#people on this website say 'we all interpret things differently :)' as if it means no one can ever be wrong about what a text is saying

[ms-demeanor]

i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! Because I just saw the post on ao3 and donations, and a different post about ao3s updated statement regarding chatgpt/ai generated fiction, and you generally have a good read on things like this - what's your opinion on it, and how its meant to be interpreted?

(I want to good faith believe, and its a complicated/ongoing topic, but wanted to hear your thoughts)

I don't know which post about the update you mean, Anon, but I assume the update referenced is the one the OTW posted on 5/13 about AI scraping and ChatGPT. I do have some thoughts but I want to go through the post a little because I don't think I'm actually needed to interpret this one -- I think with some critical thought anyone can, but a lot of people don't get critical thinking training in school, so I want to do a little demo of it.

Pre-emptively, this is a list of things I'm not an expert on: copyright law, data scraping, AI, website design, and the legality of certain forms of freedom of expression. But honestly for this you don't need to be.

First and foremost, we really have no reason to disbelieve OTW when they speak on this subject. While there's debate and discussion about AO3 and certainly it's imperfect in a number of directions, they are pretty transparent, generally speaking. I don't believe there is a reason to approach AO3 with an assumption of disingenuity in a general sense. However, the organization is run by humans, who are imperfect and can sometimes be deceitful, so it's good to always approach public statements with a critical eye.

So the post is talking about two separate but related issues: preventing AIs from scraping AO3, and policy on AI-generated works being posted. What we are looking for, from both, is a combination of things: we want what they're saying to make sense both in the world, and within the statement -- no contradictions, nothing that seems illogical, nothing that seems like baseless assumption or generalization. We want simple prose, and we want a look at the reasoning behind the actions they're taking.

When talking about AI scraping, they start with what they've done to counteract scraping, speaking in relatively simple terms but with enough specificity that if you wanted you could look up anything you didn't understand. They list what they've done to prevent scraping, and they also discuss the issues with the kinds of measures that would need to be implemented to fully prevent it. They mention specific examples that people were concerned about, and they talk about what they'll be doing going forward.

In terms of the text, this all makes sense to me -- here's what we've done, here's the problem with doing more, here's what we plan to do next. Internally, no matter what the topic is, this section is logical, there are no contradictions and no particular evasions. Critically it passes muster. Additionally, with the knowledge I do have of website design and data management, I can tell that they're doing all they reasonably can. From a standpoint of ignorance, the statement makes internal sense; from a standpoint of knowledge, they're doing what I would do in their place.

When talking about AI-generated works, likewise, they're pretty open about their process and reasoning. They say look, this isn't against TOS as it stands, and here's a reminder of why, followed by a mission statement. The bolded text of that statement is very clear, and correlates with what I said in an earlier post: their policy is maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This statement is consistent with policy AO3 has held for years, which is well-known to the community.

They go on to discuss how AI-generated work could violate spam policies, but those spam policies apply to everyone everywhere, and they remind us that we can always have the Policy & Abuse team examine a work we're skeptical of. (Inside baseball, I know some people who have beef with Policy & Abuse for being unresponsive, particularly in certain cases where harassment is involved. However, within this document, they are saying both "here's why we do this" and "if you have a problem, here's the first step.")

Again, after saying what's happening and what's being done about it, they move on to say that these are only current policies, and may change depending on future developments, and that those changes will be made available for public discussion. This is once more internally logical, and with the benefit of outside knowledge, perfectly rational.

Because I agree with them -- when I saw there was an "updated" statement from OTW on AI-generated prose I was frankly alarmed because I think banning AI-generated prose from AO3 causes way more problems than it solves. It's pretty restrained of them not to bring up the issue in more detail, but it's not difficult for those of us familiar with the community to project outwards as to why banning AI prose might be a bad thing.

So, think about what happens if an AI prose ban goes into effect and you read a fic you think was AI generated. How can you tell? Have you read some of the human-generated prose on AO3? Some of it's not great. So really in that case, what you're banning is someone saying they AI-generated the fic, which means AI-generated fic would still show up, it just couldn't be tagged as such. It's like Prohibition -- they banned alcohol and people still drank. They poisoned the alcohol and people drank the poisoned alcohol (check out paragraph five for specifics). If you ban something off the archive it'll still show up there, it just won't be tagged, so instead of a bag labeled "dead dove, do not eat" you just step on a land mine in your kitchen. AI prose is not content in the way that say incest or underage sex is; I'm against banning those as well, but at least with those you can pretty clearly say "yes this is" or "no this isn't" based on objective criteria. You can't do that with "was this made by a human or a machine" when it comes to prose.

Which leads to the second issue: if a text is reported as AI-generated and the author says "No, I wrote that," how do you prove otherwise? If you report an author for uploading AI-generated prose, all that will happen is either they just say "No, I wrote that" or someone on AO3's abuse team unilaterally decides that yes, this is AI prose, and punts someone off the website who might just be kind of a crap writer, which is not a sin or a crime. Either way it's a waste of time. So introducing a ban on AI prose is really just introducing either a useless show-law that will still cause AI prose to be posted there, just without proper tagging, or a tool to harass people with. Harassment is already an issue on the archive.

And we can reason all this out for ourselves simply by asking "What is the good-faith reason for not banning AI prose?" Assuming good faith isn't just for blindly trusting, after all; it's also for reasoning out other peoples' motivations for things.

And frankly fandom gets a little weird about assuming bad faith when it comes to anyone who has the least bit of power within the community. It's something I've encountered personally, as someone with some clout in fandom who is occasionally assumed to have weirdly malevolent intent. I'm not malicious. I'm just an awkward dumbass. But this is just something fandom does, so it's also good to check oneself and go, "Hey, is this person being genuinely malevolent or am I just assuming wickedness because it's easier to be mad at a villain than to explore the complexities of these acts?"

It's why I deliberately didn't speculate about the person who uploaded an AI fanfic and didn't respond to others doing so in comments. That person is right there. You don't have to assume any intent at all, you can just ask them. And it's so much more educational to do so!

So yeah, actually real props to whoever wrote that post by the OTW -- it's internally logical, reasonably transparent, simply written, and avoids a lot of prose pitfalls that I would absolutely fall into (did fall into, in this very post). I think within this area, they are doing what they can to prevent scraping and making the correct decisions, for now, regarding AI content on the archive.

#ao3 #otw #ai prose #censorship #archive

[kakiastro]

Money in Astrology

Hey yall! I’m back today with a new post that’s going to discuss all things about your money! Yes, you can use astrology to help better your financials and what you can do to live a comfortable life that suits you!

To understand your money situation, you need 3 different charts to look at, Look at this like a cake, there’s 3 charts which means 3 layers:

First layer is your Natal Chart: this is the base on how to gain money. It’s the abilities you were born with and what you’ve learned from past lives

2nd layer is your Progessed chart: this is the 2nd layer to how to gain money. Progressed chart is the stage you are in life currently

3rd layer is your Solar Return Chart: this is the final layer to gain money. Solar return aka “your birthday” is the overall energy of that year for you.

The frosting of the cake is you putting this all together.

For one example: let’s say in your natal chart you have a Gemini 2h, Progressed has Cancer 2h and Solar has Aquarius 2h. Let’s put it all together.

So let’s say you’re a writer for a journalism company because Gemini rules over writing and Journalism. This is what you were naturally drawn to do to make a living. Now let’s say 10 years has passed by and now your 2h is in Cancer in your progressed chart. You’re still a writer because that’s still your natal placement, but now you want shift things up so instead of working for a company, you work from home (Cancer 2h)writing from a blog/website you created, something like Patreon. Instead of the regular 9-5, you make your own money but still doing what you original love which is writing. Now let’s say you want to know how your upcoming year financial will be. So you see you have an Aquarius 2h in your solar return chart which is perfect if you have an internet type of job that you’re trying to grow. Aquarius rules online and groups of people so your subscribers may grow that year which means more money.

Now planets in the 2h, and aspects if you have planets in the 2h influence this as well. Like if you have Aquarius moon in the 2h, you may feel alienated from you family during this time because you’re so focused on your blog. Your subscribers may start to feel more like family to you etc.

I know that was a long example but I want you all to really understand how to interpret this in your own lives and charts. I have Virgo 3h so I’m all about the details 🤪

Now that we got what kind of charts to look for and how to interpret them, let’s discuss what to actually look for in these charts!

