#I hate what the term 'content creator' has done to people

[sege-h]

Alright I've not stopped thinking about this all day because I'm peeved and I guess I have things to say as someone that has been here long enough that they watched the internet go 'OCs are annoying and cringe' for a few years, enough that it scared a bunch of young artists away from ever making OCs without the fear of looking """cringe"""

If you're not someone's friend/it's not an inside joke it's never okay to go 'Kill that [OC]' especially not when you go '[not joking]' at the end of it

That's someone's little guy (gender neutral) that they've made. Something creative they've shared with the world.

Yes you're allowed to find something annoying but like. When you very publicly go 'I think this is annoying' you're telling the someone that made it 'you and this thing that brings you joy are annoying'

You are not critiquing anything by doing this- No one asked you to, and Sonic OCs aren't like a show or a comic anyone can watch and give their negative thoughts on. You're just being a jerk. OCs can be so personal and you never know whose day you might be ruining by basically going 'I hate that you're having fun, I find it and your OC annoying'

Maybe it's a budding artist

Maybe it's someone whose day was already bad

Maybe it's someone whos dealing with insecurity in their work and your words will be the breaking point that makes them quit or makes them too anxious to keep doing something for years to come

Can you tell that last one happened to me once? Lmao

The Sonic OC Tournament was so civil and that's because everyone in that tournament understands what it's like to make an OC and share it with the world. Nobody wants to go 'youre annoying, your OC should get killed in this poll' to someone else, because they understand how rude that is

People are campaigning for that OC to win a general Sonic tournament? GOOD. They're having fun! What do you expect them to do? Go 'hey everyone vote for literally anyone else but my OC, i hate them'????

When you have negative thoughts on someone having fun without hurting anyone, keep them to yourself. Or hell, maybe you have a friend that's also negative, feel free to DM each other over it instead of saying it where the artists can see. Again, the artists of a personal OC, not some piece of media that's free to critique.

I've been in this fandom for a long time. And trust me, if this is you, if you find yourself acting like this. Work on it. Grow into someone better. Because you don't wanna be the person whose impact on someone's time in fandom was 'that one jerk weirdo'

Me and the friends I've grown up along with in this fandom remember all the good times- the time someone did fanart of our OCs unprompted, the times people were nice to us, the times anyones commented so much as a 'hey! I like your fanfic/OCs!' and even though it's been years, we remember the names of the people that made fandom good for us!

But we also remember the jerks. But not their names. They're just a 'hey remember that one time this weirdo said my OC sucks?' or 'hey remember that jerk that kept insisting to critique my art even though no one asked?'

They're nameless, tiny black smudges on our experiences in fandom, people we decided to stay away from going forward. And you don't wanna be that.

I guess all I'm saying is, please learn how to act around people online. We're here to have fun, not put on a show for someone else. We're people, not content machines for you to either show amusement or disdain towards. Someone/something someone made as a fan annoys you? Stay away from it then, and don't kick someone for having fun with the characters they made

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Have you ever felt the fanbase itself has become too crowded with people who act like they "know better" then the show?

I've noticed this, specially with artist, that while they claim they're "fixing designs", most either "over-complicate" the designs (Despite them looking good) but they also seem to have a little arrogant over it.

I don't hate redesigns, that's not what I'm saying, but seeing people claim they're "better" or are "fixing" designs while over-complicating a design that's supposed to be "simple".

This is a complex question because fan content that attempts to re-imagine some part of canon has traditionally always been called "fix it" content. The term "fix it" has also always been treated pretty neutrally in fan spaces. Traditionally speaking, saying something is a "fix it fic" just means that the fic is directly addressing canon in a way that other works don't. It's the creator saying, "I want to give you a different take on something that canon did." That take usually exists because the creator doesn't like something in canon, but at the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean that the creator thinks that canon should or even could have done the fix. It just means that they want to share their ideal take on the idea.

Because I come to fandom with that history in mind, I don't see a statement like "fixing Ladybug's design" and interpret that to mean, "This is how the show should have designed her as I've taken into account all of the concerns that one must address in animation." I interpret that to mean, "I wasn't a fan of Ladybug's design, so I did my own take on her," because that is traditionally what "fix it" was shorthand for. It's not a technical evaluation or competitive standing. It's a genre.

This history seems to be ignored in parts of the Miraculous fandom and that completely threw me off when I entered the fandom. It still throws me off! I have no idea what's going on around here!

While many Miraculous fans are using "fix it" in the traditional sense, there also seem to be groups that see "fix it" as some sort of direct letter to the writers/designers showing them what they should have done. To add further complications, one sub group of Miraculous fans is USING "fix it" in that context, which is an issue I will get to in a minute. The other sub group is INTERPRETING the words "fix it" in that context and I can't change that. I can just tell you that this is straight up bizarre to me because what are you supposed to label fix it content if we can't use the words "fix it"? Why are you ignoring decades of fandom history? You are reading way too much into those words!

I don't know if it's because Miraculous skews younger or if it's because of fandom drama that predates my entry to the fandom (I'm a COVID convert, so I didn't get here until after season 3) or if I've just been lucky in the past, but both the reverence and the hatred towards Miraculous canon is highly unusual compared to what I've seen in other fandoms. I'm more used to fanworks having a tone of loving irreverence or mild annoyance where canon is seen as a series of optional writing prompts that you can do with what you will. The reason for that tone has a lot to do with the fact that it's wildly unfair to compare canon to fanon, especially when it comes to visual media.

The fun of fandom spaces is that we can create without the limits that stifle professional productions. It doesn't matter if our stories are marketable or if the designs we come up with fit a theoretical budget or if we only produce a new chapter/drawing once a year. This means that, yes, fan works often have the ability to surpass canon! At the same time, it's rarely fair to make that comparison on a technical/competitive level. I will criticize Miraculous for many things, but here are some of really basic challenges that the show writers face that I - a fanfic writer - never will:

I can use as many sets as I want, the writers are limited to the settings that have been animated

I can make my stories as long or as short as they need to be, the writers have to make the story episodic enough to fit a 20-minute run time while also drawing things out for at least 8 seasons

I can write a story that doesn't have an akuma attack, the show has a very clear rule that every episode needs to contain a fight sequence

I can put the characters in whatever outfit I want, the writers cannot because every outfit needs to be animated

I can take my time plotting out my story from start to finish and even go back and edit things if I feel like it, the writers have hard deadlines and things get set in stone very quickly

The list goes on, but it can be summed up to: as an independent creator, I can do anything I can imagine. I am only limited by my own talent. Meanwhile, the writers of an animated show for kids have to follow very strict guidelines due to things beyond their control such as budget concerns and network rating guidelines. We are not the same. You should not compare us on a technical level.

This is where we circle back to the whole "using fix it as a way to directly criticize canon and show the creators what they should have done" thing. That's not a take that I'm ever going to be comfortable with because fix it content rarely tries to fit the same confines or deal with the same instability that canon is subjected to. If you use fix it like that, then you are taking the concept too far. You're also being quite arrogant.

If I see someone do this, I tend to assume that they're pretty young or that, at the very least, they know absolutely nothing about how TV shows work. What you see on the screen is often not what the creator would have given you under ideal circumstance. Some of the best examples of this come from times when a creator was given pretty ideal conditions only to then have less than ideal conditions when the property was revisited as that highlights that you really can't just blame the writers. The most well known examples that come to mind are Avatar the Last Airbender vs its sequel Korra and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings vs his Hobbit movies.

For a really in depth discussion of LotR vs The Hobbit, you can go watch Lindsay Ellis' fantastic documentary for free on youtube. For this post, I'll just go into the high level stuff of Avatar vs Korra.

Avatar asked for three seasons and magically got three seasons. Korra was supposed to be a 13-episode miniseries, but was expanded to four seasons after season one was done. The show then had budget cuts that messed with the last season due to poor performance. Shockingly, Avatar was the better show. I wonder why? Just imagine what Korra could have been if it had been given four seasons from the start!

At the very least, I can guarantee you that writers wouldn't have ended all of season one's plot lines in the season one finale, leaving them to start from scratch with season two which is generally considered the worst season. Once again, I wonder why?

Because of all that, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a fix it fic out there that takes all of Korra and reworks it to make everything flow better. I wouldn't even be surprised if I find that fic to be better than canon because the fic was only limited by the writer's talent. On the other hand, the actual show was massively limited by things beyond the writers' control, meaning that it's overall quality issues are less a condemnation of the writers and more a representation that even awesome writers can't perfectly adjust on the fly when networks meddle.

Of course, Korra doesn't have extremely fundamental writing flaws like Miraculous does, but the principle remains the same. I can point out Miraculous' flaws with certainty, but I cannot necessarily fix them with certainty. That's assuming too much.

