idle thought #676
Jun. 18th, 2025 02:34 pmI didn’t know that the love languages thing was homophobic, just picked it up from people talking about it—and ironically most of the couples I’ve applied it to were gay or lesbian, so. I hope that ticks him right off, but also I’m not sure I should use it in the future. /Reads about it Yeeeeaah, okay. And sexist too. And he’s Christian...ah, he’s one of those types of Christian therapists. Got it. And it’s not that the idea is homophobic, per se, just the guy, but even so. As used in pop culture, it’s a useful framework to think about how to write pairings. As written, it sucks. I’ve been getting better, though, so I might not need to use it for brainstorming, so that’s good.
idle thought #669
May. 24th, 2025 07:42 pm‘you know, people should be allowed to have squicks!’ okay, go on, I’m listening, but that’s a weird thing to have to say. ‘I mean, some people overreact when you tell them you’re not cool with writing something’. Yeah, sure, there are entitled people everywhere. ‘People have called me an anti!’ As long as you’re not doxxing people. ‘People get really upset when you tell them you’re not willing to write pedophilic content!’ aaaand there goes the mask off moment I was waiting for watching the thread. Gee willickers, I have absolutely no reason why people would be upset by that accusation. No one, not even a fortune teller, could have seen that one coming.
You’re on the Ao3 subreddit. Just slap a ‘no underage’ on the prompt. Or specify which teenagers you’re cool with shipping with each other. Calling it pedophilic is not much better than calling it CSEM, and yeah, I sideeye some of that stuff, but I don’t interact and I most certainly do not tell people to their face you think they’ll commit pedophilic acts through writing.
See You Time Cowboy
May. 19th, 2025 02:00 pmSummary: This is another ancient work along the same lines as initiative meetings, Time After, and Torchwood: Aftershock. It's been sitting in a document probably just as long as those, though I copied and pasted it into my prompt document a while ago.
Word Count: 1018
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Spike/Xander
( one of the longer ones )
:( leave my burg alone
May. 17th, 2025 08:44 pmidle thought #667
May. 17th, 2025 08:44 pmfor those of you who make fun of the idea that all lowercase fiction is an artistic choice, I would like to share the reasons why I did this for a few stories, because I suspect others might be doing it for the same reasons but be unable to articulate why. And yes, I had to do it deliberately, because the word processor I was using kept capitalizing letters so I had to delete the letter and uncapitalize it or undo the autocorrect. For the few fics that I did it for, it was an artistic choice. In my case, the few it made sense for were dreamlike or dissociating, so it communicated a feeling of being unmoored from reality or the usual standards of reality. I can also point to the culprit as to who gave me the idea in the first place: E. E. Cummings, though the ‘common knowledge’ that he never used capital letters might have been a misunderstood exaggeration.
hatebot theory
May. 15th, 2025 12:18 pmThere's a newest hatebot, one that's not backhandedly mentioning a particular AI 'product' as some kind of marketing stunt. Just being genuinely awful in the comments. I don't know about the *exact* timing of this, but I have a theory, because I can think of one person who recently gained a grudge against Ao3 and the writers and thinks they're beneath him and deserve to be torn down. (Note: This is just speculations, do not harass this individual further. Especially as it's possible it's someone completely unrelated.)
I think it's the guy who most recently scraped Ao3. Or at least related to that scrape. He showed absolutely no remorse and thought he had the high ground. Again, this is what prompted my earlier post on plagiarism and AI based on the hbomberguy video. For context, what you need to know is that hbomberguy's theory is that plagiarism isn't a compliment. It's contempt. "I'm better than you and I deserve your stuff. You don't." Them being able to make a bot to launder plagiarism accusations (because they have the plausible deniability of 'well it doesn't look exactly like your stuff after it's remixed with millions of other people's stuff') makes them better than creative people, because they genuinely look down on creative people for some reason. That matches the tone of this guy's mocking posts--until the DMCAs started to work and he threw a hissy fit and claimed it was 'betraying core principles' to not want a shitty AI archive...of an archive. That already exists without his 'help'.
