#i have some very unpopular stuff in there

[drones-of-innocence]

ChatGPT Fanfiction in My Style

Just did a funny little exercise:

I asked ChatGPT to write a fanfiction like I would, and it lowkey startled me with how concisely it described my writing style. I know that it's AI and its literal purpose is to use all the data at its disposal to create these responses, but still, like, that's me. So at first I was a little alarmed by what it gave me.

...Like, excuse me?>?? This is absolutely something I would write??

Am I about to be outdone by a robot??

But then I kept reading:

Like it's cute, but..."Peach's Day??" Or Mario putting on his clothes "after the day's heroics?" The very juvenile cheesiness of "moments like these" that matter the most?

Granted it's very short so there isn't much wiggle room to try to make a nice point or theme like it's trying to there at the end, but I just get the sense that there's something totally absent from here that a human-written story would have effortlessly. I wish I could explain it but I can't really put my finger on it. It's disingenuous.

Maybe I'm not being fair because it's not like my singular style is providing the engine with endless amounts of data to try and really emulate my style. But I have several stories out there and I think it's interesting that it's able to define and approximate my style in some way.

I don't really have a huge takeaway here, only that I'm not really worried about AI taking over for creatives. This did a really nice job of imitating my writing in terms of the prose and how the characters interact, but it's very inorganic at the same time. The story feels blocky, almost. I'm no expert on what makes writing great, but I know it's not this, and that it's not me either. And anyway, the more these engines get refined, the less accurate they actually become, so I think us writers and artists are gonna be alright.

[bloody-wonder]

assuming you've read tsc, what are ur thoughts?

mixed feelings, anon!

on the one hand, tsc is just another confirmation that nora is a talented writer - i think the dialogue especially is where she really excels. the reading experience was overall very fun, i did enjoy seeing my faves again. neil is an icon, obviously. the culture clash between jean and the trojans was Comedy Gold. and it was interesting to see an exploration of a different trauma response than we've seen in aftg in jean.

on the other hand, i feel like jean's story in tsc mirrors neil's story in aftg - a troubled youth joins an exy team where he will make new friends and get better mentally - but is like. a simplified and less compelling version of that. it's good that jean is his own character, i don't need him to be a copy of neil, but i gotta say - neil's cameo appearances totally stole the show and made me wonder why i wasn't reading a book about him instead. however, it's all the other characters who were the real problem - it felt like i'm reading a version of aftg where a less fun iteration of neil joins an exy team consisting just of the upperclassmen and nicky hemmick which uhhh,, if you've read some of my old posts you know how i feel about him so there was no chance in hell i'd like cat alvarez and her whole shtick. the foxes felt good for the soul bc there was a balance between the upperclassmen's and the monsters' type of care for neil - and crucially neil chose the latter group to be his close circle, among other things, bc he felt they could understand him better. by constrast, jean is alone with the trojans who don't give any credibility to his claims that they just can't understand what he went through, don't respect his right to keep his trauma private and just keep trying to force his "recovery". aftg felt like a bunch of freaks with various but equally fascinating issues put in close quarters and you watch them sometimes butt heads, sometimes uplift each other in the most unexpected ways. tsc however felt like a bunch of normies bullying a traumatized kid - so basically one of those obnoxious fics where the upperclassmen are all in neil and andrew's business.

jean's bisexuality was a double-edged sword too: on the one hand, i felt very smug reading about how his attraction works bc 1) it's so obviously different from neil and 2) wow turns out years of psychological, physical and sexual abuse do not in fact take away your sexuality! le gasp! surprised fucking pikachu!! crazy how through all of this jean is still bi. the human spirit is unbreakable. (unless your mom hits you for kissing a girl, then it's breakable). so i did feel vindicated but at the same time this was not relatable to the point that i can't see myself getting invested in jean and jeremy's developing relationship. nothing is more of a turn off for me in fictional romances than when both of them are immediately attracted to each other and let the reader know in no uncertain terms. where are the mind games? where are the intricate rituals? it feels like a lazy shortcut. but good for them, i guess?

sooo idk. i didn't hate tsc by any means but i'm sad i didn't enjoy it as much as my mutuals😭

[baravaggio]

I like Jolyne a lot and I think she’s one of the better protags but I’ve always felt kind of bad for completely understanding why some people don’t like p6 (not talking about people complaining in bad faith who partook in the hate train it had a few years ago).

