[webgirl]

me getting back into fandoms that i left years ago

[danphanwritingprompts]

Danny woke up from being in a month long coma with no memory of how he got there or his past life. Thankfully, the doctors said that his memory would return in time, and his parents were there for him to tell him who he was and his life story until his memory returned. However, the things he’s remembering and what he was told are completely different for a chilling reason.

[danphanwritingprompts]

This prompt got two fills during Phic Phight in 2021, and I highly recommend both!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30394638

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30436809

[the-stove-is-on-fire]

Protector of Ghosts

Even big scary ghosts need affection and emotional support.

[Image ID: A digital drawing of Danny Fenton in a hoodie looking murderous while gently cradling the face of a monstrous Phantom with one hand. Phantom's body is black and shadow-like with glowing neon green ribs, palms, eyes, mouth, ghostly tail and fire for hair. Phantom has four hands, three of which he is using to hold onto Danny, and the fourth hovers reverently over the human hand cradling his face. /. End ID]

Original sketch under the cut:

[the-stove-is-on-fire]

Some detail shots of the partial transparency that I am particularly proud of 💪

[izel-scribbles]

have you ever died in a nightmare? woke up surprised you hadn't earned your fate?

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Begging people to stop reblogging this AI trash from “The Phantom Painter” on Instagram (instagram.com/phantom.painting). I’ve been seeing it on my dash more and more often from people who are otherwise anti-AI and either can’t tell it’s AI or don’t care because it looks cool.

This is the kind of shit that is VERY CLEARLY trained on the works of existing talented artists’ with distinct styles and this asshole is selling prints and making a profit off of stealing other people’s hard work.

Don’t give people like this money or attention and they will go away.

Please, if you’re going to buy art prints, buy them from an actual artist.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

@thegnat That’s the problem, it’s getting really hard to tell what’s AI and what isn’t. This phantom painter person at least says on each post on Instagram that it was created with AI, but when people re-post it on tumblr, it isn’t specified, and people end up reblogging it.

It’s not reasonable to think everyone should be vetting every single art they reblog to make sure it isn’t AI, which is why I made this post to let people know this artist specifically is AI, and I see it reblogged a ton.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

While we’re at it

and so is everything by that person, xis.lanyx on Instagram. They also sell prints of their “original images”

[ex0skeletal-undead]

That last one is for the people saying “you can always tell by the hands.” You cannot. The whole point is that it’s getting better and better at it. That’s what it does.

As an art curator on tumblr I now have to spend a considerable amount of time trying to decipher whether or not the art I want to share is AI or not and I still sometimes get it wrong.

[shithowdy]

To actually answer the question of how one can determine something is AI, particularly as it grows more sophisticated with anatomy: you have to train yourself to recognize artifacts.

There is no one single unifying giveaway beyond a strange sense of uncanny that you will eventually begin to recognize the better you attune yourself, and certain models have their own unique “styles” you can begin to recognize (midjourney and stablediffusion produce very different looks, for example). There are however a few things on which one can tend to focus.

Edges: AI, as of this post, still struggles with distinct edges of objects and figures and has a tendency to blend details together. Look for hair, ribbons, and other flowy details if present. Do they fade into other details? Look at how the hair fuses with the smoke:

Edges 2: Sometimes they will also have the edges completely avoid each other, with a foreground figure slightly warping along the edges in a way that matches the background edges, like repelling magnets:

Patterns: AI, as of this post, still struggles with patterns. Filigrees, mandalas, brickwork, scales, anything that involves a high level of intricate detail tends to get blurred together. This can be a tricky one, because a lot of artists will also fudge pattern details in looser renders, but usually in a way that makes sense as an impression and not…. this:

Architecture: Are there buildings present in the image? AI has a tendency to make Escher-esque nonsense structures, with pillars in places they don’t belong, arches that go nowhere, bricks that don’t align, and support beams that start on one plane and connect to another. It also struggles with perspective, but, so do many humans so I would not consider it evidence alone. Check out the placement of this pillar, and also the detail on the… window? Candle cage?? Thing?