But there are different types of criticism and different ways of engaging with the source material. What I do on this blog is mostly focused on high level discussion of the show's flaws and spit balling ways to fix them without really committing to anything. I'm not telling you how the show should have been written. I'm just pointing out flaws and talking about the things I think the writers could have changed or accounted for, though it is always possible that I'm wrong and this was caused by something outside of the writing circle.

That's why I rarely mention anyone by name. I cannot point a finger and say "this is the person who ruined Lila's potential and this is why they did it." I can just tell you that Lila was poorly executed when she didn't need to be. I don't want you to send this blog to the writers, but generally speaking, it is the kind of feedback that I'd be comfortable giving them if they hired me as an editor or script doctor. When I act in those roles, I'm much nicer than I am on here because I know that the writer will actually read what I say, but I am just as brutal about pointing out flaws because that's what I signed on to do. I'm not here to stroke your ego, I'm here to work with you and help you improve your story.

When I write fix it fics - and I have several - I am engaging in a very different type of criticism. I'm not discussing specific flaws in canon and telling you how to address them within the limits of the show. Instead, I'm giving you my ideal version of a given concept from the show so that you can hopefully enjoy it and maybe even use to find some catharsis for a thing that you also didn't like. I'll also change things about the show just to keep things interesting or to be highly self indulgent. For example, I avoid umbrella scenes in my stuff even though I think that the canon umbrella scenes are cute and well written. It's because they're so iconic that I do something different! Why revisit them when I have nothing to add? I'd just be copy canon! It's more fun to do something new since there are other ways to have Marinette and Adrien fall in love.

It's a very nuanced type of criticism because it's true that these stories only exists because I'm saying that canon did something wrong and I want to show you how it could have been better. But I'm also not limiting myself to the confines of canon or even just improving canon to make my argument, so it's impossible to compare them on a technical level. That's not why I write fix it fic, though. I have this blog so that I can discuss writing concepts and how to learn from Miraculous' failures. I write fix it fics to have fun and indulge my imagination. For example, I have a fic that's basically my ideal take on Chat Blanc and there's no way that would work in the context of canon. In the context of canon, I'd suggest far more minor changes or even tell them to scrap the episode all together.

Be it fix it content or more high level critical analysis like I do on this blog, it's important to remember that canon isn't going to change. Even if we could sit the writers down and convince them of everything that they did wrong and everything that they should do to fix it, they can't actually enact those changes. The story is already out there and time machines aren't a thing. But that's not what fandom content is about. Blogs like this are for people who enjoy thinking about stories critically and discussing how and why they fail. Good fix it content is all about saying, "I didn't like canon and think it would be better if X happened" or even "I liked canon, but got this idea about how it could be different" and then sharing the idea with other fans. This is because any and all fan content is for the fans (and former fans), not the creators.

So yes, I think it's valid to make fan content that "improves" canon. I even think it's valid to compare it to canon in a casual manner as that's just a natural thing that humans do. Give me two versions of something and I will automatically compare them and probably even pick a favorite. The thing that you need to be careful about, the nuance that you have to keep in mind, is that fandom is a casual space to have fun with other fans and to create whatever our talents will allow us to create. When we use terms like "fix it" or say that we like something better than canon, that context needs to be kept in mind. I will never be concerned by a reader telling me that they liked one of my stories more than they liked canon or that they wish that canon had also included a concept I've played with. That's just a statement of preference. I only get concerned when I get comments about how "the writers should read this so they can learn from you" because I didn't write it to teach them. I wrote it to have fun with my fellow fans and that is true for every bit of fandom content I produce.

I know that was long, but hopefully it answered your question? My main draw to fandom spaces is fix it content, so this is something I'm pretty passionate about. If I think that a piece of media is perfect, then I don't seek out fan content for it. I only join fandoms on those rare occasions when media hits that sweet spot of good enough to grab my attention, but bad enough/lacking something to not fully satisfy me.

[abschaumno1]

How Not To Distance Yourself From Fandom Drama As A Youtuber

Hi,

this is addressing what Scott Smajor said on stream regarding recent twitter harrassment of Ecto. I will preempt this by saying that I have known Ecto for a few years now and I support them. I think I have made my stance on "problematic content" and antis clear in the past, but to summarise: I am against censorship and harrassment. People can and should create whatever they want. If someone has an issue with what they make they should block and move on.

With that out of the way, what did Smajor actually say?

If you don't want to go to TikTok to hear it here's a transcript:

“If you don’t know what this is about, that is fine, you can stay not knowing. But if you do, this is me mentioning it, okay? I’m gonna do it. So. I’m going to try keep this short and simple, as I just want to clear some stuff up, I do not support proshipping. And until yesterday, I had no idea what proshipping was. Um, after last MCC, I removed, uh, Twitter from my phone, and I would only use it if I was on my laptop while I was travelling to VidCon and visiting [?]. So, on Saturday I was packing up my stuff and I checked Twitter before I shut off my laptop and noticed that an artist I followed, um, was receiving death threats and hate. And, me, not knowing fully what was going on, I shot them a DM along the lines of ‘sorry you’re getting hate’. Um, and then I logged out and flew home [?]. That was my mistake, as I should not have said anything without fully reading what was going on. Um, I’d just seen someone upset and wanted to help. After I got home and found out what was happening, I realised that people were saying that my DM meant I supported it, again, I do not. Um, I immediately unfollowed the artist, and have since told them that I do not- I did not realise the full degree of what had happened. Um, since this, I have made the decision to step away from Twitter, really. Um, I’m gonna do my best not to log in to look at it, um, or if you, or someone you know, is affected by this stuff, please do find the help you need, and take steps, uh, to protect your own mental well-being, like I am. Um, I would also like to say that my boundaries, um, with fanart and such has changed, and I am no longer okay with NSFW art of me or my characters. Um, and, that is the last I am going to talk on this subject. — As I said, chat, if you don’t know what it is, or what’s going on, enjoy the ignorance, enjoy the bliss. Just, you don’t need to know anything, nothing else is happening here, we’re not talking about it, we’re not going to be answering questions in chat, that’s it. Done."

(See also this twitter thread)

I'm not gonna inspect every word in that tbh and I've talked extensively about what I think of creator boundaries in fandom before so I'll spare you guys that. But there are a few points I want to address.

"And until yesterday, I had no idea what proshipping was."

I will say that I have no idea how the term was explained to him or where he got his definition from. I do know there are various definitions floating around the internet, often biased in their approach. It might be that he got one of the definitions that was heavily biased towards the anti side. I won't judge him for that. The internet, and this discourse in particular is hard enough to navigate for someone who knows their way around it.

I will also acknopwledge that it might be hard for an outsider to understand any of it in the first place.

Which is why I think the statement "I do not support proshipping" is not the statement to make in this situation. This is not a discussion he has any experience with. And I am perfectly aware of how loud antis can get, particularly on twitter. This should not be a statement. Not just because I disagree with it. He is entitled to his opinion, as am I to my own. But because as a youtuber or any other celebrity or creative, you have to realise where your space ends and fandom begins and you have to realise that fandom will have its own rules and discussions and terms.

Honestly, it's like walking into a foreign country, reading one newspaper and starting to make statements about their politics. It can and will go wrong.

Here's the thing. If you truly think you have to make a statement addressing this particular issue, while completely ignoring any other criticims thrown at you by a lot of the same people who are saying a lot of things about this, try and make an informed statement. And maybe think about the message your sending to your viewers.

Ecto received harrassment, suicide bait, death threads, and got doxxed on top of it all. I would think someone who's been on the receiving end of harrassment the way Scott has been would at the very basic least be able to address that.

Instead, what he actually said amounts to "I don't support them. I wash my hands of all of it. I don't care what you guys do with them."

At best the harrassers will feel vindicated and quiet down. At worst he just enabled them to find their next targets.

I don't think it matters what he (or anyone else really) thinks about the content that Ecto was harrassed over. No one has to like it. But that does not mean there should be any doubt about the fact that harrassment and doxxing are wrong and that there should be no space for that. Not suppporting someone is one thing. Being someone with a platform who makes a statement like this, effectively giving in to people who have harrassed someone with a vastly smaller platform, without even mentioning that the harrassment is not okay, is a very different thing.

I understand that Scott might also be trying to protect his own mental health. I understand his history with twitter. But I will say that telling affected people to "take steps to protect your own mental well-being" is not the statement I personally think he should be making. I guess we'll just leave everything to the loudest, worst people then instead of even pretending what they're doing is not okay.

