We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing
say more pls
Yeah sure why not.
So most stories take place when Events are Happening, and this means that no matter what kind of job the characters have, they’re probably not too focused on them. Fanfics, on the other hand, often show the down time. Which means that the writer has to figure out what the hell these characters do in their jobs. Unless the characters have a job the author understands or knows well, the author is often at a loss for what to have the character doing.
So they sit them at a desk and give them paperwork. What is the paperwork for? Rarely specified. It is Paper Work for the characters Important Adult Job they have and they need to read or sign it or something. And there’s always a line about how Character Hates Paperwork. Doesn’t matter if Character is a Mafia Boss or a General or a Diplomat, here they are in an office trying to get out of Doing Paperwork.
There’s also a sense of, like, humor and mundanity that comes with it. Like the examples above, it always particularly stands out to me when a dangerous individual is griping about some paper they need to sign or something. The less you can picture Character doing paperwork, all the better to force it upon them. If Character is saddled with Paperwork, they’re usually now concerned about the physical damages their motley crew causes, because damage = More Paperwork.
Anyway I just think it’s fun or funny, Sephiroth doing paper work and Sawada Tsunayoshi doing paper work and this just in, Tony Stark is doing paperwork. Sorry, Phoenix Wright can’t play right now. Yeah, it’s paperwork.
A very non-exhaustive list of actual paperwork they could be completing/reviewing/approving, in no particular order:
“oh in pursuit of dragon communion powers you end up becoming something worse than human and less than dragon” sounds like someone is envious of my fire breath
The red triangle on blue and white stripes is the flag of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists, antifascists who were made to wear the red triangle by the Nazis in the concentration camps where they were incarcerated for their anti-nazi actions or ideology.
Germany is once again on the wrong side of history, once again choosing to support genocide. Germany is actively making part of its own antifascist history illegal to support an ongoing genocide!
Germany is banning a German antifascist symbol to stop criticism of the genocide being committed by Israel!
The red triangle on blue and white stripes is the flag of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists, antifascists who were made to wear the red triangle by the Nazis in the concentration camps where they were incarcerated for their anti-nazi actions or ideology.
Germany is once again on the wrong side of history, once again choosing to support genocide. Germany is actively making part of its own antifascist history illegal to support an ongoing genocide!
Germany is banning a German antifascist symbol to stop criticism of the genocide being committed by Israel!
For those who don’t know, this piece is titled ‘Unfinished Painting’, by Keith Haring. He painted it about a year before his death of AIDs. I believe he actually finished other pieces between this one and his death. He left the majority of the canvas blank to represent his life and art career cut short due to HIV/AIDs. This was a deliberate choice and commentary about all that we lose (both personally and culturally) by ignoring the AIDs crisis at the time (1989). He was devastated he didn’t have time to make more art. 'Finishing’ Unfinished Painting is straight up spitting on Haring’s grave and shows no understanding to the meaning behind the art. The AI interpretation doesn’t even follow his extremely recognizable shape language and symbols. This is why people are angry about AI art. All commerce images and no meaning or humanity
Thank you for typing this out! I couldn’t formulate my thoughts at the time because it really and truly goes beyond “they didn’t match the pattern”. There is significance behind this piece never being completed. “Unfinished Painting” is historical on at *minimum* three different layers - reflecting one person’s struggle with AIDS, encapsulating a very terrifying time in the LGBT+ community (though AIDS doesn’t discriminate by sexuality), and showing how the LGBT+ community was (and still is) all woven together with the same struggles. And while the completion *could be* a symbol of how even HIV can be overcome (at least two people have been cured!!!!), the fact that it was completed by a fucking computer rings this symbol as hollow. Our lives are not bits of data. We are not statistics. We never fucking were.
AI advocates, go pick up a brush.
The thing with this kind of use for AI is that it all too often is excused with something innocent. “It’s so sad this was never finished! But we can now use AI to finish it! We’re helping the artist!”
But you’re not helping the artist. You’re tacking your own name onto their work in an attempt to milk some of their credit for yourself. In one of the laziest ways possible.
Sometimes art doesn’t get finished. Sometimes a song is never fully written. Sometimes a novel series isn’t completed. Maybe it’s because the artist died, or maybe it’s because the spark they had for the art in question went out before they completed the work. But that’s life. It’s unfortunate, and often sad. It leaves the fans of that artist feeling empty, because they want what they’ll never get. But that does not justify taking it upon yourself to “complete” a work for an artist, especially when the artist does not ask you to. Especially this painting, which was very obviously intentionally left unfinished by the artist. But even if it hadn’t been, and it truly wasn’t finished before he died, then that does not mean it is ok to ask a computer to finish it.
People look to AI as the big solution to completing all these things that were lost to time. They want to use actors who have died for those big, touching cameos in movies. They want to hear songs that were never completed, sung by voices who are long gone. They want to see more artwork, more creativity, by artists who aren’t here anymore. But all throughout human history, people have accepted that once someone is dead, then that’s it. The only way we can appreciate them is in what they have left us, not in what a computer might be able to create by stealing their work and creating a false image. It’s not their work. They didn’t make it. To call it theirs would be nothing short of a lie.
Kelly Carlin, daughter of the late and all time great George Carlin, shared this statement regarding an AI-generated special imitating him:
She’s right. Part of the beauty of humanity and its creations is that it is ephemeral. Death enhances our lives, not detracts for it. AI making a ghoulish reanimation of the dead should strike you with such horror that you understand why necromancy is banned by man and God.