I think there’s a certain subset of fans who’re very overly-defensive as a result of said hate train who accuse any criticism or dislike of the part of coming from misogyny though and it really gets on my nerves because.. people can just not click with certain parts, it’s not uncommon for a Jojo fan to not particularly like at least one part and that’s not any different with p6. Idk it’s just not 2018 anymore, most people moved past that ‘Ugh Jolyne is a Mary Sue Jotaro with boobs, skip part 6 it’s boring as hell.’ mentality a good while ago.

yeah, as someone whose love for jojo is more rooted in the way we can see araki continue to grow and improve as an artist/writer with each part, I definitely find the defensive way some fans react to simple disinterest exhausting. I've said it a lot on here but this is pretty much how I feel about part 4 - story structure issues aside, there's just something about the setting/genre/tone that doesn't appeal to me. meanwhile it's possibly the most beloved jojo part, which is fine lol!

jumping off what you said though, I find the way some fans selectively mishear legit criticisms of araki's writing exhausting....like one of my biggest gripes with stone ocean is the way hermes is completely sidelined for a large chunk of the part. she has such an interesting setup, araki totally fumbles her story and she ends up being one of the most underwhelming jobros because of it. this is a criticism of the way araki's sexist writing makes stone ocean a weaker (and to me, a slightly less enjoyable) part, it's not about thinking hermes isn't a good deuteragonist because she's a woman lol, but that's what some people choose to hear

and of course I do think that even if a lot of the fanbase is past that overt sexism about stone ocean/jolyne, misogyny absolutely tints the way many people read and talk about the part (or neglect to talk about it), so I completely get the frustration and why some fans might have their hackles raised about certain statements....the people who you're talking about are unfortunately a loud minority 😕 which sucks because all the stocean enthusiasts I follow are actual scholars and philosophers

[remholder]

tired, absolutely tired, of seeing art of a character where the op just says "made them butch" and all they did was give the character short hair

hair does not a person make

[merry-the-cookie]

also i can finally look at tumblr lol i didnt wanna get spoiled on the show and setlist and ykno what im super glad i wasnt

excited and also ScaredTM to see soundcheck this weekend

[old-stoneface]

im listening to the audiobook for making money (ive read the book but it was a couple years ago now) and my review is that the antagonists for this book are my least favorite out of all of the city books ive read. they completely lack charm and theyre mostly just horribly annoying

[paragonrobits]

some important calvin and hobbes facts in case you haven't read the original comic strip in a long time or only absorbed stuff on it from memes and out of context bits on here:

Calvin's last name has never been given, and neither has any of his parent's names. This was actually why his uncle Max only showed up for a brief storyline; the creator of the comic, Bill Watterson, ultimately felt that while it was fine to have him as someone for his parents to talk to, it felt far too awkward to never have Max refer to them by name and he never made a return appearance.

The general tone of the comic is fairly light-hearted, with a big emphasis on goofy slapstick comedy contrasted by clever wordplay and often surprising adult-centered jokes that'll hit you like a slap. A big part of the comedy is, as Watterson put it (paraphrased) "It's really funny to me when people express deeply stupid ideas with really fancy terminology." One notable example you might have seen is that one bit where Calvin asks his mom for money to buy a Satan-worshiping rock album and his mom replies that there's nothing genuine about them and they're just putting on the attitude for shock value, and comisserates with Calvin as he deplores that mainstream nihilism can't be trusted. He concludes that childhood is disillusioning.

There is a LOT of criticism of the extreme materialism and selfish mentality of the late 80s, when the comic was initially written. This may go a long way to explain how its aged so well; much of what it criticizes resonates well with people today.

