luffy's crew. Their violence is controlled, purposeful even when it seemed frivolous to others. We've only seen them using it against other people in order to protect someone. Harald's violence, and by extension Elbaph's, wasn't controlled, not originally. It spilled out to other countries, other people, and caused a lot of harm.

Another thing that's interesting in this arc is the way Oda is depicting adherence to tradition here:

These panels are so jarring because in all the other panels the Elbaph citizens are depicted as jolly and boisterous, their faces individually drawn and visible, and while they're a bit confused about Harald's sudden change in personality they're still open to his ideas. But in these moments where an obsession with tradition rears its head, suddenly they become these faceless and jagged horned shadows.

This theme actually contrasts quite well with Egghead, because Oda is clearly trying to strike a balance between two extremes. In Egghead we got to see the very real dangers of progress with Vegapunk and the things he wrought in his desperate search for knowledge and innovation. I've made a meta post about it before but the reason why York ended up being the traitor was because Vegapunk's greatest weakness and vice was his desire for more, more funding, more knowledge, more discoveries, and more progress at all costs. In the end his greatest regrets came from that hunger for more, and so his hunger was what betrayed him to the government and got him killed. In his own words, "In my desire to push the world forward into the future, I flew too close to the sun."

Elbaph seems to be representing the other extreme, the dangers of staying too stuck in the past and not being willing to move forward, as well as the importance of people choosing to move forward towards a more peaceful future. But even then there is still an emphasis on the importance of a culture's history.

Oda has never depicted traditions as inherently good or bad, but he definitely leans towards leaving harmful traditions behind. It's actually an interesting parallel to the situation with Calgara and Norland. Norland didn't disrespect the Shandian's culture as a whole, but he also didn't believe that people should be harmed for the sake of maintaining tradition and he harshly denounced the act of human sacrifice, calling it barbaric. But when he found out that the trees he cut down to stop the spread of the plague were sacred ancestor trees, he felt terrible and said that the Shandian's were completely justified in their anger because what he'd done was unforgivable even if he'd just been doing what he thought was right. He recognized that he should have told the Shandian what the issue was and discussed it with them because he does respect their culture and their feelings on the matter.

But the Shandians do forgive him once they learn it was for their own sake, and importantly the way they show that forgiveness, the way they connect with Norland, is through another tradition. Ringing the bell of Shandora so that Norland may someday find his way back to them, lead home to them the same way their ancestors are. So It's not that traditions are treated as inherently bad, just the ones that are destructive, that hurt people, that ruin or end lives. The good traditions are ones that connect people, and make them happy, and tie them to their history and the history of others.

Similarly, chapter 1153 is all about the importance of those differences and the importance of learning about and experiencing other cultures and exchanging with them. But when their traditions become harmful, destructive, that's when they become a problem. Especially when they start to encorporate discrimination.

In the end it always comes back to the importance of the people, without whom there would be no culture and no traditions to begin with. And while I do hope it can still be saved, Elbaph deciding to burn everything down to save their kids is actually a perfect culmination of this narrative thoroughline, even more so because this time it's the good kind of history and culture being burned. And it fucking hurts because it doesn't deserve to be destroyed like that. But because of that it puts emphasis on what is most important. As Norland said, "people's lives are more precious."

With that in mind it's worth noting that Nika is meant to be a god of the people. Oda has typically depicted rulers and kings and gods as 2 kinds of people. The bad ones believe that people should serve them, and the good ones believe they should serve their people. Enel vs Gan Fall. Wapol vs Dalton. Doflamingo vs Riku. Orochi vs Oden. Kaido vs Momo. Etc. But Nika, and Luffy, are never depicted as ruling over anyone and never serving them either, just saving them, freeing them and bringing a smile to their face. Luffy even says he doesn't want to conquer anything, despite having a conqueror's will. What he's conquering is himself. I think that's part of why he doesn't want to be seen as a hero, because he doesn't want to tie others down or be tied down himself. It's funny because he's the kind of guy who doesn't really plan for the future, and doesn't care about anyone's past. He is the ultimate example of living in the present. In a way he's arguably struck the perfect balance between the two extremes by simply not engaging with them and just doing his own thing, which in light of everything I've said is kind of hilarious and very typical of Luffy. He's irreverent towards both tradition and progress, but he does care about people.