Hands down, the statement he made feels very much like he's saying "but surely the leopards won't eat my face". It's only been a day and MCC teams were released. The leopards on twitter are eating his face once again. And I wager I am not the only one out there who now knows that a youtuber we enjoyed watching would rather side with people who send death threats and doxx others than their victims.

[xerith-42]

Actually legit not even a joke I think I sit in my home and think about C!Dream and everything he could've been at least once per day. It's such a frequent train of thought for me I've gone down so many times and I always end up somewhere new and beautiful.

(also I'm gonna call the character Dream and refer to the content creator as Clay cause I hate typing out the tags before hand)

Cause like. Listen. A character like Dream can really work in any story if handled right. And he really could have worked in the SMP as a force of unrecognized unmitigated chaos with seemingly no end or way to control it. He did do that for a while but there was something externally, something outside of the narrative that never let his arc be realized.

While a lot of stuff influenced DSMP arcs in weird ways outside of the narrative (scheduling, drama, literally not knowing where the story was going), the worst offender has to be how much potential Dream could have had if Clay was willing to let go of his ego and be cyber bullied more.

Okay hear me out--

Dream is an asshole. We can all agree on this, right? He sucks, he's a shitty person who did awful things for seemingly no reason, a mad man desperately holding onto power and control because it's all he has in a world literally of his own making. The key to having a character who sucks this hard in your story is to have them be properly humbled.

The issue is that Clay, almost as a reflection of his character, refused to be humble. He seemingly always had to be in the right, his character always had to have a way out of situations, and if we take his word on it, Dream planned out everything.

But that's just. Not entertaining.

You wanna know what is entertaining?

Techno bullying Dream.

I'm so serious when I say the Prison Podcast might be my favorite individual DSMP stream. Dream keeps always trying to hold onto power both physically and psychologically, and it keeps failing because Techno is right there, being stronger than him in both regards without even trying.

When Dream is always beating everyone down and making them miserable we need scenes of the same happening to him and the only character to ever do that was Techno. Techno was so good at bullying Dream that 80% of their interactions were just him bulling Dream. Which is a needed contrast to show that as much of a manipulative little fuck Dream is, he's not immune to the very torment he puts others through.

He too is not above judgment, and the person judging him has kicked his ass in the past that he's known as one of the few people who's ever defeated Dream and considered his top competitor. And the best part is that Techno doesn't care even a little! He bullies Dream like it's breathing because Dream really is that easy to ridicule the minute he doesn't have power over someone.

Dream's such a loser that it's always fun to watch someone clown on him. The DSMP needed more moments where Techno or even other characters got to absolutely clown on Dream unchallenged. It would make his antics far more bearable and also his constant need to push against Techno's bullying is a revealing thing about his character but that's a whole other post.

Needless to say, Dream being bullied would be beneficial to the SMP also in terms of balancing out the comedy. Dream, despite being really funny sometimes, has a hard time being comedic once he starts being taken so fuckin seriously all the time. And his actions carry weight, I don't want to diminish that, I just want someone in the story to belittle him for everything he's ever done.

But I mean... We all know Clay wasn't going to let too much of that happen. Which is a damn shame.

Shout out to the timeline where the prison podcast was actually a subathon that went on until Phil checked on the stream and let Techno out of prison, I hope you guys know how good you have it.

[melyzard]

I was wondering if you have resources on how to explain (in good faith) to someone why AI created images are bad. I'm struggling how to explain to someone who uses AI to create fandom images, b/c I feel I can't justify my own use of photoshop to create manips also for fandom purposes, & they've implied to me they're hoping to use AI to take a photoshopped manip I made to create their own "version". I know one of the issues is stealing original artwork to make imitations fast and easy.

Hey anon. There are a lot of reasons that AI as it is used right now can be a huge problem - but the easiest ones to lean on are:

1) that it finds, reinforces, and in some cases even enforces biases and stereotypes that can cause actual harm to real people. (For example: a black character in fandom will consistently be depicted by AI as lighter and lighter skinned until they become white, or a character described as Jewish will...well, in most generators, gain some 'villain' characteristics, and so on. Consider someone putting a canonically transgender character through an AI bias, or a woman who is not perhaps well loved by fandom....)

2) it creates misinformation and passes it off as real (it can make blatant lies seem credible, because people believe what they see, and in fandom terms, this can mean people trying to 'prove' that the creator stole their content from elsewhere, or allow someone to create and sell their own 'version' of content that is functionally unidentifiable from canon

3) it's theft. The algorithm didn't come up with anything that it "makes," it just steals some real person's work and then mangles is a bit before regurgitating it with usually no credit to the original, actual creator. (In fandom terms: you have just done the equivalent of cropping out someone else's watermark and calling yourself the original artist. After all, the AI tool you used got that content from somewhere; it did not draw you a picture, it copy pasted a picture)

4) In some places, selling or distributing AI art is or may soon be illegal - and if it's not illegal, there are plenty of artists launching class action lawsuits against those who write the algorithm, and those who use it. Turns out artists don't like having their art stolen, mangled, and passed off as someone else's. Go figure.

Here are some articles that might help lay out more clear examples and arguments, from people more knowledgeable than me (I tried to imbed the links with anti-paywall and anti-tracker add ons, but if tumblr ate my formatting, just type "12ft.io/" in front of the url, or type the article name into your search engine and run it through your own ad-blocking, anti tracking set up):

These fake images reveal how AI amplifies our worst stereotypes [Source: Washington Post, Nov 2023]

Humans Are Biased; AI is even worse (Here's Why That Matters) [Source: Bloomburg, Dec 2023]

Why Artists Hate AI Art [Source: Tech Republic, Nov 2023]

Why Illustrators Are Furious About AI 'Art' [Source: The Guardian, Jan 2023]

Artists Are Losing The War Against AI [Source: The Atlantic, Oct 2023]

This tool lets you see for yourself how biased an AI can be [Source: MIT Technology Review, March 2023]

Midjourney's Class-Action lawsuit and what it could mean for future AI Image Generators [Source: Fortune Magazine, Jan 2024]

What the latest US Court rulings mean for AI Generated Copyright Status [Source: The Art Newspaper, Sep 2023]

AI-Generated Content and Copyright Law [Source: Built-in Magazine, Aug 2023 - take note that this is already outdated, it was just the most comprehensive recent article I could find quickly]

AI is making mincemeat out of art (not to mention intellectual property) [Source: The LA Times, Jan 2024]

Midjourney Allegedly Scraped Magic: The Gathering art for algorithm [Source: Kotaku, Jan 2024]

Leaked: the names of more than 16,000 non-consenting artists allegedly used to train Midjourney’s AI [Source: The Art Newpaper, Jan 2024]

[1800duckhotline]

im new here and missed your bg3 phase entirely can i hear what makes the game so sucks for you (or ill go look in the tag! fine too). i love to hear people bitchin about games everybody else doesnt wanna criticize

omg hello... first of all welcome to my twisted mind etc. my blog is an array of a completely random agglomeration of interests so im sorry if i shift from posting from x to y at the speed of light LMFAO. my bg3 obsession phase was definitely a strange exception but i guess it is what it is

and def i can give u the sparknotes version of my criticisms for the game, which are both rational and not and you're free not to agree and so forth, i'm just one guy expressing an opinion which i think i'm entitled to since i've played this game for over 200 hours almost i am fairly sure. i was not okay.

obviously i'll be mentioning spoilers fyi. i got long here but i promise this is just the Resume of my actual opinions

i hate the fact everyone sounds british except minsc or jaheira. i just dont like it. like a few characters here and there its nothing that bothers me but i'm tired of british accents in fantasy media. it makes things more of a snoozefest

for a game that prides itself on characters being reactive and interactable (esp companions) more often than not the companions reactions have been disappointingly lackluster and straight up Sad because they're so Nothing. i.e. durge reveal

i think not having tav/durge voiced was stupid. my onion!

the game is not as revolutionary as people make it out to be when it comes to character design and good lord the character creator to me is offensive. the companions are all EXTREMELY SAFE when it comes to 'conventional beauty standards', and while i'm not surprised nor did i expect any less, the lack of body diversity to me is just so... boring. it's so nothingburger. like i love projecting hcs and shit but i wish i didn't have to do that

wyll having so little in terms of content and writing and reactions in the game compared to astarion (and let's also say shadowheart bc on a technical level she's the second favorite of larian) is genuinely the worst thing to me because his concept is charming and interesting and larian just decided to do nothing with him. players that are black and/or poc obviously have said this a trillion times, i'm just echoing the sentiment because i also hate how blatant it is, esp when i read up and watched how he used to be in EA. like not to say the writing there was stellar but he had dimension. larian just does not give a fuck abt him and it is irritating lmao, esp since astarion has tangentially 0 actual involvement with the game's main plot in his arc WHILE WYLL LITERALLY GETS HIS ARC SIDELINED BY THE EMPEROR I FUCKING HATE THAT STUPID TURN OF EVENTS SO MUCH

act 1 is probably the best optimized out of all the acts, with the optimization being probably up to midway of act 2. then it alllllll goes downhill. i said it so much but i never get tired of saying it: act 3 is so poorly organized, so many good ideas all smushed together in an indigestible slog of an act with too many quests flattened in one single serving making it so fucking hard to want to get it done. which is awful, because a lot of poignant plot events and fights happen in act 3. i'm still of the firm belief they should've made an act 4. considering this ties in with the aforementioned issue where wyll was supposed to get more content... and it got cut out 'for time'.

