leonidas1754

[leonidas1754]

FYI if your favorite creators start having AI dubbing on their videos - it is now on by default and not everyone bothers to read these emails. So be kind when you let them know it's enabled.

Also FYI you don't have to have any published videos to turn off the auto-dubbing, and when you turn it off, it comes up with a little survey asking you why you don't want to use the auto-dubbing.

Personally, I told them it was because AI translation is a half-baked technology that has actually set the industry back by several years, but I'm sure you can think of your own reasons too.

[leonidas1754]

Best one shot I've ever read lmao

[leonidas1754]

[leonidas1754]

This scientist crafts stunning visual art through chemistry.

[leonidas1754]

“no one’s ever mad at me unless they tell me so” is the best assumption i’ve ever made

[leonidas1754]

This whole thing about scanning your face to prove tour age is making me remember, in 2018 while out in paris we got our wallet stolen during a particularly busy night at a lesbian bar. It was very late and with no money to buy metro tickets we were effectively stranded, but some people helped us and we ended up staying the night at a really sweet older man's place. His face was deeply scarred and he was missing an eye. We chatted on our way and he told me about his life, probably to help calm me down. He explained he had been stuck in a house fire 20 years ago and had had multiple rounds of facial reconstruction and a skin graft, but there's only so much surgery can do so he just learned to live with it. I remember he said he liked the queer bars because they're the only place people don't really stare at him.

At some point I took out my phone, and at the time I was using face unlock. This prompted him to tell me all the ways this technology doesn't work on him. How his phone selfie camera doesn't focus right because it's not a detecting a face. How he had to update his ID the old fashioned way, because the website kept rejecting his photos. And how it was becoming more and more common, and how it was making his life way harder.

This was 7 years ago, and now whenever I see this sort of technology I think of how that guy can't use it. And how house fires are pretty common, and how anything from being born this way to a skin condition to heavy tattooing can probably cause the same issue. Can these people get age verified ? Will they just lose access to all social media, which are increasingly necessary in society, if this becomes the norm ? These are people who are already driven out of public spaces due to how they look, and they're getting pushed out online too all in the interest of companies wanting more money.

[leonidas1754]

for anyone in the UK, needing to access discord and unable or unwilling to provide an ID:

[leonidas1754]

I really think we should stop saying "kid-friendly" and start saying "ad-friendly". We shouldn't indulge these companies and their excuses anymore. I also think that continuing to pretend that this is about "protecting the children" pushes a lot of the blame onto kids and teens, who don't have the political power to push through any of this censorship legislature. Corporations and governments are to blame.

[leonidas1754]

I made a bad comic and now you have to look at it

[leonidas1754]

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

[leonidas1754]

From @hushiesun's tags (under cut bc spoilers):

#the fact that none of the SDU seem to actually try to understand eito #and they just keep him locked up in the cage for all the routes hes kept alive makes me a little sad...

Okay like, in the SDU's defense, I think it's arguable that Eito does this more to himself than they do to him. Eito very much deliberately drives them off with his hostility, and you can't exactly blame them for not trusting him when he consistently is extremely hostile and makes it clear he wants to... Y'know, kill all of humanity, which very much includes them. (There's also every chance that they do try and Takumi doesn't see it, iirc in at least one route the Second Academy kids are noted to have tried talking to Eito themselves despite being told about him.)

That said, I think it's part of what makes the Rebellion Route so good. Eito re-integrates with the others with shocking ease. It's not perfect, and I kinda wish they had more time to go into it, but it always gives me the vibe of like. At the end of the day, they're all in this shitshow together, they're all equals breaking free of what they were created for, and I love that.

I like to HC that in Rebellion Route, either Tsubasa finds the Cognitive Glitch Repair Program when going through Sirei's parts or Yugamu figures out a way to get through Eito's cognitive issues to at least help lessen them and make his life easier.

What's been driving me absolutely bonkers lately is that it's so fucking clear that both Eito and Takumi independently have some massive issues that need genuine help (though Eito's are directly touched upon in the game while Takumi's aren't as much), and they could help each other... If they hadn't been put in a situation where doing so is borderline impossible.

Spoilers, you know the drill, mainly Route 0, 2nd Scenario, SF, Coming of Age.

Look, just. Outright, plainly, Takumi has depression. It's not even subtle and it's been driving me absolutely nuts because I haven't seen anyone else talk about it yet (though tbf I haven't gone looking too hard since I haven't played all the routes).