1. The 2nd House + Planets in the 2h(if you have any), if not look for the 2h ruler + planetary degrees and house degrees (if your using Placidus house system)

-the 2h rules over physical money in general so this is is where you first look to get an idea to see what you can do to make it. This house is where you will start to build your wealth. 2h also rules over our values and assets. How you value and see money based on your upbringing can be seen here as well.

2. The House where Taurus rules in your charts

-Taurus rules the 2h naturally so wherever it rules in your charts, that’s an area where you can make money from as well.

3. Your Venus sign + degree + house placement + aspects to Venus

-Venus rules over money because it rules over Taurus. So even if you don’t know what to do by just looking at your 2h or Taurus house, look at your Venus placement

4. The 8th house. Use the same process for this house as you did the the 2h.

-the 8h is the opposite of the 2h. The 2h is physical money but the 8h is the power of money. It’s how you use your money in your life. 8h also rules other people money such as your partner. You can gain money through inheritance, you can have lots of debts too. 8h rules over loans as well.

5. Scorpio. Use the same process as Venus

-Scorpio is ruled by modern ruler Pluto and traditional ruler Mars. Pluto means “wealth” . I personally think it shows the power of wealth. Mars rules over action, Passionate and drive. You can make money and build wealth by using your Scorpio placements and house. What are you passionate about, what the thing that lights your soul on fire? That’s what you can make money from. Scorpio rules over alchemy, you can turn your passion into a goldmine. Money can change and end lives which is very Scorpio energy

6. 11th house

-not many people talk about the 11th house when it comes to money but it does play a role. It rules over “collected wealth” because it’s what you’ve been saving during your working career years. Using derivative houses (counting the houses) STARTING from the 10th house, it’s 2 spaces away from the 11h. So 10, 11=2 because we only counted 2 spaces over. The 2 represents the 2h.

If you’re confused about the derivative house method, go to my pinned post and scroll to learning tools and scroll down to derivative astrology post to get a better idea.

-The 11h also rules over connections and networking. You can literally make money based off of who you know and who knows you.

7. The house Aquarius sits

-like I said above, Aquarius rules over groups of people and networking. We are in a digital age now so making money off the internet is easy to do now compared to 20 years ago when technology was just coming up. Social media influencer is an actual career now that comes with lots privileges if you stick with it and meet the right people. Also look and see where Uranus and Saturn sits because aqua is ruled by both of these planets.

Thank you all for reading and if you need a birth chart, I’m open to help ya! Look at my pinned post for more details

#astrology #astrology community #knowledge #love astrology #astro observations #advanced astrology #birth chart #money #money in astrology

[emmettworld]

Okay I promise this is genuine and I don't want to send hate, and if you don't believe it, fair...but why post the works involving minors and nsfw (yes that includes the incest) ? I do believe that you can write whatever you want, and I don't think you're some boggeyman that get his kick of writing about abused kids or whatever bullshit. But there's a difference between writing it and publishing it, and while I think it's unfair your blog was straight up deleted and not flagged, I can also understand why Tumblr did it : I read the ToS, and I don't think they're just for real minors (but it's my personnal interpretation). This type of work (text, art, etc) can be shared with a group of friends or a group of people who're all used to this kind of content, and maybe it would prevent the risk of people stumbling unto texts involving Logan and David for example (happened to me once, oof) and more importantly, Tumblr throwing a fit? You're an amazing artist and while I haven't kept up with your content for a while (I unfollowed when you started posting about incest and non-con against minors sorry, it's a topic I really don't like), I don't want you to keep on being flagged and banned forever.

the simplest answer i have is because it's part of who i am as a creator, and sharing those parts has not just been extremely liberating and cathartic for me, but for others too.

that's one of the most important things to me. it would be different if all i got was hate and not a shred of support or positivity -- if nobody told me that they liked it, that it helped them be more comfortable with themselves and their own work, then i don't know if i would. it's hard to say whether i would just get bogged down by hate and give it up or if it would keep going regardless.

but aside from that, it's the principle. it's the fact that i, as well as similar creators, am not forcing anyone to see this content. i am not posting things uncensored for anyone to stumble upon. i always use very specific warnings, read mores, and links. not once would you encounter a post of mine like that and see anything explicit unless you chose to view it.

and that's the principle i'm fighting for: choice.

this website used to be place where you could pretty much post anything, way before the Naughty Ban, because we understood it was all about personal choice. about curating your own content, blocking tags and blogs you didn't want to see, unfollowing if you had to (which you have EVERY right to do, and don't need to apologize for!). most of us followed online etiquette and those who didn't, again, you can just choose to unfollow or block. not report them just for posting shit you don't like.

the TOS explicitly states real minors. if they wanted to include fictional, they should have stated that. if they wanted to include fictional, they should not only reference the actual crime, but the thought crime of creating things that don't adhere to morals in reality.

personally, i think it's one or two people throwing a fit, but that's just me. i think my content, which is not even posted directly to this site and is by no means being shoved in anyone's face, is the least of this site's problems or concerns.

but anyways, that's why i'm ready to die on this hill. because i've met so many wonderful people from being open about what i post, no matter how disturbing it may be, and because we should all be able to post freely as creators if we're not directly showing anything explicit that could violate TOS.

#answered asks #anonymous #tw purity discourse

[theheirofthesharingan]

Hi, same anon as before. After looking all day I found the panel in original Japanese version

http://blog-imgs-45.fc2.com/y/a/m/yamaharbx6jm/moblog_7d893b7f.jpg

And Itachi says exactly "もうこの世界に 未練はない", which, according to Google Translate means "There are no regrets in this world anymore". So, I know an online translator is not to be trusted blindly, but it does not seem to look like Itachi meant "I regret nothing, bitches, deal with it" as people seem to interpret. He either means "I saved Konoha, so I don't have to regret the suffering this war may have led to" or "I did my job saving Konoha, there is no point with me staying here and suffering for the things I did". Or he feels somehow responsible for the 4rth Ninja War because he worked in Akatsuki, helped collect the tailed beasts and also led Sasuke to do so, so he is like "I put an end to the war in the end, so I have no more regrets". But regrets about that, not about all he did wrong to Sasuke.

Those are the only things that make sense if we take into account Itachi was answering Sasuke when he asks "then you will leave too?" as Itachi was dispelling the Endo Tensei. It makes no sense he would just say something so hurtful to Sasuke after being remorseful for the whole fight and then go back to being sorry again and telling him he will love him always. I also checked French and Spanish translations and all them them translate that panel as "I have no further links to this world" and I even found an English translation that goes like this too here https://64.media.tumblr.com/58f88f0e4e3a0fe1512a61eeec7fdade/tumblr_inline_nwbrtoz58T1tthc3o_500.png

Not sure if all these are official translations or fanmade, though. Anyway, Itachi very obviously and painfully regretted what he did, I think you have to be blind to not get that.

Thank you so much for providing the penal in the original language. I checked the translation in several other translation tools and none of them leave it barely at "I have no more regrets". Makes me wonder why the English sub and dub as well as manga translation did this. And if I've been cursing Kishimoto for no reason because what he wanted to say was different from what got translated in English. Since most of the audience we interact are English speaking this spread like wildfire and hate for Itachi is quite paramount on this website it only worked as a catalyst for people to justify their hate.

Anyway, one of the tools I checked into translated this:

There is no more unfinished business in this world.

This is how it translates into my own mother-tongue as well. It's also closer to the ones that you've mentioned. These are the translated words that most tools translated when I checked.

The second translation was this:

I have no more regrets, no more regrets for this world.

(italicized emphasis is mine)

It does translate to 'I have no more regrets' but there's more to it, too. The context of both the phrases is quite similar.

He either means "I saved Konoha, so I don't have to regret the suffering this war may have led to" or "I did my job saving Konoha, there is no point with me staying here and suffering for the things I did". Or he feels somehow responsible for the 4rth Ninja War because he worked in Akatsuki, helped collect the tailed beasts and also led Sasuke to do so, so he is like "I put an end to the war in the end, so I have no more regrets". But regrets about that, not about all he did wrong to Sasuke.

Given the new translation and the context it seems plausible that this is exactly what he meant. Translation into one language from another usually loses a lot of depth and nuance and this seems to be one of those instances. Quite like Itachi's final words before his first death in English were translated as only 'this is it' but the better translation is 'this is the end' or 'it ends with this'. 'This is it' loses the poetry of the moment, though it still is just as heartbreaking. But again both manga and anime in English go with these words.

