#agree development

[oifaaa]

It's funny how opinions can change over time for instance I used to want Bruce to be a good parent but then I realised how fucking boring that is to read at the end of the day comics are soap operas and I'm here for the drama

[10001gecs]

one 100 word email written with ai costs roughly one bottle of water to produce. the discussion of whether or not using ai for work is lazy becomes a non issue when you understand there is no ethical way to use it regardless of your intentions or your personal capabilities for the task at hand

with all due respect, this isnt true. *training* generative ai takes a ton of power, but actually using it takes about as much energy as a google search (with image generation being slightly more expensive). we can talk about resource costs when averaged over the amount of work that any model does, but its unhelpful to put a smokescreen over that fact. when you approach it like an issue of scale (i.e. "training ai is bad for the environment, we should think better about where we deploy it/boycott it/otherwise organize abt this) it has power as a movement. but otherwise it becomes a personal choice, moralizing "you personally are harming the environment by using chatgpt" which is not really effective messaging. and that in turn drives the sort of "you are stupid/evil for using ai" rhetoric that i hate. my point is not whether or not using ai is immoral (i mean, i dont think it is, but beyond that). its that the most common arguments against it from ostensible progressives end up just being reactionary

i like this quote a little more- its perfectly fine to have reservations about the current state of gen ai, but its not just going to go away.

[largemandrill]

It is imperative to me that Cullen and Dorian’s weird little chess bond remain platonic because it means that Cullen learned how to care about a mage in a way that wasn’t just him being horny. And that matters to me.

[an-ruraiocht]

a mildly irritating internet phenomenon is people who have a fairly thorough understanding of particular aspects of history but seemingly no grasp of historiography or the process through which that history has reached current understandings

like sometimes i see people criticising historical inaccuracies in fiction from 50+ years ago without acknowledging that they're completely in step with historiography at the time. (and i'm talking ideas about social and political structure, not small details of material culture, so things that often go through big shifts in interpretation.) that WAS the mainstream take at the time and it's what the author would have learned from research. just because we now recognise it as "wrong" doesn't mean that author didn't do research or care about the worldview of their characters. they were in fact trying to do that in the context of the information and interpretations available in their time.

a work of historical fiction from the 1960s tells you about two histories: the one it's set in, and the one it was written in. if you only focus on the first one and completely ignore the second, you are failing to understand the book and its context entirely

some of this is also that many people underestimate how recent a lot of historical discovery and historiographical argument is. they see an "incorrect" idea from the 70s and assume it would have been viewed that way in the 70s when in fact major academic pushback was in the 80s on (or whatever)

like, taking my interest areas of medieval celtic studies... this field is YOUNG. a lot of the current historical and literary consensus developed not only within living memory but in the working life of scholars who are still alive/working. some of the biggest arguments and dramas involved colleagues of people i now personally know. a lot of it went down *just* before i was born, but that doesn't make it distant memory at all. everyone writing in the 80s was writing before that happened

all of this is part of why i hold historical fiction from 50 years ago to wildly different standards than historical fiction published today (another element is the significantly greater challenges to accessing research materials from outside academia pre-internet)

[viktorarcanedeservesbetter]

I feel like something that should have been explored more in Arcane is that despite the dangers and pretty much horrific conditions, Zaun children seemingly grow up a lot more caring and have a larger understanding of family in comparison to Piltover children. And if such a reflection of the real world in a sense.

The kids of Zaun seemingly grow up with a lot more adult support. Ekko is easily welcomed under Benzo’s wings. Vander adopts 4 kids (two of which we learn he knew of before their parents death, two of which we can’t be sure of). Silco, despite all what happened, and his ulterior motives, shows no problem adopting Powder/Jinx. In the alternate universe it seems as though he’s still played a part in the kids lives. Jinx adopts Isha easily and Sevika cares for her as well. Hell, even Mr. War Crimes Against Humanity does well with little Viktor (until ya know, the animal abuse).

Hell, up until Vander dies (the first time) there seems to be a large understanding of if there’s an orphan or a kid in need of guidance, take them in! (And certainly don’t inform them of your plans to turn a giant pink salamander into drugs and be confused when a nine year old doesn’t understand). If a kid wants to be your apprentice, let them! For the most part, until things all went wrong in the end of act 1 of season 1, the worst parts of Zaun seem pretty typical for any city in poverty.

Match that with what we see with how Caitlyn and Jayce grow up. Caitlyn is given adult support, yes, and it’s clearly a good adult mentor, but it’s not entirely by her choice. It’s been chosen for her. She’s safe, but there’s a lack of freedom of choice. Meanwhile, when Jayce gets older, and that same accident in Act 1 happens, the family that supported him and his mom turns their backs. His own mom doesn’t support him either, because she’s afraid of what he’s talking about, but also because he’s damming them to being outcasts.

