#AI and imagination limits

[zomb13s]

The Dire Situation of Artificial Intelligence and the Absence of a 'Fantasy' Database: A Socio-Economic and Political Analysis

Introduction Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a subject of widespread fascination, promising advancements in nearly every sector, from healthcare to logistics and entertainment. However, there exists a profound void in AI’s conceptual framework—a lack of a true ‘fantasy’ database. AI, as it stands, has no innate capacity to generate fantasy or imaginative outputs without drawing heavily…

[bogkeep]

also re: job application. that is the longest and most thorough job application i have ever written, making sure to highlight just how relevant my experiences and skills are, first drafted in a fugue state after the ten hour drive from sweden, and since then my friends have been giving me feedback like real pro editors (my phd student friend did some editor mode magics in word i had never seen before??? her powers are terrifying) and essentially helped me craft it to be the the best possible version of the application it can be. for my hotel job in the past my application was just a couple sentences written directly in the email, so i am being Super Serious and Professional this time!!!

and then the job listing site is like. do you wanna use our AI to write your application? :)

DON'T INSULT ME. DISINTEGRATE

[yuseirra]

a family bigger than 4! part 32

more eps of when the twins were babies (+ I read actors do animal impressions sometimes! there's a comic I drew way back on that)

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / side story 1 / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 / part 9 / side story 2-1 / 2-2 / 2-3 / 2-4 / part 10 / part 11 / part 12 / part 13 / part 14 / part 15 / part 16 / part 17 / part 18 / part 19 / part 20 / part 21 / part 22 / part 23 / part 24 / part 25 / part 26 / part 27 / part 28 / part 29 / part 30 / part 31

[ananke-xiii]

lately i'm flirting with the idea of seeing s15 Chuck acting towards Sam and Dean just like Sam and Dean usually act towards "normal" people. I mean, these two come to town one day, knock on someone's door and then, in one way or another, proceed to completely destroy someone's perception of reality. Yeah, sorry to inform you but monsters are, like, real-real. Fiction bursts into reality in the worst possible way and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Unless you're Doug. In that case you could just dump your girlfriend/coworker and pretend that nothing ever happened.

Chuck does something very similar but way worse to Sam and Dean because what Chuck really does is taking away from them their claim to fiction. Like, it's just so much more interesting if I look at Chuck as someone who's not appropriating Sam and Dean's perception of reality, rather their right to fiction.

[dark-twist-fairytales]

I love trying to find a sort of outfit creator/fitting thingy for just a basic and it's just-

Ai

Ai

Ai

Ai

Oh this looks like a decent- Requires a sign in

Ai

Alright, this should be- That is not the website I clicked on

Ai

Ai

Ai

Maybe this will-? Nope, that leads to ai

[astralmarionette]

todays thoughts: atsugawa sickfic abt their relationship with food insecurity and how akutagawa couldnt eat just anything due to his illness (lungs but i also believe he'd have an extremely sensitive stomach + foods he absolutely could not eat because they were so horrible to him) and so he wiuld often just not eat whereas atsushi grew up eating anything as long as it didnt look too bad (if he could take off the visible mold it was fine to him) and them slowly unlearning these habits that are detrimental to their health (aku's unintentional self starvation and atsu subconsciously international self sabotage)

[dullahandyke]

sidenote speaking of polls that infuriated me, that poll like 'does a story require themes to be good' was sent from hell to kill me

[feralportalmaster]

The AI singing voices made it to MC creators and I am LOSING IT.

I just listened to Grian sing Candy Store from Heathers and Scar sing Burn from Hamilton and it literally brought me to tears. It’s so simultaneously blessed and cursed.

Only a matter of time before we get the whole Life Series gang singing the entire Crane Wives discography.

[insert-clever-username-1133]

i dont know how to put tags in the main post so I'm just putting your tags in my tags

because maybe this is Tumblr reading comprehension but I'm gonna be so for real it took me until reading the tags to actually realize your argument was against the idea that you can put a halt to genai by just. speaking out with no real action. which is a stance I absolutely agree with. but i got to the end of this post and thought you were arguing against anti - ai sentiment in general 😭 i think your tags really add to the discussion

You can't argue against a technology. No one has ever, ever, in the history of humanity, argued a technology out of existence. The closest we've come are nukes and human genetic engineering. Nukes exist and multiple countries have massive arsenals of them, but we've agreed not to use them because it would mean humanity's utter destruction. Human genetic engineering cuts right to the heart of a bunch of ethical questions about health, equality, identity, and so on, and also up until very recently genetic engineering has been a long and extremely expensive process. We'll see how long human genetic engineering remains taboo now that it's getting cheaper and easier. But these are absolute outliers. In the vast, vast majority of cases, I mean literally in virtually every single case, when people fight a new technology—for any reason—they loose.

