codeandgin

[codeandgin]

so maybe nevermind o.o

Good omens 2 discussion

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I understand the appeal of the coffee theory as a cope for the hurt that those final ten minutes inflicted, but don't put too much weight on it.

You were SUPPOSED to feel angry, sad, betrayed, etc. All these takes trying to absolve Azi of blame, when the point was that he CHOSE to do this.

We're at the end of Act 2, Azi has space to grow, deprogram himself, seek Crowley's forgiveness, and knowing how good a writer Gaiman is, I have faith that it will be beautiful. Robbing Azi of the agency to make as big of a mistake as this misses the point imo.

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the other thing I find very funny about trying to write a canon compliant wol is taking all the wolship hints extremely seriously.

I don't really wolship because I'm just fundamentally not that kind of fan. But I know for those who are, the sheer number of romance hints FFXIV throws at you can be overwhelming to parse in a context where you have a preferred/intended wolship, particularly if you're not attracted to the gender the hints are coming from in the first place (a particular tip of the hat to wlw fans navigating the g'raha of it all). I've seen plenty of people write around them or write them out or be like "no aymeric was for real inviting my wol to a nice platonic zero-subtext dinner," and God bless all of you.

But it's really funny to imagine them all as all-too-real but unreciprocated or perhaps unreciprocatable. The sheer scale of it is comedy. Spoilers for all of FFXIV follow.

Oh God, the Lord Speaker wants to have dinner, just the two of us, at his family estate and not a government building. I hope he doesn't bring up his crush on me. Thal's balls he's about to bring it up—oh thank God there's an emergency. Oh no someone got hurt! Oh no it's the teenage girl with a crush on me.

Your life is a cosmic joke. You watch the Sultana get poisoned and all your friends probably die to save your life and it's kind of all your fault in some ways, I mean at the very least you should've spoken up when they gave the teenager a private army, and then the teenage boy speaks up and is like, "hey, I guess we have at least one ally. What about if we go visit that guy who is really obviously down unbelievably bad for you and wants to lick the sweat off of you." and you have to be like, yeah, Alphinaud. Great idea. Let's do it. I'll call him.

(brief interlude: also haurchefant's DEATH hits so good if you don't reciprocate. It's okay. He gets it. You're going through a lot and even if you had time to sort through your feelings maybe you're just not into him. That would be okay! You can love someone, or the idea of someone, without needing it to be romantically reciprocated. That's chivalric, even. Knightly. So he won't ask you to lie to him and say you love him as he lies dying in your arms. He's not so low as all that. But could you smile for him as you used to? That true hero's smile of yours. And you do, and he dies. And you both know he died for a lie, in a way, or a flight of fancy. And he's okay with that. Are you? Should you be? Should he?)

Then you're into Stormblood and it's like wow, okay. That last part was all high fantasy, of course there were loyal knights and elegant princes. But this is war. Imperialism. Grim business, surely there's no way—oh no BOTH handsome young revolutionary leaders seem to have a special interest in you?! And so does the Crown Prince of the Empire? Come on, man. I should get to do the whole horrors of war thing without having to also deal with this. Gaius sucked and it was weird that he let his foster daughter run around being openly obsessed with him but at least he never made it my problem.

You can't even get away from it across dimensions. Shadowbringers is a horror story about going on a teambuilding camping trip with your work colleagues for some reason except they all suddenly got really hot and they keep touching you affectionately on the shoulder and being like "I care for you and your happiness. Truly." And also you're being stalked for the whole camping trip by two old men who are obsessed with you. The false climax of the story is that the one old man tries to betray you and give a dramatic monologue about how he loves you but the two of you are doomed by the narrative and then the other old man shoots him in the back like "no actually its MY turn to betray them and give a dramatic monologue about how our love is doomed by the narrative." Then the real climax is old man #1 backstabbing old man #2 in the middle of said monologue before old man #2 dies and gives ANOTHER wistful monologue about his doomed love. Then for the patches they're like okay so we have this even CRAZIER old man who's gonna strike when you're weak and give a dramatic monolo—