Conversely, Vander is more than willing to take the fall for what Claggor, Milo, Vi and Powder did. He’s willing to go to prison for a long time, in order for them to have a better future. Despite Vi’s best efforts, he’s not going to listen to her (she is just a kid) and he’s not letting his family go down and get hurt.

Meanwhile, a man who grew up in this mentality, where there’s a wide sense of family support from people who aren’t your biological family, is the one to go to Jayce, a stranger, and tells him he believes in him. It’s why it’s such a shock to Jayce; his own family and family friends denied him. They didn’t support him.

I think that’s what makes all the difference. Piltover and Zaun have wildly different understandings of family and forgiveness. For Piltover, it shuns and damns the lives of those who upset the balance. For Zaun, it provides safety and never ending understanding.

Just. I’m thinking.

[thatweirdtranny]

sometimes things are not that deep

[mal3nko]

No because Dorian becoming Archon of Tevinter should have given us at least SOME inner conflict on his part when it comes to achieving that status since it’s what his father ultimately wanted him to be in the first place when he was younger. Like there’s so many aspects about him reaching that position that should have put into question a lot of things about his personal journey and Veilguard does absolutely NOTHING with it.

I mean, you can choose who’s the ruler of Fereldan in Origins as well as who’s the new Divine in Inquistion and I feel like both of those choices give an appropriate amount of characterization and inner conflict with the people involved. We get a proper look at how whoever is elected truly feels about their position, like an unhardened Alistair feeling very unconfident about being king and is even willing to break up with a non-Cousland Warden for the sake of his country. I guess this is part of a bigger issue with Veilguard in general and how it just seems so uninterested in tackling the bigger picture when it comes to politics within Thedas, and by extension how people truly feel about reaching these positions of power.

Like I’m sorry, but I just needed a lot more from Dorian than just “Oh, I’m going to be Archon? Excellent! I’m a little nervous about it but I’m sure I’ll get the job done!”.

[antianakin]

I'm kind-of genuinely devastated that they decided to cut out the reveal of Perrin having known all along about Mon Mothma's rebel activities and was getting interrogated WEEKLY by the Empire and never cracked even once.

This would've helped answer SO MANY QUESTIONS about Mon and Perrin, and it could've easily helped answer the question of why Mon felt like she could just walk away from her family after making herself public enemy number one.

She goes to finally explain it all to Perrin right before she makes the speech because dammit she might not have trust him or even like him all that much but she doesn't want him DEAD and he deserves the chance to find this out from her and get himself to safety before she turns his life upside down, and he tells her he's known all along and covered for her this whole time and never once cracked or been discovered, even when she framed him for gambling and sold off their daughter to a gangster's son. He lets her know that he doesn't need to go to safety, he's not just going to run now because that'll just make him look like he was involved in it. He can continue to cover for himself when the Empire comes to interrogate him again, and he can do it well enough to ensure Leida doesn't get implicated, either. Mon's priority is the rebellion, her priority is her work and it always has been, even to the detriment of her relationship with her family, and Perrin understood that but it meant that HIS priority had to be protecting and taking care of Leida in the absence of her mother. So Mon has to go, but Perrin has to stay because their daughter needs him now more than ever.

And it just makes the choice that Mon has made so clear, the sacrifice she chose to make for the sake of the rebellion, and she can't back out now, she can't make a different choice because she tells herself she's doing this FOR Leida, to try to make a better world for her daughter to live in, but in order to give Leida that world, she has to leave Leida behind.

But she realizes now that she CAN trust Perrin, she could've trusted him all along, so she chooses to trust him now. She trusts him with their daughter, she trusts that he can take care of himself and Leida in her absence once more.

This helps Mon's arc SO MUCH, and I honestly love it, and as Bissell says it's technically a non-canon thing now because it clearly never even made it into the script really let alone got filmed, but it's pretty easy to slot it into what we DID get to see, so as far as I'm concerned, this is my canon. This fixes so many of the problems I had with the end of this arc for Mon and makes it so much more emotional and almost tragic. Mon made her choices and you can argue that some of them were mistakes if you want, you can argue that it made her a bad mother if you wanted to, but it's so much more complicated and nuanced than that, and I love that this finally makes that so clear. Mon made her choice and her family paid the price a long time ago, long before Mon was willing to acknowledge that she'd made that choice.