There is no tenable "anti-AI art" position, just like there was never a tenable anti-loom position, or anti-railroad position, or anti-horseless carriage position. These things were doomed to fail absolutely from day one, as soon as the technology existed, and anti-AI art is doomed to fail just as utterly and completely. There is just no path here, if this is what you've hitched your wagon to I really do not know what to tell you.

[arolesbianism]

You know I rly rly wish Jackie had more personal logs because god damn do we barely get to see her perspective on like anything. Like... What gets me most abt Jackie is that she clearly on some level still cares abt Olivia. Olivia was a very important person to her. I don't think Jackie is some victim or anything, but I have to imagine it hurt to watch someone that close to you drift away and grow to hate you. I just find it interesting to imagine Jackie as almost petty in her coldness to Olivia. Like, the two have been working closely for years, Jackie Knows that Olivia isn't the purely moral scientist she seems to think she is, and while I do still think Jackie is worse, I also do think she had a point when she did point out Olivia's hypocrisy. So it just makes me think... Did Jackie maybe become more stubborn against Olivia's feedback because of this? I think it'd be interesting if from her point of view, Olivia has been actively manipulative in her hypocrisy. I think it'd be so fun if Olivia wasn't just an annoyance, but the villain of Jackie's story from her point of view? I just like the idea of them both being the villains of each other's stories, it adds more to the doomed toxic yuri I think

[kopilot-pop]

Hi, I’m making a post because something very serious happened in Korea and I’m hoping as many people are alarmed at this.

Deepfake photos have been made and sold on telegram (an anonymous chatting app), and almost 220,000 users were identified for being in Korea. About 70% of those were teenagers, and a list of schools (including colleges) that had victims within the chatrooms in the past couple of years was posted.

My school was on the list and it has been identified that two of my close friends were direct victims.

So that’s why I’m making this post. It’s a little bit of a rant and it’s mostly my anger getting the best of me.

Waking up, finding girls BEGGING their friends to take down photos from their instagram profile, the terror we felt when we found out men were hacking into privated accounts to take revenge, watching my friend breakdown as she tells me that she’s being investigated because her face was deepfaked into pornographic content - can you imagine that? Because that was me two days ago.

Korea, as a whole, is extremely lenient on their criminals - especially sexual offenders and minors - and it’s TOO LENIENT on men.

This situation is not being reported as much as it needs to be, and I’m trying to grasp onto straws by alerting people that know my stupid account on how fucked up this country is.

Men are making friends-only stories saying shit like ‘Why are y’all concerned? Y’all are ugly af’ (this is a real post i had the pleasure of seeing), and people in general have this fucked up view on AI generated content saying shit like “Isn’t this better than actually getting assaulted?”, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

I have to go to school. I have to walk around campus with the fear that maybe, just maybe, the man I walked past just now has seen a deepfaked photo of my friends. The perpetrator’s aren’t limited to simply the number of accounts within the group chat - what if they passed their phones? What if they texted the photos to each other after making them on the telegram? Our school has a big dormitory - what happens within those walls FILLED with men?? The more I have to think about it, the more sick it makes me.

I am not being the most informative and rambling more than anything. But my excuse is that there aren’t many reports and credible sources talking about this. So I’m going off on my personal experience as much as possible.

Please, people - especially women - be fucking warned about this situation. My country is one of the biggest perpetrators, but that doesn’t mean this deepfake issue isn’t (already) worldwide. It’s gonna get bigger, it’s gonna get more dangerous, and it should be making you sick to your stomach.

I hope all victims, including including my friends, get the justice they deserve.

Please, stay safe.

