freakytofu - Tumblr blog

[freakytofu]

Thank you, and farewell

There's no easy way to say this, but I will be taking down the translation site as of March 30, 2024.

What does this mean?

I'll be making the site private, which means I'll still retain ownership of the domain name, but it will not be available for viewing.

Why?

There are a few reasons.

AI Automattic (Wordpress' and tumblr's parent company) is in the process of making a deal to sell user data to OpenAI and Midjourney. If you're on tumblr regularly, you've probably heard about this already. It's applying to WordPress too. I'm aware that any content I've already posted publicly, including translation challenges and the formerly public (now password-protected) MDZS chapters, have likely already been scraped. I'm not sure whether my drafts got hit as well. Regardless, with the increasing use of AI in both fandom and non-fandom spaces, I no longer feel comfortable posting any publicly accessible translations, even with a password.

Technical problems Today I logged into Wordpress and found that I can't access any of my posts from the back end, including the published posts and the drafts of my future translations. I do have a backup of all my posts as a giant, compiled text file in Notepad, and I also have some old backups in prettier format. However, I'm unable to access or edit any drafts, and I am only able to edit published and password-protected posts by going through the public pathways of the site. As you can imagine, this is extremely inconvenient and stressful, and not at all conducive to a smooth workflow. None of my troubleshooting has helped fix the problem.

Fandom, permission, entitlement Some recent personal interactions in fandom have made it clear that no matter how many reminders of my Share Policy I put up, requesting that people ask for permission before reposting or distributing my work in some form (screenshots/audio/otherwise), someone will always ignore it. I'm lucky that no one has tried to take my translation or fanfic and tried to profit from it, which could land me in hot water legally, but I'm making the translation site private as a preventative measure. My fanfic is still up on AO3, though all of it is now archive-locked with comment moderation. I was receiving an increasing number of microaggressive, or just plain aggressive, comments, especially on MDZS fics, which is the reason I haven't been writing anything and have been slow to respond to the lovely, positive comments that I have received.

Will you still be translating?

I will continue to translate MDZS and other Chinese works for my own personal enjoyment and education.

My shoot-for-the-moon dream is to start a small press where I can buy licenses for danmei novels and publish both my translations as well as those of my trusted friends'. Unfortunately, that is not feasible right now for a number of reasons. Maybe one day. <3

Final words

This is a really bittersweet goodbye. As you can tell from previous posts, I was very excited to set up my translation website and share my work with the world. I've put a lot of time, energy, and enthusiasm into setting up the site and completing translations, and I've learned a great deal in doing so. It has been a joy sharing the site, the translations, and progress updates with the fan community, and I wish you all well.

This blog will remain up, but previous posts will be deleted once the site is taken down.

Thank you all for your support and understanding.

-G

[freakytofu]

Using the bathroom in general is a human right and should be enshrined as such and I'm not joking. Too many groups of people are denied bathroom breaks or the use of bathrooms entirely--disabled people, blue-collar workers, children, homeless people, prisoners, students, the elderly. I'm surely missing other groups. Not using the bathroom when needed can cause serious, long-term damage, not to mention death. Free, clean, accessible bathrooms should be available everywhere. It's fucking cruel to deny someone the use of the bathroom, regardless of the reasoning. I'd rather every student in the world goof off and every homeless person make a mess and every worker "steal company time" than let one person suffer because they're denied the right to fucking pee in peace.

[freakytofu]

[ID: a photo of the back of a metal street sign. drawn on the sign in black marker is an illustration of wired earbuds. this drawing is labeled "hedphon." End ID]

can I show u guys my favorite graffiti ever

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I have never read a more excellent article

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Genuinely, big paper mould in the hat that's just too good to be true.

When I see fungibles like this I always platform the gurney into the jumping ghost. Hopefully, this is feasible enough for Big Al to Timothee Chalamet the cat, regardless. Anything to quit the juice.

Good luck, and may the host be swift.

Apparently they're selling post content to train AI now so let us be the first to say, flu nork purple too? West motor vehicle surprise hamster much! Apple neat weed very crumgible oysters in a patagonia, my hat. Very of the and some then shall we not? Much jelly.

[freakytofu]

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

[freakytofu]

girlie that's not a random headache u are dehydrated malnourished over caffeinated over stressed and sleep deprived

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"who radicalized you" ever since i was a child i wanted other people to be treated nicely and fairly because i didnt understand why theyd deserve otherwise and it fills me with disgust seeing how people treat their fellow human beings sometimes

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[freakytofu]

Just this week in games:

- EA laid off 700 workers

- Sony laid of 900 workers

- Rockstar announces in-person work mandates for all employees (a 'soft layoff' that will force some staff to quit, which likely means that actual layoffs are forthcoming)

In 2023 6,000 games workers were laid off. Now in 2024 over 10,000 workers have been laid off, and there's still 10 months to go.

Not to be hyperbolic, but I think this is perhaps the worst year for video games ever if we're measuring by number of layoffs.

[freakytofu]

god can you imagine glados equipped with tiktok therapyspeak. she’d be unbearable

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when i was a kid we only had windows 95 and we had to sharpen the points of our mouse cursors with pocket knives to make them precise enough to click things reliably

[freakytofu]

Smol snippet of Jon Hamm reading the Good Omens excerpt at the The Art of Elysium’s 2024 Heaven Gala, 6.1.2024 :) ❤ (I hope we will get it all one day! :) <3)

Jon: From a little story called Good Omens, The Nice and Accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and our own Neil Gaiman.

The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."

"But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered.

"How?"

"It doesn't matter!"

"It could use a space ship," said the angel.

Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah," he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird—"

"Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about," said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to—" He hesitated.

[freakytofu]

david jenkins only ever wanted 3 seasons.

3 seasons to tell their story.

and even after slashing their budget nearly in half, making them cut the amount of episodes and their runtimes, and having to cut out and rewrite entire storylines, that still wasn��t enough.

fuck you, david zaslav.

[freakytofu]

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A real 3-hit combo of tumblr posts rn