Anyway I'm just really enjoying the themes of Elbaf so far and how well they've resonated throughout the story and I just had a lot of feelings about it that I wanted to try to put into words lol. Oda is always great at packing a lot of meaning into relatively short flashbacks and this chapter was a really good example of that. Also Ida is great and Harald had good taste in women (fuck Estrid all my homies hate Estrid).

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Sack

Debut: The Binding of Isaac

Welcome to one of our most Mature posts ever! Today, we discuss a creature from a rated-M game! I've wanted to talk about some Isaac creatures for a while now, but there's the glaring issue of lots of them being graphic, bloody wretches, even if it's a cartoonish art style. I figure people coming to a Mario-based blog simply don't want to see that! And that's ok.

So here is something fun for the whole family! Something that CONTAINS the family! This is a classic Egg Sac. Spiders, it seems, will never lose their association with horror and spookiness, which can very often be quite fun! They can be widely beloved AND be Halloween mascots. An ideal outcome, really. But of course, there's nothing wrong with being scared of something, as long as you don't use that as an excuse to be violent!

Anyway, Sack! Sack is the creature of the hour, and yes, it is a creature. It is a stationary enemy that grows when idle, popping out spiders when full size. When attacked, it will shrink, and if not destroyed, will begin growing again. A creature capable of physical growth (we are yet to learn whether it is capable of emotional growth)! It makes me think of the diving bell spider's silken home, shrinking as it loses oxygen.

Now, I don't think its being a creature is the REASON that Sack can grow. I would attribute that to the spiders inside! The non-living sack could be maintained by its inhabitants, a eusocial colony of spiders using their collective silk to fortify their fortress. Now hold on, did I just call Sack non-living, while still insisting that it's a creature? I did. I think it's time to introduce

Walking Sack

If you don't think a WALKING egg sac is a creature, then get out of my house! If you think it is a creature, then you can stay, but please don't take the last ice cream cookie sandwich, I was looking forward to that.

Walking Sack is just such a supremely silly thing! A spider, or spiders, made an egg sac. It contains spiders. And this one happens to have legs, and the ability to walk! Humanoid legs, not spider legs. These are the egg sac's legs. The real question is thus presented! Does the egg sac walk around on its own volition? Or is it being puppeteered by the spiders within, a bit like the real-life decoy building spider? Can both be true? This could be a whole new kind of creature that has spiders instead of a muscular system... the implications are astounding!

I also want to give a shout out to Sissy Longlegs here! She is not an enemy. She is a friend! Her flavor text is literally "She loves you". And she does love you! Every so often, she will birth a friendly spider that fights for you, without the need for any egg sac. Which makes sense, if she is, as her name implies, a harvestman rather than a true spider!

Do you think silk is an incredible material, and its chitinous users innovative artists? Because you should! If you've been taking spider silk for granted, just take a moment to think about it, and how amazing it truly is. Nature is full of infinite wonders!

[alexanderwales]

Not the asker from before, just saw that you were open to questions about web serial preferences.

I'm particularly curious about your opinions on the Wildbow serials; you called Worm out as a prior hyperfixation, but I saw on the chart that you'd checked out early re: the author's other stories.

Did you just not find them interesting? Do you think there's something about what made Worm compelling that was absent in the others? I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success, but it's hard to discuss because the Worm and Wildbow fanbases almost feel like distinct entities sometimes. People talk past each other.

I really enjoyed Worm, yeah, and spent a fair amount of time on the discord, the subreddit, spot-reading, fact-checking, doing analysis, stuff like that. It was ages ago: I read Worm as it was coming out.

As for why I didn't stick with the others ... it's complicated.

I think Wildbow is, for my tastes, actively bad at pacing. This showed in Worm, then showed a lot more in Pact. Part of the issue is that the stories (to the extent I've read them) begin to have this monotone feel to them, like each chapter has the same "energy" as the last, which is often anxious, angry, stressful, cornered, etc. Over the course of, say, half a million words, I tend to get fatigued. So Pact ended up being something that I dropped relatively early, before the Toronto arc.