[bubalgum]

⠀⠀𓈒⠀⠀𓏸 ⠀WAiTiNG ROOM : FRUTiGER-AERO⠀𓇼

This isn’t just a place to wait—it’s a place to be. Somewhere that exists outside of time and space, built entirely to serve your desires. The air hums with the soft buzz of infinite possibility as your thoughts shape the world around you. Here, relaxation is an art form, indulgence is encouraged, and everything is at your fingertips. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀bars that cater to your whims ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི The air hums softly with the clinking of delicate glasses and the murmur of your favourite melodies in the background. The bartender—perhaps a charming stranger, a famous actor, or a friendly AI in human form—knows your every preference without a word. Drinks appear like magic, tailored to your every mood: sparkling fruit spritzers that dance on your tongue, creamy milkshakes topped with edible gold dust, or dark, rich coffees brewed just so. Every sip feels like a new discovery, a little celebration of you. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀kitchens overflowing with endless delights ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི The kitchen is no ordinary room; it’s a sprawling paradise where the scent of fresh bread, simmering spices, and buttery pastries dances through the air. Counters gleam in polished marble, cupboards stretch endlessly, and every drawer holds a surprise. Say the word and a feast appears—perfectly plated sushi with intricate designs, steaming bowls of soul-warming ramen, and a cake so decadent it could make angels weep. There’s no limit. Want a perfectly nostalgic home-cooked meal like your mom’s? Or a creation plucked from your wildest culinary dreams? Done. The fridge hums happily, never empty, and the oven is always warm. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀bedrooms crafted for rest and dreaming ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི

Here lies the softest haven in existence, where sleep becomes an art form and dreams feel like journeys. The beds are immense, swathed in silk sheets and duvets that feel like a cloud’s embrace. Pillows mould perfectly to your head, each one cooler than the last, and the air smells faintly of lavender and rain. There’s always the perfect playlist for relaxation—soft whispers of the wind, delicate piano, or the gentle patter of rain against the window. And when you close your eyes? You drift effortlessly into dreams of golden fields, starlit skies, or anywhere your heart longs to wander. Even just lounging here feels like a rebirth. Time doesn’t matter—here, you’re held. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀rituals of serenity and liquid escapes ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི Step into a realm of ultimate relaxation, where the bathroom and swimming areas blend into a sanctuary of indulgence. The bathroom is a spa-like retreat, with chrome surfaces glowing under soft, golden light and the scent of lavender and eucalyptus in the air. Rainfall showers offer endless settings, while deep clawfoot tubs invite you to soak away every worry. Beyond, the swimming areas unfold like a dream—an infinity pool shimmers beneath a glowing dome of stars, while a hidden heated lagoon nestles among lush greenery. For playful moments, a vibrant pool awaits with slides, waterfalls, and floating loungers fitted with snack trays. Whether it’s the silk-like flow of water in the bath or the crystal-clear embrace of the pool, every corner invites you to escape and rejuvenate. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀cinemas where anything comes to life ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི

A cinema beyond your wildest imagination sprawls before you: plush seats that recline into near-nests of comfort, buttery popcorn and candy appearing at the snap of your fingers. But what’s on the screen? Anything. You want to watch a book you love turned into a perfectly directed masterpiece? Done. A fanfiction visualized with your dream cast, every scene sculpted exactly to your taste? It’s playing now. Want to relive moments from a DR or watch your favourite actor perform just for you? All here. The screen is endless, the quality so crisp, that it feels like you could step inside. And you can—should you choose, the scenes could stretch around you, pulling you into worlds of your own creation.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀a phone that bridges worlds ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི Resting delicately on a nightstand or tucked into your hand like a lifeline is the ultimate phone—a device that bends to your will. Its surface gleams softly, showing apps that let you scroll through TikTok or Instagram with ease. Every post feels perfectly curated, and time itself stretches so you never feel rushed. Handle accounts across your DRs, text your CR/DR friends as if they’re right there beside you, and exist on the edge of reality. Call someone who lives in the place you’re headed, or scroll just for the joy of it. This phone doesn’t glitch, doesn’t die—just waits, pulsing softly with endless possibilities.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀mirrors that let you become anything ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི

Standing like a gateway to wonder, the mirror isn’t ordinary glass—it’s liquid, shifting, alive. Step before it, and the reflection stirs, waiting for you to decide. Want to see yourself with softer features? A bolder wardrobe? Hair like cascading waves of moonlight or skin adorned with radiant tattoos? It adjusts instantly, letting you try on identities and aesthetics without limit. Spin in gowns made of galaxies, suits cut to perfection, or casual looks that feel so you. Every tweak and change feels satisfying, a playful exploration of who you are and could be. The mirror never judges; it just shows you the endless, beautiful possibilities of you. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀໒⠀ ⠀the atmosphere itself ⠀⠀─── ა ྀིྀི Beyond the individual features, the very feeling of this waiting room is enough to make you melt. The air is a perfect temperature—just warm enough to hug your skin, with a breeze carrying the scents you love most. The lighting shifts seamlessly: soft and golden when you need peace, cool and vibrant when you want energy. Windows reveal scenes of beauty that change with your desires—sunlit forests, endless oceans, glittering cityscapes, or galaxies swirling with stars. Time bends and stretches here, never demanding anything from you. Also, the entire waiting room? Edible. Feel free to take a chunk from the floating sofa pod. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

GOD OMG THIS TOOK ME LIKE 3 HOURS. IM SO PROUD :3333

[remixingreality]

Happy Sunday to you all! I want to thank all of you who follow Remixing Reality and appreciate the sweaty, happy, happy, gay, gay images I create and share here on Tumblr.