True, Itachi bitterly regretted what he put Sasuke through. I've said this many times before - Itachi wasn't deluded about his actions or what he was doing to Sasuke. He didn't have the 'oh, I messed up so bad' moment because what he did was precisely his intent. His actions are morally wrong when you look at them objectively but characters in a story never react in accordance with the objectivity and morality audience applies depending upon its own experiences and biases on fiction. Just like all other characters, who reacted to the horrible circumstances in a violent way, Itachi did too. He was also shaped by his own life. And at the end of the day, he owned up to all he'd done rather than looking for excuses or wanting to justify himself.

It takes a lot more than just guilt to fuel the willpower he required to prolonge his life when he was terminally ill. No one regretted the things they did more than Itachi did. Some of it was his own doing and most of it was the circumstances he was pushed into. He never needed to be told he was wrong. He may or may not have acted differently from how he did, because of his experiences, but he never made excuses for them and lived and died with the same resolution.

#itachi #anon #ask #itachi uchiha #uchiha itachi

[jakowskis]

💖💙💜 owen harper bisexuality masterpost 💖💙💜

i've had this in my drafts for a minute but i figured i'd finish it up and post it today for bisexual visibility day :D

it hasn't cropped up recently, but i've seen a lot of people who've questioned owen's bisexuality over the years and i thought i'd compile all the 'evidence' (although it completely baffles me that we got a show with five canonical bisexual characters and people want to write two of them off as straight / "heterflexible" ?? there shouldn't have to be 'proof' of owen being bi, RTD said torchwood is about five bisexuals fighting aliens in cardiff which means they're all bi, full stop. also, bisexuals should never have to 'prove' they're bi, and in regards to fictional characters, i'm sick of people nit-picking who 'deserves' to be counted as rep and refusing to 'claim' certain characters if they're morally grey or if the fandom simply doesn't Like them as much-)

but i digress.

so without further ado, here's everything i've found that supports owen's status as a bicon :-)

explicit canon instances

➤➤ obviously, we have to start with his gay kiss in the first episode of the show. there's a lot to be said about that kiss, i'm not gonna get into all that here, but i've seen a lot of people say it's not proof of owen being attracted to men, and i wholeheartedly disagree. you can literally catch him smiling very happily after the kiss (and one of owen's few genuine smiles of the series, too). i don't think a straight man (or even a "heteroflexible" man) would beam at another guy who's just informed him that he wants to fuck him. a fair amount of people have also said they interpreted owen calling the taxi as him intending to get away from the couple, but i don't understand how they're getting that impression, because that smile makes it seem very much apparent to me that running away is the last thing he wants to do.

it's also, notably, the first time we see bisexuality IN the bisexual show, which i don't think should be discounted. like, we see owen do something gay before jack does, for fuck's sake. is it a good first impression of how torchwood portrays bisexuality? no. is setting owen up as a more sex-driven, opportunistic bisexual nicely contrasted against ianto & tosh's more romance-oriented brand of demisexual bi/pansexuality? in my opinion, yes. i love that the torchwood bisexuals all practice their bisexuality in different ways. that's very special to me. 'cause it's realistic! real bisexuals all experience bisexuality differently! obviously it'd be a different story if he was the only bi rep, because lord knows we've seen enough of that already, but torchwood makes an effort to show us five different brands of bisexuality, and five different bi stories that largely only exist in the subtext, that aren't the focus of the show, and it's fantastic. it's all i could ever want out of bi rep, honestly, even if it is a bit dated now.

➤➤ the other explicit moment in the show: asking tosh and ianto for an end-of-the-world threesome in sleeper (s2ep2). i've actually never seen owen bi-deniers (fhdskjf it's a conspiracy) even mention this scene. owen literally asks ianto if they can have sex with each other to his face, and he's dead serious when he asks it. that's... i mean you can't mistake that as anything else. like fhdsjkf??

➤➤ next we jump to some of the, i suppose, extended universe content. whether the books are canon or not is debated, but the novel 'another life' features owen playing an online simulation game, and it makes a point to depict owen flirting with someone with a male avatar + wondering to himself if the guy would be down for cyber-sex. [someone posted part of that scene here. for context, owen's also got a VR headset on during that bit.]

➤➤ another instance is on the website, which some also don't regard as canon, but, i mean, i don't know who worked on the things we see on that site, but obviously they got their information from somewhere. they probably consulted with the writers on the show, or at the very least got notes on what things to touch on. anyway, there's a portion of the site where you can find a 'background check' on owen, and it's just a collection of messages from some ex-lovers of his. one of them is a man.

again, some people disregard the canon validity of the website, but the way i see it, the information on this site was released while the show was airing for fans to look at and to gain further insight on the characters. one of the things they felt a need to tell us about owen, important enough to be featured in his background (wayyy before the katie plot was developed), was that he wasn't just interested in women. personally, i regard that as canon. you can find this here. and even if you wanna say fragments jossed this background, it doesn't joss his, like... identity.

next we have things said by russell t. davies himself + by burn gorman (owen's actor)

➤➤ again, RTD (who's torchwood's creator, but i'm assuming everyone reading this knows that) explicitly described torchwood as "a bunch of bisexuals living under cardiff and fighting aliens". that's not ambiguous. [i don't have a direct source for this quote, it was apparently said on the dvd extras.]

burn's comments on owen's sexuality include...

➤➤ (when asked who owen fancies) "Owen's pretty cocky, he'll try it on with whoever comes along." [x] and yes, this is vague, but vagueness is often interpreted as proof of bisexuality. (for example, in the pacific rim dvd features, newt's bio stating he was interested in "whoever will take him" was widely interpreted by the fandom as him being bi.)

➤➤ (in regards to owen's "let's all have sex" line) "I don't think he [...] thinks about the implications, or whether it's with a man or a woman." [x]

(ok i have to admit, although i absolutely adore burn, i'm not super fond of the way his 2006-08 self would talk about how torchwood handled sexuality*. however! he kind of hit the nail on the head in saying that, even if it's in the context of owen wanting end-of-the-world sex, because my take on how owen sees his own sexuality has always essentially boiled down to thinking he'd be like, "well, why wouldn't men also be an option?" (well, with sexual attraction anyway; i think owen's relationship with romantic attraction is far more complex.) i think he resembles jack in that way; anyone's a prospective sexual partner, if they're attractive and interesting and he decides he wants them, and he's also impulsive as hell, so he doesn't think too hard about gender in the moment if he decides he's into someone. there's not really any hang-ups.)

➤➤ and ofc...

(out of context this could look like he's just jokingly calling owen an alien-fucker, although owen makes his thoughts on alien-fucking pretty clear in countrycide lol, but it was said in the context of owen/andy as a ship [x].)

*if you're wondering what i'm referring to, it's a comment here [x] about how the torchwood team's bisexuality is a result of being in a pressure cooker environment and having a 'wartime mentality', and they just kind of 'take what they can get'. the implication that bisexuality is out of desperation/accessibility rather than attraction is pretty damn icky, BUT i love him lots and he generally seems to be pretty woke these days (+ otherwise has always seemed to grasp why torchwood's rep was so unique and groundbreaking and important) so i'll go ahead and hope that was just, y'know, simple 'being a straight guy in 2008' ignorance. fifteen years is a long time and i have faith his opinions have evolved by now, esp considering he used the word 'pansexual' at a 2016 con [x]. (actually, ok, you caught me, that last bit wasn't super relevant and i didn't need to bring it up, but i just wanted to gush about him doing it because how often do you hear that word out of celebs, especially older and presumably straight ones. and in 2016, too. kinda slay of him, ngl)

aaand finally, some random, non-explicit little things that i think support him being a bisexy king (several of these are goofy and half-serious)

➤➤ in episode 2, they make a point to cut to owen smiling after jack's line about "you people and your quaint little labels". one might argue he's smiling at gwen & carys on the screen, but cutting to him immediately after jack says it very much implies he's reacting to jack's words, and i think it's particularly poignant after, again, we saw him kiss a man the episode prior. (which, another thing - owen's literal introduction features him kissing a man, like that's gotta count for something. if the literal third thing i ever see a male character do ever is kiss a guy, that means something.)

➤➤ and of course, in the same episode, we get "period military is not the dress code of a straight man" .... owen's the only one of them with working gaydar. also what a fruity thing to say

➤➤ speaking of fruity things to say, in s2e10 when they're all watching the old film, owen goes "look at the state of them 💅" and he says it SO cunty for no reason it always kills me fhsdkjfd

➤➤ combat.