Ward was just ... not what I wanted. The premise is that the world has ended and they're reconstructing society on an entirely different alternate Earth, and then this felt like it was largely background, and I didn't enjoy the therapy stuff, and the worldbuilding seemed so lazy to me, which was not at all the case in Worm. I wrote some fanfic, fairly early on, which was my attempt to express the things that I wished it was about, and to come to grips with the fact that it wasn't about the things I wanted it to be about. Still, I used to wait up until midnight for new chapters to drop, so I could read them and discuss with people, and eventually the chapter were coming later and later, and they'd come when I was tired, and that's how I fell off, because I also wasn't having that great a time with it. I didn't care about Victoria, who had too much baggage and uninteresting thoughts. One of the things I remember sticking out to me is that she focused a lot on clothes and appearances, giving much more detailed descriptions of them, and I thought that this was something that Wildbow was doing to differentiate her from other protagonists, and also that I did not really give a shit about Victoria's interest in clothing. I keep wanting to go back to it and finish it, just for the sake of completion, so it's not technically dropped by my standards, and I never hit a point where I thought "okay, I'm done with this, I'm not finishing this". I've been spoiled on a fair amount of what happens after the point I stopped reading the updates (I'm not spoiler averse), and nothing really made me think that it would be a good fit for me. Still, a very decent chance that I come back to it and binge the stuff I haven't read in a handful of weeks.

Twig ... people kept telling me that it was good, and I think I tried three times to get into it. I have no idea how far I actually got, but I gave it a fair shake, maybe ... four arcs? I think biopunk is also not a favored genre for me, and the characters didn't grip me very much, and it felt a bit like a "monster of the week" thing except that there was just so much word count, and not in a good way.

I hear people praising Claw, and Seek, and I think "okay, maybe I should check those out", but it's very possible that after Worm I was just too familiar with Wildbow as an author and thought that there was some ... redundancy to reading more? Especially millions of words more?

I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success

I think there are a few reasons for this, but this answer is already getting pretty long, so I'll be brief: Worm came along very early on, did things with the superhero genre that people hadn't seen much of before, had a particular ethos when it came to powers, munchkinry, and characters, and for all that I would argue it had "bad pacing" it did contain a pretty steady progression from idea to idea, and most of them worked. It also had a lot of structure that helped the fanfic scene explode, in a way other works didn't. I think most people who have read Worm could write a dozen half-decent "Worm-style" heroes without much trouble, but the same can't be said of any of Wildbow's other works (at least, to my admittedly incomplete knowledge). It's a combination of a lot of things, and I don't think most of them are repeatable by Wildbow or anyone else.

[transfemme-shelterdog]

adding my two cents to the pdb situation. this got really long, im very sorry about that but it makes me extremely upset.

even if being cis wasn't relevant (which it is) he was still talking down to trans men of color about racism, as a white man. like,,, isn't it being progressive 101 that white people shouldn't do that? race gets read before gender. i think people of color probably know how that works better than white cis baby does.

ok actually it's turned into three cents while writing this. he posted an answer to an ask about being a white cis man speaking down to/over tmoc and said "the most i did is point out that Black transfems experience a lot more oppression than either white transfems and Black transmascs."

incorrect actually!! the original post that people are talking about is specifically addressed to tmoc and he specifically said that, in regards to tmoc speaking up about their unique axes of oppression, "i swear so many of you are just forgetting that there's trans women who experience all the same stuff you do but worse and more, including Black transfems. [reblog] yes you're treated like shit compared to white transmascs, yes you're treated like shit compared to cis Black people, but... you can not just forget that Black trans women are treated as uniquely predatory and violent."

white cis baby these are two similar but different sentiments, which are both still speaking over tmoc. one person saying they experience unique oppression does not invalidate another person's unique oppression. keywords that pdb himself said: "yes you're treated like shit compared to white transmascs, yes you're treated like shit compared to cis Black people" okay so why aren't tmoc allowed to talk about that without people claiming that they're transmisogynistic?? so many tmoc in the tag are talking about their own experiences without bringing up transmisogyny at all. since im white that's all i'll say about it, because people should go read those posts instead of hearing me paraphrase them.

i know everyone here knows this but i just have to reiterate. all trans men are asking for is space to talk about our issues. we do not want to stop talking about transmisogyny. we do not want to stop talking about transmisogynoir. we just want a place to discuss our theory and experiences without being told that it's worthless. these discussions can and should exist in tandem with discussions about transmisogyny, and so should discussions about exorsexism.

again, sorry for the length and general attitude of this. i try not to be visibly upset when discussing things but this one has been building for a while. sick and tired of the vocal minority putting their fingers in their ears. thank you for reading.