I know I'm terrible at answering DMs - as a rather shy person I usually prefer let my art speak for me - but I really do appreciate all the positive comments and feedback and likes and (especially) reblogs, it means more to me than you'll ever know.

Sometimes the comments aren't so positive, as you might imagine. Surprisingly it's not homophobes who hate my gay art, but the rather strange and strident anti-AI folks who send me the most hate. Even death threats, for daring to use a technology that they don't approve of! Man, the internet is wild place. But being a bit of a contrarian, such comments just make me want to use ALL THE AI, ALL THE TIME.

Anyway, this recent comment was much more reasonable, and I thought deserved a response with what, became essentially, my artist's statement; the whole reason I've been prompting and prodding AI tools to make sweaty, sexy gay images for years:

---

"Please don’t use AI. AI is terrible for the art community and art in general"

---

Thanks for the feedback, but as a gay man I have a different outlook on AI: it's been an incredible opportunity to heal my soul by using AI tools to create & share images of happy, fun, joyful images of gay male sexuality & love.

I grew up as a young gay person in a time & country where images of happy gay people were absolutely forbidden. Gays in media could only be portrayed as living miserable lives; murderers or victims of murder, drug addicts, pedophiles, thieves, & reprobates, the scum of humanity. Even actual gay media was censored so that anytime I saw real gay men having real gay sex in a porno mag or film they were always stony-faced & miserable looking. Any images of happy gays were censored with big black bars or deleted entirely.

That shaped me as a person and contributed to my belief that as a gay man my life was going to be absolute shit, that my sexuality meant that I was unworthy of love & would never experience joy. It was madness to even expect to find happiness as a gay person! Decades later I'm still fighting against that negative self-image that was forced on me, every single day.

It's been a constant struggle, made harder by family who raged at me that I would never find happiness or success or love as a gay person, the horror of watching friends & lovers waste away & die awful lonely deaths during the AIDS crisis, & more recently, having to recover from a beating & stab wounds from a group of angry young men who tried to murder me just for the crime of being a gay man walking home from a movie in my own neighbourhood.

AI has frankly, been a godsend in my recovery & helped to change my limiting negative self-image. By being able to - daily - create, view & share images of joyful, fun gay sex & sexuality I've been able to re-write the negative internal story of my own life & imagine a more positive future for myself.

But besides my own issues, with the resistance to gay rights occurring across the globe I fear we are about to return to the days where gay people are universally suppressed & hated. I want to combat that, & AI has provided me the tools to share images of happy gay sexuality with the world & an audience for whom portrayals of gay joy are still fleetingly precious & rare.

---

For all who have asked, I mainly use Bing Image Creator to make these images. For those who have asked why I don't make actual hard-dick smutt, 1) Tumblr still doesn't officially allow full nudity and sex to be shared on their platform and I don't want to be banned from my favourite online community, 2) As a childhood SA survivor I still have some hangups about sex I'm working through, and 3) I actually enjoy the challenge of tricking the heavily-censored Bing AI into creating sexy, smutty images of happy handsome gay men, for reasons I just realized today while writing this post.

I have been exploring other, less censored AI tools lately though, and have been using Flux to create a collection of more explicit images exploring my favourite themes like superheroes, gladiators, gogo boys, sci-fi heroes and mad scientists, beautiful men, furry satyrs, horny gods, gay love and cruising in other times and centuries, and my all-time favourite gay romance comfort movie, "Red, White & Royal Blue". I'll start sharing those on my Deviant art page soon, and I'll let you all know when I do.

Much Love, Ray ❤️

[therobotmonster]

On that recent Disney Vs Midjourney court thing wrt AI, how strong do you think their case is in a purely legal sense, what do you think MJ's best defenses are, how likely is Disney to win, and how bad would the outcome be if they do win?

Oh sure, ask an easy one.

In a purely legal sense, this case is very questionable.