and that's without even getting into the literal soulmate ghost only you can see

my warrior of light never felt more betrayed than in that scene where Y'shtola is like "haha Alisaie and G'raha have crushes on the warrior of light." Like I thought we were COOL, Y'shtola! I work here! This situation is already in such a delicate balance! Right when I got here I met Alisaie's "friend from work" who was like oh haha so YOU'RE the one she can't stop talking about and we never followed up on that because the woman died horrifically like five minutes later right in front of us! Then when Vauthry got away and we had to do all that shit with the dwarves, G'raha kept pausing every ten minutes to be like oooooh I'm so old I'm gonna die soon...at least I got to spend some time with some people who are really important to me...in fact here's what I'd tell the person who's most important to me...actually u know them really well haha. And I just had to sit there and be like wow, dude, crazy.

even in the face of apocalypse you still gotta go back in time like 12,000 years and there's somewhere there who makes you sit and listen to his story which is that the purpose of his whole godlike immortal life was to be in a throuple with you and old man #2 from the camping trip. and you just gotta sit there the whole time knowing you/your past life is the one who broke up the throuple over politics. He's like come help me harangue the old man into streaking in public, he'll do it if you ask.

then you meet and fight and kill God and you gotta turn to the team and be like hey sorry guys can you give me a sec. I'm gonna call God by her real name because we met one time for like four days and after that the promise of meeting me again was one of the things that sustained her through her millennia of suffering. Not like that but like. Idk. Just gimme a sec!

It's a relief when you finally get to Lahabrea and he's like actually I still don't fuck with your vibe. Like thank GOD.

And my WoL is very obviously dad-shaped so Dawntrail had a very specific energy for me but I understand that for plenty of people your deepening rapport with Wuk Lamat had a romantic subtext (same for Koana depending on how you read a few of his lines). And personally I think it's the height of comedy to be like, noooo, babe, your highness, I know you and your brother the king are in love with me and want me to stick around and support you emotionally through this governmental transition haha. But it's just...the cursed wineglass, babe. I GOTTA go figure out what's up with this cursed wineglass.

It's a running gag in some of the more optional content that people are like "you have an unreasonable number of hobbies and side gigs" to the WoL from time to time. But if every time you tried picking up a new hobby some new elf started baring their soul to you, you too would be like Hey Jessie (or sometimes Krile or Tataru), my good friend who is one of the only people in my life who knows what professional ethics and work-life boundaries are, any chance you need muscle on a gig on the other side of the world? Ideally with only Cid and his ex so all libidinal energy in the room is directed towards machinery or someone who isn't me?

ironically one of the only places you get a break from psychosexual obsession is the nier content

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My name has some of the letters that Amanda has in it but is not Amanda

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

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woe bunlith waifu dance be upon ye

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i love this stupid website

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Hehehe I get to force my friends to watch Pyramid of Mars now

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I want to make it clear to Tumblr's algorithm that I very specifically have not looked at any Hazbin Hotel stuff on here because I find the fandom exhausting.

So why are the top three posts on the For You tab ALL HH STUFF? NO, I DON'T CARE THAT ALASTOR IS A TUMBLR SEXYMAN FRANKLY I THINK THAT'S A BIT WEIRD HE'S ACE.

Also, the show is mid and is a victim of its short runtime. I like the songs tho.

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starting 2024 off on a good fucking note

snoozing tumblr live PERMANENTLY 👏👏👏

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The Enshittification of TikTok

I’ve been using TikTok since around 2020. I could probably be classed as an average user; I don’t upload much, occasionally leave comments, and mostly just doomscroll. I enjoy the app; I have managed to train the algorithm as best as I can to provide me a feed of queer humour, world news, gaming content, etc. Short-form video can be a great space for that kind of content, and I love watching creative people carve out a niche for themselves. However, during my time using TikTok, I’ve noticed a wave of bizarre design decisions, alterations to the UI, changes to what kind of content is preferred by the algorithm, and I would like to vent about them here.