Completely agree Anon, I appreciate your input.

[bullet-prooflove]

Do Charlie and Emery feel resentful / hold responsible Voight or Threat Assessment for Em being shot? Voight bc Emery was sent in as a baby detective with little to no UC experience, and threat assessment for not informing Emery about the bounty. Would they have let Charlie know about the bounty since it directly threatened an officer under his watch?

Heads roll at the Threat Assessment Unit. Charlie launches an internal investigation into why the threat was ranked as low priority and the unit ends up with completely new leadership.

In theory they should have let both Voight and Charlie know. Vought as her immediate commanding officer to inform her and begin a discussion on safety measures and Charlie to sign off on those measures and to coordinate a plan moving forward.

There defo should have been a meeting between the three of them to discuss the precautions to take, such as bulletproof black out curtains (very real), a officer with her at all times, even a safe house if it had real weight behind it. There would have been a lot of options for them to work with.

When it comes to Voight it’s a complex issue because Charlie understands both sides of it. It’s probably something he’s done before himself when he was running his own unit. You do everything you can to prevent the next event and Em had a good ‘in’, it couldn’t be anyone else and to be fair she has a good head on her shoulders. However it’s HIS Em, the love of his life.

For Em this thing is a bit of a wake up call. She’s not been a complete fan of how Voight works but she’s learned a lot. Intelligence is all big picture and the greater good, and sometimes that means sacrifice or playing hardball, like threatening a single mom you’re gonna send her to jail for trafficking which she was forced into by a gang, just so she wears a wire. To Em that’s exploitive because she’s been the minority, she knows what it’s like to not have choices but to Voight that’s business. I do think there will be a parting of ways with Voight expressing his disappointment at her decision.

[dykedvonte]

I keep seeing fanarts of ppl's OC's being on the ship, so do you think that if there was 6st crewmember (specifically, another woman) Anya would've been more safe? Like, someone to actually call Jimmy's begaviour out, someone Anya might wanna trust? Is there a possibility something might have changed (even if a little) or it would not have mattered at all?

-💀

I feel like the game would make it part of the commentary on where she would believe and help Anya but still be sort of dismissive? Like the whole “don’t waste time crying and being scared keep going and move on, don’t let him win��. It’s supposed to be positive and reinforcing but sometimes it does more damage in those times of mourning and grief, it feels patronizing, like you don’t understand what you’re going through but they do. Even if they did call out his behavior it’s still on Curly to act and while another voice would help, it’s still 4 against 2 on guys that don’t get it until they have to vs women who always have to.

I don’t mind mouthwashing OCs but I do get a bit bored as they tend to be borderline saviors or like Jimmy aligned. They are either more complicit than Curly or just Jimmy haters for no reason, outside of what the creators know about what he did to Anya. I am never irked by OCs but in a story like mouthwashing you really need to think about what your character adds to the commentary, especially if they are there during the crash. It’s nice to have like characters on Anya’s side more whole heartedly and interesting to see characters who placate Jimmy but sometimes it’s one note.

I can’t and don’t want to police peoples OCs it’s never my intention when I comment on trends I notice, but I do feel like the way people make their OCs interact with these two characters and especially Curly, really show a grave misunderstanding of the narrative and these characters as people vs roles in the story. Still, I know people just make up characters for fun and that’s fine. Great even, but I guys I’m focusing more on OCs that are supposed to have those serious dynamics. My favs tend to be pretty-Tulpar or post-Tulpar au OCs.

The inevitably of the crash is on Jimmy. He did that not because he wasn’t stopped but because all his means to kill Anya were taken. The gun, the axe. Even if Curly did strip him of his co-pilot privileges and try to keep him contained there’s only so many people. An extra body helps but they have jobs they have to do, he’s the only one steering the whole ship and Jimmy would likely have an out: food, bathroom, etc. He’s not new and if he couldn’t crash the ship directly, who’s to say he wouldn’t sabotage something else? A clunker like the Tulpar wouldn’t take much. An extra person helps but it’s just another thing that prolongs what a person like Jimmy is willing to do to shirk responsibility.

It’s more than just needing someone to stand up to him and think that’s what is missing when it comes to inserting a character into the mouthwashing setting.