Bill Watterson views comic strips a legitimate form of artwork, and repeatedly fought to have more space to draw more beautiful and artistic backgrounds, which was a very hard fight and unpopular even with other comic strip artists. He eventually did win some compromises and a lot of Calvin And Hobbes' artwork shows it, with the use of space to indicate time as well as a sharp contrast between the often plain environments of mundane life contrasted by the wildly beautiful imagery of Calvin's imagination (which often sports realistic depictions in an art shift of sorts).

Hobbes is explicitly not an imaginary friend, by word of Watterson himself. We don't know WHAT he is exactly, and Hobbes is apparently unaware of the strange nature of his reality; people look at him and only see an ordinary stuffed tiger plushie, but he has a tangible effect on the world that would be physically impossible for Calvin to do on his own. He's apparently been around for a while, and was apparently around when Calvin was a young baby.

On that note; Hobbes has implicitly killed (notably treated as both a gag and also with the vibe of 'he's a tiger, duh') and while he doesn't do it again on-screen, he doesn't have any moral issues about it. Calvin claims that he's never had trouble bringing Hobbes to school because the last time he did, Hobbes killed and ate a bully named Tommy Chestnut and simply comments that it was gross and he needed a bath. Calvin's tried to repeat this again, but Hobbes was grossed out at the thought having to eat a kid raw and not being allowed to use an oven first, or complaining that children are too fattening.

Hobbes became gradually less human-like in body language and more like an actual cat in both body language and behavior; this was due to Watterson drawing more inspiration from his cat, who also inspired a lot of Hobbes' running gags, such as pouncing on Calvin when he got home. Several years into the syndication of the strip, Watterson's cat passed away, and he did a tribute to her with a comic strip of the two of them agreeing to try to dream together so they can keep playing when they have to sleep; Watterson's commentary (if I recall right), remarks on his cat: "We can see each other again in dreams."

[trashbatistrash]

,

[deathbyworm]

lil magnagate symbol wants to be a time gear so bad. give up it loser! you'll never have what he had 💔💔

[dycefic]

Tom Saves The World

Everyone knows that it’s super-heroes who save the world. They fight the aliens, or the monsters, or the bad guys. And mostly, that’s true.

But not always.

I’m a psychic. The thing is, my range isn’t that great. I don’t have much detail more than about 36 hours out, 48 for something really big. I’d had a nebulous sort of bad feeling for about a week before this one finally hit, and it was big. Something very tough and very supernatural was going to come up out of the harbor of Nova Roma, and the death-toll was going to be high. Crazy high.

I did all I could. I told the Unaligned Supers Job Placement Agency, and they put the word out to everyone on both sides of the Line. The Henchman’s Union don’t like natural disasters any more than anyone else, and they’re often quite helpful against eldritch horrors and stuff like that. Things that don’t hire henchmen and ruin the property values.

The trouble was, nobody big was around. The only really big team of heavy hitters on the West Coast were away dealing with some sort of doomsday cult - I never was clear on what that was about - and Guarde and Dog Fox were out of touch and even Mx Frantique was out of town at someone’s wedding. It was going to happen in less than two days and we couldn’t find anyone to help and I was seriously considering calling in some kind of bomb threat or something to get people away from the docks, at least.

And then, about eighteen hours out, it just… went away.

Which never, ever happens.

My powers might be short range, but they’re reliable. I don’t get stuff wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find any way to prevent what was going to happen, or even been able to identify anyone who could. But someone did. Someone had done something to stop the threat, something that happened literally while I was opening my car door. When I reached for the handle, thousands of people were going to die. By the time the door was open, there was no threat at all.