i fucking hate astarion fans. i trust like 2 people that do like him. i genuinely was so indifferent to him in the game. like he's fine as a character. i just dont like him much because of the fans. Again ties in with the wyll issues too because people love to pretend astarion would be in wyll's place in the dancing scene when astarion would call you slurs and kill you if he could

also like think what you will of minthara but i think it's criminal that she's a companion and alongside wyll is left to rot at the bottom of the game's code. it's definitely more egregious for wyll imo but like. idk i also am not a fan of this esp since i discovered halsin was added as a companion because THE FANS begged them to. seething

again, there's people more well equipped to discuss this and i did reblog and share posts abt this before on my main account but the embarrassing fantasy racism is there and it's an innate problem of dnd. i think it should be mentioned and kept in mind regardless if it's done well or not (which i don't think it was).

this is less abt the game itself and more abt the fandom but i genuinely cannot fucking stand people who are so aggressive at users who have sexuality headcanons for some of the characters of the game. i've seen people have SO much fucking vitriol towards lesbians having lesbian hcs, specifically, gee i wonder why. this hasn't happened to Me but i have witnessed it.

i think that's more or less the Issues i have with bg3. you're free to ask anything in specific but like... i dont hate the game. or i wouldnt have played it so much. but it should not have been GOTY to me. sorry. like there's so much i just think is wrong... but im just one guy.

i usually prefer completely different types and genres of games, so obviously i'll be more dissecting towards a game i tried out of curiosity and Liked, but with many grievances. the type of stuff i usually like is also far from perfect but i judge a lot of those things in bg3 because of how the game presents itself as in advertisement and social media posts, as well as just like, the steam page. i have plans in the future to try similar games to bg3 to see if it's a common problem within that genre or if it's the black sheep (for me) but for now it is how it is

anyways i did also like a lot of parts of the game, it's just, i can't really reccomend it without mentioning what i didn't like you know?

[thestarseersystem]

honest to god im so tired. no matter what your criticisms are of a system online, you should not accuse them of ableist things or demonize their disorder. Or just diagnose people with disorders on the internet.

I have always hated this dumb bitch ass youtuber, and I like DissociaDID, sure they've got into drama and given misinformation the past, but they also went through a lot of severe harassment and hatred that they did not deserve. And this STUPID person is STILL making videos online and they're so unequivocally false that its not even funny.

Like, DissociaDID has LITERALLY SAID MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!!! MULTIPLE TIMES, that do NOT let their littles on their channel, and if it does happen, it's rare. Its really depressing that this dumbass mf makes up lies and distorts the truth about a very popular system in the internet sphere.

Back to the pathological liar thing, ANYONE who uses the term "narcissistic" to mean "bad person" is just an ableist. So, if you see an online denouncing of a popular creator, and they call them a sociopath, a psychopath, a narcissist, etc. thats just a sure fire way to know that they do not know what they are talking about and have taken it into bad faith.

I'm just honestly violently disgusted about this sort of behavior, and it sucks, because I found out that I was a system because of DissociaDID, and the fact that people assume that they're faking because of whatever the fuck is cruel and horrible.

I've been afraid to talk about this because I remember the drama surrounding DissociaDID, but I have never thought that they were lying. You shouldn't ever fakeclaim people on the internet, you don't know their story, you don't know what their life is like, you don't know what they went through.

Horrible ableists like Michelle Mana and other ableist drama youtubers don't deserve to have a platform. Don't support these people, don't watch their videos, don't actively seek them out or comment. It's not worth it.

I just want to bring attention to this specifically, because this horrible person is still making videos on this stuff, and it shows that these ableists do not see people with DID as people. They do not see mentally ill people as people. They do not see those with stigmatized disorders, such as personality disorders, as people. Because otherwise, they would not fakeclaim or see NPD as the worst thing.

No matter what big systems have done, it doesn't mean they deserve to be harassed or attacked on the internet. I don't want to see this shit when I search up a youtuber or creator that I like. I know it's lies, because if it was anything substantial, it would be addressed. But it's the same old shit again.

Fuck ableist content creators, we don't need this sort of blatant bigotry. Don't support this shit, no matter your criticisms of those involved.

[hanasnx]

some updates while i’m here. i miss you! whether you’re a casual enjoyer of my blog & i see you in my notes, or my mutuals, or my followers, i’ve been thinking of you :) rare vulnerable moment i do cherish this blog and all your well wishes. thank you very much. i was right, typing is a huge strain and taking a break has been very good for my hands, so i’m going to keep at it.

some things:

don’t be afraid to keep sending me asks! they’re a great joy to me, i love seeing a notif in the inbox. i’ve gotten a fair few already that i’m excited to respond to when i can come back.

i did post a fred weasley drabble and not that i have to explain myself but i wanted to say i’ve been watching the harry potter movies. i’ve never seen them in their entirety, and the earlier ones have always been christmas movies in my house so to speak so i figured id give them a fair shot. i did read the books, and i’ve seen bits and pieces of the movies (hence my interest in fred weasley when i was a tween, but seeing him again made me wanna write for him for the first time in years)

also! a very kind anon told me earlier that my response to someone wrongfully making an ai chat bot of my content was an overreaction. it was “not that deep,” i believe was the colloquial term used. so the inherent content theft of ai invading free creative spaces is solved everyone! well done! very special thanks to the anon that let me know i was overreacting towards something i am passionate about and had a strong feeling towards! wow :) i never would’ve seen it like that. genuinely i am sorry anon that you’re ugly irl and your mommy doesn’t love you, which is why you feel like you can’t have a backbone over certain things. maybe you should stop consuming the free content creators provide on tumblr because you feel so secure in criticizing the selfless service <3 it’s giving: “im an old bigot that thinks ppl must be talentless and stupid when they work at mcdonald’s, but i’m still going to eat the food from there.” you’ve been blocked btw so you’re not offended by my use of free will when making free content on the internet for your grubby little hands to get a hold of and your smooth brain to criticize my right to share my personal opinions.

because the internet is the way it is, getting “hate” online has never really bothered me since i’ve always been a person with a large enough platform for years. it’s very easy for me to ignore and block and never answer whoever has decided to send some worthless hate message. which is probably why i almost never get hate anymore but it does happen occasionally. this was different since it wasn’t an attack on me per se, more so someone trying to admonish me for having a fair reaction towards something offensive. so i’m here to tell you it’s alright to treat strangers on the internet as strangers. you’re allowed to reinforce boundaries. you’re allowed to tell people you do not appreciate their actions towards you, and don’t leave room for argument. i am a very direct person, which means i told that person firmly that they needed to delete that ai chat bot they made of my au without my consent. and i did it without remorse. and i was told “it wasn’t that deep.” well it was. and it is. it is that deep because it’s deep to me, and i know it’s something that happens to others and it is that deep to them too. so what’s the problem in it being that deep? there is none :) let things be deep. be sincere. it is very important.

also if you make ai chat bots without creator’s consent when using their content you’re a piece of shit and doing a disservice to the very person you’re trying to exalt. take a step back and reevaluate how ai harms your interests rather than progresses them as well as the creators you claim your respect and cherish. you’re a victim of propaganda, my friend! and i prolly wouldn’t have made this post if anon hadn’t said anything. so maybe they should’ve kept their mouth shut since they didn’t wanna see shit like this so bad lmfao

now that that’s out of the way, i am sending wet fat sloppy kisses to everyone’s lips tell me when you receive them

[duran-duran-less-official]

Ok ngl the fact that you refuse to watch the video before making an opinion on it strikes me as anti-intellectual. The video gives a very clear list of things to look out for for future instances of plagiarism and discusses why plagiarism (especially the plagiarism Somerton was doing which included stealing and harassing other smaller lgbt creators when they spoke up about it) is such a problem and how it’s easy to forget to check sources or think critically when it’s packaged in a well produced video like the ones he made.

