#people can change and I guess so can I

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[ohhgingersnaps]

I'm seeing some frustration over fandom creatives expressing anger or distress over people feeding their work into ChatGPT. I'm not responding to OP directly because I don't want to derail their post (their intent was to provide perspective on how these models actually work, and reduce undue panic, which is all coming from a good place!), but reassurances that the addition of our work will have a negligible impact on the model (which is true at this point) does kind of miss the point? Speaking for myself, my distress is less about the practical ramifications of feeding my fic into ChatGPT, and more about the principle of someone taking my work and deliberately adding it to the dataset.

Like, I fully realize that my work is a drop in the bucket of ChatGPT's several-billion-token training set! It will not make a demonstrable practical difference in the output of the model! That doesn't change the fact that I do not want my work to be part of the set of data that the ChatGPT devs use for training.

According to their FAQ, ChatGPT can and will use user input to train itself. The terms and conditions explicitly state that they save your chats to help train and improve their models. (You can opt-out, but sharing is the default.) So if you're feeding a fic into ChatGPT, unless you've explicitly opted out, you are handing it to the ChatGPT team and giving them permission to use it for training, whether or not that was your intent.

Now, will one fic make a demonstrable difference in the output of the model? No! But as the person who spent a year and a handful of months laboring over my fic, it makes a difference to me whether my fic, specifically, is being used in the dataset. If authors are allowed to have a problem with the ChatGPT devs for scraping millions of fics without permission, they're also allowed to have a problem with folks handing their individual fics over via the chat interface.

I do want to add that if you've done this to a fic, please don't take this as me being upset with you personally! Folks are still learning new information and puzzling out what "good" vs. "bad" use is, from an ethical standpoint. (Heck, my own perspective on this is deeply based on my own subjective feelings!) And we certainly shouldn't act like one person feeding a fic into ChatGPT has the same practical negative impact, on a broad societal scale, as a team using a web crawler to scrape five billion pieces of artwork for Stable Diffusion.

The point is that fundamentally, an ethical dataset should be obtained with the consent of those providing the data. Just because it's normalized for our data to be scraped without consent doesn't make it ethical, and this is why ChatGPT gives users the option to not share data— there is actually a standardized way (robots.txt) for website servers to set policies for how bots/crawlers can interact with them, for exactly this reason— and I think fandom artists and authors are well within their rights to express a desire for opting out to be the socially-respected default within the fandom community.

[uncanny-tranny]

So often, twink death is framed as a bad thing. However, the "twink death" for trans men* is frankly one of the most healing things you will bear witness to (pun intended).

[pokimoko]

The fact that Main-verse Ooo is as good and as kind as it is (relative to the other universes shown so far, at least, it's obviously not perfect) all because of the same character that starts off as the OG series' antagonist, the person we were made to see as the bad guy (albeit an often ineffectual one) for several seasons, is making me lose my mind.

Imagine finding out the guy you spent your childhood beating up and saving princesses from is in fact a driving catalyst behind you being able to exist, and not only exist but also live in a world that knows what kindness is. All because that man, the same man who you've witnessed do terrible things, once met a little girl and taught her how to be good.

Simon's story really shows us that even if you lose your way and forget how it is to be good yourself, the world keeps the memory for you. That act of love Simon showed Marcy by protecting her and seeing her as more than the monster she thought herself to be created ripples upon ripples, small at first but eventually enough to help give their wreckage of a world—a world that easily could have been forsaken, its goodness overlooked because of its inhospitable remains—a chance to grow into something beautiful. Because of those very same ripples Simon created, the people of Ooo grew up in a world where they know enough about kindness that they were able and willing to spare the 'bad guy' some, to see beyond the wreckage and allow him to grow too.

In saving Marceline, Simon helped to not only to save the world, but also himself.

[sonknuxadow]

this is probably an unpopular opinion with the amount of "everyone is married with kids" type future aus people make for sonic characters but i cannot see sonic getting married or having a kid ever. if he did somehow end up with a kid hed be the worlds first transmasc absent father or however the joke goes

[autisticlancemcclain]

Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me

i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.