At first I thought it must have been a ranged thing. Like, whatever I’d been seeing (all those teeth, I saw them in nightmares for months after) had been distracted by something tasty on its way here and gotten off track, that it’d come up somewhere up or down the coast. My range isn’t that big, either. Anything outside about thirty miles might as well be on Mars for all I know about it. So we kept a watch out, and warned the chapters of the Union and the Agency in other cities.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I couldn’t explain it, and I was really unpopular for a while. Supers do NOT like people who cry wolf. There’s enough freaky shit we have to deal with without someone panicking everyone with a dire prophecy that fizzles out.

Thank all the gods that Tunny showed up. Nobody’s really sure what Tunny actually is - sentient fish creature, some kind of really mutated human, an alien, or what. She changes her story a lot. But she’s pretty friendly, especially for a twenty-foot-long horror-movie-mermaid-thing with four arms, so when she came into harbor to pick up some supplies a guy from the Agency went out to tell her what I’d seen. I’d gotten a wharf and dock number, so she went down to check.

I don’t think anyone had ever seen Tunny scared before. Her English wasn’t good enough to really explain what she’d found hibernating down there, but it was something very old and very powerful and very dangerous, and if it’d been woken up my vision would just have been the start of the crisis.

She rounded up a bunch of whales to help her move it, once she was sure it hadn’t been agitated and wasn’t likely to rouse if moved carefully. They towed it out before dawn, not wanting to scare the civilians, and when I saw the footage from the helicopter the Union sent up, when I saw how big the swell was, how many whales were pulling, I swear I nearly crapped myself. No wonder I’d been getting hints a week in advance. Somehow we dumbass humans had built a whole fucking city almost on top of some kind of Ancient Old… THING, and eroded the sea-bottom until it was exposed, and if someone hadn’t done whatever it was we’d all have been dead long before Tunny arrived. And not just all as in ‘all of Nova Roma’, it could have taken out half of the continent... or all of it.

It took me years to find out what happened. YEARS. It turned into a kind of hobby, tracking everything that might possibly have come into contact with Wharf 38 on that particular day.  

And what I found, eventually, was a city employee named Thomas Briggs.

I’d found out early on that 38 wasn’t in good repair. Not that bad, but not great. It was old, things were getting a bit saggy in a few places, but there’d been no sign that anything was likely to fall off on the day. It had sat there for a couple of years after the crisis that never happened,, doing its job without problems then been rebuilt without any drama at all.

Entirely, completely, and totally because of Thomas Briggs.

The story, when I finally pieced it together, went like this.

There’d been some project or other to build some sort of high-budget science project over on the other side of the harbor, hanging it off’ve Pier 8, the furthest out on that side. Something about tracking sea-life or ships or something. My conversational English is near perfect, I’ve been here for years, but I don’t speak science nerd in ANY language. It’d all been approved, some university was covering most of the cost, it was all gonna be fine. And it was gonna be over on 8 because that side of the harbor is the shallow end. It’s where the sailboats go. All the big stuff that would block visual sensors and deafen the thing with engine noise was over in the thirties, in the real deep water.

They were almost ready to install the thing when a bunch of rich dudes suddenly got their panties in a bunch over having a big sciency tower thing ruining the view from their yachts, and tried to get it moved.

To, and I’m sure you guessed this, Wharf 38.

Which was completely insane. It wouldn’t be able to do its job over there, it’d be way more in the way, and (although they couldn’t have known it) the installation would definitely have woken up the Thing sleeping by the wharf and we all would have died. But rich dudes with yachts don’t care about that stuff. They’d bitched out and bribed up their friends on the city council, and those friends had done their thing, and the scientists had been left in the dark, and it’d almost gone through. They’d figured to install it right away, so that when the science guys found out it’d be too late and they’d either have to pay a lot to move it or just use it where it was.

Enter Thomas Briggs.

Mr Briggs, Tom to his friends, didn’t give a crap about the yachts or the science. He was a senior money guy for the commercial wharfs, the one who figured out things like how much money they’d take in in a quarter, and what the repair budget should be, stuff like that. He found out about this thing two days before the disaster would have happened, and sat down and did the math.

