#real life should also be like this

[antennatoheaven]

kirby games are so real for letting you heal your friends by giving them a little kiss everything in video games should be like that

[uncanny-tranny]

Periodic reminder that unless a person specifically and clearly tells you it is okay to tell others they are trans or queer, you should err on the side of caution and assume they do not want you to tell people (especially random people!) about their transness or queerness.

You have no idea, generally, why somebody doesn't talk openly about their trans or queer status, and you have no idea, truly, how somebody might react to that information. The most progressive person out there is still capable of harbouring incredibly negative thoughts about somebody's queer status.

[b4kuch1n]

polymer broadcast signal hijack

[syn0vial]

my gun-loving, car guy, "i'm the straightest man i know" brother who just finished baldur's gate 3 talking about astarion:

[vanhelsingapologist]

Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.

They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.

They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.

Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.

On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.

[courtrecord]

honestly i hate how that “maybe the curtains are just blue” post has become shorthand for anti-intellectualism and shit bc as someone who has an utter passion for media analysis now, I WAS THAT PERSON IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASS.

english class never taught me how to analyze stories, it taught me how to remember what things the teacher said were “symbolism” and how to take quizzes where we had to match a quote to the character who said it. i didn’t give a shit about any of it, bc literally why should i. it was bullshit.

there’s this idea online that people are forgetting or rejecting what they learned in english class when they’re bad at media analysis, and maybe that’s a little bit true, but i think the much bigger problem is they never learned it in the first place. cinemasins & “maybe the curtains are just blue” aren’t convincing people to abandon an intellectualism they already had, they’re filling a void.

when all you learn in high school is to write on the test “blue = depression”, why is it surprising that so many people don’t give a shit about the curtains.

[eilarae]

Stardew Valley Discourse: A Summary

shane: i have depression

person: aww poor sweetie im so sorry ily im always here for u

shane: *exhibits symptoms of depression*

the same person: ew there's no excuse for that

[silusvesuius]

nnnnnnnnnnnnno maa'am

[casualavocados]

If anyone allows Zhang Teng to get in again, I'll kill them!

AI DI + talking about & attitude towards death KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[warlenys]

been counting the number of wilson scenes per ep and s1 has 140 total with 1x10 having the most at 18 and 1x22 having the least with only 2 he also got a total of 0 separate plots all season and only 4 episodes had any kind of inquiry into his character he truly is just Also In Those Episodes in s1 they didn’t give a fuck about him

[inkskinned]

the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.

people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.

"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."

the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.

the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.

at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.

"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.

this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.

[batsplat]

random throwback to fabio's response to casey saying he should've been black flagged for the whole open leathers situation

[tennessoui]

it’s like baby gorl there’s no way I, the author who wrote the fic you’re commenting on and who is the intended audience for this comment, am gonna agree with you 😿🙏 some things can just stay on your chest 🙏

[hamofjustice]

nemona feels like an obscure blorbo instead of the main rival character from the latest pokemon game because to get to her really good content from people who really get it, you first have to wade through the ocean of yandere pervert obsessive stalker annoying punchable bimbo amazon goddess interpretations of...

... a neurodivergent and possibly disabled high schooler who's desperately trying to make any friends or get any support from her rich neglectful family - while everyone in her school is jealous of their own imagined version of a privileged asshole version of her they made up - who deeply and platonically loves and supports the one new kid who agreed to take the time to get to know and respect her and her special interest without having to hold back her true self

unlike her, it's not great!

kinda feels like she has the same problem in our world that she does in hers.

[vvitchllng]

Love the idea that Raven Queen in her own realm feels an arcane magic wielder proposing some batshit crazy maybe it’ll work maybe it won’t hubris plan like a disturbance in the force and Instantly is like oh I’ve Got to stop this shit in its tracks

[nothingmatters-everythingmatters]

sometimes I think so much of "queer" discourse surrounds semantics and identity labels because people engaging in these spaces legitimately do not live life outside of the internet. I don't just mean they don't go outside or talk to real people, but the way they interact with real people is never truly free from the internet. I think this is just sort of how gen z are now unfortunately, so much of our lives are consumed by handheld devices and social media platforms, but I find it way more prevalent in artsy, liberal, tra-positive communities. (the amount of times I just hear people straight up quote popular tumblr posts or tiktok trends...)

and surrounding yourself in real life with people who frequent the same internet circles as you and thus hold the same beliefs is a great way to not end up experiencing anything actually real, and thus you never really learn anything from your life experiences or from other perspectives, much less experiences of relationships or sex or romance. leading to people caring way too much about words and perception with things like pronouns or microlabels or "validity." everything is about optics and holding the "correct" opinions because that's the state of the internet these days! of course they'd ignore the actual material aspects of oppression, what is the internet if not a breeding ground for consumerist distraction from dealing with the various staggering issues in society?

"touch grass" isn't even a good enough solution anymore. can you partake in any hobby without thinking of how other people would percieve it? can you have a conversation without parroting the words of a tiktok post? can you seek love and relationships without obscuring it in layers of branding? can you understand yourself, truly understand who you are, without obsessing over how it looks on a screen?