#Seek AI

[aishuglb12]

IBM’s Strategic Acquisition of Seek AI and the Launch of Watsonx AI Labs in New York City

In a significant move to bolster its position in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, IBM has acquired Seek AI, a data analysis startup specializing in natural language processing for enterprise data queries. Concurrently, IBM announced the establishment of Watsonx AI Labs, an AI accelerator located in New York City. These initiatives underscore IBM’s commitment to advancing AI technologies and fostering innovation within the enterprise sector.

Understanding Seek AI and Its Innovations

Founded in 2021 by Sarah Nagy, Seek AI has developed a platform that enables users to interact with enterprise data using natural language. This technology allows individuals to pose questions in everyday language, which the system then translates into database queries, facilitating intuitive and efficient data analysis. Seek AI’s solutions have been particularly impactful in sectors such as e-commerce, financial services, and consumer packaged goods, where rapid data insights are crucial for decision-making.

Timeline and Strategic Planning Behind the Acquisition

IBM’s acquisition of Seek AI is part of a broader strategy to enhance its AI capabilities, particularly in natural language processing and data analytics. The planning for this acquisition began in early 2025, with IBM identifying Seek AI’s technology as complementary to its existing AI portfolio. The deal was finalized and publicly announced on June 2, 2025.

Key Figures and Their Roles

The acquisition brings Sarah Nagy, Seek AI’s founder and CEO, into IBM’s fold. Nagy’s expertise in data analytics and AI will be instrumental in integrating Seek AI’s technology into IBM’s offerings. Additionally, Ritika Gunnar, IBM’s General Manager of Data and AI, has been a pivotal figure in orchestrating the launch of Watsonx AI Labs and aligning it with IBM’s strategic objectives.

Significance of the Acquisition and the AI Accelerator

This acquisition is significant for several reasons:

Technological Enhancement: Integrating Seek AI’s natural language processing capabilities enhances IBM’s AI solutions, making them more user-friendly and accessible to enterprise clients.

Market Positioning: By acquiring a startup with innovative technology, IBM strengthens its position in the competitive AI market, particularly in the realm of enterprise data analytics.

Innovation Hub: The establishment of Watsonx AI Labs in New York City positions IBM at the heart of a vibrant tech ecosystem, fostering collaboration and innovation.

Rationale Behind IBM’s Strategic Moves

An AI Lab—short for Artificial Intelligence Laboratory—is a dedicated center for the research, development, and application of AI technologies. These labs are typically operated by universities, tech giants, startups, or public-private partnerships. The goal is to advance the state of artificial intelligence through cutting-edge experiments, model development, ethical testing, and product innovation.

Unlike a regular software development unit, AI labs are innovation-driven, where the focus lies on solving complex problems using machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and even robotics. They serve as hubs for technologists, researchers, students, and entrepreneurs to collaborate, ideate, and build the future of intelligent systems.

AI Labs operate at the intersection of technology, business, and academia. Here’s what typically happens within these innovation centers:

1. Pioneering AI Research

The primary mission of most AI Labs is to drive advanced research in areas like deep learning, generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and reinforcement learning. These labs often publish white papers, participate in global AI challenges, and contribute to the open-source AI ecosystem.

Read More : IBM’s Strategic Acquisition of Seek AI and the Launch of Watsonx AI Labs in New York City

[crystaldragon1997]

🤌✨RANT✨🤌 Personal rant

(Edit: Links to forums and updates added in reblogs and a page break for convenience)

iNaturalist (Parent company to the app Seek) just announced a collab/sell out to Google GenAI with no concerns about user data, data collection, and privacy. They issued a non apology explanation that was kinda just wishy washy and saying it's better this way. Information brought up when finding matches for your observations are going to be AI generated and so will some examples images... 

I use iNat regularly to assist my natural practices. It was like an on the go field guide to what is essentially what I consider a sacred part of my practice. And it's all getting sold to train GenAI...

I feel genuinely betrayed because we all know Google's GenAI(the lil blurb at the top of Google searches) isn't always accurate and sometimes egregiously and dangerously false. And now an app that for so long has been crowd funded, citizen science based and peer reviewed is going to instead rely on AI.... 

Waiting a little bit to delete my account hoping they take it all back but I guess I will be going to some nature centers, parks, and libraries now in hopes of collecting field guides ..