Then he sent out an email to the guys trying to push this through, and he ripped into them like they’d threatened to knife his mother. I got my hands on that email, and I didn’t understand a lot of it any more than the council guys would have. It was ALL numbers. But at the top he wrote it out in plain English. Pier 8 was new, and rated to handle the weight of the thingy. Wharf 38 was going to be scrapped in a few years, and it was NOT rated for that kind of structure. Pier 8 had plenty of room around it. Wharf 38 was already a tight fit for the big commercial ships, and adding a structure sticking out on one side would block off at least half of the wharf to those ships completely.

Bottom line, putting the thing on Wharf 38 would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year than putting it on 8, AND the city would have to eat the cost if 38 collapsed under it which it could easily do, AND the city would have to pay to move it in a couple of years anyway when 38 was due to be rebuilt.

And he cc-ed every important person he had an email address for, including the mayor, the anti-corruption people, and several reporters.

He must have sent that email right when I was opening my car door.

The whole plan collapsed right there, and some people got fired. There was no news story because the whole plan got killed before the reporters even got to the right office. The installation was started on Wharf 8 a few weeks later and I never connected it to a commercial wharf on the other side of the harbor.

One email, and a man who I never could have located in time, a man who had no powers at all, a man who was just conscientiously doing his job looking after the city’s money saved the city, and the continent, and maybe even the world.

Who could have predicted that? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

I can’t deny that I went home and got drunk off my ass that night. Just thinking about how close that had been made my hands shake. One man. One honest man who’d done the math.

I put the word out, once the hangover wore off. What had happened. That Thomas Briggs was the reason we were all alive and everyone better make his life real nice from now on, because he’d done what none of us could do and nobody but the supers would ever even know it.

He’s got a lot of luck coming to him, I can tell you. We don’t forget debts like that.

And I knew that’d freak him out, because honest men don’t like it when people start doing them a lot of favors for no apparent reason, so I tracked him down at the little bar where he likes to have a quiet beer on Friday nights before he goes home. Hell, I was the one who’d gone through it all, back then. I should get to tell him.

I sat down beside him at the bar and looked at him. I saw a thin, small, balding man who looked like he worried too much and didn’t get enough sleep, with lines around his eyes. Yeah, he looked like a man who’d do the math. “Thomas Briggs?”

He blinked at me through his glasses. “Yes? Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t. My name’s Barkhado Omar, and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” I offered him my hand and he shook it, still looking confused. Which was fair, ‘cause I doubt a lot of seven foot tall Somali women came up to him in bars even when he was young. He’s got to be close to retirement now.

He frowned. “Looking for me? Why?”

I smiled at him. “Tom, let me buy you a drink and tell you about the day you saved the world.”

It’s usually us who save the city, or the world. We have all the intel, all the advantages, all the powers.

But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s someone like Tom Briggs, doing the right thing at the right time and never knowing that he changed the course of history.

Wild, huh?

--

This story is a direct result of me and my ex chatting about how different the entire Marvel Universe would have been if Jean’s first ‘resurrection’ - being found in a life pod under a wharf, IIRC - had happened at like... any other time. Earlier. Later. It would have changed SO MUCH.

And we speculated about how it could happen, how someone just puttering around in middle management might have unknowingly saved countless lives, prevented Madelyne’s corruption, the legacy virus, all of it, just by postponing that particular set of repairs a bit longer.... and I couldn’t resist writing a version of the story in which Tom does, in fact, save the world.

[evilwizard]

I do want to say, my views on AI “art” have changed somewhat. It was wrong of me to claim that it’s not wrong to use it in shitposts… there definitely is some degree of something problematic there.

Personally I feel like it’s one of those problems that’s best solved via lawmaking—specifically, AI generations shouldn’t be copywrite-able, and AI companies should be fined for art theft and “plagiarism”… even though it’s not directly plagiarism in the current legal sense. We definitely need ethical philosophers and lawmakers to spend some time defining exactly what is going on here.