[wackywatchdotcom]

something i genuinely adore about tadc is how painfully flawed everyone in the circus is. and not in a small way

everyone does SOMETHING that negatively impacts the others. but it makes the fact that you are supposed to sympathize with and really connect with them all the more potent. because its easy to want to put a bunch of characters in a bad situation together and to just have them all be nice to each other and everyone and never make mistakes because theres no reason to hurt each other, and most of them dont TRY to, but the way they cope is so, so realistic for each of their personalities, and it doesnt always mesh with the others, and sometimes it exceeds self destructive and Just Hurts Others, Too

they still generally care about each other and the mistakes they make and the ways they end up hurting each other dont lose their weight but like. it doesnt take away from their humanity and the fact that they are all trying so hard to manage in an awful situation

and the characters seem to have sooome sort of understanding of this too. not fully, because the characters dont tend to be 100% communicative, but when they hurt each other, it often makes EVERYONE uncomfortable. because these are the only people they have. these are their friends. and theyre all coping. but it doesnt change how much it affects them (best illustrated by ragathas lines at the start of ep 2 or gangles 'i love her, but after a while it gets kinda hard to tell how genuine shes actually being'). its not all like this, theres a good amnt of variety, but characters knowing this but not really knowing what to do about it is very painful in an effective way

(i think a subtle example of this is how zooble handles gangles situation in ep 4- they were so genuinely trying to help her because they care. but could tell as the day went on that oh, this is not working at all and its making things worse, and they leave gangle alone- something that very genuinely couldve been the moment she abstracted, because of the mask zooble gave her- and we dont get to have a super blatant explanation of zoobles thoughts on it, but they reach a fairly healthy conclusion about it that helps both of them, and i like that a lot, because on paper zooble could be placed at fault but the narrative doesnt dwell on it excessively, because thats not the point. i dont know if that tangent makes sense but i think about it sometimes. i think zooble wasnt 'to blame' but it was still a mistake, which is a hard balance to strike, and having them help at the end feels extremely effective at rounding it off!!!)

but like. in general its complicated balancing making characters in a bad situation act flawed because it can run the risk of seeming like the story is scolding them or blaming them for the situation theyre in, or like youre expected to not sympathize with them despite it (though the inverse also has complications- if characters in a bad situation never mess up, it feels unrealistic and hard to relate to, and can imply that their innocence is why whats happening to them is bad at all), but the show handles it so well

even the characters who are genuinely trying all try in different ways- some of them have similar outlooks or attitudes towards these thing but theres vital differences for ALL of them- sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. in fact some of the more painful mistakes characters have made in the show have come from them so genuinely trying (like the thing i mentioned w zooble, or basically Everything Ragatha Does, or pomnis first attempt at helping gangle, etc), which hits harder than if every mistake characters made had wholly selfish and cruel goals.

i mean, there is a selfishness to many of the characters' actions but imo not in a way thats not warranted. because all of them are in a horrible setting. its uncomfortable to watch characters be selfish. but it is a natural instinct to survive. its not the foundation of most of their actions, but when it is, its uncomfortable but hard to completely disparage them for in a way that makes you feel kinda conflicted

and like. it hurts to be doing your best and for that to make things worse, but its what happens often in the show. because no one in a bad situation is gonna handle it well. by the very nature of trying to survive something is gonna give, but it makes the themes of the show so much more powerful. that making sure the people around you dont feel unloved, cherishing them and finding meaning with others is no less important just because everyone is fucking up. it complicates things, for sure, but it doesnt make those characters exempt fromt this. theres a reason pomni tells gummigoo that she doesnt want "anyone" to feel like theyre nothing, and that kinger doesnt add ANY quallifiers to making sure people feel wanted and loved (not that i think either of them were thinking SUPER super hard, but it conveys smth from the perspective of the narrative

it gets complicated when you add in jax for sure, since i think on the surface he IS the exception to this concept- none of the characters like him, including pomni or kinger. but i think this is something thats gonna be examined further down the line, bc hes the main complicating factor in this reading of the show, but i feel like thats on purpose. hes universally disliked (and so is caine, in a different way) and his actions arent mistakes. they are him coping. the show has made it clear that he can be a complex person AND also a piece of shit. his actions dont detract from the fact that hes a person and the show reminds us of this. so it makes things so messy, but im genuinely super excited to see how the show examines that. where his character goes is, imo, going to be a massive piece of how this show fleshes out this concept

[why-is-every-other-name-taken]

Being an extreme radfem/terf blog sounds miserable

[dragonflight203]

Is the problem the technology itself or the human element?