➤➤ no, really.

➤➤ bonus: in the combat commentary, it's mentioned that when RTD saw the above scene between mark & owen, he said it was "the gayest thing he'd ever seen".

➤➤ in the three monkeys, a big finish audio featuring owen & andy, owen flirts with andy repeatedly. even if he just does it to be annoying, it's still pretty damn gay. also the pet names... (he calls him sweetheart, sunshine, and tiger. it's half-mocking, sure, especially because it's owen, but there's also a domesticity to it.)

➤➤ and then there's the hope's "you're alive again and you want crisps?!" "be glad that's all i'm asking for" (owen was like 'i will not use this as an excuse to try to sleep w andy i will not use this as an excuse to try to sleep w andy i will not use th') these are the only two audios i've heard with this duo, i'm sure there's more examples in the other two. i know gooseberry literally has owen sabotaging andy's relationship with his gf and that is... woohoohoo.... i'll update this once i get through those.

➤➤ …. this is my personal opinion but i lowkey think he kinda wants john hart a bit when they all first meet him in kkbb hdskjfds. gwen & tosh both seem very charmed by him and they're meant to, it's supposed to be like 'oh, look at jack's ex waltzing in and charming the pants off everyone (ha), and only ianto and jack see through him' - owen isn't given a flirty line of dialogue or even a close-up shot of him eyeing john like the girls get, but if you watch him closely he certainly looks… intrigued by him. i think owen's more of a bi disaster than he lets on.

➤➤ in episode 10, diane notes that owen has "beauty products" in his bathroom. obviously this shouldn't be indicative of sexuality, but how many Straight Men in 2006 were moisturizing lmao. hell, how many do nowadays 😭

➤➤ gwen & owen's dynamic settles into a lovely little friendship in s2 and owen lowkey gives gbf vibes <3 them making fun of the movie in s2e10 together + the cheek-kissing at the end of s2e9… bi besties!!

➤➤ the peace sign he throws up in meat when he meets rhys fdsjk i don't even believe in some of the silly internet jokes abt bi culture but c'mon

➤➤ have you seen his taste in women. diane is soo butch and gwen's a total tomboy in s1. that's bi culture babey!!!! i too like girls when they're boys

➤➤ i already talked about it but the aforementioned scene where he asks tosh and ianto for a threesome... he asks them, like, immediately after they team up and bully him for not comprehending that there's "no phones. phones all broken. anyone there? no, 'cause the phones aren't working." that was suuuch a disaster bi owen moment for me. i too would get a little revved up if tosh and ianto both bullied me at once <3

aaand finally... the biggest Evidence of all....

➤➤ he's a leather jacket bisexual. need i say more

and that's all! thanks for reading!

[credit for the dividers used in this. didn't tumblr used to have built-in dividers? i miss that.]

#mine #torchwood #torchwood posting #owen harper #tell me why im nervous to post this fhdskfds #my anxiety is like someone's gonna get mad at me for this somehow #shhhhh #beating it with a broom #look at my post boy

[artist-issues]

I love your post detailing greta gerwig's changes in her adaptation of little women, but isn't Narnia definitely flavored with some universalism? In the Last Battle, a worshipper of Tash ends up in heaven because he's like "truly seeking the face of God" essentially even if he knew Aslan by the wrong name because his culture only exposed him to Tash. Also, I was raised protestant so I don't know if catholics have a different idea about what counts as universalism or not, but basically I'm not so sure if this will get in the way of her working on the films, especially if she does the Magicians Nephew. Unrelated, I wonder how they're going to go about adapting the Horse and his Boy without it being lambasted for racism etc lol

I think "flavored" with Universalism is a good way to describe The Last Battle--and only The Last Battle, and only that bite of the meal that deals with the young Calormene. Because my understanding of Universalism is that they believe all people, regardless of their beliefs contradicting Biblical Christianity, go to heaven and are not condemned for choosing to be god-of-their-own-life.

You can't quite look at C.S. Lewis' entirety of work and believe he was a Universalist in that sense. He certainly believed in the Biblical truth of Hell. Otherwise, specifically in Narnia, there would be no "Darkness on Aslan's Left Side" that all the creatures who fear and hate him disappear into at the end of the world. That seems like a pretty straightforward representation of Judgement.

I think the whole thing with Emeth the Calormene is interesting. From the language Lewis uses, it seems like he's trying to say something about the posture of a heart more than the name one swears by. Emeth is confused that he's been allowed into the True Narnia because "all my life I have served Tash." But Aslan basically looks at the heart; he says if Emeth had been serving Tash, his deeds and his heart would match Tash. It actually seems more like Emeth didn't know who Tash was at all, or he would have been performing vile works to please Tash. Aslan also says Emeth would never have kept "seeking" for so long if his heart had been serving Tash, which implies that Tash is easier to know than Aslan.

All of that is fascinating (I do think it is the theologically weakest, if not worst, part of the Chronicles of Narnia series.) But I don't think it has anything to do with Universalism as we know it today. Unitarian Universalism is just "Believe whatever you want as long as your belief system doesn't judge other people's belief systems, and you'll be fine with 'God.'" Lewis certainly didn't subscribe to that unbiblical worldview, even with the Calormene in the Last Battle.

I don't know what you mean about the Magician's Nephew.

The real problem with Greta Gerwig is not that she claims Unitarian Universalism. It's that she can't tell a story that is faithful to the original books; she has to transpose it into her own values. So, for example in what we're talking about, if she were doing "The Last Battle," she'd certainly cut out The Darkness on Aslan's Left Side scene, and maybe even reduce the whole conversation between Aslan and Emeth to "all are welcome!" But the main thing she'll do is elevate Susan, Lucy, Jill, Aravis, and Polly to a disproportionate degree.

Finally, I would just say, I'd love for somebody to explain to me what makes The Horse and His Boy racist. (With a reminder that nobody on this website knows my race, so nobody can claim that race-based unconscious bias is what's keeping me from seeing it.)

Lewis invented his own race that, yes, is heavily influenced by Western-Arabian-Nights-interpretations of Middle Eastern cultures. But the Calormenes don't serve Allah, they serve Tash and other gods. The Calormene characters are not all ugly. The Calormen food is not all disgusting. Aravis is a Calormene, and she is a heroine and a main character. Not even every Calormene is even evil, or the enemy of Narnia, though the nation is. What, just because a non-white nation is depicted in Narnia and you can see what culture their fantasy culture is based on, that makes it racist? How? Because Lewis doesn't even write all Calormenes as good or evil, he writes them as humans. Explain to me how that's racist.

(I mean, not you, @childlessoldcatlady, I'm enjoying answering this question. I just meant, someone explain it, now that I'm on the subject. Thanks for the question. I'm Protestant, too.)

#Christianity #The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle #Emeth #Calormen #The Horse and His Boy #Aravis #C.S. Lewis #asked #answered #Greta Gerwig #Unitarian Universalism

[hungwy]

ON THE AI ART THING

i see three main points people are making, which i think are fair: first the supposition that the products of people's labor are being used somewhere in the process of art generation in an unfairly profitable way; second the supposition that the products of the artists' labor are being stolen before they can sell it; third that the other two result in a chain-reaction down the line where nobody's an artist any more because neural networks are adjective-er than humans.

for what its worth the way AIs combine images is just not the way you think AIs combine images. machine learning is complicated. neural networks are complicated. read up on GANs; watch a few Two Minute Papers videos (like this one, which is particularly relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCf8OA4GPvI). the way they combine im its not forgery (AI are not perfectly replicating your piece and selling it as it is for their own value; at some point it might involve copying/"looking" at it), its not stealing (you still have your art with you), its not even Youtube Poop remixing. generally the hypest way to do neural networks right now is to take a collection of items the AI knows to contain similar concepts and creates an understanding of that shared concept; a good dataset will be big enough to understand all the full variations of that concept, or accurately deduce the rest of the variations, all through the natural inconsistenties that a bunch of pictures of the same thing might produce. an AI knows how to do an oil painting style because it probably knows quite well the actual qualities of an oil painting. it also knows what the sun looks like, how cloth drapes at different weights, how holes in the ceiling of a building might imply shafts of light illuminating on the floor, and other incredible stuff. beats me how it does that, and you likely won't get it either. but the point is the way people are talking about AI on here seems solely informed by imagination.