I would like to preface this with the statement that this article is in no way researched, more that it is an anecdotal account of aspects of TikTok that stand out to me as annoying and emblematic of enshittification.

I. UI

The UI of TikTok seems to be in an ever-changing state of flux. One day the homepage is split into “For You” and “Following”, the next day the TikTok Shop has joined them as a third tab. Then the “Friends” feed shifts to the navigation bar, only for it to be swapped out for the Shop a week later. Consistency is not key, it seems, in the minds of Douyin’s UX designers.

I understand optimising the layout. I understand the need to find places to put newly developed features. It just seems so constant on TikTok, that I almost doubt that they have a UX team at all. Given that it took years to add letterboxing so non-iPhone aspect ratios didn’t get random cutoff, I may be right.

II. Feature Added, Feature Removed

If you’ve been around on TikTok for any length of time, you’ll know how frustrating this is. With seemingly the same frequency of their UI changes, TikTok adds new features and removes well-liked features to the app. Who remembers pinned comments? I do. The repost feature that was recently added has already been gutted, as you can no longer attach comments to a repost. I don’t know if they’re unconfident in the features they make, or if they’re using us as unwitting beta testers, or what. To compound this frustration, rollout and removal of features seems almost random - dependant on the model of your device or even the region in which you reside. I didn’t get captions for nearly a year after they were first rolled out.

III. Impossible (4/4), conversations(2/4), are(3/4), coherent(1/4)

Comment threads are impossible to follow. It is impossible to have a coherent conversation with someone in the comments over a prolonged period because the comment threads don’t sort temporally. What’s the point in having the ability to reply to specific comments if the thread isn’t going to be displayed in the correct order? Sorting parent comments by an algorithm that boosts engagement, I understand. Sorting comments in a thread the same way is mind-boggling. The 100-character limit is already enough to kill nuance stone dead; we shouldn’t be forced to number a threaded comment so future readers can puzzle together the intended order.

IV. Filters, Content Scrapers, Commissions, and Ads

TikTok has some of the most bizarre content moderation on the planet, liberally applying the ban hammer on legitimate accounts for no apparent reason, and yet doing nothing about the prolific content scraper accounts. There are so many accounts that rip content from other TikTok users, from YouTube, from TV and Film, split it into a million 30-second slices, and farm engagement from it. Sometimes they go to the extra effort of pairing it with an unrelated video designed specifically to turn your brain off and keep watching. Sludge content is hell. And they see little to no pushback - from the comments, or seemingly from the copyright owners. And how could they? It’s like whack-a-mole, one goes down, and two more appear to take their place. And because these scraped videos are specifically designed to hold your attention, and leave you wanting more, the algorithm loves that shit, and pushes away genuine original creative material in favour of these rips. It’s horrifying.

Next to sludge content, with the goal of switching your brain off to farm engagement, are filters. Filter is a misnomer, in my opinion: low-budget augmented reality games would be a more accurate descriptor. With all the grace and robust programming of an interactive mobile game ad, most of these filters act as a medium to create low-effort videos, often to farm rage engagement through acting as incompetent as possible. Because people are so susceptible to rage engagement (why do you think mobile ads haven't changed in 10 years), the algorithm picks up on this and again, pushes this slop out.

Of course, TikTok is also a business and needs to make money. So of course that means, as time inexorably marches on, and they need to maintain the illusion of infinite growth, the algorithm is tweaked to push more ads, worse ads, and ads that are disguised as normal content. If you see “Commission Paid” under a video description, or a link to the TikTok shop, run, because that’s an ad. More ads between videos, and videos that are secretly ads, again diluting the wide range of actually creative art on the platform.

Block them, press the not interested button, close the app. Train TikTok not to reward this behaviour. Please.

V. Self-Censorship

[REDACTED]

Where Do We Go From Here?

Like I said, I love TikTok. It is a space that has connected communities around the world in a creative space. I learn more about current events on TikTok than I would ever learn on the ten o’clock news. I don’t want to see it continue to decline in quality, I want to see it grow.