Not to mention the environmental impact Google and GenAI have on a global scale is completely opposite to what iNat has stood for and gained its following for over the years. It absolutely is breaking my heart.... Over 1.5 million dollars....

Maybe I will cool down and think this is all silly. Maybe they will walk it back. I know there are genuinely great conversations happening on the iNat forums .. but the trust feels broken.

https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/113184-inaturalist-receives-grant-to-improve-species-suggestions

[victoriadallonfan]

Love people who believe that WB is trying to depict the Belt as a “utopia”

Like, the first chapters of the respective MC’s has:

- Orion waking up to the post apocalypse of the setting and his friend being crushed to death in her sleep

- A being a gene modded baby who has her hopes and dreams crushed by her own parents

- Winnifred’s parents talking about how they suffer under bigotry and also being bigoted to others

Like, I don���t know champ, kind of feels like you just might not be able to read?

[casualavocados]

How's that possible? Since when did you start eating spicy food? I told you I'd do it for real next time. ...Don't touch me, or—I'll kill you!

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 12

[raps-hellion]

disclaimer: please do not harass, bully, or send hate to people who use gen ai. you are better than that.

this post applies to one work of suspected generated ai art only — it does not apply to all ai art, and is certainly not a guide you should hold all art to. these are just characteristics i've noticed in this particular example that seem like gen ai usage to me.

this is not an invitation to go harass anyone or fill their reblogs/replies with dogpiling that this is ai. this post is purely to promote awareness around how to spot these instances of ai use.

face

uneven pupils: pupils are major indicators of ai generated art, as ai struggles with consistency. these two have different positioning (left is higher than the right) and are irregularly shaped (left is bigger than the right, neither are circular nor oval in shape as one would expect an pupil to be).

tear ducts: these tear ducts here don't flow into the eyes' waterlines, they're instead positioned above the waterline and seem as if they've been stuck over the eye whites. this could be an intentional stylistic choice, but oddly shaped tear ducts are similarly an indicator of ai-generated art.

tears: the left eye's waterline is melting into the tear.

irises: irises are uneven (again, ai can't do consistency), and the right has a wonkiness to it.

head

ears: the shells of both ears don't follow the curve of a normal ear — which is more noticeable on the right. the antihelix doesn't align and instead follows the curve of the hair strand. the left ear's helix is merged together with another strand of hair and peels strangely away from the side of the head.

shading: this method of shading gives the face a strange geometry, especially concerning the tip nose, which makes it seem as if it's been sliced at an angle, and the streak of light across the chin.

hair

some of the hair strands don't follow the flow of motion — two on the left are curled in on themselves and look curly or puffy in texture rather than the flat, wavy texture of the rest of the hair. some strands lose their individual texture and shading and melt oddly into the rest.

body

necklace: the beads lose their circular shape and become squashed ovals. the necklace's string loses thickness completely between the two beads on the right, and loses its alignment in the second bead on the right.

shirt: the pegasus is missing a hoof on its left foreleg and has no ears. the pattern around the pegasus is inconsistent; the creator has argued that they'd struggled and had just given up, but the random inconsistencies (pattern changing direction, becoming rectangles, spirals melting into each other) aren't the sort an artist who attempted a pattern and gave up would make. the pattern also disappears in the gap between the dagger's guard and her hand; i have seen people claim ai can't do words, which is often true, but they forget this art is often edited and words can be added in post (also just half-blood is a strange choice).

armor: the two shoulder plates don't match, and the right one melts around the hand; the left one has a black rectangle underneath it which seemingly serves no purpose; the right also has some sort of black fabric underneath with an unclear purpose (shirt sleeve? fabric wrappings? straps?), which then seems to lead into the forearm's bracer on the right side, but stops abruptly on the left. additionally, the black, raggedy ends hanging around her elbow don't have any logical source.

hands: the left hand's thumb nail has no nail bed and instead blends up into the first knuckle. additionally, the dagger's point is sticking into her finger.

background

spirals: there is a strange almost-circle between the third and fourth spirals from the top of the circle — this reads to me like an ai artifact (ai generated images often have unfinished, melted, or illogical elements in them which are often disconnected and left floating); the patterns behind athena don't follow a cohesive pattern, one at the top even seems to be mimicking annabeth's hair strand.

athena: the lines of her hair get lost in her ear, the fingers of her right hand are melting together.

conclusion:

this is (likely edited) generated ai art. i do encourage you to look closely at any art that triggers a gut feeling that it isn't a human-created work, but do not harass any user with accusations; it is very simple to block or not engage with the post.