I was not a Somerton fan (I bounced off his videos since they couldn’t hold my interest) but you have to understand he scammed a lot of people out of money while positioning himself as the True Queer Authority while spreading misinformation. Of course people are angry.

And were hbomb and todd just supposed to keep quiet about the fact that he was plagiarizing and spreading misinformation? If not for those videos, he would’ve kept scamming people. He was causing harm, and in an attention based job like this, the only way to stop them is to deplatform them. How else were they supposed to spread the word? Genuinely interested in how you think it should’ve been handled.

My guiding principle here is that when someone does a bad thing, the response to that should be proportional to the badness of the thing that was done.

The problem with HBomber as a handler of this kind of controversy is that he has no apparent upper limit on the number of hours he's willing to spend on this. And as I highlighted in an earlier post, he seems to treat any one thing he finds bad as equally bad as all the other things he talks about. I think it might be a consequence of the way his videos are formatted, and it all adds up to being disproportionate by definition.

Consider: If it's worth spending two hours talking in general terms about how plagiarism on Youtube is a pervasive problem, which I have little reason to doubt, why is it worth spending another two hours calling out one specific guy who does this thing that apparently a lot of people do? Does James McBlandname also kick puppies and protest against Planned Parenthood in his spare time? Like, the impression I get from that split is that one guy's acts of plagiarism are considered equally as bad as every other act of plagiarism on Youtube put together. And I'm sorry, I simply don't believe that any amount of plagiarism from one guy can be that morally bad.

As I said, this is a failing of HBomber's format, and the end result is that James Blanderson kind of... takes the fall for every Youtuber who has ever plagiarised. Is he worthy of derision? Yes, absolutely. Is he worthy of personally being a scapegoat for the entire Youtube plagiarism industry? There's practically no way that can be true.

It kinda makes me wish and hope that I never jumped on the Tommy Tallerico hate bandwagon—I legit don't remember if I ever have. But the same principle applies. Do intellectual property rights and their various abuses suck? No doubt. Does Tommy Tallerico deserve to be an icon of that particular sin when, say, the entire Microsoft corporation exists? Maybe not.

The question is, why single one guy out at all? Especially if it's a pervasive problem! If you're gonna go down the route of Prestige More-Than-Movie-Length Callout Post, the net result from that is you've entirely obliterated the online presence of one guy. Have you actually solved the problem? Even if the General portion of the video does the smart things, like tell viewers which genres of content farm are especially susceptible to this, or advising them how to spot when content might have been plagiarised as you're watching it, are people talking about that? Or are they talking about the one guy the other half of the video was about? What is your net impact here, and could it maybe be improved by cutting the video down to 30 minutes and being a bit more general?

All this doesn't even touch on how morally bad plagiarism is. Like it IS bad, sure, but there's degrees of badness. If you remember illuminaughtii's defining toxic trait as plagiarism, when in fact she was also very likely guilty of workplace bullying and financial/verbal abuse, then something has gone very wrong. I understand that this is Youtube, so the value of Content is at a premium, but maybe that means their own moral compasses have been warped, naturally treating plagiarism as considerably worse than the average person would or perhaps should. This is part of the point of me saying you aren't a Youtuber's foot soldier! They decided to make Youtube their lives, but you don't have to!

[utilitycaster]

OGL 1.2 summary

Finally have had a chance to look through properly. I do strongly suggest following people like Gabe Hicks and James Haeck, who are game designers with extensive experience working with WoTC but neither of whom are currently employed by them; Hicks also has done extensive design on other TTRPGs (as showcased in Dimension 20's Shriek Week; they are also a developer for Motherlands RPG and worked on the Uk'otoa tabletop game). Both have had pretty thorough and thoughtful criticism that is grounded in the facts of the matter.

Also: I am doing my best but I am not a lawyer. Please defer to verified lawyers if my paraphrasing is incorrect. Additionally, I am rephrasing things in simple terms, so do not jump to conclusions based on my word choice; if you are looking at the highly specific legal implications of a word you should refer to the actual OGL 1.2 document. And, most importantly, All of this can be commented on at this survey link.

In general:

The core rules, not including classes/races or specific spells, will be covered by a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. This includes things like ability checks, saving throws, the core stats stuff, conditions (prone, exhausted, etc) and creature types (but not the creatures themselves). The full SRD 5.1 is available here if you want to check for yourself.

It affirms the fan content policy (never affected by 1.1, but worth mentioning given how often it came up; Actual Play is covered here)

D&D Beyond and DMs Guild are, also as previously, under their own standards that are available for review on those sites. (I think I may have made some errors regarding DMs Guild being a WoTC property with its own rules in the past, but it is and you can review some of their policies here.

The OGL 1.0 is deauthorized, which means that once the OGL 1.2 (or whatever version is ultimately finalized) takes effect, new works must abide by OGL 1.0 rules; however, older materials originally created under 1.0 are still valid under 1.0. The full revocation was perhaps the most problematic part of OGL 1.1, so this is a good step forward and means existing 3PP materials you have can continue to be sold as is.

The actual OGL 1.2 stuff

This applies specifically to commercial content using material in the WoTC SRD not covered by the CC-BY 4.0 license created after this license goes into affect. Again. Does not affect streaming or other fanworks including free homebrew; does not affect other games; does not affect material published in the past.

It also only applies to static published materials and to VTTs; VTTs have a separate section.

Third party works under the OGL 1.2 are owned by their creators in full (this means no possible claims from WoTC to royalties or the IP created by those third parties). There is a clause stating that in the case of unintentionally similar content (the "3PP creates a fire-based druid around the same time as Tasha's came out" case I mentioned previously) a lawsuit may only be for financial damages, not injunction (which I understand to mean things like emotional impact etc) and must rely on proof that WoTC "knowingly and intentionally" copied the work. This is, from what I am given to understand, extremely standard in copyright law because coincidences do happen and people do try to sue over them, and has been deliberately rephrased to affirm that WoTC does not own the third-party content provided the terms of the OGL 1.2 are maintained.

Works must also indicate they are derived from OGL content using appropriate signifiers as put forth by WoTC, clearly state they are third-party and not endorsed by WoTC (this is why Griffon's Saddlebag has been foaming at the mouth) and creators must be in a position to enter into the terms of the license (of age or has had a legal guardian review the terms as proxy), cannot infringe on material that is not in the SRD, cannot violate the law; and there is a morality clause regarding no hateful conduct, the decision of which is made by WoTC.

Additionally, the OGL 1.2's terms cannot be modified, other than the specific details of how to attribute, and some legal pieces at the end regarding notifying creators.

VTT Policy

SRD materials are permitted in VTTs these do not and have never included official images as the SRD does not have images. Fan images are permitted. This information must be static; stat blocks are permitted, but, per the example given, animations such as that of a magic missile are not.

My thoughts/editorial:

I will direct you to James Haeck about VTTs. I have said before I don't really like VTTs. I don't even have a D&D Beyond subscription. I went to cancel mine and found that I was actually just using the free tools (I've bought some books through D&D Beyond, to be fair but I have not subscribed to share them and I have under 6 characters). Personally, I find myself in the awkward position of "I love theater of the mind and imagination in TTRPGs and so I think having an animated magic missile is kind of stupid; honestly I'm not even into D&D Beyond animating the dice rolls" and also "you shouldn't disallow things at a business level solely on the belief that they are kind of stupid." So: worth providing feedback on that one! Also, more relevantly, is this only about licensed D&D content? Can you provide animation for your VTT if you're doing things in a different game, just, once there's SRD content in play on the field, you must stop? Can you provide animation in D&D as long as it's not material covered in the OGL, ie, can you have a sword swinging animation or can the player sprites move rather than just appear in a space, neither of which are unique concepts to D&D (vs. magic missile which is)? In summary: my feelings aside re: VTTs, clarification is in order and I will be providing the latter feedback.

Morality/Hateful conduct clauses are complicated. I absolutely agree that I do not trust a corporation to determine what's hateful. I also 100% do not trust the community either, and I 110% do not trust people who say the community will police itself. I've been open in the past about how I don't fucking trust the D&D community on Jewish depictions (spoiler: actually, non-Jewish people handwringing about goblins, golems, and phylacteries has often been extremely condescending and misinformed, and while obviously Jewish people are not a monolith, my primarily Jewish D&D tables have never taken issue with these things as presented within WoTC materials, but have taken issue with fan-created depictions, and I'm tbh hardcore side-eyeing the Hasbrodeus module for like 20 reasons, of which that is one). However, the same is not necessarily true for other minority groups, notably PoC, of whom there have been some quite harmful depictions; and I think most of us are aware that morality clauses have long been exploited to label queer depictions as obscene: I don't have a good answer for this other than "needs more specificity." A good start for the latter issue would be spelling out bigotry (ie, "discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation or gender presentation") and providing a clear process for appeal. I do understand where WoTC is coming from given the whole issue with the new TSR but this is incredibly complicated and impossible to outline in a one-size-fits-all clause. Worth noting, however: DMs Guild, again, has separate and more rigid standards. This does not mean the horny gay vampire game that was removed from it would be permitted to be self-published under the OGL 1.2; it also does not indicate that it wouldn't, because, again, lacking in specificity on what "obscene" means.