AI is fundamentally a new technology. Basically, as I've heard it described, advanced predictive text.

Advanced predictive text on its own is neither good or evil. It exists.

The problems arise with how how people interact it.

I think that’s a distinction that needs to be made when discussing AI – is it the technology itself that’s being discussed or the circumstances around it?

All new technological advancements are resource intensive when they're first developed. I don’t consider that unreasonable as part of research (in moderation, with proper justification provided); part of experimenting is trying different methods to see what works. Once there’s success it should be refined.

The issue is that AI was rolled out to the masses without being made more efficient.

That could be controlled with regulation. Will it be?

My guess is not in the immediate future. But that’s a human problem. If corporations were required to make AI more efficient to deploy it, they’d find it.

AI will inevitably become more efficient in the future as corporations fight for an edge; they’ll make it more efficient if only for their own cost saving. How quickly and efficiently… That’s on people.

AI also needs to be trained on a base of material.

That is not in itself a problem; public domain could be used as a source or corporations could acquire materials by properly compensating people for providing them.

That AI has been trained on material stolen by others is a human problem. It’s not inherent to AI.

There’s no reason that AI models can’t be trained ethically. That they are not is the fault of the humans that create them and the governments (failing to) regulate them.

Corporations are using AI as an opportunity to modify the law to their own benefit.

That’s again entirely a human problem. AI in itself does not create the law or change the law.

All new technological advancements create new legal questions that must be answered; revenge porn is the one that immediately comes to mind, but the internet and cell phones have certainly created others.

With AI, copyright law has been a big one. But it’s not inevitable that the results of the new legal questions should favor corporations; if they do, that will be because people chose that.

By raising copyright questions AI could be used as an opportunity to overhaul copyright law for the better.

I doubt it will be. But that’s because of humans, not AI.

And so on. At the end of the day, AI is just a tool; it’s disruptive like the printing press, textile machines, and internet were before it.

Just like with those developments, AI doesn’t need to inherently cause harm. It inevitably will and it has, but those are because of choices people made.

And while that’s incredibly frustrating, it also means that the future harm can potentially be negated. People can make different choices.

Unfortunately, it’ll be an uphill battle against corporations with a lot of money and resources on their side… But those battles have been fought before with other major technological developments and progress has been made.

AI and the circumstances around it both warrant discussion to me.

AI as a tool has potential uses. If nothing else, it will be used to develop future technologies and warrants a critical eye with that potential in mind. Even if it’s not useful now, how could it be made useful?

The circumstances around it has rightfully engendered much future. The energy usage, the stolen training materials, the laws… People are angry for many good reasons. How can these be remediated?

The circumstances are all malleable. I do think it’s theoretically possible to create an ethical AI, if highly unlikely in the future. And if there could be an ethical AI, I think discussions about it’s potential uses could be quite interesting.

The thing about debates about AI art is they're debates worth having, I think, and the answers aren't obvious but they're also not new debates.

The debate about whether you can use AI to write a story and then claim it as your story is essentially the same argument as whether you can display a factory made brick in an art gallery and call yourself the artist. Is it art? Is it your art? We've been having this debate for the last century.

The debate about AI plagiarism is similar to the debate about whether Andy Warhol should be allowed to copy comic panels made by poorly paid artists and make far more money for them as his art. Where do the limits of "inspired by" lie?

If I accept knitting, sewing and pottery as art but still buy factory made clothes and plates do I have a leg to stand on if I object to factory made stories? Does it matter if machines can reproduce art? (I like that machines can't crochet because I prefer crochet to knitting, but this does not inherently make my crochet more valuable than if I had taken up knitting.)

Also, prior to the industrial revolution there was a lot of knitting and sewing and spinning in the world that was being done not because people enjoyed it or were making an artistic statement but because it had to be done. If 50% of the world's population still had to spend huge amounts of time producing fabric, would the world be better for it? Does it really matter if we are writing our own emails?