for unfair and stealing bit, there's something to be said about how certain online communities, websites, people, blogs. etc are naturally private due to obscurity while also being technically completely public; like caves hidden in valleys that take quite a bit of looking to get to and see. in the past we just assumed they would stay hidden: the art on this blog will only be seen by its followers, or people i link the blog to, surely; ill teach you the way to my little cave. unfortunately the internet has been filled with extremely informed and skilled valley-treading and cave-finding robots, and unless you have big ol' signs that say "DO NOT FIND THIS CAVE!" (i remember for forums you could stop scrapers from coming to your website, i think on tumblr there is something like a "do not show in search results" button too), or somehow otherwise avoid their path using strange internet tricks or complete luck, they will totally find your little cave and rummage through it. what i mean to say is this: your art is already part of the publicly available data, and you're in a tough spot to do anything about it. i have no solutions.

the objectionable part is not in this collection of references for analysis, nor in how the AI is usually interpreting what objects are what, but the misuse of the AI to produce things you don't like (which is part of the point i wanted to make in my first post, besides arguing for the artistic integrity of what the AI is doing with its sources). and i see how it seems unfair -- someone smarter and more knowledgeable about art, labor, intellectual property, and value could articulate this more -- that a customer of a neural network could so freely replicate someone else's work with the original stylist having nothing to show for it. it wouldn't be any better if a sufficiently skilled person was requested to draw original pieces in your style. so in that way this is less about AI and more an objection against the violation of someone's intellectual property, if that exists.

for the second point on losing artists, i understand the reasoning as following: nobody wants to be a starving artist, and to avoid that in capitalism one needs money, and if someone is dead set on being an artist (or for some reason can be nothing else) they must sell their art to make money. if no one is going to give them money for art, they will certainly be a starving artist, which we don't want. the conclusion here is, if we want artists (starving, at the very least), we should restrict anything else that makes art which might compete with the artist's. okay, that might work: we could stop having AI make art. but what if, despite our best efforts, we can't fully restrict such a thing? what if AIs are here to stay? more importantly, what if artists are actually already partnering with AI to make art, and you've just been none the wiser? What if you yourself could adapt to new technology and use it to better your own art? The improvement of this tech is, as far as anyone can tell, inevitable. Like any tool, it will be applied in obvious and creative ways. It will displace some people, it will be used by others, and further it will be ignored by the rest.

naturally we would think at least some artists could no longer be paid for what they currently do. if companies can afford a concept artist they likely could better afford a subscription to DALL-E. If their work is no better than AI and they cost more it seems clear they're out. but im simply not jumping to the conclusion that companies specifically will be replacing ALL artists with AI, since most trained artists are in fact better than AI, and come with the human factor. some companies will certainly try the switch to AI for the novelty of it, two or three might succeed, most will probably find out negotiating with an artist or two for long term projects is much easier than talking to the team of computer science geeks to see if the damn art-generating program will churn out something slightly more [quality], more palatable to today's changing tastes -- all that, IF "AI generated images" is even the zeitgeist in whatever hypothetical time period in the future this is happening. maybe by the time the tech is developed people will think handmade stuff is popular and companies will follow suit, with all their logos or whatever being painted on glass panes.

i mean, who are we even talking about, considering artists? the fandom artists definitely aren't disappearing because of neural networks. all those millionaire furry artists simply won't lose business because people are going to Midjourney and entering in "shirtless anthropomorphic tiger, [famous furry artist]-style". people who want oil paintings want some physical oil paintings and usually not a digitally-generated oil painting printed on canvas. people want a human intermediary for basically everything, and if you've ever worked retail with an older customer base you'd know that's true. id certainly prefer human-made art to neural networks if i was gonna spend money (and i apologize to our future robot overlords for such a statement).

so who is really completely losing out here? many artists are, quite frankly, not big enough to get fried. concept artists for triple-AAA shooters might take a hit, i imagine; its decently easy to generate generic cities and alien landscapes with AI. but frankly, artificial intelligence is a tool, and not a scooch-along robot replacing your cubicle in the office. you still need people who know about art, and artists willing to put in the work, for it to produce anything of commercial value. even if it gets so good that the CEO of a business can log on to ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-WEBSITE.com and type into the text box "I wuld like to buy a compny logo for $50 please", im sure there will always be more status in having that "human touch" to your designs, and less status in those robo-packs of ugly slightly mismatched placeholders. besides, artists are already using AI to help create their products in the first place; i refer to that Two Minute Papers video again (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCf8OA4GPvI).

Edit: Considering Two Minute Papers, we do see that VFX artists and simulation scientists are trying to find ways to realistically simulate liquid, gases, fire, etc. with AI. This likely will have consequences for whatever hand-simulated stuff VFX artists have been doing.

your art is publicly available and you really don't have much control over what happens to it. unless little intranets for families and towns and cities and such become more popular, unless you start password protecting websites like forums used to do, your shits getting collected. its not a good reality and im definitely an advocate for internet privacy. for many artists the internet is unfortunately the only place they know how to get their stuff out there. its not a good situation for artists to begin with. the thing is, what's happening with modern AI art generation isn't... really that bad. unless some specific human wants to make it bad. if from this moment on we decide to push for legal-social-whatever punishments for not compensating the artists whom AI was trained on, okay, i guess. companies developing these AI probably have too much startup money anyway and most artists make far too little for the years of wrist pain. but i would say the customers requesting your art style or whatever are certainly at more moral fault, because it almost certainly wouldn't just pop out a given art style unless your prompt guided it to.

i will stand by the fact that the art of modern neural networks is more complicated, less hurtful, and way cooler than ripped off collage nonsense, and it will be exciting and scary to see where we go from an AI winning an art tournament -- for the moment you can be scared if you want, i guess, but if you didn't already lose your job to a guy utilizing a neural network then you're probably already safe. (and you might as well get on the train before you're left behind.)

[queer-reader-07]

i understand getting really deeply and personally attached to fictional characters (i do it all the time) but i think too many people fall into the trap of interpreting criticism (or honestly just differing opinions that aren’t even necessarily negative) of characters they love as personal attacks.

not every character or every piece of media is for everyone. some people are not going to like your Favorite Thing. and that is OK. it’s ok if you’re a little hurt by people saying they didn’t like your favorite character.

but what isn’t ok is taking that hurt out on the person who you disagree with. you don’t get to tell someone they’re a bad person for not liking your favorite show or for having a different favorite character.

don’t make me tap the sign.

yes, some people are just assholes and will call others dumb for liking a certain character. but if someone isn’t saying that? if they’re just sharing an opinion on the public opinion sharing website? maybe don’t go into their replies and tell them why they’re wrong for not having the same opinion as you. maybe you don’t need to tell them why they’re a terrible human being. maybe don’t put words in their mouth and interpret everything they say in poor faith.

maybe, just maybe, you can keep scrolling. if what the other person is saying is Just An Opinion and not spreading hate, maybe you don’t need to tell them every reason why they’re wrong.

sometimes people have different opinions than you. and most of the time, neither of you are right or wrong. most things we all have opinions on are not dichotomous, so we’re all bound to have varied thoughts on whatever the Thing at hand is. that’s just how it goes.

ALSO and this bit is specifically for the good omens fans in the audience: for the love of all that is holy do not go into Neil’s asks trying to get him to justify why your specific opinion or interpretation is “correct” and other people’s are “wrong.” i mean no one should be doing it with any creator but some of y’all are way too comfortable in Neil’s ask box.

YOU ARE TALKING TO REAL HUMAN PEOPLE.

#in the age of the internet i think everyone needs to remember their opinion doesn’t need to be shared on every single thing #(yes i see the irony in me sharing my opinion on why we don’t need to share an opinion on everything) #you can be hurt by other peoples differing opinions but that doesn’t make them a bad person #just because their words made you feel a thing doesn’t mean what they said is actually objectively bad #people are allowed to say what they want about the media they’re consuming #just like you are #and i don’t think fighting with people about why you’re right and they’re wrong actually is helpful #it’s counter productive at best and actively harmful at worst #media criticism #media discourse #long post #just some thoughts #good omens #this one’s been sitting in the drafts for a while so have it on this fine thursday (or whenever you’re seeing it)

[maryholmes94]

‘Sherlock’ Out Of Fandom. Essay №1

For several years I’ve been writing about ‘Sherlock’ and its actors, Sherlock Holmes and his various adaptations, and a couple of weeks ago I’ve decided: why not to write about it in English on Tumblr? As some of you pointed out, it is not that easy to find any analysis of this show, which is not johnlock-related (at least on the English-speaking websites). So I’ve decided to express my thinking in writing, hoping that it could be useful not just for me, but for somebody else. I have no idea how many essays I’m going to write, but I want to unite them under the title “‘Sherlock’ Out Of Fandom”. And by that I mean that I’m not going to give any attention to the theories and speculations which were based on the incorrect interpretation of the original source (which in this case is the ‘Sherlock’ TV-series itself). So I’m not going to talk about the so called “Johnlock Conspiracy”, or about “season 4 is not real” theories, or about any other fantasies this fandom is so full of. Furthermore – I’m not going to be involved in the discussions which are concerning such theories, so I warn you in advance: if you want to talk about ‘Sherlock’, please be kind enough to talk about the actual show. The show that was actually released on television and not on AO3 in some fics you like so much. That would be a different topic and I’m not interested in discussing it.