I find the choice to make the core mechanics Creative Commons but not the class structure (which is under the OGL 1.2 proper) to be a really interesting one, and I mean this in a neutral-to-complimentary way. Not sure what the implications are, but excited to find out, because I think it might lead to more interesting indie games that can capitalize on the widely known core combat/ability check mechanics of D&D but develop wildly different class structures.

DnD Shorts continues to shit the bed in the extreme; for real, do not listen to this dude. His twitter is currently a wild self-contradictory mess, his journalistic integrity never existed, and he is literally a clickbaity mediocre white man who has probably been playing D&D for less time than you. I understand that not everyone learns how to determine trustworthiness of a source online but like...why would you trust a guy who has no reason to have insider information and every reason to want clicks and attention. He isn't even a creator affected by the OGL (unlike, say, Hicks or Haeck), and some of what he said was literally obviously false to anyone who's filled out a UA or OneD&D survey.

Honestly, in general, I think the end takeaway really has been "try to determine the motivations and concrete actions of people talking about this." Are they pushing a specific game (rather than generally providing alternatives for those looking)? Do they run channels that don't rely on the OGL 1.0 OR 1.1/1.2 in any way but do rely on clicks? Are they a creator genuinely concerned for their livelihood, or are they a person who thinks that when a game company gets sufficiently large (or even when they don't...see someone asking a tiny Native-owned TTRPG for their SRD) IP laws should no longer apply?

[userpeggycarter]

your 'won't reblog' list is so funny imagine being a loser who hates fun that much. imagine being such a sad little butt baby you can't interact with anyone who likes things you don't. couldn't be me!

wow. i don't even know where to begin.

it's kinda hilarious that **I** am the sad little butt baby but you're the one having a meltdown in my inbox? being butthurt because a stranger has a "won't reblog" section in their about page????? do you have self awareness??? read that second to last sentence I just typed again. read it. HOW CAN YOU NOT GET IT???? 😱

second of all, the "won't reblog" section is a guideline for tagging me on posts. i don't reblog that stuff for a reason. it's not a DNI. in fact, I do interact with people who reblog and make content about (some of) that stuff listed in my blog because the morals of media consumption are complicated and very personal. some things i draw a very hard line on, some i don't. let me explain each of those "forbidden media" in my blog for you in basic terms like I'm talking to a child (because i am):

Wizarding World: JK Rowling is a TERF, an antisemite and a racist. i thought this one was self-explanatory. it's 2023 ffs

MCU!Maximoffs are white-washed, anti-romani and very antisemitic. google that stuff if you don't know. next question. (i did reblog a MCU Wanda gifset recently btw, but a mutual tagged me on it and i felt awkward ignoring it, but when that happens i tag those posts with #mcu wanda because some people blacklist that tag and for good reason. also it's a subtle way to say I'm not okay with her. i wish these awkward situations didn't happen but they do and i like to support creators, despite your allegations that i don't.

starker is a p*do ship. thorki is inc*st. duh

ngl reylo is not necessarily problematic i just think it's lame lol maybe it shouldn't be on the list because all of that other stuff has serious problems (IN MY OPINION!)

red/orange/color-washed content is racist if done with POC (and it's even a bad look if you're dealing with white people, to a lesser extent ofc)

i don't need to explain johnny depp do i? christ

henry cavill dated a teenager. google it

the last of us's creator is anti palestine and pro genocide.

elizabeth olsen said the G slur on air in the Graham Norton show AFTER he told her it was a slur!!!!!!!!!!! again google it.

gal gadot is also anti palestine. remember the IDF cunt post? iconic

taylor swift: same thing with reylo, i'm just not interested in her, even though she's not exactly a saint either... but honestly i put TS on the list mostly because most of the gifmaker community loves her and i was worried people would tag me on TS content and that would be an uncomfortable situation, because i don't like to ignore tagged posts but also i like to have boundaries/preferences, even though YOU deem them silly or stupid (like if that's your right to do so lmao alexa play toxic by britney spears)

i'm betting money it was the taylor swift thing that pissed you off lol maybe mcu wanda???? both?

stolen/reposted content is also self-explanatory right? or are you that stupid? considering the tantrum i think you are but hope springs eternal i guess...

LAST, but not least, i'm gonna end on a positive note because unlike you I'm not a cunt (derogatory). I'm gonna address your first message here:

listen, i get it. i get frustrated with notes too. the grass is always greener and there's always a bigger fish i guess. you envy me and i envy other creators bigger than me. but we shouldn't do that. first of all, it's not a competition. my "success" (it's tumblr at the end of the day... silly stuff!) is not a threat to you or anyone else. people can reblog my gifs and yours, they don't have to pick a creator. unfortunately, tumblr has been suffering from lack of interaction lately and it's just getting worse. all creators are complaining about it. creators of different sizes and different niches, btw. we complain in private and in public. and what tumblr does in return? text posts complaining about us complaining get 50k notes in a day. it's tough. we shouldn't be treated this way, even though no one is obliged to reblog stuff and we aren't owed notes. but it's natural and fair to feel sad about lack of recognition and complain about. tumblr's lack of engagement is going to kill the website, but that's a conversation to another day.

i want to end with this:

you need to create because you want to create. you need to create because you want to get better at your craft. recognition is good and it's natural to want and feel upset about the lack of it, but it shouldn't kill your creative spirit. social media has poisoned our brains. 50 notes might not sound a lot but imagine 50 people in real life complimenting you. you might be someone's favorite creator. you might be a niche creator who is carrying your community on your back and people in that niche are so grateful for you, even though they don't say that. because unfortunately, hate speaks louder than love. case in point, this hate mail. for every one of you out there, there must be 10 people who like my work. but i never hear from them and that sucks, but i must believe that they exist and be thankful for them. sometimes people will recognize my hard work and i'm very grateful for those moments. they do motivate me, but they aren't the only thing that motivates me. making posts i wanna reblog but won't exist until i make them motivates me. getting better at my craft motivates me. making friends because of my craft motivates me. knowing i'm entertaining people (even though they're very silent about their appreciation of my work) motivates me. tumblr is a social media platform and social media is made by its users. if anyone stopped posting, there wouldn't be anything to do here. my gifset might not change the trajectory of someone's day (sometimes it does!), but it's my drop of water alongside thousands of other drops of water from other users that make this ocean that we all swim in. don't give up. keep making gifs. you will get better at them. people will follow you. you will get more notes. might not be enough followers or enough notes in your opinion, but we shouldn't put a number on our value.

and let me tell you a secret: when your goal is numbers, you're never satisfied. believe me, i learned this lesson. i thought i would be happy with hundreds of followers. then i got hundreds of followers. suddenly they weren't enough, i wanted thousands of followers now. and then i got them. guess what? i still seek validation through numbers (google David Foster Wallace's This is Water btw). but it will never be enough because you are now and i was then looking at the wrong solution to the problem. i need to FEEL enough, not be told by numbers or people that I'm enough. I'm the one that decides that. and i am enough. I'm good, even. hell, I'm great. and in theory, so do you, but god that attitude... it ain't it. it will only cause you pain. and worse, it's causing you to try to cause pain in others. isn't that sad? isn't that shameful? i do say try because newsflash pussycat, it didn't work. i was baffled by your hate (thankfully i don't get a lot of hate around here!), but i wasn't hurt. because I'm not threatened by your perception of me. because it's superficial, childish, hateful, you name it. i know myself. i love myself. in the words of my beloved URL namesake, i know my value. do you know yours? it doesn't seem like you do. and that type of attitude only lessens your value, babe. this is not getting you anywhere in tumblr or worse, in life.

this would be the moment in which i would wish you the best, but you know what? fuck you. i hope you get no notes until eternity. but in case an innocent person is reading this and is also battling with their self-worth due to tumblr notes: i wish you the best. don't give up.

[techmomma]

I don’t draw as much as I used to. Some days it drives me insane. Since getting this job there’s been whole MONTHS without drawing even the sloppiest thumbnail or even just a warmup.