I don't like the idea of reading a story with nobody on the other side of it, as it were, a conversation with something incapable of understanding. But how much of that is because stories are my art?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I'm not ready to shut up about Aveline and Carver--so, when you go see Aveline in Act 1, you can catch up with her a little bit and that's where this conversation can happen:

Aveline: "It's just one more change, though. The real end for me was Ostagar. What about you, Carver? You were there. Do you feel something similar?" Carver: No. Aveline: All right, then. Bit of a tit, your brother.

I wanted to see what she would say if Carver isn't in the party. Instead, she says this:

Aveline: Carver was there. I imagine he feels something similar. If he allows it.

......well, at least she didn't call him a tit?

[kwyoz]

it constantly irks me that mfers complain about the casting for ellie (still, in the year 2025), but are CONSTANTLY praising dina's casting as if they didnt completely erase her ethnic features.

[veal-exe]

If you need someone to talk Out Loud about the heart of my issue you can watch the short section in This Video about Artistic Wrath. I have even done the favor of timestamping it for you.

[paigemathews]

"A Warren. It's a family trait. So are the short tempers, the great cheekbones, the strong wills, and, of course, the powers. All blessings. All signs of where you came from."

Honestly, thinking thoughts about Warren witches and the short tempers. We see this one best through Piper obviously, but I was thinking about the way that this manifests in especially Wyatt out of all the next gen kids.

I feel like Wyatt really represses a lot of his negative emotions. Don't get me wrong, I do generally think that he's a pretty kind, optimistic person in general, but I also interpret him as someone who has this kind of fear at what he's capable of. I've mentioned this before, but the way I went about "depowering" Wyatt, for lack of a better word, to a manageable level is that he locks down most of his powers so that his control is somewhat resigned to not using them because while he's not necessarily afraid of his powers, he's afraid at their potential power. I mean, my Wyatt is currently hovering around 23ish in my next gen stuff, and that is an intense amount of power (and pressure) to put on someone who is still trying to figure out what the fuck they're trying to do right now. However, the issue is that a witch's powers are closely tied to their emotions, so with Wyatt basically locking down his powers, he basically locks down those emotions as well. The trigger for a lot of the particularly destructive powers, aka the ones Wyatt ruthlessly extinguishes in fear of unleashing tend to be rooted in stuff like anger or fear.

So when it comes to Wyatt's temper, I think it's really hard to actually unleash it. One, I think that he's just kind of hard to piss off in general. Chris and Mel have always been the two to start fighting, so he tends to take on a mediator role with them (especially bc the only other next gen kid to stand a chance is Peyton, Phoebe's eldest). So he's pretty good about letting shit roll off his back, because both of his siblings will turn their anger on him if his interference goes poorly. Two is that he's at least. kind of aware of other people's expectations of and for him, which don't really tend to be very human. He's pretty awkward with some of it, because so many people expect this saintlike, godlike figure of the Twice-Blessed and he's a 23 year old working as a library assistant at Magic School trying to figure shit out. (Especially when it comes to the magical politicking bullshit, Wyatt's so earnest and open that he struggles with it. It's an interesting time when the Marks family manages to drag any of the Halliwells to a witch event bc of the layering expectations and personalities for each Warren.) But he's pretty good at the compassion and gentleness that people expect, and he leans into that when he can sense those expectations. Thirdly, and I'll relink this post, Wyatt internalizes the fuck out of shit. He doesn't really blame someone else, even if they've wronged him. Instead, he fully takes on the blame and guilt himself and basically self-flagellates himself about it.

For the most part, he's very difficult to anger. However, when someone actually does manage to piss him off, there are two possibilities. Firstly, he basically unleashes it if he's able to, aka evil beings. Secondly, he hardcore represses it. Not even in a swallow the acid in your throat type of way, but like he ruthlessly shoves it so far down that he can't even taste the burn in his throat anymore type of way. In that case, he just blocks it out and pretends it doesn't exist until he basically believes it. The biggest thing is that when it comes to short tempers, no one really realizes that Wyatt even has one.

Needless to say, and actually the inspiration for this is that repression demons can wreak a whole lot of havoc through Wyatt if they can get to him. It'd be a source of pretty significant power to the demon and damage to those around Wyatt, and the guilt he'd have afterward? Could honestly power another repression demon. An important part of growing as a person and as a witch for him would need to be embracing and dealing with his emotions, all of his emotions, in a healthy manner instead of just repressing them entirely. I feel like that'd make some cool plotlines for growth, especially with the empaths in the family.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

me when I hear another miku banger: okay but how do I make this about nova

[adolins-heart]

on one hand I wanna write my fic ideas wherein my marvel oc gets sent to the alternate universe of Gotham and hijinks ensue whilst she tries to survive and get back and the batfam and such slowly learn more info abt her world and how it's being threatened atm and she needs to go back and help and whatnot.

