In Aeaia

in the past, authors like anne rice have tried to limit the production of fanfiction. but at least rice was honest - she thought this infringed on her copywrite. back in the day, this was considered a valid argument to not create any fanfiction at all for her works.

do you understand what i’m saying? while you may sound valiant for placing a creator’s “discomfort” above the fan’s natural proclivities in fandom, really you’re just continuing to advocate for censorship in fan spaces.

Make whatever you want, but don't show it to the original creator. Writers legally cannot read fic of their work. It is a perfectly reasonable boundary for actors not to want erotic art of their characters thrust upon them. Don't link copyright holders to fan merch of their IP. And for the love of fuck, stop @ tagging the people who make the thing you're a fan of to validate your headcanons or rebuke someone else's.

Here's N.K. Jemisin on the subject:

To expand on this a little bit: Ryoko Kui takes the tools of character design seriously, and uses them with forethought and consideration to set her characters apart, give them personality and specificity, and thinks very carefully about what each piece of design communicates and how it interacts with all the other design in her story.

Body shape, face shape, noses, eyes, brows, hair, proportion, fashion, ears, posture, roundness and angularity, broadness and slenderness, posture... Kui clearly thinks about ALL of it, and incorporates all of it.

And this is part of what gives her story such a profound sense of taking place within a world, a whole world inhabited by thousands of people each of whom are as full and unique and distinct as every other one. You look at a group of her characters and none of them feel like Copy Pasted NPC Placeholder #3457, they each feel as though there is a life there, an individuality, even if they are never actually deeply explored in the story.

Compare and contrast with something like Genshin Impact's style of character design:

Now, I don't bring this up just to sh** on Genshin - its character design style is adapted very effectively to the kind of story and world it is trying to build, which is to say a gacha story where every part of a character is formulated towards the singular goal of appeal. It's a world inhabited by nothing but main characters, essentially, and it is a laser-focused power fantasy structured around constantly pursuing the high of maximum damage numbers pumped out by maximally cool and badass battle moves executed with maximal grace by physically perfect avatars who provide the player with maximal aesthetic pleasure.

But because of that, its character design style is under severe pressure to regress to the mean - i.e. skinny bodies, young bodies, beauty ideals, and a minimal amount of physical difference. This style of character design tends to focus all of its effort in colorful, detailed and attention-grabbing fashion and hair styles, and generally avoids "alienating" design features like, well, literally anything that could be conceptualized by anyone as "ugly." Big strong noses, for example, or larger ears, or wrinkles, scarring, skin folds and so on. Fatness functionally does not exist in Genshin Impact's character roster for this reason, and it's part of the reason why the franchise struggles so notably to design characters of color - the concept of "beauty" is deeply bound up in systemic biases of class, race, gender and nationalism, and since Genshin's character design ethos is "make every character as broadly beautiful as possible" it has to keep hitting the same limited set of beats over and over and over again, and it reinforces the biases it inherits with its inability to step outside of them.

So Genshin Impact characters have a tendency, for me at least, to all kinda blur together into a brightly colored cavalcade of lowest-common-denominator ambulatory clothing racks, characters whose bodies exist for the primary purpose of transporting a highly elaborate costume around.

Kui by contrast very very actively seeks out elements of physical difference, and incorporates them into her design process - she seems to delight in inventing as many nose shapes as possible, as many different kinds of eyes as she can think of, and the result is that she has a character roster which is recognizable even if you change or remove very important parts of their basic design.

Where Genshin Impact (and that style of character design) would severely struggle to make characters recognizable without their costumes, because the characters in large part are their costumes, Kui's design style makes characters extremely recognizable not only in and out of costume, but even if the fundamental nature of their bodies change across species, and it makes her characters of the same race and species eminently recognizable from one another, even while sharing many physical traits and aesthetic features.

Y'all the hate and misinformation in the pro-palestine movement is off the CHARTS.

A large portion of the stuff I see claiming to support Palestinians on this website that I could reblog is either:

Completely untrue and not based on anything factual

Potentially even intentional misinformation or propaganda by malicious parties

Calls for increased violence or hatred

Zealous, fanatical, fascist, or pro-terror rhetoric

Wildly unproductive and beneficial to absolutely no one. Such as things that are not in the interests of Palestinians while also managing to harm the most Jews as possible

Logical fallacies, false dichotomies, useless or offensive comparisons

Conflating Israeli government with Israeli peoples and Jews on the whole

Absolutely raging blatant antisemitism

Using the term "Zionist" as the justification for their violence, hatred, racism, and antisemitism while still feeling like they can masquerade as pro-peace love and justice without actually being critical of the systems that led to where we are now

It's a major major problem. The things we balked against in the far right in 2016 are becoming main-stays for this movement more and more and it's distressing.