Since we established this simple but important rule, I think we can move to the first essay in this series, which is titled

Three things that make ‘Sherlock’ special

The viewers may like ‘Sherlock’ or hate it, but whatever their personal opinions on this show are, they can’t deny that it is indeed very special. And not just because of the unique place it occupies in the ‘multiverse’ of interpretations of the original stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And even not because it helped to speed up the revolution that changed the whole TV industry and our perception of it. What makes ‘Sherlock’ really special is its authors’ innovative attitude towards the old narrative. It was a radical break from traditions, which, surprisingly, is still unnoticed – maybe because other subjects interest people more, but maybe because, however radical this break was, it looked so natural that people simply didn’t realize its significance.

This innovation is visible through the entire series, but there are three milestones, which are the fundament for the whole narrative and story-telling of ‘Sherlock’, so let’s have a look at each of them.

The analytical approach to the original material

The fans of Conan Doyle’s stories know that there are basically two ways of bringing them to the screen. The first one is the good old ‘filmization’ – or, to put it simpler, the film adaptation, when the creators take the original story and adapt it to the screen. That was the path taken by the famous ‘Granada’ TV-series, the Wilmer-Cushing series from the 1960s and the Soviet version from the 1980s. The second way is the good old ‘based on the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’, when the creators write a new story and add here and there some ‘easter-eggs’ and references to the original source. The best examples here are Rathbone-Bruce movies from the 1940s, the Guy Ritchie’s movies, and all these young sherlock holmeses, extremely old sherlock holmeses, enola holmeses etc. Which way have Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat chosen? Some may say – both, but the more correct answer would be – none. What they did is what every true scientist is doing when he or she needs to analyze their sources: they’ve read them all, they’ve singled out the essentials and they’ve drawn the balance – which at the end became the carcass of their story. So therefore each episode of their show is not just an adaptation of the original story, and not something new that they invented – it is a profound analysis of the Conan Doyle’s stories which is put under the lens of their own perception. And that makes ‘Sherlock’ not just an adaptation, but a philosophical research both of Sherlock Holmes as a cultural phenomenon and of the world Gatiss and Moffat – and their audience – are living in.

Which brings us to the second point.

2. ‘Sherlock’ tells the story of its own time

Again, the fans of Conan Doyle’s Holmes certainly read many books and articles about the famous writer and his attitude towards his creation, about the origins of his ideas, and about many other things, but what sometimes is overlooked is the fact that all the stories about Holmes written by Conan Doyle are a huge source of historical material. His stories present a chronic of his own time – yes, it has its flaws and it is far from complete, but nonetheless, if the reader wants to know something about the late Victorian and Edwardian era, Conan Doyle’s books are a rich source of knowledge on the subject. And ‘Sherlock’ is the first interpretation of it which is also a chronic of its time. Yes, there were other movies before that which were set in the contemporary era, but how much can a viewer find out about the 1940s from the Rathbone-Bruce movies? Yes, there was a war, and people wore certain clothes and travelled by trains, but who were these people? What a world they were living in? The information on this subject is scarce and hides behind the human drama and detective plots. ‘Sherlock’, on the other hand, is rooted in the time it speaks about – just like the original material it is based on. That’s why Conan Doyle’s stories were so popular, and that’s why ‘Sherlock’ is so popular too. People see in it the world that surrounds them, they know it and understand it, and understanding brings interest and a sense of belonging – the key to any TV-show’s success.

3. As its title says, ‘Sherlock’ has only one main character

The third milestone of ‘Sherlock’ narrative seems at first sight to be more concrete, but it is closely tied to the other two. A long history of bringing to the screen the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle accustomed the viewer to a certain paradigm. Sherlock Holmes is always accompanied by Dr. Watson, and sometimes (though in fact very rarely) they are joined by other characters, such as DI Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson (more often) and Mary Morsten or Mycroft Holmes (more rare). And here ‘Sherlock’ broke the tradition again: not only did Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat give the supporting characters important roles, but at the same time they also made Sherlock Holmes a little bit lonelier than he already was by putting his personality at the center of their attention. In the end, it’s all about Sherlock and the circumstances which made him a man he is. Yes, his interactions with other characters are part and parcel of the story, but the fact that Dr. Watson doesn’t have the “exclusive access” to him anymore enriches the narrative and enables the writers to show all sorts of Sherlock’s personality. Suddenly he takes a whole number of roles nobody before thought him capable of taken: he is a son, he is a Godfather, he is the best man at the wedding, he is a close friend of Mary Morsten, a defender of Mrs. Hudson, a sarcastic, but caring younger brother and a tender forgiving older brother. And the main subject of the show is the moral and internal evolution of this extraordinary man. Sherlock Holmes written by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and played by Benedict Cumberbatch is not a legend and not a monument: he is a man of flesh and blood, and it is his extraordinary inner world and not his deduction skills that makes him so unique – and special.  

These are the three major things that in my opinion make ‘Sherlock’ a special adaptation of the original Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. It presents an analytical take of the original source, it perfectly depicts its own time (and its main problems), and it brings Sherlock Holmes at the center of the narrative, making him not just a hero of his time, but a man who has a story all of us can understand, and some – even relate to. In the end, ‘Sherlock’ is not just another adaptation – ‘Sherlock’ is an original story everyone can take to heart without even knowing about its source.

@rey-jake-therapist - tagging you in case you find it interesting

#SherlockBBC #SherlockHolmes #MarkGatiss #StevenMoffat #SherlockMeta

[bloggingboutburgers]

Different anon but, to be fair, as wonderful a comic artist as you can get it's pretty much impossible to make sure that NO ONE misinterprets your art. People just see what they want to see a lot of the time, and even the most straightforward, clear as day message can get misinterpreted. You can't account for everyone's experiences, biases, way of thinking and interpreting, etc. and any change you make is just going to open up the doors for a DIFFERENT misinterpretation. So while I do agree that part of being an artist is looking for an effective way to convey your message, and if the vast majority of people reading didn't get the message then yeah it's probably useful to try and think about how you could have conveyed it better, as a general rule the fact that a bunch of people misinterpreted doesn't necessarily mean that there was any fault on your part. People read the same thing and take away different messages, it's normal, not to mention that we are literally on the "how dare you say we piss on the poor" website lol Anyway, I love your art, thank you for all your hard work ❤

Haha yeah that's a fair point TwT I've definitely misinterpreted comics that had a clear-as-day message I still couldn't see for what it was in the past, because I was in a place of hurt and my gut reaction kept being "yeah this is bullshit"... So I'd be hypocritical if I said I don't get it 🙈 Thnak you so much for the kind words tho <

#i'll keep doing my best 🤞 #anon

[96percentdone]

I've been ruminating on fandom lately. Criticizing fandom at all will get you barraged by very defensive fans who will accuse you of hating fun, not understanding creative expression, and being an art snob, and I am about to go a LOT harder than most of the posts I've been exposed to, so in an attempt to preemptively curb that indignance: I like fandom. I have written fanfics, and theory posts, and meta, and I've reblogged countless fanart. A lot of what I engage with or have made meets the standards I'm about to critique, and I understand completely that for many, fandom is a hobby. People would like to escape from the struggles in their lives. They find comfort in the media they love, so they immerse themselves it. It can be hard to make anything in this capitalist hellscape, so if you've achieved something at all, it's a miracle. I get it. I really do. I'm not an art snob; I think it's fine if things aren't that deep, and they're primarily wish-fulfillment. I have some grievances with the critics too, and they'll come up. This post isn't about you specifically; it's bigger. Fandom content suffers a lack of substance because of superficial engagement with the source material.

