bawbixo

[bawbixo]

I finally posted Aquamarine! on Quotev, lol

Aquamarine! Ao3 link (even if you plan to read it on quotev I still recommend going here first to see all the tags+content warnings)

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

She would not fucking say that. Yes she said that in canon, but I perceive a greater truth unaffected by her writer's misogyny

[bawbixo]

okay I promise I'll stop reposting about tshd for the night 💔

Yoshiki & ‘Hikaru’ as textposts <3

[bawbixo]

I think some of the reactions to The Summer Hikaru Died from English speaking fans are very, very telling.

On one hand, you have people blatantly denying its queerness. Which gets harder and harder for them, especially after viewing the second episode.

Then you have the people denying its queerness because "it's not a BL". While I think most of the people saying this are younger or misguided by queerbait-y shows that they've seen, this sentiment still denies queerness as a part of life and a part of fiction. I thought it would be obvious that not all queer stories are romances. But I suppose there are really still people that only see queer people as the romances they have.

But then there's my least favorite type of person, who recognizes that the characters are queer in some way, but deny the fact that queerness (especially Yoshiki's sexuality) is woven into the fabric of the story. If Yoshiki wasn't queer, The Summer Hikaru Died would not be the story it is. Most of its themes would cease to exist.

The amount of people I've seen say that: "The Summer Hikaru Died may have a gay character, but it's not impactful to the plot. The story is about grief, not LGBT stuff" -- is horrifyingly sad. And the fact that so, so many people still racistly think that being queer is a western invention is even sadder.

I've seen people say that "oh, of course the author didn't mean for this to be about sexuality; they're Japanese!" is gross. Especially when Mokumokuren themself has described The Summer Hikaru Died as a "queer story".

Anyway, I'm annoyed with people, as per usual. I love that more and more people are getting into this story, but it truly makes me upset to see people try to take an explicitly queer story and water it down.

At least we have this:

And I like that even Reddit people are calling it the "fisting scene"😭

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

spot on 😫

something i really love abt tshd is how queerness is so intrinsic to the plot without it being the main focus, it’s pretty common in anime/manga where if there are canon queer characters, the word gay or actual queer struggles are never mentioned. but in tshd, yoshiki is very clearly repressed and closeted living in a rural, homophobic town in japan. it’s *suffocating* him, the only person he really had was hikaru but now he’s “gone” but still not quite gone, leaving him tethered back to this town. it’s obviously a super common sentiment among queer people who live in rural areas to want to escape into city.

and i know everyone laughs at this panel for the iconic ell jee bee tea thing. but in context it’s one of the most heartbreaking and relatable scenes in the whole manga imo. the people of this town aren’t just homophobic, but they’re trying to erase the mere existence of gay people as a whole by covering it up. its pretty obvious that yoshiki is depressed, and it’s easy on the surface to think its solely because he literally has a monster possessing his dead childhood friend/crush’s corpse. but its pretty clear that it only strengthened what was already there. (lowkey his themes are very reminiscent of owen in ‘i saw the tv glow’)

it’s hilarious seeing people say “why did they have to make it gay” ever since the anime trailer came out bc truthfully this story would not work nearly as well as it does if it was just some random ass straight couple. i really hope anime watchers look deeper into the narrative instead of just saying “omg its uwu toxic yaoi” or “it’s a horror anime with forced woke gay ppl in it”

[bawbixo]

he's such a bean

Don't forget to water your eldritch horror best friend so he can grow up strong and healthy <3

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

reading these yttd memes is really making me consider rewriting yttgi, lol. I'll likely never continue it since I hate it so much, but I wouldn't mind rewriting the whole thing if I get back into my yttd phase

sou posts WORST MEME EVER gets WORLD RECORD for MOST VOTES in DEATH GAME HISTORY

[bawbixo]

When Nao thought it couldn’t get worse

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

[bawbixo]

the last line is so deep imo

Another reason to ignore negative comments (especially on AO3)

So at work I’ve been forced to learn about “AI Agentic Workflows”. But being an AO3 author, I couldn’t help but think of how this technology affects authors on AO3 (and honestly on other social media platforms too).

What I learned was this: Agentic AI workflow software makes it extremely easy to automate, and bulk-post, HIGHLY-STORY-SPECIFIC negative comments to AO3 fics.

If you’re not familiar with what an AI Agentic Workflow is, I highly recommend informing yourself. You’ll be hearing it a LOT very soon. Basically, it’s a linked linked chain of AI prompts on one/many software platforms. Each “agent” completes a task. Then it hands off the completed task to the next AI Agent in the chain, which builds on it. Then that result is handed off to another agent, etc etc, even potentially to a final agent which analyzes what worked well and what didn’t, and changes what the other agents do.

There are a ton of repercussions here.

But let’s stay focused on AO3.

With AI Agentic workflow software, a person/group who wants to silence the voice of a community can easily scrape a tag, analyze stories by the thousands, then post thousands of highly customized, story specific negative comments, all without a human being ever seeing your words.

They could even set up AI agents watching to see if you delete your story, or delete your profile, which would be a marker of success. That success marker could be shared back to the other AI agents, and the whole workflow could be changed via automation to use that more effective approach.

I’m sure the OTF is working on ways of stopping this. I’m sure most social media companies are too.

But as usual the tools to create havoc are ahead of the ones to prevent havoc.

Anyway.

TL;DR: If you get a highly-story-specific negative AO3 comment — it does NOT MEAN it was written by a HUMAN! You were probably just story 20,031 in a scraped database of 50,000 stories, all of which were being targeted because they belong to a group/topic/tag that some shitty group or agency wanted to silence because of their horrible political or social.

Don’t let them silence you. They never looked at your words to begin with.

[bawbixo]

*wokely* tell me what genitals you have, stranger i just met

[bawbixo]

I just realised why low engagement on the fics upsets us fic writers so much. It's not I needed the attention and I didn't get so I'm upset. A part of it is because we want acknowledgement for our work, but after I updated a chapter a few days ago, and seeing no response from the readers, it feels like I wanted to celebrate the story we love and nobody else showed up. It's a lot like organising a party and hoping people will come, but you're the only one who was there and then you go home, feeling disappointed and friendless. It is an extension of wanting to be acknowledged. And maybe something else too. I don't know if someone else feels the same.

That about sums it up! When things like that happen, I’d suggest finding a local way to celebrate with yourself- go for a walk, get some ice cream, spend time with a friend, ect