I never defend Israel because...well... I don't personally support its actions. But I also cant sit silent while people seem to blindly and passionately fall for all of the traps above and feel like they're doing the progressive compassionate thing. So I try do what I can- speak out as much as possible against the flaws I see popping up in the pro palestine movement with the hope it doesn't snowball into something monstrous and far warped from its original intention. I want Palestinians to thrive but it can't and won't be through antisemitism.

Reminder that porn will never stop being a thing. It just won't. If it's made illegal, then it will continue to be created and distributed - its just that it will now be done under the table, and with no safety regulations or protections for anyone.

Yes, the hard-right's ultimate plan is to use porn as a gateway from which to attack queer people, but even if that wasn't their plan, you should want to protect the legality of porn anyway.

Keeping porn legal means that the chances of sexual assault on those who work in the industry are reduced, and means that victims of assault are able to pursue legal action against their attackers. Keeping porn legal means that human trafficking is decreased, and it gives victims of human trafficking a legally supported escape route that would be lost if porn were made illegal.

Keeping porn legal means that anyone who is involved in making it - regardless of whether theyre making it simply because they want to, or because they're financially desperate -- is granted a measure of protection that they otherwise would not be. People love to raise the "but porn is made by desperate people who sell their body to survive," but a) some people make porn because they like it, and b) someone who is desperate enough to sell their body will do so regardless of whether it's legal or not. But when it's legal, that desperate person has far more protections and is less likely to be taken advantage of than when it's illegal.

To the people who want to make porn illegal?

Fanfiction is porn. (It's just in prose form.)

Fanart is (often) porn.

Queer people's existence is porn.

Even if you are not personally a sex worker, this is absolutely your fight too.

"But they're selling your body" ....do you think a warehouse worker isn't selling their body? The retail worker who has knee and hip problems from having to stand all day, the barista with carpal tunnel, the office worker with migraines from the screens and fluorescent lights.

I'm a mixed Asian Jew. After October 7th, just like everyone else, I've had to ignore the rampant antisemitism everywhere, especially in fandoms. Recently, I've noticed something that has really been scaring me and making me a million times more anxious.

I used to be very active in Kpop fandoms. Yes, I am aware Kpop fans are crazy but I used to have my circle of friends that were pretty chill. Obviously I had to unfriend all of them lol.

There's a huge trend in Kpop fandoms right now where Kpop fans do not want Kpop documentaries/movies to air in Israel. Evidence: https://x.com/CARAT4PALESTINE/status/1815400792678895980

This is not unique to Kpop fans. Beyoncé fans were angry when her movie aired in Israel. Taylor Swift fans were angry when her movie aired in Israel and so forth. However this is very scary. We can't just brush this off as "well they're crazy stans" or "yk how people on the internet are". This is going to harm us. This CURRENTLY harms us. I'm just so disturbed and angry.

It gets worse: when a Kpop boyband worked with an Israeli producer on a recent album, people were furious and wanted to boycott it. Obviously and thankfully they failed because they stan these people so hard but still. It's so fucking insane. None of this is normal.

Hi, no you are not bothering me at all.

Yeah it is not normal and very much jew hate. Whilst I'm not into kpop anymore, I used to be a fan back in 2015 - 2019 and I still get videos reccomended on my fyp on tik tok related to kpop. I have seen a lot of just vile antisemitic stuff on top of a fan cam. Which whilst sucks, is a tiny bit funny.

My favourite video i've seen from kpop stans (sarcastic) is when they will be a BTS stan, then spit some shit like "Israelis aren't civilians because they serve in the military" cause like, cool bestie your bts boys aren't civilians either by the same logic, yet you still support them.

I looked at that tweet and yeesh. "aparthied state" like idk how to tell these people, but their faves work for companies which are more focused on overworking their idols and bringing in money rather than supporting Palestine.

Like you said, these people stan so hard they forget, and after the war is over, they will still support Hybe and other companies.

He and his first wife divorced after… well she said it better than I ever could.

“I excused a lot of his failings and whims because I loved him. But one day he did something to me that I couldn’t forgive. I was singing that evening at the cabaret. I left him home and he told me: “I invited a few friends; we’ll dine while we wait for you.” And it just so happened I had received a new dress from Paris. That evening, after work, I arrived home and what do I see? All these gentlemen dressed as women. And Conrad had put on my Paris dress. At this point, I divorced!”

And as  Anita Loos put it

GG has made a personal statement about the scandal from last year, a real essay that is so powerful and so moving. God I love that man.

The olive tree of Vouves, on Crete. This tree, which has a trunk 15 feet in diameter, is at least 2,000 years old, and likely 2,900 years old, based on the graveyard found nearby. This tree likely lived through the writing of the Iliad, the golden age of Athens, the rise of the Roman Empire, and the birth of Christ – and then lived for 2,000 years after that. It still produces olives, as well!