But for civilians, using AI art is bad in the same nebulous sense that buying clothes from H&M or ordering stuff on Amazon is bad… it’s a very spread out, far away kind of badness, which makes it hard to quantify. And there’s no denying that in certain contexts, when applied in certain ways (with actual editing and artistic skill), AI can be a really interesting tool for artists and writers. Which again runs into the copywrite-ability thing. How much distance must be placed between the artist and the AI-generated inspiration in order to allow the artist to say “this work is fully mine?”

I can’t claim to know the answers to these issues. But I will say two things:

Ignoring AI shit isn’t going to make it go away. Our tumblr philosophy is wildly unpopular in the real world and most other places on the internet, and those who do start using AI are unfortunately gonna have a big leg up on those who don’t, especially as it gets better and better at avoiding human detection.

Treating AI as a fundamental, ontological evil is going to prevent us from having these deep conversations which are necessary for us—as a part of society—to figure out the ways to censure AI that are actually helpful to artists. We need strong unions making permanent deals now, we need laws in place that regulate AI use and the replacement of humans, and we need to get this technology out of the hands of huge megacorporations who want nothing more than to profit off our suffering.

I’ve seen the research. I knew AI was going to big years ago, and right now I know that it’s just going to get bigger. Nearly every job is in danger. We need to interact with this issue—sooner rather than later—or we risk losing all of our futures. And unfortunately, just as with many other things under capitalism, for the time being I think we have to allow some concessions. The issue is not 100% black or white. Certainly a dark, stormy grey of some sort.

But please don’t attack middle-aged cat-owners playing around with AI filters. Start a dialogue about the spectrum of morality present in every use of AI—from the good (recognizing cancer cells years in advance, finding awesome new metamaterials) to the bad (megacorporations replacing workers and stealing from artists) to the kinda ambiguous (shitposts, app filter that makes your dog look like a 16th century British royal for some reason).

And if you disagree with me, please don’t be hateful about it. I fully recognize that my current views might be wrong. I’m not a paragon of moral philosophy or anything. I’m just doing my best to live my life in a way that improves the world instead of detracting from it. That’s all any of us can do, in my opinion.

[kyri45]

This may be an unpopular take lol but it just kinda crossed my mind. I don’t know but I kinda feel like MK doesn’t really have the right to know or ask about that kind of baggage from his bio parents? Like it has to be up to Wukong and Macaque to tell him. (Low key these three if you actually think about it have NOT known each other enough for that kind of baggage to surface up like this)

Like there are stuff about some family members of mine I did not even realize were terrible people until waaaaaaay later into adulthood, after being raised by my parents for a long time. And the only reason I was told about a lot of this is because my mom was stressed the hell out in the moment and blabbed it to me. To this day I am pretty sure she deep down did not want me to know.

I dunno maybe I am way off base here and it’s more a difference in cultures and family dynamics (ie from an Asian household weeeeeee) but the story having to bend over backwards to get to a point where MK is probs about to yell at the two of them just feels… eh to me. Like I said tho, unpopular take lol so I get if peeps will disagree haha

Oh yeah I agree on the fact that he also shouldn't have poked too much durong the series about what happened between them. The thing here is mostly- like the fight and everything is somethimg that is literally in JTTW, and since the book is canon it means that almost everyone who had at least read the book is aware of what happened between them. MK is known for only have read very few parts of the book so. In some way, he would have found out. And if the little guy got to experienced it 4k I guess he kind of neccessitated some extra explaination (even though I'll admit, he could have just read the book more and he wouldn't have such a high view of Wukong without having to go thtough extra trauma but i guess chat likes the angst

[worldseer]

Unpopular JJK opinion.

If I die in flames for this, I may as well die standing. Fanon Toji is just wrong. Like- that's not him.

Walk with me-

First and foremost to remind y'all:

Toji was abused for much of his life growing up, and likely never recovered from that

Mamaguro is the first and only woman he loved, the one who changed him and made him better. His habit afterwards and likely before was to just go from rich woman to rich woman to get money. It's unsaid if he had relationships with them, but it's more likely he just did jobs for them in between assignments.