[dorizardthewizard]

one thing i hate about the winx club ai controversy is the people saying it's fine because they only used it in the concepts. they did not just use it to get inspo like a pinterest board, there's evidence that some characters were entirely designed by ai

"it's just concepts, the animation is still done by humans!" concept art is an important creative process that decides the entire look, feel, tone, soul of the production! this wouldn't just be using tools to speed up a process, it's completely replacing creative thought and experimentation with a machine. it's telling me they don't care enough to put in the work, so why should i care to watch it?

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Stoker's book was ending up quite unlike the lurid sensation novel he had first envisioned. In making his final revisions, he fell back instinctively, if perhaps unconsciously, on the sturdy substructure of the litary form that had sustained him since childhood: the fairy tale. The plot took on an archetypal simplicity, drawing on the folktale motif of abused and abandoned children. An orphan (Jonathan Harker, bereft of parentage like most of the main characters) ventures into the woods and is confronted with a terrifying demon king, who chases him home, but the young hero must return to the dreaded place to destroy the monster and restore moral order. Among the many calssic tales evoked are "Bluebeard" (the castle with locked rooms and bloody secrets), "Jack the Giant Killer" (the ogre who chases the protagonist to his homeland and is slain), and "Little Red Riding Hood" (explicitly cited in Stoker's text and mimicked when a wolf crashes through a bedroom window to menace Lucy and her mother). In short, for Dracula to be saved as a publishable tale, it had to be shrunken, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedtime story of childhood abandonment and rescue.

david j. skal, something in the blood: the untold story of bram stoker, the man who wrote dracula

[frostfishy]

the disablerrrrr

[musicalmoritz]

“Killua only had one friend and they ruined it by making it romantic” do Ikalgo, Leorio, Kurapika, Zushi, and Alluka mean nothing to you???

[twistedappletree]

Why is one of the homophobic dudebro arguments against hansry always “Theresa is the canon romance, she’s Henry’s true love” ???????

Like ok, fine, if that’s how you wanna play your game then by all means, go for it. But considering she wasn’t in the second game at all besides a few casual mentions, it’s pretty clear she wasn’t meant to be the dev canon romance. It also doesn’t negate the fact that Hans and Henry have been through the most together. They probably know each other better than anyone else in their lives.

Falling for each other was pretty much inevitable, either in a platonic or romantic way—so even if Warhorse had restricted romance options to only Theresa, Hans and Henry would still be the canon Relationship™️

[isuggestforcefem]

https://www.tumblr.com/isuggestforcefem/782383791093301248?source=share

What about intersex people? Their relationship with their agab can be a lot more complicated.

In some cases, intersex people start developing traits opposite of their agab, usually when they hit puberty. If they took steps towards preventing their body into developing into something they don't want, wouldn't that be the same as transitioning?

In other cases, intersex people might have different genitalia from what they're expected to have. I'm not aware of how gender is assigned in these cases, but if they tried to align the mismatched pieces of themselves with their agab, would they still be cis? Even if they started taking hormones or got surgeries to become who they wanted to be?

They'll often face the same experiences and obstacles as trans people, regardless of whether they align with their agab or something else. Especially in the case of intersex people, who don't align with the sex "binary," their agab is often just a word on a document to try and categorize them in a system that doesn't make the effort to acknowledge their existence.

Shouldn't we let them decide whether or not they were transitioning, rather than defining them as "not really trans" for trying to be their agab? Shouldn't their own experiences and feelings about what they went through give them the validation to define themselves?

Well you see generally if you take steps to align yourself with your assigned gender you’re probably cis.

[chaiaurchaandni]

also remember that no form of resistance is ever acceptable to the colonizer. and that includes non-violent resistance (the great march of return) + non-violence is only successful against a force that has a conscience. but if your opponent had a conscience, he would not be oppressing you in the first place.

[natsmagi]

tsumugi made amulets out of his cut hair and gave one to natsume and natsume threw it in the river. he like literally outright fucking hates tsumugis new haircut. Tsumugi keeps saying hes doing this so theyll continue to be happy forever and then fucking ruins that very happiness by acting painfully out of character. this man who has never before been insecure in his appearance despite his self-loathing, had eichi tell him he should just cut his hair, went on to believe this hair of his to be a curse and a burden, and when telling natsume about his plans to cut it natsume didnt want him to but they did it all anyway. Why is eichi even here. why did they break natsumes heart under the guise of character growth.

were they too happy? was their relationship too good? did we need to go back to square one because there just wasnt any drama between them anymore? natsumes growth wasnt showcased in this story at all either, he reverted back to his old self. it hurts seeing this it like actually hurts really bad. this was promoted as their "happy ending" but all i see is their happy ending in wonder game being forcefully taken from them. Tsumugi even liked his hair, yet now suddenly he views it as burdensome. i need everyone involved in creating the current state of ensemble stars to die and i need this stupid fucking game to EOS already