[bunjywunjy]

Dude you reblog so much ai art. Can you at least like. Look at things a bit more closely or check the comments.

I just scrolled back through like a day and a half worth's of posts and I don't see anything obvious, what are you talking about? I reblog a shit ton of art in general, so it's not weird that sometimes AI slips through. stuff is also in my queue for around 2 weeks before you guys even see it, so usually there's not a lot of comments on it yet when I shove it in there.

the internet is pretty saturated with it at this point and it's only getting more convincing so it's gonna happen. I don't know what to tell you unless you can singlehandedly end the AI trend or something.

[chronicreativity]

masterlist of places to submit creative writing

it's intimidating thinking about submitting your precious work to judgement, but all the rejections are worth it when you finally get that one glowing acceptance email that puts your anxieties and impostor syndrome to bed. but where do you submit? it can be incredibly overwhelming trying to find the right sites/journals/zines to submit to so i thought i'd create a little collection of places i have found to submit to and i will update it whenever i find new discoveries.

PROSE ONLY

The Fiction Desk

They consider stories between 1k words and 10k words, paying 25 GBP per thousand words for stories they publish and contributors receive two complimentary paperback copies of the anthology. (A submission fee of 5 GBP for stories which sucks)

Extra Teeth

Works of fiction and creative nonfiction between 800 and 4,000 words receive a 140 GBP payment upon publication in the magazine as well as two copies that feature your work. If your work is selected to published online, you get 100 GBP instead. A Scottish based publication that also offers mentorships to budding writers. (Free)

Clarkesworld

Fantasy and sci-fi magazine accepting submissions of fiction from 1k to 22k words, paying 14 cent per word. Make sure you read their submissions page carefully, it gives you a good idea of what they're looking for and what will get you one of those disheartening rejection emails. (Free)

Granta

Open to unsolicited submissions of fiction and non-fiction. Unfortunately they do charge a 3.50 GBP fee for prose submissions, but they do offer 200 free submissions during every opening period (1 March - 31 March, 1 June - 30 June, 1 September - 30 September, 1 December - 31 December) to low income authors. No set minimum or maximum length, but most accepted works fall within 3,000 and 6,000 words.

Indie Bites

A fantasy short fiction publisher looking for clever hooks, strong characters and interesting takes on their issues' themes. Submissions should be no longer than 7,500 words. You get an honorarium of 5 GBP for each piece of yours that they publish - it's not much, but yay money! (Free)

Big Fiction

Novella publishers (7,500-20,000 words) looking for self-contained works of fiction that play with things like the linearity of narratives, perspective, structure and language. (Free)

Strange Horizons

Employing a broad definition of speculative fiction, they offer 10 cents a word for spec fiction up to 10,000 words but preferably around 5,000. (Free)

Fantasy and Science Fiction

They publish fiction up to 25,000 words in length, offering 8-12 cents per word upon publishing. (Free)

Fictive Dream

Short stories from 500 words to 2,500. They want writing with a contemporary feel that explores the human condition. (Free)

POETRY AND PROSE

eunoia review

Up to 10 poems in a single attachment, up to 15,000 words of fiction and creative non-fiction (can be multiple submissions amounting to that or a single piece). It's free to submit to, and they respond in 24 hours (I can vouch for that).

Confingo Magazine

Stories up to 5,000 words of any genre and poems (a max of three) up to 50 lines. Free to submit to and offer a 30 GBP payment to authors whose work is accepted.

Grain Magazine

Another Canadian based publication also supportive of marginalised identities. They accept poems (max. of six pages), fiction (max. of 3,500 words) or three flash fiction works that total 3.5k, literary nonfiction (3,500 words) and queries for works of other forms. All contributors are paid 50 CAD per page to a max of 250. Authors outside of Canada will need to pay a 5 CAD reading fee but they do offer a limited number of fee waivers if this impacts your ability to submit.