He has a gambling addiction, likely because it gave him a sense of choice and control over things in his life. He wanted to feel like he could win at something, if not at being loved and revered by the Zenins. He is not addicted to money itself, or frugal about things.

While not THE BEST father, he only wanted to have Megumi given to the Zenin Clan because he believed he would be treated better and thrive there. Living in luxury and adored for your cursed technique is better than living with a non-sorcerer who struggles to keep money. Hell Megumi is NAMED Megumi because he's a blessing.

Now that that is out of the way, here is the unpopular opinion part. TOJI IS NOT THE LOVER YOU ALL WRITE HIM TO BE! HE'S NOT SOME KINKY DADDY WHO WILL DEGRADE AND BULLY YOU OR STEAL YOUR MONEY. And now I will explain why- 1. By example of Mamaguro, Toji notably softened and let go of bad habits. Yes, including his assassin job and gambling (so no worries about him stealing money). If in fanfic we're writing that he loves you, then yeah, he's gonna be a sarcastic sweetheart. Probably teases you a lot, but still cares and makes effort to show it.

2. As a man who worked a job as a literal assassin, I highly doubt he would want to ever be rough in intimate settings. He wants to keep the violent sides of himself as FAR AS POSSIBLE away from those he loves. So no rough kinky stuff, sorry. He's not gonna consistently degrade you or leave rough marks and bruises from grabbing and tossing you around in bed. He wants you safe, and not to see the man he was before.

3. As a man who was abused, he will likely be polarizing at times. Sometimes he avoids touch, and other times he's all over you asking for attention. He will want comfort, care, and gentle touches. Like the biggest lap dog you've ever seen. Please just compliment him, kiss him and hold him, he needs the reassurance. Or give him his space, and let him be but don't forget to offer something to cheer him up (like meat and offal).

4. He can be VERY bitter, but not overly angry. We know he still has a deep grudge against the Zenin clan and jujutsu society as a whole. It wouldn't be uncommon to see him possibly seething and stewing in silence, or hold more grudges. That being said, they likely wouldn't be held against you (if he loves you). He's cool and level-headed, and rarely lets emotion get the better of him (save for combat).

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I care too much about characters.

[crtter]

I’ve been seeing some people getting a bit confused and getting some stuff wrong in the comments of that one post telling the story about the creator of Neopets throwing a hissy fit (Hissi fit lol) over people disliking his idea of a game “that’s just like Neopets but with crypto” and I don’t want to add anything to it to not bother the OP but Neopets has been a hyperfixation of mine since I was 13 and I physically can’t stop myself from going “Um, ackshually ☝️🤓” so I’m gonna do it in my own post. Here’s what happened:

The guy who got super pissed off and started badmouthing Neopets users, ending his tirade with a selfie of him giving Neopets users the finger, Adam Powell, did create Neopets, yes, but he doesn’t own it anymore since it was sold to Viacom in 2005. He has been involved in a few game ventures since but they haven’t been very successful.

His idea wasn’t to “implement NFTs in Neopets”, he’s developing (or planning to) another game that’ll apparently be free to play with some extra paid features, and said features would be paid in some sort of cryptocurrency.

Sadly, the parent company of Neopets, JumpStart, already tried to implement NFTs by partnering with Metaverse back in 2021, with disastrous results, both in the eyes of Neopets players (who hated the idea because NFTs are a scam and terrible for the environment and all) and in the eyes of NFT bros (because the NFTs in question were VERY overpriced given their poor quality and made using stolen assets from Neopets fan sites). The project is apparently still underway but it’s hugely unpopular and tweets made by the official Neopets Metaverse account mostly only gets engagement from NFT bots, if they get any at all.

Back to Adam. He apparently thought people would be “excited about his new game because of the Neopets Metaverse thing”, without knowing how much the fanbase hated the whole thing, and tried to peddle it in the Discord server of the r/Neopets subreddit, a subreddit that has always been VERY vocal against the Neopets NFTs. And well. You can guess how much people weren’t interested in his game. Then, just to make matters worse, people went on the Discord server of his game and saw that it was badly moderated and chock full of homophobic comments made by cryptobros.