Marian Ellis Rowan (1848-1922, Australian) ~
One hundred and fifty-eight medium- and small-sized moths, in seven columns. A wide range of families is represented, including the NOCTUIDAE, ARCTIIDAE, LASIOCAMPIDAE, LYMANTRIIDAE, GEOMETRIDAE, PYRALIDAE, SESIIDAE, etc.
hot (bitter) take but getting asked for your pronouns is kind of useless when you use anything but One of the big three. cis people short circuit when you answer with it/its or neopronouns or even just multiple alternating sets
one time a girl asked my pronouns, i told her it/its, she tried ONCE before asking if she could just use they/them. right in front of my salad. like why even ask me at that point
people have talked about how it’s not okay to they/them someone who you know uses she/her or he/him but it’s also not okay to do that to someone who uses any other pronoun set. neopronouns & it/its are not interchangeable with they/them! xe/xyr is not code for “if you want a challenge try this out but otherwise they/them me because all non-binary pronouns are basically the same anyways” that is the devil talking!!!!!!!
YOU ARE STILL MISGENDERING PEOPLE EVEN IF THEY ARE NONBINARY AND YOU USE THEY/THEM IN PLACE OF THEIR ACTUAL PRONOUNS
Centaurs are not 50% horse. They have 75% of a horse, and 50% human of a human body, smushed together to create a mammal that’s approximately 2/3 horse, and full of redundant anatomy. Two torsos and 6 limbs like an insect.
So then YOU do the math!
And while you’re at it do the math for human x centaur and don’t forget to show your work.
Point 1: use the Harkness test to determine if it’s bestiality or not
Anthropomorphic animal world, I was some kind of thief. I was thinking about the risks of whatever change the organisation I was a part of was doing, some kind of restructuring.
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Why have I already had 3 (three) dreams where everyone is a furry??
I think the mentality of “why bother doing something if you’re not good at it?” feeds directly into “if you’re good at it why aren’t you monetizing it?”. At its core I really think its about commodifying every last shred of labor and experience.
THIS
Adding that this is literally a huge reason we don’t leave unsolicited criticism on things like fanworks- fanfiction, fanart, fan crafts etc. Because there’s a LOT of people out there who are just doing this for the fun of it. They’re doing it for the same reason people go on walks- to feel good. And receiving crit they didn’t ask for doesn’t feel good.
Picking up a hobby and then being judged for how good you are at it - even if the judgement is minor, or in your head - really fucks you up. As someone. Who is fucked up from holding unreasonable expectations for trying to be perfect at whatever I do, because that is what I do. It fucks you up. When I do something I *desire* to be good at it. Very good, if possible. I nigh expect things to go exactly as I imagine them, always, and it never comes out exactly the way I think, and it is devastating. Typos in my writing destroy me. Seeing a drawing that could just be a little crisper. A dropped stitch in a crochet project. Looking at my giant box of expensive markers and thinking quietly “but am I good enough at this to use them properly”, even though I love using them. It fucks you up.
A real question worth $500,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Air date: November 18th, 1999
the end of this clip is the perfect punchline
For added context: Pokemon, both the game and the anime, released in the US in September 1998, a little over a year before this clip. And it was firmly aimed at kids, not adults.
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, starring Elijah Wood as Frodo, was in production at the time of this clip but would not be released for two more years, until December 2001.
So this guy is not quite as stupid as he appears to us here in the year of our lord 2023 - none of these things are household names and memes in his time the way they are today.
Regis has writers who should be able to at least look up which Baggins is in the Hobbit, though, so no excuses for him.
This is one of my favorite posts because that cat’s fucking name is fucking meatloaf
Let us just appreciate that this person’s dad didn’t know when they would be home and so he couldn’t plan for them to be able to join the family for dinner, but he knew with no doubts that dear sweet Meatloaf staying in that exact position for hours was an absolute in this scenario. Truly, that cat was named well.
one of my favorite posts on tumblr over the course of 5 fucking years.. clearly i need a life
Meatloaf is a reliable cat and did not steal the money for selfish reasons. A rare friend.
omg imagine being born and you are on a spaceship and everyone aboard is sooo so mad at you just because you burst out of some guy’s chest to be born. like um sorry i’ve not been alive before i didn’t even know that’s not allowed please be nice to me um the spaceship floor is cold is no one going to knit me some little booties i am calling child protective services
Still a good precaution. And definitely necessary for everyone for when life has returned to normal in like three years just in case you meet the love of your life and they’re positive.
Couldn’t share this fast enough.
Rebloging this to add a little more info because it’s very important:
Antiretroviral therapy when used correctly can cause the user’s “viral load” (your viral load is how much of the virus is in your bloodstream), to drop because the medicine prevents HIV from creating copies of itself.
Regular blood tests are done to monitor your viral load, and after taking the medication long enough, it can drop so low that it becomes “durably undetectable”. This means that the HIV virus in you has become so miniscule that it can’t be detected, and by extension can’t be transmitted either. It’s important to note that in order to be considered durable undetectable, you MUST test as undetectable for atleast 6 months after testing as undetectable for the first time.
Also very important, being durably undetectable does NOT mean that you’re cured or that the virus is gone, not by a longshot. The HIV virus is still very much there, but instead of being active, it’s gone dormant in a small number of cells called “viral reservoirs”. This why it’s EXTREMELY important that even after achieving durably undetectable status, you continue to take your Antiretroviral medications correctly. Because if you stop, the HIV virus will reemerge from the viral reservoirs and pick up right where it left off in creating copies of itself, and you will have to start all over again if you want to become durably undetectable again.
This is great advice for people struggling with or know someone who has HIV.