This has been a space for me to vent, thank you for reading if you have.

Addendum

I didn’t redact V. Self Censorship for a cheap joke, by the way. I wrote about five different versions of that segment, but I couldn’t find a way to word how I feel about the topic in a way that felt adequate.

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Fume Knight ez I guess

So remember when I said in jest that this was now a Dark Souls 2 fanblog? I've been doing a replay, powerstancing caesti until I got to Eleum Loyce, switching to bone fist (I did some suicide runs early to grab it before Mirror Knight). I've just fought the fume knight, the famously hardest boss in the game, who usually walls me for hours, AND I BEAT HIM ON THE FIRST TRY.

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Good omens 2 discussion

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I understand the appeal of the coffee theory as a cope for the hurt that those final ten minutes inflicted, but don't put too much weight on it.

You were SUPPOSED to feel angry, sad, betrayed, etc. All these takes trying to absolve Azi of blame, when the point was that he CHOSE to do this.

We're at the end of Act 2, Azi has space to grow, deprogram himself, seek Crowley's forgiveness, and knowing how good a writer Gaiman is, I have faith that it will be beautiful. Robbing Azi of the agency to make as big of a mistake as this misses the point imo.

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Potential Spoilers for Final Fantasy XIV - You’ve been warned

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I don’t care that the writers are being vague and ambiguous - G’raha Tia is the biggest simp for the WoL on Etheirys, regardless of gender. Poor little catboi just wants to travel the world with us (and probably also get railed in the meantime)

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I want to make clear by the way, this was fucking fantastic and Mr Gaiman is an amazing writer. Can't wait for the ending whenever it rolls around.

But for now, leave me alone im in the corner crying

Yeah ok good omens 2 tore my heart out as well.

I'm not ok

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Good Omens S2’s ending is so agonising, but I’m coping because I think it’s going to make Aziraphale’s development significantly more impactful in S3! As a second act this has every painful, fascinating ingredient that made Zuko’s arc in ATLA so outstanding, and the conflict is completely in character for Aziraphale!

He loves Crowley deeply but he’s still clinging to Heaven’s brainwashing, and he’s never actually treated Crowley as an equal or sought to understand Crowley’s perspective yet.

Aziraphale still seems to believe Crowley is just a ‘lost, confused angel’, rather than recognising what Crowley is actually doing: rejecting the system entirely and trying to do good on his own terms.

Aziraphale still hasn’t listened when Crowley explains over and over again that he DOESN’T WANT TO BE AN ANGEL. He’s still desperate for Heaven’s validation, even after he chose to leave, and there’s a deep void in his identity! He wants so desperately to be seen as “Good” (regardless of the actual morality of his actions) that it’s used over and over again to coerce and manipulate him! He also wants desperately for Crowley to be “Good” too, because at this point Aziraphale couldn’t ever let himself trust or accept Crowley if he wasn’t.

Aziraphale’s ‘angelic superiority’ is still constantly used to prop up his own identity, and he still considers deviance from Heaven (both in himself and others) as something shameful, embarrassing and in need of being ‘Corrected’. He also still believes Crowley needs/wants to be “Forgiven” by Heaven and that angels are inherently superior to everyone else!

At the start of this season Aziraphale lets Crowley sleep in his car for God’s sake, and apparently only calls Crowley when he wants something! He takes Crowley’s devotion to him for granted, and dismisses Crowley’s feelings and perspective on Gabriel instantly! Whenever they disagree on anything Aziraphale just assumes that he is Good and Crowley is Evil, therefore Crowley’s perspective isn’t worth taking seriously.

He does love Crowley, but Aziraphale still hasn’t reckoned with Heaven’s brainwashing, and he won’t be able to until he gets the outcome he thought would fix everything, and realises that it doesn’t. Being offered everything he ever wanted, how could he refuse?

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Just finished good omens season 2.

I'm going to kill myself.

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Yeah ok good omens 2 tore my heart out as well.

I'm not ok