Spoilers For The Ending Of The Mersault Arc In Bungou Stray Dogs Season 5.

can we form a coup against asagiri and make you the writer instead? genuinely... I am not taking the Fyodor immortal information well.. please help............................ ( ´，_ゝ` )

Oh, I would absolutely not do BSD well either. I just wish Asagiri had stuck to his roots more. He was a great comedy writer, and the beginning of the story was great for it. It's the action and Death Note stuff he can't seem to get mastery of. But for the immortal part: I'm not entirely sold that Fyodor's immortal, yet. It seems like yet another twists that will twist to reveal oh, shocker, he faked his memories to confuse Sigma/the ADA... or something. Could very well be immortal, but not 100% guaranteed.

i don't even think that the example is a death threat, but go off, i guess.

(also TIL extra details for context, so thanks for that)

its dope how the CEO of this website can casually drop the fact that he had at least one content moderator on payroll who was accepting bribes to take down blogs on request, without revealing who was affected by this or what actions were taken to reverse the damage, and were all just supposed to be like oh ok thanks for taking care of that :D

#everything is a fucking lie from both sides at this point

No it isn't. The product defends itself.

So is everyone gonna just ignore the fact that the leaked Document that PM sent over to the Union states that Vellmori was the one to resign herself and was the one who didn't want the info being spread around?

Like, I'm not saying PM handled this shit well, because they absolutely didn't, but the whole thing of her being fired is apparently just a straight up fucking lie.

And, if the Document PM sent to the Union is to be trusted (which, if they lied about that, I imagine that would be even more legal trouble than is worth for them with all this shit going on), that means that everyone being mad at PM for not saying anything more is being mad at them for Following Vellmori's Wishes.

Again, I'm not saying that PM handled Any of this well. They absolutely should have made sure that Vellmori didn't feel so threatened that she felt the need to resign. They absolutely fucked up in that department.

But the main thing people focused on, Vellmori's firing, allegedly just wasn't even real.

What the fuck is even going on anymore.

//Btw, here's the source for the translation of the Certificate of Contents that PM sent to the Union and which was later leaked.

The stereotype of the ugly, unfuckable feminist exists for a reason – because it’s still the last, best line of defence against any woman who is a little too loud, a little too political. Just tell her that if she goes on as she is, nobody will love her. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always believed that part of the point of feminist politics – part of the point of any sort of radical politics – is that some principles are more important than being universally adored, particularly by the sort of men who would prefer women to smile quietly and grow our hair out

If you’re a feminist you’ll be called a man-hater. You don’t need rebranding (via nothingman)

@analytical-machine:

i have this feeling it's about feeding mayoi on schedule. and also dumbing down the plot so ppl won't think about it deeply

@postcardorigami:

i dunno yknow like i want to believe it isn’t malicious but also with how they’ve done everything so far i just can’t help but feel like it is just a little bit coming out of some sort of dislike if not for the series then certainly for the people that are making it—like shrek being a punishment for the prince of egypt folks or something

to the second point i mean like it already has an audience from the manga and from previous anime seasons, so they’re not really taking that big of a risk with making it—what’s riskier is putting it out in a way that is so blatantly different from the source material and with the actual quality of what they ARE doing being so reduced even from previous seasons, and the only justification i can think of for that is if they don’t care or even actively dislike the series

The thing is glorious manga master race would watch the anime, no matter what. We see this in action right now. Therefore, the goal is to lure in the unaware - for which quality isn't actually needed as long as costs are recouped, but also - if someone watches the anime they have no reason to read the manga, b/c there is legit so much to consume. So if they imbibe a 'good enough' anime, it will not rewire their brains (consider: for BSD, classlit counts as extra materials. Can't profit off that - ex. NLH entered public domain relatively recently).