BTWN

An up-and-coming lit mag looking for diverse works that play with genres, breaks the rules and is a little weird. They want what typical lit mags reject. Stories up to 7,000 words, non-fiction up to 7,000 words and up to 4 poems totalling no more than 10 pages, hybrid work, comics/graphics up to 5 pages, original periodicals up to 14,000 words of prose or 20 pages of poetry. (Free)

Gutter

Accepting submission in spring and autumn work that challenges, re-imagines or undermines the status quo and pushes at the boundaries of form and function. If your contribution is chosen, you get 30 GBP for your work as well as a complimentary copy of the issue. Up to three poems (no more than 100 lines), fiction and essays (up to 2,500 words)

Whisk(e)y Tit

This one's worth checking out just for their logo. They're looking for fiction whether it's short stories, flash fiction or novel excerpts up to 7,000 words, up to 5 poems, up to 7,000 word essays, screenplays and stage plays (can be full works or excerpts up to 20 pages). (Free)

FOR QUEER AND MARGINALISED WRITERS

Plenitude magazine

A queer-focused Canadian literary magazine accepting poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. They define queer literature as create by queer people. (Free)

Lavender Review

Poetry written by and for lesbians. An annual Sappho's Prize in Poetry takes place every October. (Free)

AC|DC

"A journal for the bent", always open for submissions from queer writers of all experience levels. They lean towards dark and raw writing but are open to everything as long as it's not over 3,000 words. (Free)

Sinister Wisdom

A literary and art journal for lesbians of every background. They accept poetry (up to 5), two short stories or essays OR one longer piece (not exceeding 5,000 words), as well as book reviews (these must be pitched before they are submitted, (Free)

Queerlings

Open annually from Jan 1st to March 31st they publish short stories of any genre (up to 2,000 words), flash fiction/hybrid work (500 words), poetry (up to 3 poems per submission with a 20 line maximum on each) and creative non-fiction (2,000 words) written by queer writers. (Free)

underdog lit mag

Based in the UK, they focus on amplifying emerging and underrepresented writers. If you're female, POC, LGBTQ+, working-class or all of the above with a story of 100-3,500 words that fits their flavour of the month (the last flavour was Magical Realism) send it their way! (Free)

fourteen poems

London-based poetry publishers looking for the most exciting queer poets. You can send up to five emails to them within their deadlines and you get 25 GBP for every poem published.

Froglifter Journal

A press publishing the most dynamic and urgent queer writing. Poets send in 3 to 5 poems (max. 5 pages), writers send in up to 7,500 words of fiction or non-fiction or three flash fiction pieces, and cross-genre creators send in up to 20 pages within the submission windows March 1 to May 1 and September 1 to November 1. (Free)

OTHER SOURCES

Short Stories: X | X | X

Poetry: X

[maykitz]

crazy specific ad lol. go buy space on local billboards and newspapers. smh

[miyrumiyru]

She ran away from that dumbass (rode on her twice but both failed), but got caught by another guy :(

폭탄먼지벌레 (Pheropsophus jessoensis)

[snugglesquiggle]

why aren't you reading seek?

but for real though, today's chapter was so damn good it motivated me to at least try to write recommendation. i need more people to read it - someone who follows me has got to be willing to give it a try

seek is an original science fiction story set in the radically distant future, updating roughly every week (or lately, closer to every two)

the world is barely recognizable, practically post-scarcity and full of cybernetic modification and AI

in fact, one of the pov characters is one such AI, and the other is so heavily modded i've seen one person derisively call her a cyberfox. this hardly scratched the surface of what's interesting about them and their situation, but this is just a quick recommendation

you can read the first chapter here: https://seekwebserial.wordpress.com/2024/10/18/0-1-0-hack/

i'll admit, the start can be a bit shaky (this whole "guy wakes up in a hostile high-tech facility with no memory of what's going on" setup is definitely not the most inspired of starts, and this is all the more dubious when it's so far still unclear what role he'll play in the long run direction of the story)

furthermore, the structure of Seek is ambitious - and questionable in a way that strains against the foremost issue of a rotating pov stories. there are three perspective characters, each essentially living in entirely different worlds and "eras".

as a result, it feels at times like reading three different novels interleaved, with little tying them together. now, a sense of interconnection has begun to emerge, a dozen odd chapters down the line, but yeah

if you stick with it, though? there's incredible payoff, several intensely satisfying character moments in a fascintating world futuristic to the point of becoming alien

the blurb goes:

Despite our best efforts, few survived faster than light travel. None survived the trip back. So we took a different approach altogether. We started bringing the universe to us. There’s no point. What hasn’t changed in the last four hundred years won’t change in our lifetimes. There’s no point. We’ve solved it. Everything humanity needs, it has. We’ve reached the finish line. There’s no point. Turn off the lights, close your eyes, and cover your ears, nightmares come manifest. Three storylines from three individuals, worlds and eras apart.