He has no hobbies. His main interest is sleeping. He has no friends aside from the single one, and it's unclear whether he even cares about his family all that much, as far as I can remember any worry about them barely if ever comes up, it's always Karua. The literal FIRST THING WE SEE ABOUT HIM is that he sleeps in the same clothes he wears daily. He's self-sacrificing and he has absolutely zero confidence in himself or his decisions. He has absolutely nothing but his care for his friends and allies, and for the most part, he's not allowed to have anything more than that. He's so focused on others to the point of it being selfish in its own way, and he can and will destroy himself over and over again if he believes it's needed to help those he cares about.

We see him lean on Eito in Route 0, but honestly, I don't believe it's to the degree everyone else seems to think. To me, it always felt like Takumi and Eito were propping each other up, doing the best they could in the insane and terrible situation they were thrown into. It was a little more give on Eito's side and a little more take on Takumi's, but sometimes relationships are like that, some people have more/bigger needs than others, and that doesn't mean the relationship is inherently bad or unhealthy. It's only amplified as the others start to look to Takumi more and more as a leader figure.

Obviously, it's clear in hindsight that Eito was manipulating Takumi to a degree, but much of Eito's actions are done basically entirely on his own, without manipulating Takumi other than in the sense of having his trust. Destroying Sirei, killing Hiruko, letting Eva escape then killing her, destroying their food supply, even convincing everyone but Takumi (and Nozomi) to give in to V'exhness' false surrender offer (that he wasn't aware was a farce), they were all done by Eito alone.

I think part of the reason people interpret it that way is because of what happens AFTER Route 0. Because the problem ultimately is that Takumi still highly values Eito's friendship, he hasn't magically processed that betrayal in the 5 days between when it happens and when he turns back time, in no small part because he has a lot of other shit to work through as well. And once he turns back time, he gets basically no opportunity to do so. He's immediately forced to choose to either kill or spare Eito, and then Sirei names him leader of the SDU. Takumi's entire focus is on keeping everyone alive. Both the time travel and Sirei effectively isolate him. Of course Eito is still on his mind a lot, of course he mentally references what he thinks Eito would say or do, and of course he misses that friend he'd counted on throughout such a stressful and confusing situation.

Something that also drives me crazy is the way the subject of Eito wanting a cure comes up in the SF route. It just really comes out of almost nowhere, with another timeline's Eito admitting to it because ???????? genuinely why? It would have been incredible to have a route that focused on Takumi doing his best to get close to Eito and truly understand him, gaining his trust and having Eito eventually admit that way that his cognitive distortion has caused him a lot of isolation and pain, and that he wants that human connection more than anything.

Because that's the biggest issue, really, on both sides of it; neither truly get the opportunity to try and understand one another. Takumi doesn't get a chance to process that betrayal and grief, to actually be able to approach Eito with a clearer picture.

To Takumi, everything he knew about Eito was false, and Eito is purely a man of spite and malice due to his cognitive distortion.

He doesn't get the chance to wonder if maybe, just maybe, not all of it was a lie, and that Eito is ultimately just another person with wants and needs and pain, someone who doesn't need to be saved, but to be helped.

And Eito, god, it's more obvious, but I really wanna touch on the fact that despite what he says on day 95, it's pretty clear that he was at least somewhat genuine in Route 0. Yes, he hid his disgust and hatred of humanity, but that doesn't mean he didn't form some level of actual connection with the others, especially Takumi. He just can't admit it because it's dissonant with everything he believes he wants, along with his cognitive distortion making it impossible for him to truly connect in the ways he might want to and the ways he knows would be wanted from him, all tied up with a nice bow of fear of how Takumi might react to learning about said cognitive distortion.

Eito's behavior in the Defense Room on Day 95 reeks of someone putting on an act to convince both themselves and others of something. In Eito's case, if Takumi completely hates him and believes Eito truly never felt any friendship or positive things for Takumi or anyone else, then Eito can shove out any and all doubts from his own mind, all the reasons he might cave to a Takumi that instead tries to plead with him and insist that Eito isn't alone.

Of course, after Route 0, Eito doesn't have that connection with Takumi, there's nothing to pretend isn't there because for him, it's not. His fascination with Takumi is born from Takumi's time travel and that he stopped Eito from destroying Sirei, and likely also how Takumi acts towards him, clearly still feeling the pain of that betrayal.