Adam gets pissed off at people disliking his game idea and not taking kindly to his comments that “they just don’t understand what crypto is about” and goes on an angry tirade, saying stuff such as how much he wished he never made Neopets because the fanbase sucks, saying he’s going to buy it back just to destroy it and ending in the aforementioned middle finger selfie, all while people clowned on him like crazy. This ended in him getting banned from the Discord server AND from the r/Neopets subreddit. He then started trying to defend himself and demanding to be unbanned in… the comment thread of a news article relating the incident in the Neopets fan site Jellyneo. Last time I checked he was still at it.

He blamed his outburst on “having drunk alcohol while on Sertraline” and has said he wasn’t aware of the homophobic comments in his server and claimed that he doesn’t have anything against LGBT+ people, but he has also made it very clear he doesn’t think he’s in the wrong and won’t apologize for anything.

[utilitycaster]

maybe a slightly unpopular opinion but I love how this season of D20 is about the boring day to day of high school along with all the usual mystery and hijinks. I like how after the wacky chaos and Spring Break Vibes we have to see the characters actually balance all their high school responsibilities, and I love the downtime mechanics. I like how all the running gags from season 1 - D20's first season - are getting fleshed out and explored and made serious, like Fig attending barbarian classes and Porter not liking Gorgug. I like how on some level the party is just exhausted from spending all summer saving the world instead of doing dumb teenage things. I like how the structure of D20 means that we actually do play out the long-term consequences of some of the party's victories that would have been in the endgame of most campaigns (eg: Adaine killing her terrible father). I like how Kristen's story especially echoes this, with her being told that she has to get good at the less flashy stuff, not just the huge miracles. also I definitely think Jace, who was killed by Aguefort very early in the first season, killed Yolanda.

[seriousbrat]

Hi ! I don’t understand why people say Severus was bullied , I don’t think he was because there wasn’t a power imbalance between him and James, and he defended himself didn’t he? He created Sectumsempra for his enemies *aka The Marauders* so he doesn’t look like a victim to me😅! What do you think?

Did we read the same book? haha. Joking aside, I think there are some serious misunderstandings here about bullying. Sev was definitely bullied by James and Sirius. That's just objectively and undeniably true.

First of all, I know I've talked about this recently but there was absolutely a power imbalance between James and Severus. I think you're taking 'power imbalance' to mean 'difference in skill level' perhaps but that isn't what it means necessarily. The power imbalance between them is social. James was a very popular student, Severus was very unpopular. James came from wealth, Sev came from a poor working-class family. James was pureblood, Sev was halfblood. I think the first of these differences is probably the most relevant, but all of them are at play in the dynamic.

Sometimes 'power imbalances' in situations of abuse or mistreatment aren't as clear cut as you'd think. It might be as simple as who's stronger physically, or it might just be about who is more afraid of the other or who has more emotional influence over the other rather than such clearly defined social differences. In the case of James and Severus, however, it's pretty obvious.

Victims of bullying often defend themselves. That's extremely normal, and it's pretty much victim blaming to suggest that a victim is no longer a victim if they can or do defend themselves. Similarly, victims can do bad stuff themselves, and still be victims. Victims are rarely, if ever, "perfect" in the way they respond to abuse or bullying (or in general), and the expectation that they have to be in order to be considered victims contributes to "the myth of the perfect victim", which I encourage you to read further about! Victims often don't "look like" victims when socially we expect them to be meek and harmless and well-behaved. Few people are truly meek and harmless and well-behaved 100% of the time, especially when subject to abuse, bullying, or mistreatment.

Sectumsempra was a horrible spell but that literally doesn't change the fact that Snape was a victim of bullying. Even Snape being a bully years later to Harry and Neville doesn't change the fact that he was once bullied.