as i try to write this recommendation, i'm finding myself trying to summarize all the cool things it does - how society and culture is reshaped by this abundance of resources and automation, and the gross proliferation of advertisement and surveillance that results. or talk about the emphasis the cybernetic augmented place on the fidelity of their mods. but at a point it feels like i'm just doing a worse job of telling the story

so i think the one thing i'd point to as my favorite part of Seek is its portrayal of the integrated "onboard" AI that quickly become more widespread over the course of the story.

there's such a creativity and attention to specificity when it comes to portraying how different people relate to their onboards, down to the formatting flourishes the text uses to set off and differentiate scenes where several different intelligence conversing

but i digress

it isn't just the worldbuilding that gets me, but the character writing, and even the plot has started to heat up - as i said, the reason why i'm writing this now is because the newest chapter (2.6.w) is easily the best in the serial

i have further thoughts on its painstaking tension, the suffocating powerlessness on multiple levels but they don't exactly mean much if you aren't caught up

so yeah. i love this story and i'm hoping for it to garner more readers

if i have to end off with one last piece of bait - we have one protag become taylor swift times a thousand and the other become a terrorist. things get crazy

get in here!

[yuseirra]

On the other hand, she disappeared. The warmth of conversations repeated with my partner Easily turned into hatred in my mind.

In that moment, my consciousness surged, My head filled with an overwhelming amount Of calculations that felt like they would never end.

This is the "transformation of human tissue." Doesn't the color in those sharp, clear eyes Seem almost monstrous?

I'll draw it just like I did back then, "Like you and me."

I’ll never forgive—if there was a bright future, It was all taken away from that day onward.

As if to confirm my own existence, today, once again—

Let’s start the experiment, with a countdown. Shall we open that door, just one more time?

I've been listening to Dead and Seek as I draw this guy(check the link..why am I convinced that what's happened to him is EXACTLY like what the song's story goes. Please give that song a listen, it's very cool!!)

I watched the part where he appears and his eyes are actually REALLY LIGHT compared to what I thought it'd be?? That'd mean his eyes were originally of a bright hue, hey, could it really be that it were to be a different color before having shifted into this current lavender? IT COULD HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN GOLDEN..I can't give up on that because it works with his name you know???;; what if it really got tainted into that color?

ALSO!!!! HE IS THE GUY WHO'S BEEN MAKING THE WISH:

"I want to see you" in Mephisto!!!!!!! "I want to get closer to the only Ai" in Fatal!!! HE HAD HIMSELF THE WISH TO MEET AI AND BECOME CLOSER TO HER!!! THAT'S WHY HE KEPT TALKING ABOUT WISHES WHEN HE MET HIS CHILDREN!! HE WAS WORKING TO MAKE THAT A REALITY!!! HE MADE THAT WISH "UPON A STAR"! And that star must have somehow given him the idea that he could achieve just that if he did whatever he was doing, that's why he couldn't stop!!!

He's all like: "If life returns to you, if it reaches you I don't care what happens to me" (Mephisto)

"Without you, I cannot live anymore I would sacrifice anything for you"(Fatal)

RIGHT??? RIGHT???? WELL, THAT'S WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING!! HE WANTED AI TO LIVE!! HE WANTED TO GIVE EVERYTHING HE HAD FOR HER SAKE AND THE STAR GAVE HIM FALSE HOPE!!! or maybe if he did go through with it Ai could have been brought back in a way, so that's why he was all like he can't die now or that there's something he must still do. He realized Ai loved him back so, I guess that made him even more extreme in the recent eps because it made him even more desperate, Ai did so much for him...he doesn't care about his life you know?? He was already good as being dead after she passed. I think THAT'S what's been happening regarding Kamiki. I don't think it makes sense any other way. He wanted Ai back..he thought he killed her and was overridden with guilt after it and wanted to do something to reverse it. And the way I see it, something took advantage of his feelings and caused him to grow insane and drift apart from his innate tender self.

[fortunaestalta]

[blogishdaj]

Seek 1.6.B spoilers

Basilisk IDLX-B Elabre Systems Seekwebserial is now my new blorbo my new babygirl. Incredibly badass, incredibly chill, incredibly messed up existence. Bro is the true Space Blake/Rose Thorburn, doing the scifi equivalent of advising a hardheaded 'sibling' through a mirror / being a living tattoo / possessing the body of someone else.