But on the other hand, the readers wouldn't know the marvel related backstory of this OC and would have. No context for her going in

But ALSO then the readers would know abt as much abt this mysterious figure as the batcrew do, and get to learn via flash backs and her slowly revealing info to them as safety allows

Then there's also just a general. Idk if there's any sort of oc etiquette when it comes to writing oc centered fics? My brain goes so hogwild when I read anything that I usually avoid oc fics other people write just bc I usually read and enjoy fics at face value but I also go "now what would happen if this OC was here?" And that gets real complicated when other people's ocs are involved

[magpiemirroring]

Every time I see someone argue that AI is making art accessible, or making art possible for disabled people or whatever, I'm just....

Well, first: have you talked to any disabled artists? Some of whom were artists before they became disabled? Because I've yet to talk to any who would be content with a machine making art for them. The part folks yearn for is not really the idea magically being on the paper, it's the time spent making the piece. And artists can be very clever and very determined to find a way to make art in spite of any limits their bodies may have.

But really: Why are you so ashamed of being an amateur artist?

Like, I've been putting work into getting good at art since I was in preschool and paused while eating my crayons to consider that it mattered to me how many legs a horse had and I was damn well going to attempt to get it right!

But maybe that's not you. Maybe you haven't found the right art form for you yet. Maybe you haven't been willing or able to throw yourself at the challenge of getting better at any form of art.

There's lots of things I'd like to be good at, but I'm not. I didn't have it in me to throw myself at dance or music. I took music lessons twice in my life. Once with violin through my school, and once private piano lessons with a nice lady who taught piano in her living room. I murdered the violin. I was passable at piano. I wasn't passionate enough about either to practice frequently.

Any hope of dance or sports would have been nixed by my body. I'm flexible in the wrong ways and I have shoddy proprioception, so I would have inevitably torn something or broken something important in the process. And I didn't love either enough to sacrifice my body to them. (I love art like that and I am so careful of my hands and wrists and shoulders and I still have times where I can't make art or I have to make art slowly.) But I love to dance for fun, just for myself.

I'm an amateur chef and baker. I have a bare minimum of skill in sewing. I dabbled in making websites but coding gives me a headache. I love so many kinds of science and still do, but got burned out on trying to get my math to the necessary levels. I love history, but if you ask me to write a proper research paper I will probably cry from academic burnout but I will ramble about history if you give me an opening. I am frankly shite at any sport that involves running and the only sport I ever daydreamed about getting good at was archery. I love playing video games, but I despite the many many hours I have put into some games, I always play on easy mode and have no interest in Getting Good because that's not fun for me. I can't sing, I can't dance, and my acting skills are rusty at best. I used to do whatever theatre I could. I took theatre electives 3 years in a row in school and did summer school one year to make room for theatre. I sang and danced badly as required. I'm naturally shy, but I liked acting. A lot. But I didn't like it as much as I liked drawing and painting and digital art. I didn't want to throw myself into the grind to try to make acting work for me and I decided I didn't even want to devote my time to local theatre. It took so many hours that I would rather spend on art. But I exercise my dormant theatre kid muscles by DMing D&D when I can cram that into my schedule, lmao.

I am bad at so many things that I enjoy doing and I still enjoy doing them. Doing the thing is what's fun and fulfilling.

So when folks claim they need AI so they can make art, I'm kinda flummoxed, but that seems like you're letting the AI do the fun part, the important part, the part where the art is actually made. Do you actually like art? Do you actually want to make art?

Why are you so embarrassed and ashamed of not having professional level skills in something you never put professional level effort into? Look at all those things I'm shit at! There are professionals I can and will pay for if I need a thing professionally done with professional skill. But messing around with food, with learning, with video games, with theatre and improv skills, and making all sorts of things in areas of art and crafting that are not my focus? These are my side projects. My fun times with friends. They don't need to be good, just pleasing to do.

Why do you hold art to a different standard? Why is art all about the finished product's value in someone else's eyes and not the experience you have in making it?