But I think it’s been good for me? Yeah, it still drives me insane. I have so many things to draw, all the time, forever, and it never feels like enough TIME FOR ANY OF IT. I am a visual communicator, there are so many THINGS that just don’t work in words! But they’d make sense if I drew them. Just this one idea, I gotta get this idea out of my head and it demands a visual aid. And I gotta decide between that, or this thing I’ve been wanting to draw for two weeks, or this other thing I out off for a month, or this thing, etc. etc.

But

I think it’s been finally, actually helping the burnout I staved off healing from for ages. I’d pull back but still try to make myself draw and it’d only somewhat help, temporarily, but now actually not drawing for long stretches of time, I can feel something healing. I don’t draw often and I don’t draw a lot but each time feels like more and more of a joy. I feel more excited to draw, less tired, less staring at a document like “JUST FUCKING DRAW ALREADY!” and nothing happening.

Maybe it’s been helping me get away from feeling like I owe people, personally and in-general, art. Not just in the sense of commissions but as a content creator, like if I don’t meet these invisible quotas for posting then idk everyone will hate me or stop following me or whatever. “You have to draw content like it’s your job or like it will be your job someday or you’ll never go anywhere.” Or, as has happened, people will ask “Why aren’t you making art anymore??” and I won’t have an answer. Worrying that people will think I’m NEVER DRAWING AGAIN and look on me pityingly, like I’m no longer an Artist or.... something.

brain: something bad will happen me: what brain: something bad

me: cool, great, thanks

And now that I’ve not been drawing and people HAVE asked that but it was a single instance thusfar, and there’s still people following me and enjoying my art and my characters, which is great, but even if there weren’t.... it’s been showing me it’s really not so bad. It’s okay to not draw anything for long stretches of time. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but who cares? I’m liking my drawings more on the rare chances I do get to draw, even if I don’t finish them. I’m enjoying my art more and more. Maybe I only have the spoons for a headshot but it’s spoons at all, and that’s awesome. Instead of being ONLY a headshot, it’s more like “yay, I got a chance to draw a headshot at all!” Art is feeling less of a chore that has to be done every so often because you have to, and more of a joy that I get to indulge in.

So unfortunately, it does mean that art will still probably be few and far between, in terms of here on tumblr and what I post. I’ve also started taking a joy in not posting everything I draw; sometimes it’s just for friends, sometimes it’s just for me. So you guys don’t see everything I do, even when I do draw. But I’m still here. And I’ve been feeling better about my art. Maybe one day I won’t be so tired and I can happily draw everyday for hours like I used to; or maybe it’ll still remain sparse and sporadic.

But that’s okay. Maybe I won’t get any commission deals out of drawing so sporadically, maybe I won’t get huge follower numbers. But that’s okay. I like my art. I like my circle I’ve got here. And I’m learning to not hate myself for staring at an open document and not drawing anything. I’m learning to be okay being tired.

Love you guys, still! Lots of love to people still sticking around and lots of love to people who’ve stumbled on me recently and made the flattering-if-questionable decision to follow me. You may not see much art from me but I’m still here lurking most days, and enjoying the quiet.

[opinated-user]

You know, before Lily's Steven Universe video came out, I remember watching a stream of hers where she was editing it together, repeatedly doing takes to sound angrier and angrier about things. But the thing that turned me off of her and her content wasn't that. I never believed her shrieking was genuine, I had always seen it as performance meant to be comedic. What turned me off of her was her shit talking another content creator, SF Debris. Why? Because he has always been open about the fact that while he understands what women are and aren't aesthetically pleasing in traditional senses, the only person he ever felt attraction to in his life is his wife, and he's never had any desire to have romance with anyone else. Also it took him about five years to realize he was attracted to and in love with the woman he then asked out and ended up married to.

Now, to anyone else on Earth, there's nothing offensive about any of that. While SF Debris has never used any labels to describe himself or identified as such, a lot of his viewers think of him as being on the ace spectrum. Lily, though, has one major disagreement with him, which is that her least favorite Star Trek series is his favorite and her favorite series, he calls out for dismissing murder when it's done by the good guys.

So Lily went off on a tangent when someone (who presumably didn't know Lily hates being recommended things and cannot be rational about someone else liking/disliking a thing she dislikes/likes) recommended she watch his video on the Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode Profit and Lace, in which he tears apart the transphobia of the episode and the grossness of how that episode handles misogyny and feminism, and Lily. lost. her. shit. She went on a rant about how SF Debris isn't really LGBT (he's never claimed to be) and he's lying about his supposed lack of sexual attraction and everyone wants to fuck. That's a phrase she used that really made me uncomfortable. Everyone wants to fuck. He must be lying when he says he's not interested in having sex with anyone other than this one person. It must be virtue signalling, it must be lying, it's manipulation, he's manipulating the audience by playing an unrealistic saintly persona, and the kicker, that he's probably sleeping with underage fans.

I'm not ace, but I know a lot of ace people, and I just found that so uncomfortable, this idea that they're all lying, that they're trying to trick you so they can sleep with you. I'm trans and that's what people in my country say about trans men and trans women and often nonbinary people, too. Queer people (which I count him as, even if he has not used the term for himself) aren't lying to you in order to get into your pants. Queer people aren't secret predators. If you don't like SF Debris' videos, that's fine. I dislike most of his Gundam videos and I don't think his Enterprise analyses were very good or in-depth. That doesn't mean he's lying about his sexuality so he can fuck people and it especially doesn't mean he's suddenly into children! And it's even worse in context because his twin sons are disabled and he's mentioned worrying about protecting them from predators because the stats for abuse from people outside the family are much higher for disabled kids. She saw a queer-ish man and declared him a predator even though fear of predators is something that plagues him to this day due to his kids' disabilities. She saw an ace-ish person and declared them a liar automatically.

I don't like Lily. She's still trans and bi. I don't like Keffals. She's still trans. I don't like my Intro To Buddhism professor, he's still gay. People don't become liars once you dislike them. And while I do believe Lily is a predator, that took years of evidence to make me believe, I didn't go from "I don't like her content" to "she's a pedo" because those two things are not related. Your gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation or lack of those things are unrelated to your actions, and it is predatory action that shows us who a predator is.

That was the day I quit watching Lily's videos. The way she talked about this guy who is on the ace spectrum was so fucked up that I couldn't excuse it or rationalize it away. Because it wasn't recorded, I'm sure she'd deny it ever happened. But the way she said "everyone wants to fuck" as if it was written in Scripture or an undeniable fact is burned into my memory. It was said with the certainty that queerphobes have when they say "there are two genders" or "you can't change your gender". It was said with the same 'you're ridiculous for suggesting otherwise' dismissiveness and disgust.

Ace people, you are valid. Demi people, you are valid. If you are only very rarely or never attracted to someone and never or rarely feel romantic connections with people, that is not a lie and you are not secretly gross or bad or wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone not being into sex or romance and it's not a character flaw of any kind.

I've been noticing an uptick in TERFs and radfems saying men can't be ace lately, that that's a trap meant to lure you into sex with them. So maybe that's why this is on my mind lately. It's so much like her take on this guy that when I hear aphobia I think of Lily.

I'm not ace but my heart breaks for ace people. Just for living their lives and being honest they're viewed as predatory liars.

You'd think a trans woman would know better than to treat others that way.

i'm going to go ahead and also assume that person has never interacted with LO or spoke a word to her. that's some serious unhealthy level of projection that LO really needs to work on.

[thinkatoryprocess]

Honestly, Harry Potter being what it is now hurts. I was in denial about a lot of the flaws in the series - a LOT of them - and basically only became wholly devoted to fandom once I read Harry Potter and discovered its fandom. (I poked around in fandom a bit before, at least on my terms, but it became a full-blown hobby once I read HP.) I was young - 14, if I recall correctly - and you know how formative it is to discover your Thing at that time, how important your Thing is at that time, how hard it is to acknowledge its flaws because it's your Thing.

And there really are more flaws than just Rowling's rabid transphobia. There's racism, there's antisemitism, whether or not either were actually intended - and that's not me cutting her a break, she fucked up with a lot of her choices on dealing with anyone who wasn't just a standard British white person. She has some fucked up views on women and girls for an alleged feminist. There's her treatment of queerness, as though she knew she had a fanbase who loved queer content but didn't have the guts to make it outright canon, getting the benefit of both not having written a queer pairing and writing a queer pairing simultaneously. Schroedinger's Queerbait.

I know all of this, and I even knew some of it back then. I look at my AO3 page and ache every time I see that I've written 27 Harry Potter stories, well over the amount of any other fandom on my profile. Right now I'm actively trying to get my main fandom over that line so I don't have to think about HP that way anymore. But why?