Many fandom critical posts on this website bring up shipping culture as the reason everything is samey and uninteresting, often referencing ao3 in specific. I sympathize with these posts, I also find shipping prominence can be fairly tedious when you want to read ANYTHING else, but why is it when complain about fandom, we point the finger at fic? Why do we use shorthands like "he would not fucking say that," and drop ao3 tagging conventions, and mention fanfic websites? Have y'all LOOKED at the fan art you reblog? A lot of it is just posing and kissing. If you wanted to analyze it for any further meaning, I don't think you'd get very far. I am not positioning fanfiction as superior; as everyone points out, a lot of it is repetitive and derivative, but let's not pretend that this is a fanfic exclusive issue. We can take it further out! Look at the absolute state of meta. Most analysis is done in service of promoting a headcanon or a ship if it isn't just a theory wildly speculating an explanation for an unresolved or ambiguous plot point. We're gonna include those guys who make power scaling rankings, filling out the wiki, etc too. They're fans! Everyone agrees those people aren't engaging with the text in a deeper way, but that doesn't make them NOT fans. It is the way their appreciation manifests the clearest! We're all fans; we are doing the same thing in just a different form.

Most of what gets popularized I all these spaces is based on a strictly literal understanding of the work; it's about plot events and how characters relate to it and one another, and the meaning people get out of it—from shipping to theorizing to memes to tierlists—never goes beyond that level. If people don't know how to look for themes, to interpret symbolism and examine the construction of a work to see how it contributes to how the whole is operating to affect them, because their education on how to do it sucked shit, then obviously they won't. But I don't think that's enough to explain the heart of the problem.

Critics will bring up the fandom wash cycle, an analogy for how way fandom will spend more time engaged with itself than the source material, and perpetuate its own tropes and fixations ad nauseum. This is true in any fanspace you can spend your time in, including those "who would win" bros. I hear this, and I think of social media, the place most of fandom lives now. People making original work often talk about how their stuff never gets any attention compared to fandom stuff; the biggest fandoms are sprawling franchises with corporate entities behind them. Social media algorithms promote what is already popular, what will generate the most clicks, so you stay online and make their corporate overlords more money. It is the depth of human experience streamlined into easily digestible chunks.

You're spent because life is hard and the world sucks and the only relief you can find is in the media you love. You don't want to expend a lot of energy today, so you'll consume or create ship centered content, or fan theories, or memes and gifs. You'll wonder who would win in a fight. Even without social media, people feed their own algorithms, because the system is designed to encourage it. Fandom is part of a larger whole.

If fandom will ever be more than what it is, you have to be willing to put in the work to fix it. Criticism won't cut it. As the saying goes, be the change you want to see in the world. Create what you want to see, use what you make to teach what might be lacking, seek out more of the things that look like what you want fandom to be (I assure you it exists), not just what you already know. Fandom is perpetuated by fans. Being a fan doesn't make you predisposed to creating cyclical, watered-down content. Every fan has a rich internal life with a whole host of experiences that should inform both how they make their works and how they read it to begin with, because they're people.

People are far too diverse to be defined by an algorithm; maybe with enough effort, we can write a new one.

#hope.txt

[rikeijo]

Today's translation #266

Febri vol. 40. Kubo Mitsurou's interview

Part 11.

--- The most extreme example of that is the rings scene in episode 10 - it was shocking. After listening to what you've just said - was is also a spontaneous development?

"Not spontaneous - it was inevitable! At least this is what I was thinking, when I was drawing the storyboards. I was looking forward to draw that scene at the end of episode 9., where Yuuri and Victor meet again at the airport in Fukuoka, and at that point in time, me or Yamamoto Director, we weren't really planning to set up any bombastic tricks in episodes 10 or 11. However, because episode 10 is the last breather before the Grand Prix Final, we wanted to make it as fun as we could. To do that we were putting forward different ideas and I was wondering if it would be possible to make the relationship between Yuuri and Victor even deeper. By that point in time, they had already hugged and done things straight out of Monday 9PM TV dramas, so I was thinking that probably doing more would be impossible. But then, a thought came to me, that it would be nice to have an item that could be a kind of boost for the Grand Prix Final. When I was looking around websites of various rings brands, I found the information that engagement rings are not only for people who want to get married, but also something that you can gift to your soulmate. I thought: "That's it!". Plus, among the reference materials we have gathered during our location hunting in Barcelona, I found photos of a church and choir, so I thought: "That's the place!".

--- Everything just came together, almost as if you were guided by something/somebody.

"I was almost at the end of my wits at that time, but that scene, I drew on impulse. It was before the anime started airing, so I didn't know what the response was going to be like, and how people were going to interpret it. I was like: I don't really care if people are going to think that "this scene is just absurd!" (laugh).

--- As a result, the viewers went crazy.

"If it was a manga, I think that much less attention would have been paid to it, surprisingly. It was very interesting for me to see, how impactful it was when it was made into animation.

[Notes: Many TV dramas that aired at this time slot, Monday at 9PM, on Fuji TV gained huge popularity, so it's a sort of "brand" for TV dramas. It's already a well-know fact in the fandom, but for newer fans which happened to stumble across this translation - she meant the airport scene.

---

"When I was looking around websites of various rings brands, I found the information that engagement rings are not only for people, who wants to get married, but also something that you can gift to your soulmate."

Many people would probably feel a bit weird if somebody important to them gave them a ring saying that "it's an engagement ring", but then said: "But it's not an engagement, we are not engaged" - the classic "words have specific meanings" problem. I'm sure some jewelry brands use the word "soulmate" in their marketing, but I'm not sure they encourage people to gift "engagement rings" to people who they don't want to get engaged to. There are others types of rings, too, after all.

In Jp, she kind of "solved" this problem using the English-Japanese word "engage rings (engeeji ringu)", where engage is short for "engagement", instead of Japanese "konyaku yubiwa", lol. Both mean exactly the same thing, but people who don't speak English may not know what the word "engagement" means - like, "engeeji ringu" is the ring the bride-to-be may get from her partner, but maybe it has different meanings in English, who knows? 🤨 If she said "'konyaku yubiwa' are not for 'konyaku'" instead, then you'd immediately think: "eee, what are you talking about? Why call them "konyaku yubiwa" then?"... At least, no clubs for after-school activities were mentioned this time 😂 (The "rings are for bukatsu members" explanation was from Pash!!! issue published on February 10th 2017, and this interview was published on March 1st 2017.)]

#yuri on ice #yoi translations #yuri on ice translation

[snnynatural]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN!

Name: lumi!

Pronouns: she/her

Most Active Muses: sonny on this blog and on @snnydcys , @greatcstarcher is second , i do have other blogs that you can find here

RP Pet Peeves: oh god, to list a few...

plagiarism. whether it be a character or a plot idea, don't steal from anybody. people work hard on their characters and plots. i understand not many plots can be considered original, but everyone comes up with their own twists. stop stealing.

lack of respect for female characters both canon and oc. i can't say enough that female muses deserve to be seen. especially poc female muses.

white washing. as a poc person, i have dealt with a lot of racism both irl and on tumblr. it was to a point i took two years off of this hellsite. so do not change a poc character into a white one. we've been erased as it is. and if you struggle trying to match a character to its race, do not feel afraid to ask someone for help on it. there are also websites that show you an fc's ethnicity as well.

not knowing where the line is between mun and muse. they are two completely different things.

god modding. for the love of all that is chuck, do not control what anyone else's character does. we all control our own characters and that's how it should be. this also means doing something crazy that someone else may not approve of so if you want to do something, ask first.

demanding people read your rules, but you don't do the same. everyone has different rules for each of their blogs. respect goes both ways. so if they read your rules, please do the same. they are there for a reason.

force ship, simple as that

anon hate. seriously, that kind of negativity should never be welcomed nor encouraged. we all come here to escape as it is so just let everyone have fun writing.

lack of communication. we're all grown adults here. if there's a problem, just communicate.

trash talking someone's portrayal. realistically, we all interpret canon characters differently than others and that is okay. no one's version is right or wrong. no one is the "chanel/walmart" version. just don't rp with that portrayal if you don't want to.

rushing people to reply and shaming them when they don't reply fast enough. everyone has real lives and can't always get to it. or maybe they don't just have muse for it and need time away from it. now a simple nudge to let someone know they replied maybe weeks later just in case they missed it is fine. but if you're going to put pressure on people? stop.

using mental health as an excuse to be a shitty person. many people here suffer with different kinds of disorders and that is no one's fault. but that does not mean it's a pass to be a horrible person. you choose how to treat people around you. you choose whether or not to be a kind person.

i can go on and on, but we don't have time for that so here is the rest of the list on the top of my head for now: self victimizing, ignoring triggers, trying to control your rp partners, bullying, hovering, spreading lies about people, gate keeping, face chasing, racism, not understanding boundaries, not understanding that rping is a hobby and not a jobby, ect.