A second plagiarism AI thief then popped up to create a second quicker dataset seemingly with the sole purpose of a phishing scam to grab people's personal information. It could be somebody unrelated just taking advantage of the chaos; I don't remember if there was a proven link between this guy and the one before, but even if it's a totally unrelated rando it reads like retaliation. Like, 'how dare you be against AI, I'm gonna put you in your place' kind of attitude.
Original jerk thief also then uploaded the tool in a fit of pique. Which I'm sure he thought he was clever, but that was a definite misstep on his part, because it means Ao3 can actually pick his coding apart and actually find which vulnerability he used to access locked works and patch it. I'm sure he thought he was being clever, but it's like. Buddy. Pal. Friend. You are that creatively bankrupt to think you're the first one who's ever had this idea? I mean, I don't know why I'm asking; it's kind of obvious, but still. Newsflash, no one 'on your side' needs your tool and most of the large companies have done it already. I know you think you have the winning hand and that's why you're showing it, but...dude, all you're doing is the equivalent of showing your malware to the antivirus company. They would have had more work to identify it without your help.
I don't remember the exact timing, but I think the newest hatebot popped up after that. There's been a lot of comments of 'I can't understand why someone would do this'. And while I could be completely wrong...I don't think I am, based on the timing and the contempt. I think it's the original guy, someone connected, or just some random pro-AI loser who, again, is just lashing out in retaliation because creative types shouldn't be allowed to exist or thrive and need to be 'put in their place'. It's pretty clear the intent is malicious, they're probably using an AI to do it, and pro-plagiarism AI techbros have what they think is a really good reason to hold a grudge, so.
I rest my case.
(and, because I am creative enough to think I'm not the first one to have a thought and am not against credit: me and TheFoxAndPhoenix on reddit are on the same page here)
In a shocking sequel, I think I have even more evidence for my theory. With the hatebots evolving so quickly, I think we can even guess as to their goals. The last three iterations were: "This fandom is being depreciated to save space" (makes no sense outside of a tech context), mockingly effusive praise ("this belongs in a museum!") and "You clearly have lost steam for this story, you should go on hiatus/delete". With this, they definitely want to make writers feel bad (hippiegoth97's theory), and, if they can, get them to delete their stories. One of the guesses is that these are all trying to get people to take their stories down so they don't have provable copyright (I saw Smegoldidnothingwrong say this, but they also say 'that's the most concrete theory we have' so I think it's more commonly established and held at this point). I don't think these AI techbros know that Ao3 always emails you your story after it is deleted, so at minimum you still have that if you're trying to DMCA. It's harder, true, but it doesn't make it 'free game'. Again, they're trying to mess around in a realm where they don't know how it works.
...I also missed the part where someone got a comment where the people behind the bot were so lazy they accidentally copy-pasted the first part of the chatGPT response where it was saying "okay, here are 20 fanfiction comments designed to evoke a strong negative emotional response from the author, focusing on a polite opening followed by harsh criticism". So, basically, their prompt they put in. I...am impressed at the sheer laziness and incompetence, but then, they want someone or something else to do the work and it will, sadly, be effective against some writers, so why should they bother actually trying not to look this massively incompetent?
idle thought #666
May. 14th, 2025 08:16 pmThis will be...a long time in the future. But. One of the reasons I definitely ship Shaun and Desmond is, well, first tsundere characters are, like, my jam, but. In AC3 specifically Shaun mellowed. A lot. Still snarky, but he softened a lot and actually made time for Desmond and was quietly supportive about Bill.
The moment I knew The Secret Histories wasn’t going to stay 100% gen was when Shaun got really soft to Desmond, and Desmond was doing it back with a little teasing. (I probably should’ve known before, maybe when Desmond was having his panic attack and probably when Desmond was thinking ‘you know what sounds nice being back in London with Shaun buying me a sandwich’, but, uh, I can be dense about crushes in real life too, so.)
idle thought #664
May. 7th, 2025 10:15 pmAlso I feel like Asura/Taisha is the unhinged version of Ukitake/Shunsui? Like, don’t get me wrong, Ukitake and Shunsui are both capable of being feral murder machines, but Asura and Taisha take it to the next level (and sometimes pointing it at each other). But their dynamics are very, very similar.