Scraping as fair use has already been established when it comes to text in legal cases, and infringement is based on publication, not inspiration. There's also the question of if Midjourney would be responsible for their users' creations under safe harbor provisions, or even basic understanding of what an art tool is. Adobe isn't responsible for the many, many illegal images its software is used to make, after all.

The best defense, I would say, is the fair use nature of dataset training and the very nature of transformative work, which is protected, requires the work-to-be-transformed is involved. Disney's basic approach of 'your AI knows who our characters are, so that proves you stole from us' would render fair use impossible.

I don't think its likely for Disney to win, but the problem with civil action is proof isn't needed, just convincing. Bad civil cases happen all the time, and produce case law. Which is what Disney is trying to do here.

If Disney wins, they'll have pulled off a coup of regulatory capture, basically ensuring that large media corporations can replace their staff with robots but that small creators will be limited to underpowered models to compete with them.

Worse, everything that is a 'smoking gun' when it comes to copyright infringement on Midjourney? That's fan art. All that "look how many copyrighted characters they're using-" applies to the frontpage of Deviantart or any given person's Tumblr feed more than to the featured page of Midjourney.

Every single website with user-generated content it chock full of copyright infringement because of fan art and fanfic, and fair use arguments are far harder to pull out for fan-works. The law won't distinguish between a human with a digital art package and a human with an AI art package, and any win Disney makes against MJ is a win against Artstation, Deviantart, Rule34.xxx, AO3, and basically everyone else.

"We get a slice of your cheese if enough of your users post our mouse" is not a rule you want in law.

And the rules won't be enforced by a court 9/10 times. Even if your individual work is plainly fair use, it's not going to matter to whatever image-based version of youtube's copyreich bots gets applied to Artstation and RedBubble to keep the site owners safe.

Even if you're right, you won't have the money to fight.

Heck, Adobe already spies on what you make to report you to the feds if you're doing a naughty, imagine it's internal watchdogs throwing up warnings when it detects you drawing Princess Jasmine and Ariel making out. That may sound nuts, but it's entirely viable.

And that's just one level of possible nightmare. If the judgement is broad enough, it could provide a legal pretext for pursuing copyright lawsuits over style and inspiration. Given how consolidated IP is, this means you're going to have several large cabals that can crush any new work that seems threatening, as there's bound to be something they can draw a connection to.

If you want to see how utterly stupid inspiration=theft is, check out when Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron over Terminator because Cameron was dumb enough to say he was inspired by Demon with a Glass Hand and Soldier from the Outer Limits.

Harlan was wrong on the merits, wrong ethically, and the case shouldn't have been entertained in the first place, but like I said, civil law isn't about facts. Cameron was honest about how two episodes of a show he saw as a kid gave him this completely different idea (the similarities are 'robot that looks like a guy with hand reveal' and 'time traveling soldier goes into a gun store and tries to buy future guns'), and he got unjustly sued for it.

If you ever wonder why writers only talk about their inspirations that are dead, that's why. Anything that strengthens the "what goes in" rather than the "what goes out" approach to IP is good for corps, bad for culture.

[max1461]

Some mathematicians claim they can visualize R^4, or even higher-dimensional spaces. I think this is probably possible for the human mind to do, in principle; the human mind often proves surprisingly flexible. But I think it probably takes a lot of concerted practice, and because you are stretching your mind beyond its intended limits in a purely-internal, imaginative way with no external reference points to check against, I think it probably has some things in common with certain types of meditative practice.

It's also common to hear mathematicians say that if humans had visual intuition for dimensions higher than 3, higher-dimensional geometry may have advanced much farther, since visual intuition is so often crucial in thinking of proofs.

So, ok, I suspect that AI will obviate the utility of this before it could ever have the chance to get off the ground, but this all makes me imagine a world where techniques for learning to visualize higher dimensions are well-known and practiced, and have become a functional necessity for being a working geometer in higher-than-3-dimensions. And these techniques require a lot of persistent practice and training, which (by the nature of the thing) is hard to precisely communicate to students. So part of becoming a geometer involves training in what is basically a meditative practice, where, à la Zen, much of the process involves not directly teaching the student but giving them prompts and mental exercises that are meant to trigger internal, incommunicable revelation. But instead of enlightenment it's geometric intuition. And so if we're getting a math PhD in, say, differential equations or something, it's mostly like it is today. But if your PhD is in low-dimensional topology there's like a whole monastic apprenticeship style thing that just comes along with it. People sometimes drive themselves insane. People sometimes drive themselves insane.