Does he have feelings? Questionable. A personality? Kinda. A body of his own? He can puppet his owner's, sometimes. Free will? Absolutely not. He is trapped in subservience to some dystopian AI company and exists as a nanotech lattice embedded in an extremely stubborn 16 year-old girl's body, who is his client. However he is a good boi doing his best <3 I await his ascension into omnipotent superintelligence and/or civilization-ending cognitohazard.

[ipilokko]

Just so you know...

[pink-yuri]

♡ RWBY Official Manga Anthology ♡

[arentwelost]

woke up the other day thinking about the nightmare sequence in ep 11 and its ambiguity.

yes, it is a representation of how far shima and ibuki are willing to go for each other – the way that they would betray all that they have stood for, to abandon whatever future and salvation they could have had for the other person.

shima, despite being one of the guiding voices of this story about respecting each and every life and being careful not to abuse the authority vested in the police, ends up pulling his gun on kuzumi. even though one of the first lessons he had taught ibuki was that "90% of [the japanese police] in reality don't pull out their guns until retirement. not that they don't shoot. it's that they don't even pull it out." ibuki is merely threatened for shima to direct his gun at kuzumi. he not only betrays himself, but also ibuki and kousaka, both of whom he had scolded for their inability to work within the rules.

ibuki, too – his story arc, which aligns with the overarching message of the series – is focused on being able to make it in time. to stop things before it gets to the point of no return. yet despite being told by a dying shima not to kill kuzumi, he nevertheless does. becomes the kind of police that his mentor had become, as though all of the pain he'd gone through, all of the regrets about not having stopped gama-san in time, meant nothing to him in this moment.

in this reading, the nightmare sequence presents to us shima and ibuki's fear that their sense of selves and morals are not strong enough to withstand kuzumi. that they'd give in to the void when it comes to the worst.

but i think there's enough ambiguity in this drug haze dream for us to read the nightmare sequence the other way around too. we could also interpret the first part of the nightmare as belonging to ibuki, and the second half as shima's.

after all, both shima and ibuki have proven over and over again that they fear for each other more so than they do for themselves.

ibuki is afraid that shima would lean into his self-destructive tendencies to the point of sacrifice, just as he has done many, many times in the short amount of time they've known each other. shima is a man who would drive them into another car with no hesitation, who would guide a gun to his own head to provoke a clearly distressed yakuza member: "then, why don't you shoot? i'm fine either way." who, while having no intentions on actually dying, still plays hard and loose with his own life, as though that would allow him to repent for the mistakes he made with kousaka.

beyond that, ibuki fears that shima would go somewhere where he can't follow, whether that is towards death or due to some kind of misplaced need for punishment. he's chased shima down about the latter before, demanding assurance that "shima wouldn't quit being a policeman, right?" but he doesn't get a satisfactory answer, just as he only got a smile and an "understood" in response to ibuki saying he won't let shima put himself in danger again.

and so we could read the first part of the nightmare as a manifestation of ibuki's fears too – the way that shima is willing to give up on his future as a cop as well as his life to ensure that ibuki could go on.

and this echoes well with shima's fear of ibuki going off course, which is what the second part of the nightmare is about. earlier in the episode he tells itomaki that he wants ibuki to "remain on the right path." shima has been prepared to betray himself even before he had arrived at the docks; he knows that with his current investigative methods he may no longer be able to walk alongside ibuki anymore, and he does not want ibuki to follow him into the dark, especially when ibuki had just experienced the loss of his mentor, especially when he is a good person.

ibuki has lived much of his life being kicked around, given up on – yet has remained loving and kind to the world around him. in his own words, he's "glad that [he] didn't resent the world" in the ten years he's been benched. shima knows that ibuki's worth and strengths would eventually be appreciated by others, and he doesn't want to become the reason why ibuki has to give up his future as a cop. he, too, is afraid that ibuki would become another gama-san. not only that, he fears that he would be the cataylst again, just as he was with kousaka. this fear drives him to strike first; shima not only reverts back to his bad habits, but this time he's further accompanied with a strong sense of guilt and self-sacrifice that weren't there prior to kousaka's death.

considering how the narative has unfolded and the relationship that they've developed with themselves and with each other, it's definitely fitting, then, to see the nightmare sequence as a shared nightmare, as a manifestation of their combined fears. not only of themselves and who they might become, but for each other.