Resolution and quality: AI cannot make high-resolution images. It just cannot. While most artists aren’t posting their full resolutions, generative images can’t be enhanced, and the “artist” will not be able to provide proof of work. You should be able to zoom into work by an artist and admire their strokes, relate to their errors, and appreciate their process at every skill level– zooming into generative images somehow makes them even less clear, a mess of pixels that are somehow both blurry and also look like they have been run through a sharpen filter:

Text and signatures: AI struggles with legible characters in any language, and the result is a simlish-looking approximation of characters at worst, and hilariously misspelled words at best. Since these models are trained off real artists, they will also often have artifacts of a signature that oopsed its way into the image. These signatures are always illegible or, if “legible”, are not actually the names of real accounts.

Things like this can be tough to spot at a glance if you’re not actively keyed into looking for them, but they’re the type of uncanny stuff that once you see it will start gnawing at the back of your mind. You’ll be scrolling your feed and suddenly take -1 psychic damage and you have to scroll back up to see why. Stuff that goes beyond inconsistent lightsources and bad anatomy.

[jellymellydraws]

[thehikingastronomer]

If this isn't the truest thing

[peglarpapers]

i love it when male biographers talk shit on women for rejecting their male biographees bc the misogyny inevitably goes so far it turns into homoeroticism naruto-style

[peglarpapers]

like how dare she reject the proposal of a weird guy who was 20 years older than her and constantly flat broke and always going on extremely life-threatening naval exploratory voyages. what a shallow evil bitch. i wouldn’t have rejected him. he was a good man. he had a soft touch. i wish he’d touch me softly. i wonder if in the dark antarctic night he ever felt his heartbreak so keenly he contemplated the comfort of another man’s arms. i could have been that man. anyway magnetic readings were taken at

[burningvelvet]

no but this literally describes a certain subset of percy shelley scholars who hate mary shelley and there is one "scholar" in particular who meets this description 100% but he's still alive and actively writing and probably googles his own name so i can't Speak about it...

[burningvelvet]

i was going to mention the old byronists too lol @cxnthie

[bokkerijder-deactivated20240624]

pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc

against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"

[justasunflowerseed-deactivated2]

pro-AI in the sense of "use it for jobs that are near impossible or highly taxing of humans"

against AI in the sense of "use it to replace human creativity in fields built on human creativity"

[olderthannetfic]

A short while ago you mentioned fic on AO3 that was written in the “AO3 style”, or something to that effect. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what that means/is?

--

Oh god. This topic comes around every 6 months or so. Others should feel free to help me out here, but basically...

A lot of fanfic sounds like the other fanfic and other stuff that the same communities consume. In a given era and sector of fandom, that leads to a samey style. It often has a lot of overlap with a specific sector and era of genre fiction with a heavy dose of watches-tv-does-not-read-books elements on top.

AO3 House Style is relatively similar to the height of LJ Western slash fandom. Other fanfic styles are often similar but start showing other influences the more distant you get.

There are some major strains, not always in the same works:

Transparent genre fiction prose that doesn't call too much attention to itself. It's there to convey plot, not make you notice the language qua language. You'll see something similar in, say, a Mercedes Lackey novel (along with the terrible editing and protagonist centered morality that are also common in fic, haha).

YA boom era YA vibes.

Kind of forced "snark" and samevoice from many characters in a way that tells you the author spent a little too much time watching Buffy.

World building and complex thriller/mystery/etc. plots that actually work typically take a back seat to pining, angst with a happy ending, and other more ship-focused, character interaction-focused, and emotions-focused things. The general idea of a mystery, vampire AU, etc. is often present, but it's more of a backdrop. (Depends on the part of fandom though!)

Huge focus on the internal psychological and emotional state of characters.