[orteil42]

some undifferentiated thoughts about my Starfield playthrough as i have them. i am a game developer with a strong interest in procedural generation and i've enjoyed a bunch of other bethesda games so this might get pretty mean sorry

(this is a long one)

starfield dialogue is already exhausting me "oh you must've been living under a moon rock ;)" get it! because they're in space! this would've been too corny for the Jetsons

there's a kind of cheap dusting of space theme over everything. the food isn't salmon but alien salmon. it's not seaweed but alien seaweed. cooking alien stir-fry. come on

cannot get over how clumsily the theming is handled. books, board games, weapon names revolve heavily around space. these people have been living on alien planets for hundreds of years yet have this unending sense of novelty about it. the game takes itself completely seriously but feels like it's attempting to parody itself

people's EYEBALLS are CLIPPING THROUGH THEIR EYELIDS

a woman is speaking to me in french. her accent is about as believable as her haircut

these are some of the worst reflection maps i've ever seen

next to nothing is interactive. you can sit in chairs and sleep in beds and that is about it. can't even drink from people's toilets. disgraceful

game helpfully crashes 5 seconds after i decide i should get some sleep. very handy!

my character has not said a single thing since i started playing. not one peep. this is an unmitigated improvement over Fallout 4 i'm so glad honestly

the more i poke around the big city the more the NPC quips feel like something out of gen-1 pokemon. can't get enough of this coffee :) this city is where it's at :) spacesuits are comfy and easy to wear

very strange sense of altered reality from the quest dialogue too. has anyone at bethesda met a person before? i move on to some mission that has me scanning wildlife on a faraway planet hoping this will, somehow, feel less alien than human conversation

just as with No Man's Sky, every planet is uniformly dotted with equidistantly-placed points of interest that you slowly make your way to (no vehicles besides your jetpack) which always turn out to be some cave or building identical to those you've cleared before

unlike with No Man's Sky, the seamless exploration is faked and the biodiversity is nil. you do get an impressive amount of raw loading screens however

the prefab bases and power stations found everywhere on planets seem to have very sparse, very specific slots for spawning consumables, which results in encountering some giant industrial installation in the middle of nowhere with, i don't know, a loaf of whole-grain sandwich bread just casually sitting next to it all proper. there is no breathable atmosphere here. who is eating this

planetary traversal is a CHORE. i am saying this as someone who loved Death Stranding

heinous "hold to confirm" buttons sprinkled in various flow-breaking places throughout the interface

enemy AI is abominable. nobody is pathing their way to get my ass. "must've been the wind" taken to the next level. an infant playing peekaboo has more object permanence

hoisting yourself up on ledges when jumping is…nice

companions randomly nowhere to be found. persists through multiple fast-travels and loading screens until, just as randomly, they pop back up

storage space is now limited! unlike in Fallout 4 and virtually every other bethesda game, your containers now hold a finite item capacity. god forbid we let the player have fun

baffling inventory UI. i imagine there's a mod out there that completely overhauls it the way SkyUI did for Skyrim. this should not be needed! how are your UIs getting worse a decade later!

scanning the precious few species inhabiting some dusty planet; one of them is this arching red root i've already seen several times before. my job done in this biome, i travel (read: teleport with a loading screen) to the polar region to find some other species. the first one i catalogue is the exact same red root again but this time it's named "boreas root" todd howard is a genius

some alien horror comes at me full fangs out. i hop on a pebble. obscenely, i am safe

procedural terrain generation beyond dull, impossibly unimaginative. these people have not had one critical thought on what makes a procedural world interesting. beginning to feel validated in my belief that only i should be trusted with proc gen. along with perhaps tarn adams

jokes aside this is making me feel genuinely insane. there have been excellent procedural generation techniques that produce compelling explorable maps for decades now. bethesda absolutely has the budget and know-how to do miles better than this yet somehow they just…do not? the same way Pokemon has decided to just no longer bother with their mainline games despite being the highest-grossing media franchise in history? hello? what is for real going on

some of the most cynical breadcrumbing i've seen in years. approaching some random cave and this person in space gear, who in the vast immensity of the infinite cosmos just happens to be snapping pictures right here, tells me more-or-less verbatim "if you like this place, you should see this other place" [other random cave has been added to your map.]

i do not like how good this makes No Man's Sky's gameplay look. it depresses me how much i have to hand it to No Man's Sky for at least not fucking up this bad. please stop making me wish i was playing No Man's Sky instead this is grotesque

i think i've exhausted my interest and patience for this game at the moment. i'll get back to the main story at some point and try some other systems ie. crafting and base-building to see if there's any engagement to be found but so far, my god. my god