Experience/How Many Years: a long as time that for the earlier years... i shouldn't have JBESGKBKB

Fluff, Angst, or Smut: yes. i love both angst and fluff so much, but if for example i am doing too much angst, i would want a break for fluff so that way there is time for me to breathe. for smut, as long as i'm comfortable with you, i'll do it. but if i don't know you or have never written with you before, i most likely won't.

Plots or Memes: i love memes that inspire plotting. cause as much as i love plotting, sometimes i don't know what i actually want. unless a plot randomly hits me out of nowhere.

Long or Short Replies: depends on my brain. short replies are fun for crack and silly things, but longer threads for actually plots and things.

Time to Write: when my brain feels like it! i don't force myself to write if i don't want to.

Are You Like Your Muses: i would say i am in a way. more than i realized? more so her disney canon version. we both give are all to the people we love and care about, even if it means never putting ourselves first. being clumsy ekbrkg. we both get walked all over by people that we love. she's not afraid to be herself and stand up for herself, which i'm not afraid of being myself but i'm working on standing up for myself more.

tagged by @rebuiltmyself ( my bb <3 )

tagging : youuuuuuu

#𝚈𝙾𝚄𝚁 𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚃𝙻𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝙵𝙴𝙷𝙾𝚄𝚂𝙴 . . . dash game

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

You know how some people have their pets use "speech buttons" such as Bunny the dog? I was thinking about Koko and how her sign language was poor.

Like, are primates in sanctuaries able to associate some words their keepers say to specific things? Like would a monkey recognize the word "Grape" for example if it was a favorite snack?

Could a monkey or gorilla learn "language" that way and "speak" to us like Bunny?

The issue when it comes to Koko’s sign language is/was not really a problem with expression, so much as with cognition and unreliable results. Sure, animals can point to symbols on a board, recognize cue cards, make gestures, or press buttons that mean things to us, but does that actually mean they understand what they mean beyond the result they create? Most animals know the words that represent the things they like best. It isn’t surprising that Bunny can use buttons to say “Mom - me - outside - walk”, because she knows that when these words get said they usually result in her getting taken out for a walk. That isn’t to say this isn’t impressive! but it is a different situation. Koko’s handlers were probably really good at inferring what she wanted from her gestures, but part of that was likely because when you have a relationship with any person or animal, you kind of get a feel for that. When my cat is pacing around and meowing at me I know what he wants, because that’s my kitty and friend. It’s similar to how parents of small children can interpret baby babble, but to outsiders it still sounds like nonsense even if the parents know that their kid is asking for applesauce. Because linguistics are so complex and adding animals adds further complications to the mix, it opens up a lot of debate and inquiry to what counts as actual understanding versus what is mimicry for a result/reward.

 The crux of primate cognition and language studies, such as the ones conducted by ACCI, is not so much to see whether animals can recognize words or symbols and recreate them to earn a reward, but to see how much primates can learn and how complex they can make their communication. While animal/human communication may not be a straightforward path, it is still very interesting and worth looking at! Take this:

This is just one of the many lexigram boards used by the bonobos at ACCI. These boards have simple concepts like the names of foods, caregivers, and objects, but they can also be used to communicate more complex ideas if the bonobo is capable and willing. Communicating using a lexigram board, or through other methods such as the buttons you mentioned takes a level of intelligence, and also a level of patience and desire to take part. It can be hit or miss, but can be successful at least insofar as the animal being able to communicate their needs. Kanzi the bonobo is best known for his intelligence and lexigram use at ACCI; knowing, recognizing, and using the most symbols. Still, bonobos in general still use these boards largely to communicate basic desires in straightforward ‘specific symbol = I receive treat I want’ expressions. From the ACCI website, same link as above:

“The bonobos use the lexigram symbols to communicate with their human caregivers and visitors. For example, they are able to request their favorite foods, indicate which social partners they want to be with, and ask their caregivers to play '“water chase” with them. This is one more way the bonobos at Ape Initiative have choice in their daily lives! The bonobos all differ in their knowledge of the lexigrams, with Kanzi knowing the most symbols, so we make sure the bonobos always have access to a keyboard.”

So when it comes to primate/human communication, it isn’t the straightforward path it might appear to be. Is an animal expressing its thoughts and feeling, or basically button mashing to achieve a specific result without really understanding it further than that? Animals do not have the same minds as us, limited by their ability to express themselves, but are inconceivably different from stem to stern. This is a line of inquiry that has been studied for years, but I would also like to offer this for the average person:

How much does it matter? Sure, we shouldn’t anthropomorphize, and we should be aware of the facts behind cognition and communication studies and inquiries, but at the end of the day I think that if a primate (or any living creature really) is being treated well, having its needs met, and enjoys using communication tools, that’s great. We get a kick out of it, and as long as we keep it in proportion and don’t get carried away, we can all enjoy ourselves. I encourage you to research the subject if it interests you!

#ACCI #kanzi the bonobo #inquiring minds want to know #mod J

[docileandlazy]

your relationship with ur faith is really inspiring to me. I see people on tumblr talk about their religion and It feels very different from what I see represented everywhere else. Do you have any tips for someone who has little to no experience with this kind of thing exploring a relationship with Christianity / God

What are you looking for in God ? What does God mean to you ? Why are you searching for a relationship with God ? With Faith ?

These are some of the questions I asked myself when I first began to explore my own relationship with religion. As part of that exploration, no matter the answers arrived at, I think it's important to understand that God isn't one set thing. I know who/what God is to me: I know what he represents, how I view him, and how I see my relationship with him playing out with him in the way that best suits myself and my lifestyle. God to you doesn't have to be the same thing God is to me, God isn't the same thing to me as he is to many of my friends or fellow theists I speak to. We all have such beautiful and unique relationships with him - for some of us, that means acknowledging him, praying to him, worshiping him, loving him, and for some that means having no personal relationship with him at all, or any combination of these things. There is no right way to have a relationship with God and Religion. However you do it is good and it is holy and it is beautiful.

I started exploring religion personally by looking into the saints and their stories, the devotion and love they held for the Lord were things that were really inspiring to me. Even if you don't view the saints as vessels of divinity the way we catholics do (as it is often the protestant belief that it is a sin to do so), i believe their stories of devotion and the stories of their lives are still something that can be so inspiring. So hopeful. Reading stories of the Bible (though, they don't have to be directly from the Bible - it can be an overwhelming book to start with. You can find condensed versions elsewhere) gave me Hope. To read of Judas and the kiss he granted Jesus, of the love they felt. Of the love Adam felt for Even in the Garden of Eden, a love so deep he'd go against the wishes of his creator. The separation of the sea, the love Jesus had for people of all kind, his brothers and sisters blood or no blood. These were all things that brought me hope, and it is the stories such as this within the Bible that I recommend to people first. The stories of love. Of devotion. Of hope.

I also enjoyed looking into other peoples interpretations of these stories and happenings. As silly as it sounds, tumblr did help me find my faith. So did forum websites. Youtube theology videos. Reddit, oddly enough. Catholic church websites, protestatnt church websites. Peoples personal blogs. Books from the thrift store, from the library. What drew me first to religion was the community I found within it, the love that is held there. I began to question my faith as the result of the steady decline in my physical and mental health, and it was through God that I was able to get through the mental health part of that. He helped save me, or at least my love for him did. So look for others, look into what people say, believe, think, how they live - it helps. It continues to be my favorite part of my religion. My relationship with God and religion is always changing, its always an active process.

My biggest piece of advice is this: if you do find yourself coming to faith, to religion, to God, it doesn't have to be some big, awe inspiring "oh wow" moment. It can be little things. Religion clicks for some, it doesn't for others, for some the process is fast, for others it's slow, for some it's any combination of things. It's a process that is different for everyone. Be not discouraged. In my earliest days, when I truly began to believe in God again I found myself closest to him when I was doing nothing but sitting on my bed, writing prayers, listening to music. There was no big moment, no spark. I just took a deep breath and realized that I'd found the love I was looking for, and that I'd found it in God.

#pryn #religion #ask #i dont know if this makes sense. religion is such a complex and beautiful topic to me. God is so complex and wonderful. He is made of love.