Lots of hurt/comfort, both physical and emotional.

Lots of serialized work that shows the traces of being written that way (dangling plot threads, inflated word count, returning to similar plot points in a way that wouldn't happen if the thing were completely written, revised, and then only posted serially).

Certain cliched phrases like "He smelled of __ and __ and something uniquely him", carding fingers through hair (thanks, commenters for researching this one a year or two ago and proving it's way more common in fic!), "Oh. Oh.", etc.

If the fic is more self-consciously literary, it's full of sentences that trail off to the point where you're almost not sure what actually happened.

Often lots of very short paragraphs and lots of scenes that are almost all dialogue

Frequently third person limited present tense. Some third person limited past tense. Less of other stuff unless you're looking at a fandom where canon is first person or you're looking at readerfic (which is on AO3 but is not really "AO3 House Style").

Honestly, some people would just say "sounds like fanfic", but if you go read primarily on SpaceBattles or something, you're going to find a lot of stories that don't sound quite the same as your prototypical AO3 fic.

[momokarp]

Danny never got help with his homework again

[cadaverkeys]

I cannot BELIEVE you guys actually signing up to netflix just because account sharing was banned. You need to learn about cool websites with many beautiful women who would love you message you and send you downloadable files.

[bornt-urnge]

⚠️ Fandom is Moving Forward with Generative AI ⚠️

As of December 15, Fandom has announced their plans to continue using AI to "enhance" their articles.

In short, they claim to have primarily used AI to

Scan images for "appropriateness" (be that NSFW content or just fitting in with the theme of the show), which still involves scraping tons of images and comparing them to a potentially unethically sourced database. As with all machine learning using images, it is still wildly inaccurate.

Optimizing edits - something they admit is still severely lacking because it can't read tables or variants on simple things like "birthday"

Optimizing SEO - this is clearly what they care most about, since Google likes the "Quick Answers" - as shitty as they were - this means they can continue to dominate the search results and gain more ad revenue.

This is a good time to remember that Fandom is a for-profit company with inverstors, which means their end goal is always to make the most money possible. They don't care about "The Fans" (despite the lip service), and they don't care about the authenticity of user-generated content if they can figure out how to automate the process.

STOP USING FANDOM.

Alternatives/Workarounds:

Indie Wiki Buddy is an extension that will redirect you to non-Fandom versions of wikis if it's in their database.

BreezeWiki displays all Fandom wikis in a clean, ad-free format with just the article content (no links to their forums, autoplay videos, etc)

If you must use Fandom, install UBlock Origin. It's available on all desktop browsers and Firefox Mobile. Hit them where it hurts. And encourage the wiki teams to leave Fandom if they can.

Also, be sure to support independent wikis! You can disable adblockers while on their sites, as they usually have much less obtrusive ads which directly fund server maintenance rather than CEO salaries. Change links on your posts/pages to direct to non-Fandom Wikis (even wiki.gg is better).

Keep information free from corporatization.

[olderthannetfic]

I have over 2000 bookmarks on ao3, so there are times when I want to read a fic, but don’t remember the title or author. And I read a lot of fics that has the same trope, (fix-it, secret reveal, enemies to lovers, etc.) so the summary and tags aren’t always enough for me to find that one specific fic.

Something I do is write a summary or just some major plots points in the notes. It’s been super helpful because I do reread a lot of fics.

My question is, is this considered rude to the author? Because I know a lot of authors expect to see a person’s thoughts on the fic if they check the notes, not a summary.

--

Bookmarks are not for the author.

Write whatever is useful to you and/or other readers in your bookmarks.

I do enjoy seeing how other people have bookmarked my work, but I'm basically snooping. Benignly. But still. That's the framework an author should look at it through.

[toast-ranger-to-a-stranger]

PUBLIC bookmarks should be mindful of the author, however. And unless you click that "private" box on ao3, the author can see what you have said. A few readers don't seem to be aware of that.