Moreover, i've been watching Monster on and off on the side and the anime is slow, visuals obviously old but aged well, just… has slow, low-to-no animation moments that give it a feel of being adapted literally panel-by-panel. Meanwhile, i jumped ship to manga after s1 and the biggest reason was… I was consistently distracted by the 'aha, this animation repeats to pad out the episode', 'this animation brings absolutely nothing to the plot, why is it there?'. Comparing it to respective manga parts makes it even worse, because in retrospect manga at the same time rushes and pads out. Like, you could just have some manga panels that are fundamentally stills with some voiceover and it would work. When you track what gets cut & what gets added - they remove the quiet moments (the sort that let the viewer ponder on the events before you're given next plot beat), and add meaningless animation loops that are the equivalent of jangling keys. If the logic behind them is to add levity to a serious plot - why?

Humor in a serious plot also has it's own pacing (read: to tactically control tension, not just to add whenever convenient), and it's existence in the 'core' plot completely changes the tone, especially when combined with wan! which, acts as a palate-cleanser - but one outside of the flow of the main chain of events, thus not changing the read of them.

so, they didn't have to do ＡＮＹ of this. But they did. Who benefits? hence, option 1: churn for BSD mayoi. All yu-gi-oh animes move(d?) in tandem with card releases with episode quality swinging hard, so we absolutely have a precedent. option 2: noticable dislike for the source === malicious actions. We have a precedent - Firefly TV show. consider who exactly has the decisionmaking power here, what demographic: the kind that would not see spicy takes on mental health (did the anime get to the point where who should be framed as a deuteragonist just straight-up hallucinates? and the 'camera's eye' doesn't give a shit?). And what about unsubtle anti-war messaging? Yosano on the main cast, Fukuchi being a Metal Gear Solid refugee? But at the same time, aren't Hunting Dogs baaaasically military? quick check on wiki says is a rabbit hole, but the intended point stands: you just can't win with these characters. Plus moral ambiguity and noticable grayness implictly make it a harder sell for 'all audiences' (read: squeaky clean)

So, you force everything to be scheduled too fast, too quickly, too soon - using the excuse of (1) to cover for (2). (#1, and the terribad norms of the industry)

aaaand that's how you get away with murder *jazz hands*

the thing about this current season and the egregious errors, issues, etc. within it is that realistically none of this had to happen—i think it’s pretty obvious that not only on top of studio bones’ already apparent and seemingly deep-rooted disdain for the source material and specific crucial characters with immense impact on not only the plot but also on the development of the actual protagonist, the season is also incredibly rushed, and it didn’t need to be

season four came out only a few months ago. it would have been reasonable—and honestly it would have been expected—that bones wait at least another year to work on season 5 and develop the chapters covered here a little more, so that not only could they present a cleaner, better-paced, and more emotionally impactful product, but that they also would give the manga more time to finish this current arc so that if they did choose not to adapt anything afterwards, they could at least close out this part of the story on a halfway acceptable note

it’s not just disrespectful to the fans and asagiri/harukawa (my god, what they’ve done to harukawa’s beautiful art style should be considered a crime), but it’s frankly a poor reflection upon themselves, too, that they’ve pushed this season so quickly after the most recent one, seemingly without care for what it’s reception may be by the people who want to see the story done justice

sauce since that sounded too spicy:

looks like a missing comma, tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ moreover, why reveal who was affected (who and how gains from this 'fame')? what actions would be good enough to reverse the damage? Whoever is banned left. Quietly unremoving posts would mess with people's blogs, and PMs informing of it would not be viral - depending on for how long (very) and relentless (also very) this went on this may mean flipping through - by hand - thousands of posts while the current backlog grows.

what IS notable, however, hides lower: >Most importantly, and why she is banned from Tumblr for life, is she made threats of violence against Tumblr staff. translation: as long as you don't prod the mods you're good to go!

its dope how the CEO of this website can casually drop the fact that he had at least one content moderator on payroll who was accepting bribes to take down blogs on request, without revealing who was affected by this or what actions were taken to reverse the damage, and were all just supposed to be like oh ok thanks for taking care of that :D

no hiding The Good Stuff in the tags ;<

*clutching head* rodya and meursault would have such a good dynamic actually

I wonder if rodya would initially see meursault's indifference as like. a simpler version of her own feigned carefreeness and as a deliberate attempt to place himself as an outsider... only to realise that No, he really Is just Like That. and then she gets annoyed because it turns out that people who don't care about anything don't seem to be any fun.