[impossible3girl]

Marauders stans/Snaters: I can excuse s*xual harassment, but I draw the line at calling someone a moodblood once in a moment of huge distress.

Me: You can excuse s*xual harassment?

That's how most of my interactions in the comments of my Snape TikToks go. Bonus points if they also can excuse bullying in general as long as the bullies are rich and conventionally attractive, or just ignore it for the Marauders but make up extra mean stuff for Snape.

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[sneez]

corvin

[id: two digital drawings of corvus from the video game paladins. he is a pale-skinned young man wearing a red and black caped coat with the collar pulled up over his mouth, and has brown hair with a white streak. the first image is a portrait of him from the shoulders up alongside a full-body drawing. text beside it reads 'guy who really needs to stim but isnt letting himself so hes just standing about looking intensely uncomfortable'. the second image is a full-body drawing of him holding his pistol and knife in an action pose against a background of scenery from the game. overlayed text reads 'I'M JOINING THE WAR AGAINST AUTISM ON THE SIDE OF THE AUTISM'. end id. ]

[milf-harrington]

i keep seeing people say "oh eddie would be x in a modern au" "eddie would be y in a modern au" and im ???

a modern day eddie would still be a metalhead dnd player who's probably read the LoTR triology more than once; he'd just also own all the movies and know a bunch of useless trivia about the actual filming and production.

he'd probably still be a drug dealer, still gets held back a year in high school, probably has a second hand phone with a cracked screen that he only uses to listen to music, skips class because his teachers don't like him, runs a dnd club either in the drama room or the art room, either forges notes to get out of phys ed or just doesn't show up, he strikes me as someone who enjoys the process of burning music onto cd's so he probably has a bunch of mixtapes in his glove box and steve would hate driving with him bc his car wouldn't have an AUX port or anything so he'd either have to listen to the radio or eddie's music

a modern day eddie would still be eddie, he'd just have the luck of getting to experience all the nerdy shit that comes out after the 80's and also modern technology

[foxgloveinspace]

People jumping ship cause of the new masks is very ahhhh. Telling. Tbh.

[happyk44]

PJO: we need to recognize the value of the minor gods. The Olympians are important, sure, but the minor gods do a lot of work in maintaining and assisting the pantheon, have their own kids and deserve to be seen and valued just as much

HoO: Back at it again with Olympian-only nonsense!

[wisecrackingeric-2]

Can I be mega autistic here and vent for a second and ask if anyone else is lowkey scared for whatever the next RE game is HSBWHDNDJ

[friendofthecrows]

Hey I know I focus on low empathy disorders (esp. because I have ASPD) and this sometimes extends to talking about how many empaths demonize us but:

Shout-out to people with high empathy/hyperempathy that aren't perfect angels 24/7

I can't talk on it much because I'm Literally The Opposite but the people who have been most accepting about my lack of empathy have been people with "too much" of it.

Whether you *are* super sweet or whether your empathy manifests in difficulty controlling anger or pain you feel from others (or both, as is common) you have just as much of a right to your struggles as all of us without empathy. You're not overemotional, you're reacting proportionally to what you feel. Even if you were, you deserve to be treated with kindness and without judgement!!

Solidarity between people with low/no empathy and people with hyperempathy forever (つ˘◡˘)づ💚

[piningpercussionist]

I don't think I ever posted these, but a while ago I made some icons to use for discord rp stuff, and I figured I might as well post them.

Future Kim (with Lucifer) our beloved... and werewolf Kim!

I forget if I've mentioned it in tags somewhere, but there IS a werewolf Kim blog I made AGES ago that just hasn't formally opened yet. And I'm gonna be honest- that shifted Kim might be one of my favorite werewolves I've drawn recently.

Anyhow, enjoy!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

set out to create a serious, canonesque drawing with which to say "feel free to go in my lackadaisy tag and help me mystery speculate" but only got going when i made it bowling and the rarepair agenda