If you hate something and want to make sure you don't accidentally read it again, for instance, make sure the bookmark is actually set to private. Authors often do check the public bookmarks-- and seeing something like "0/10, won't read again" is pretty shitty for people offering their work for free.

[olderthannetfic]

idk “bookmarks aren't for the authors” is true-- but you don't need to be a jackass where the author can see#reblogging this bc op doesn't seem to want to and seems fine with just the flat: oh ALL bookmarks are JUST for YOU#despite already acknowledging that public bookmarks with spoilers can be whack for other readers#they don't seem to want to acknowledge the fact that public bookmarks affect the writer#maybe they just don't think it matters-- but they are the exception and not the rule bc almost every author i know checks the bookmarks#and is disappointed and discouraged by those shitty versions of public bookmarks#is it very “first world problem”?? in some ways yes!#but it is still very much a problem for the authors#especially ones that are just starting out

Oh, did you want me to come tell you I disagree with you again instead of letting you have your say?

Fine.

Bookmarks are not for authors.

AO3's bookmarks are designed to be a lot like Delicious's. You can moan that Things Are Different Now and that Times Have Moved On like in every other wank where this turns up on my tumblr every six months.

Too bad.

One function of bookmarks on AO3 in the way that they are implemented is to encourage a public reccing culture, and that includes things authors don't like, like rating a fic or reviewing both the parts the reader did and didn't like.

A bookmark that just exists to flame the author is, indeed, pretty rude and unnecessary.

A bookmark that exists to say "This fic is bigoted" or "I really didn't like the writing style" or "I know it says CNTW, but I was blindsided by the dark stuff in this fic and I think other readers will hate it too" is perfectly fine.

I would only be circumspect about highly specific late-fic major plot spoilers, not things like "Feels darker/less dark than the tags imply" or "Tag X means Y does it to Z, not that Z does it to Y".

If, as an author, you cannot stop yourself from looking at bookmarks even though they upset you, you are the jackass.

I am a writer. I'm even someone with a lot of public haters who follow me around making it my problem.

No, you don't get to ruin one of the main points of bookmarks.

It's entitled nonsense, and I will say so every time this stupid topic comes up. Which it does. Fucking constantly.

99% of the time, AO3 is a highly writer-centric website, and I like it that way. Our commenting culture is anti-concrit, which I agree with. Our warnings requirements err on the side of the writer's artistic vision, which I also agree with.

But bookmarks are, essentially, a work by the bookmarker. It's not obvious from most of them because they're so low content and because Delicious culture has been dead for so long, but when you see someone who's a BNF reccer/bookmarker (yes, they exist), it becomes clear that these are work just as a really well-curated reblogging tumblr for a fandom is.

So no, I don't care if some author is sad to see "Would not read again".

It's not their business.

[olderthannetfic]

Well, well, well

[raven-bythesea]

For the DC x DP server gift exchange!

Constantine has been taking care of dealing with a stray King of the dead for a while now

Please no reposts, referencing, reusing, or edits, please feel free to reblog ❤️ Click for best resolution!

[were--ralph]

apparently melon husk is actively rolling this out in other countries its actually joever

[joyflameball]

This cannot be fucking real

[joyflameball]

What do you mean this is fucking real

[iris-in-the-dark-world]

i really think everyone should archive everything important and get out while they still can, even moreso than six months ago

[vampyrluver]

If anyones interested in learning about the first black vampire short story, published in 1819, heres a link to the wiki, its called The Black Vampyre, and its about a former slave turned vampire who seeks revenge on his slave master. Its actually a first in many categories!

[structureoflove]

you can read the story itself here

[ineachretelling]

Not only is it the first Black vampire story, it's the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mixed race vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and probably the first anti-slavery short story. Some scholars believe that the text was written in response to John William Polidori's The Vampyre.

[fan-art-ic]

Here is the actual pdf from the site since you have to click around from the above link to actually get to it