(ofc he does actually care about a lot of things, just not necessarily his grander place in the world lol)

idk. nihilism vs absurdism. fun duo 👍 rodya would find meursault's genuine comfort with being a speck of dust in the universe baffling, while he would probably find her desire to assert her own importance pointless, but they could probably bond over little things like their shared desire to live in the present and appreciation of/indulgence in earthly joys. and meursault would probably listen if rodya wants to rant about anything without asking any uncomfortable questions. I think they could appreciate each other's presence.

An interesting thing to note in regards to the Akutagawa-Tanizaki debate: their viewpoints were likely somewhat influenced by the styles of traditional vs. Western literature. Akutagawa Ryuunosuke tended to be more faithful to the emotional and abstract style of Japanese literature— whereas at the time of this debate, Tanizaki Jun'ichirou was deep in his fascination with the West, which is associated with stories that have more focus on a structured plot by comparison.

The interesting thing about this is that, later in life, Tanizaki-sensei would undergo a "Return from the West", in which his fascination with the West dwindled, and he became more invested in traditional Japanese aesthetics. In a roundabout way, the real life counterparts of Tanizaki and Akutagawa went from being at odds, to ultimately coming to an agreement— though Akutagawa-sensei passed away before he could witness Tanizaki-sensei's change of heart.

In regards to BSD, this could be paralleled with Tanizaki (the bsd character) leaving the Agency, whose members are authors who leaned more towards a Westernized style of writing, and transferring to the Port Mafia, which is composed of authors who were more loyal to the more traditional, abstract/emotional style of literature. But who knows, maybe Asagiri will surprise us.

the darling Glaze “anti-ai” watermarking system is a grift that stole code/violated GPL license (that the creator admits to). It uses the same exact technology as Stable Diffusion. It’s not going to protect you from LORAs (smaller models that imitate a certain style, character, or concept)

An invisible watermark is never going to work. “De-glazing” training images is as easy as running it through a denoising upscaler. If someone really wanted to make a LORA of your art, Glaze and Nightshade are not going to stop them.

If you really want to protect your art from being used as positive training data, use a proper, obnoxious watermark, with your username/website, with “do not use” plastered everywhere. Then, at the very least, it’ll be used as a negative training image instead (telling the model “don’t imitate this”).

There is never a guarantee your art hasn’t been scraped and used to train a model. Training sets aren’t commonly public. Once you share your art online, you don’t know every person who has seen it, saved it, or drawn inspiration from it. Similarly, you can’t name every influence and inspiration that has affected your art.

I suggest that anti-AI art people get used to the fact that sharing art means letting go of the fear of being copied. Nothing is truly original. Artists have always copied each other, and now programmers copy artists.

Capitalists, meanwhile, are excited that they can pay less for “less labor”. Automation and technology is an excuse to undermine and cheapen human labor—if you work in the entertainment industry, it’s adapt AI, quicken your workflow, or lose your job because you’re less productive. This is not a new phenomenon.

You should be mad at management. You should unionize and demand that your labor is compensated fairly.

the funny part is: Boney M's song is quite relevant. To quote:

However, many historians point to the unusual cult that Rasputin practiced at the Emperors’ court — a strange mixture of Christianity and sexual practices. Many of the noble women were believed to be in sexual relations with Rasputin, possibly including the Empress.

no russian history memes with fyodor? no memes of him meeting RASPUTIN? no memes with him participating in russian revolution? no memes of him being friends with ivan the terrible? i am disappointed with the fandom :/