Because this thing that I loved was written by someone who talked about love and acceptance in her books but wrote with cruelty and disdain in her heart, and it showed. Her transphobia just crystallized that part of her and made it shine awfully for all of us to see. She was never a good or kind person; when she was brainwashed by the TERFs, it showed us all who she really was. And honestly, it hurts to realize that I devoted so much of my (mostly quite young!) life to hanging on every word of someone like that. Someone who could apparently bring herself to look at someone like me and call them a rapist or a pedophile or to try to rip away their identity with malicious satisfaction. It sucks, and I hate this person I once naively loved. I feel like so much of my life was stolen by someone who didn't deserve it, but even moreso I feel like I've done wrong by a lot of people by overlooking those flaws like the racism, the misogyny, and going "but this character's so interesting" instead.

It's complex. But that's where I'm at every time I see her, every time I see the tag. I'm not perfect, and this is a grand ol' sign of it. I'm desperate to support good creators, queer and non-white creators, to reward content that treats these things right, because my eyes are open. It's just that nostalgia can burn.

[chipotle]

Twitter, failure modes, and your favorite bar

So I’ve been seeing arguments for why, no, you should really stay on Twitter, because of the problems with anything vying to replace it. Most circle around what tech people might dub failure modes in terms of both engineering and policy.

Make no mistake, many of these are solid arguments. Twitter has, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, gotten many things right. They’ve got fast onboarding. They provide a good experience on both mobile and desktop. (Please don’t @ me with your objections to ads and algorithms and whatever; I’m not saying the UX design on Twitter is perfect or free of dark patterns, I’m saying that it’s been developed by UX professionals over a 15-year period and it shows.) They understand the importance of making a service like theirs accessible. They understand the importance of well-designed terms of service that limit their legal liability without taking draconian stances toward users and their content. These are all failure modes that other, newer, smaller services have done little or nothing to address.

But for many people, the real issue isn’t what’s wrong with the other places. It’s that they love this place. Twitter, for all its faults, for all the love/hate relationship you have with it—it’s your favorite bar. This is what most indie creators are feeling, I think. None of the other services have the audience reach; it’s unrealistic to expect us to be on a half-dozen new sites when we could just stay put; and, hey, the likelihood of Twitter really exploding is pretty low. All of those are true, too.

The problem, though, is that just because Twitter’s failure mode isn’t likely to be “closing up shop” doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other failure modes. You might have noticed I didn’t mention harassment and toxic behavior as a failure mode—the things a Trust and Safety Team handles—but it is. As Nilay Patel observed, the product of a social network is content moderation.

To be clear, this is something all the Not-Twitters are going to have to come to grips with in ways they haven’t yet. Cohost, Hive, and OoobyBloobly (which I just made up, or did I, you’re not sure, are you) look good by comparison because they are a fraction of a fraction of Twitter’s scale. Your favorite Mastodon instance this week is even smaller. With Twitter’s two hundred million users, trying to regulate bad behavior is a 24/7 rearguard action.

Well, guess what? Twitter’s Trust and Safety Team is now gone. By deliberate design. It’s not coming back, at least not in any recognizable form, not any time soon.

You think I’m going to mention Musk restoring Trump’s Twitter account. I am. But the canary in the coal mine isn’t the who as much as it’s the how. Musk claimed in October that he’d set up a new “council” for moderation, and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before the council convenes.” That was a blatant lie. He polled his followers—hardly a statistically unbiased group—about restoring Trump’s account, and has restored others just on his own. Tech journalist Casey Newton:

At the risk of stating the obvious, this sort of ad hoc approach to content moderation and community standards is completely unsustainable. It does not scale beyond a handful of the most prominent accounts on the service. And, most worryingly, it is not based on any clear principles: Musk is leading trust and safety at Twitter the same way he is leading product and hiring—by whim.

And this is Twitter’s failure mode. All those tweets you’ve seen bitching about how a big problem with Mastodon is that you might choose an “instance” that ends up being run by an anti-woke edgelord tinpot dictator? That’s Twitter now.

Oh, you say the need for advertisers will help rein in their worst impulses, because no sensible advertiser wants to have their “promoted tweets” running in line with alt-right propaganda? Good luck with that: a Twitter that’s only ten or fifteen percent of its original size requires a lot less money to run, and Musk’s been clear he aims to reduce the company’s dependency on advertising income.

And those remaining thousand employees or so aren’t going to push back the way we saw happen in some tech companies a year or two ago. The shakeout isn’t just in progress, it’s almost over. The ones left either can’t afford to leave or subscribe to Musk’s worldview. Anyone who joins Twitter under his leadership will have done so knowing what that worldview is.

The “liberal bias of big tech” has always been a phantasm. Silicon Valley has always had a strong libertarian bent to it, from the right-of-center Hoover think tank at Stanford University to the military/aerospace roots that long predate the 1990s dotcom boom. While many SV libertarians are socially liberal, not all are, and a few of the most prominent conservatives came out of the “PayPal Mafia”: Musk, the openly anti-democratic Peter Thiel, and VC David Sacks, who co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth with Thiel a couple of decades ago. Along with professional idiot Jason Calacanis, Sacks now advises Musk on how to run Twitter, and the circumstantial evidence suggests they’ve encouraged the performative cruelty Musk’s exhibited in how he’s run things so far.

So here’s the thing. What conservative culture warriors always say they want is the absence of political bias, but time and time again what they mean is bias that explicitly favors them. Everything else, you see, has an innate liberal bias—it’s them against the world, fighting the good fight. They want fairness and balance the way Fox News does. They don’t want an unbiased social media site; what they want is a site with Gab and Parler’s slant, but Twitter’s reach. Now they have it. The product of a social network is content moderation, and Twitter’s new content moderators will be hand-picked by Musk. It’s going to be full of people who won’t object to racism, homophobia, and transphobia as much as object to fighting it, because “free speech”.

If you do believe in the Fox News kind of balance, that I’m wrong about Silicon Valley’s political biases and especially wrong about Twitter’s, this isn’t a failure mode. It’s what you want, or at least what you think you want. It’s clearly what Elon Musk thinks he wants. But for Twitter as we knew it, this is a catastrophic failure. It’s a terminal condition, an unrecoverable crash.

New Twitter will be hostile to anyone queer, or non-white, or slightly to the left of Ronald Reagan. You may be a creator who wants to stay on Twitter to reach your audience, but the audience there will inevitably tilt toward the anti-woke, All Lives Matter, gender critical, Just Asking Questions crowd. If they’re your audience, congratulations, I guess. If they’re not, you have a problem.

I get that, right now, it’s still easy to rationalize staying on Twitter. The alternatives are too confusing, or have questionable terms of service, or don’t have a registered DMCA agent, or have a crappy official app, or have a crappy web interface, or just seem like they’re run out of a college dorm room. We can go down the list and acknowledge most or all of those are great points.

But your favorite bar is under new management, and whether you want to admit it or not, you know damn well what kind of bar they’re making it into. You need to think long and hard about whether you’re okay with that.

[scarlet--wiccan]

did you see that marvel is making a variant cover with wendy mayomoff / wand*visi*n for scarlet witch #3

Quick note-- I've seen some people talking about the "wendy mayomoff" thing here and on twitter, and I think it's time we put it to rest. "Maximoff" is a real-world Romani family name that was borrowed from an important historical figure, and Marvel has been using it in racist representations for decades. Olsen's character using that name is, in many ways, insult upon injury. Let's move on from the pithy jokes and remember that we can criticize Olsen's character without denigrating actual Romani ethnic names.

Anyways, I'm not, like, terribly surprised. Wanda//Vision was enormously popular, and M C U Wanda has proven to be very merchandisable. I don't think it's the first time they've done this with collector variants.

I hate to say it, but part of the reason this series exists is because the Scarlet Witch is now a prominent, marketable M C U character. We all know that characters who become popular with film audiences get an extra push in comics. It would be naïve to pretend otherwise. Fortunately, that market synergy doesn't always mean that comic characters actually become more like their film counterparts, and Wanda's a great example-- the Robinson book in 2016 and the current Orlando ongoing are both very different from the M C U in terms of visuals, genre beats, characters beats, and even their approach to Wanda's representation. Both books acknowledged Wanda's Romani background with, I believe, the best intentions, even though Robinson totally fumbled the bag.

I don't know what kind of conversations are happening behind closed doors at Marvel, but I do know that Orlando and the rest of the Scarlet Witch team are committed this new, more authentic version of Wanda, and it seems like they're being supported by the editors. Unfortunately, that doesn't guarantee that other artists are always going to be on the same page, and it will not stop the larger corporate machine of Marvel from profiting off of Wanda//Vision. I'm choosing to trust that the contents of the actual book, and the ethos of the creators I'm actually supporting, will not be impacted by this.

Also, Nakayama has always been on thin ice with me, so I'm not surprised to see his name on this one.