[[ To preface this next bit, I feel the need to be clear that I think the SF Route sucks as a 'true end', but that's an entire long post all on its own. That said, this next bit is going to be written with the approach of addressing the route as the story is rather than blowing Takumi's behavior off as the hasty and inconsistent writing it feels like ]]

Even in the Coming of Age and SF routes, Takumi isn't allowed to actually connect with Eito in any meaningful way.

In Coming of Age, he suggests the DCRT because he sees it as an opportunity to help Eito. There may be some delusion that he could have his false friend for real this time, but more than anything, it read to me as a genuine desire to rid Eito of the clear problem he has, being that his cognitive distortion prevents him from connecting with others and being happy.

Takumi has no context for how terrible the brainwashing machine is in this timeline, only getting the barest hint of it with Eva, so it never really read to me as "being willing to put Eito through something horrible to get route 0 Eito back" (though that's not something that's necessarily off the table for him, at least in some routes) and more as genuine intent, especially when Eito comes back "cured" and Takumi is clearly weirded out, but accepts it. This Eito isn't the one he had back in Route 0, but it's an Eito who seems to truly be happier, even if he's kind of weird about it.

And in SF, we don't even get that much. They find a potential cure again, but Takumi literally doesn't even get the opportunity to try and get to know Eito as he is because Hiruko uses the brainwashing machine on him. And yes, again, Takumi doesn't really have context for how terrible the machine is, not to mention he's hyper-focused on the lead they have for breaking out of the time loop, so he's willing to simply accept it at face value again.

What both of them need, more than anything, is a genuine, mutually supportive connection. And I truly believe it's something they could find in one another, if circumstances allowed for it.

Takumi needs someone who will help him, yes, but also someone who can get him to push back as well, someone who won't put up with him destroying himself for their sake. Because Takumi will, we see him do it several times over in various routes, and it's in no small part because he is being placed in that position of responsibility without proper support, along with that lack of any motivation outside the lives of his friends and the absence of self-worth.

Eito could support him quite well, if given the room to breathe, if he can let go of the idea of using Takumi as a tool to further his own goals. But he's trapped in a cage, given no compassion by Sirei, and no opportunity to pull himself out of the mental trap he's in: viewing his distorted sight as a gift as the only coping mechanism he has for the isolation it caused and continues to cause him.

Eito needs someone who truly wants to help him, but not diminish him as he so often was in his false childhood memories. Someone who wants to cure his condition because of how it affects him rather than it (mainly) being about them, though it's impossible for there to be no self-interest in such a thing, let alone have Eito believe there isn't.

Takumi may have difficulties dealing with the other members of the SDU at times, but he accepts them as they are, and there's no reason to think he couldn't do the same with Eito given the time to actually process his grief over Eito's betrayal, to find that balance between wanting to help others and respecting both himself and others' strengths and struggles.

They just don't have the opportunity, or rather, Takumi doesn't have the opportunity. They're both open wounds; Takumi is reopened over and over and over again, given no time to heal, while Eito is left to fester without care.

God I just want them to get the help they fucking need.

[leonidas1754]

Hey can someone help me find a specific interaction?

It takes place during the initial hundred days, I think towards the latter half but definitely before day 95. It's a moment where Takumi and Eito are in Takumi's room at night and Takumi says something along the lines of believing Eito would be a good leader/a better leader than Takumi.

(I need the exact lines for a fic because I'm a fool)

[leonidas1754]

"they knew it was wrong, you can tell because they did things to avoid getting in trouble" is such a profoundly terminally neurotypical conclusion to reach and i am sick of seeing it repeated as a truism

[leonidas1754]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[leonidas1754]

Everyone: Please please please don't write your books in Google Docs. Frankly don't use Google Drive for personal stuff.

Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read.

[leonidas1754]

there are some headcanons where it's like. 'i would enjoy this as a light seasoning in fic but certain chunks of the fandom have become more committed to this than the actual canon and made it load-bearing in scenarios where it simply doesn't make sense'.

[leonidas1754]

I was walking through the toy aisle at Target when I found this thing and had a VIOLENT AND IMMEDIATE FLASHBACK to when JP first came out and they had a bunch of REALLY COOL T Rex toys that I would have sold one of my scrawny small-child limbs for but my mother wouldn’t get me one because they were “too violent and also ate people” :(