#and then tried to write me a script for the presentation using AI

[void-of-unparalleled-chaos]

Group projects have this uncanny ability to make me want to yeet myself into the sun

[43501]

🍓 and 🧩

🍓 What made you start writing fanfiction

Reading The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fanfiction on Geocities/FF.net around the year 2000. Discovered an author with the most well-crafted, evocative prose I'd ever seen in my life (to this day, can sincerely say this author was a master). Reached out to him, he was extremely patient with my barely-literate, nine-year-old self and responded to questions. We had a creative writing assignment at school and I tried my hand at doing a style emulation. Obviously it wasn't very good because I was in third grade, but it was good enough because my teachers were like "damn, what the hell, you should keep writing" so I did (on-and-off) for the rest of my life.

I've finally reached his level of technical mastery, but it took a long time. Perhaps I could've achieved this proficiency sooner if I read and wrote more studiously, but I cannot be single-minded.

🧩 What will make you quit out of a fanfic

Instant hard quits:

Author has no concept of when they're supposed to paragraph break, fic is badly formatted and difficult to follow.

Ridiculous Mary Sue OCs. I love original characters and I think I give them much more grace than the average reader, but they need to be appropriate to the setting and I need to feel like they're organic and they "belong there".

Egregious mischaracterization of one of the major characters. I don't mean tripping over a detail or two, I mean presenting a truly gross misunderstanding or flanderization of the character we see in the canon narrative.

Second-person fanfiction that is not reader-insert, but casts the reader as a canon character (i.e. "you are L"). Almost always these fics should be first-person from the character's perspective instead. Not going to mince words: this is a notoriously difficult gimmick to pull off, better writers than you have struggled with it. You, average fanfiction author who barely understands 2nd person perspective at the best of times, likely do not possess the level of craft required to do this well. Just write first-person.

Work created with AI or that I strongly suspect was created with AI.

Mpreg. I don't mean situations where a character is FTM or some nominally masculine non-human species. I mean straight up man ass pregnancy. Words cannot describe how much I hate this.

These things aren't instant quits and I've read good fanfics that included them, but they do lower my HP and if I get reduced to 0 I will quit:

Reader-insert with things like "e/c" (eye color) and "h/c" (hair color). Your reader already knows their hair is brown. You do not need to write the equivalent of "he ran his hand through your brown hair" when "he ran his hand through your hair" conveys the same action.

Author not striking balance between dialog and prose. If the work is literal pages worth of characters speaking back-and-forth with little to no dialog tags, no action happening in between, no pausing to allow characters to react or have some interiority… you are writing a script, not a story. One of my favorite novels (Kiss of the Spider Woman) is solely a conversation between two people in neighboring prison cells with only a dash to indicate a change of speaker. It can be done, but only if you set out with the explicit intention to do this and understand what you're doing.

Characters using cringeworthy therapy speak or lingo that isn't particularly common outside of ultra-lefty, ultra-queer online spaces. Example: I shouldn't be seeing a character born in the 18th century describing themselves as "genderfluid" - they would use some other description or turn of phrase to gesture at the same concept.

Egregious misunderstandings of country/culture when author is writing characters of a different nationality to their own. Common examples: stories taking place in a Japanese high school but using American high school tropes (especially if there's anything about a "prom" - becomes a hard quit for me if it's that bad).

Egregious anachronisms. If you're not writing some flavor of fantasy and your story takes place at a point in the past of our real world… please do some research about the relevant time and place, especially about what technology existed and how widespread it was. There were no smartphones in the early 2000s. Home internet usage didn't see wide adoption until 1999 or so. Dial-up era internet was text-and-image based, too slow to support things like video. They didn't have DVDs in the 80s. A VHS tape does not have menu/settings/chapter select, it's just a film that goes backwards and forwards. USB thumb drives weren't around in the 90s. Floppy discs can't hold much data.

[souploover69]

Delta Hall

so recently i used ai to generate an episode of Delta Hall Internet Show which the tally hall members are replaced with deltarune characters

(Kris - Rob, Susie - Joe, Noelle - Ross, Berdly - Zubin, Ralsei - Andrew, Lancer - Bora)

The ai made an entire script lmao

Susie: Hey Kris, what's going on?

Kris: Nothing much, just sitting here drinking a diet Dr Pepper and writing my song. What about you?

Susie: Just practicing my singing while I play drums. You think I sound any good?

Kris: laughs Oh man, the way you sing, it sounds terrible!

Susie: laughs Oh yeah?! Just wait until you hear my beatboxing skills, that's gonna make your ears bleed!

[after Susie said that the two begin beatboxing and singing. It's an absolute disaster but they seem to be having fun]

[the clip then cuts to the intro of the Delta Hall Internet Show]

[The scene starts with Kris and Susie playing the accordion and drums respectively. They look really awkward playing them but they're clearly having fun. The music begins playing.]

Susie: (singing) Do you like how we walk! Do you like how we talk! Do you like how our faces disintegra- 

[Berdly abruptly interrupts her.]

Berdly: Hey what's up guys.

Ralsei enters the shot

Ralsei: Hello Berdly.

Susie: Hey.

Berdly: Did you guys know that bananas are a good source of potassium?

[Everyone just stares at Berdly.]

Everyone: No, we didn't know that.

[Awkward silence for a couple of seconds]

Berdly: I'm just gonna go now.

[Berdly left the shot and Kris and Susie go back to the singing/accordion and drums combination but they aren't able to sync up.]

[It then cuts to a clip of Ralsei neatly making a bed, which got ruined by Susie jumping/sliding onto the bed]

[The next scene involves Susie and Berdly attempting to cook a cake. As expected, nothing goes correctly. There is a montage of them making the cake and each section is them making a mistake that ruins the cake.]

Berdly: What's that one cooking tip again?

Susie: No, I think you're doing that wrong. Let me try.

Berdly: Fine.

[Susie's cooking also goes horribly]

[After a while the cake is completely ruined and they are now depressed.]

[It then cuts to a screen saying FIFTEEN SECONDS OF LANCER while several images of Lancer are scattered around the scene]

[Cut to a compilation of clips of Lancer doing funny shenanigans. He's eating cheese, playing with fire, and being a little gremlin.]

Everyone: Yeahh!

[The clip then cuts back to the Fifteen seconds of Lancer]

[Cut to Berdly talking in front of a green screen in front of him. He is talking about video game topics and is being really passionate about it. He talks about stuff like boss fights, game design, and game mechanics. He's even using some hand motions for dramatic effect.]

Everyone: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

[They're really impressed about the whole presentation and start cheering.]

Jevil: Hello everybody, it is I Jevil! I am here to interrupt Berdly!

[Jevil leaps out of nowhere and starts laughing maniacally.]

Everyone: Jevil!?!

[Jevil looks smug and proud that he was able to interrupt Berdly's presentation.]

Jevil: Did you think you could escape me by using a green screen presentation!? The most devious method of showing a video is no match for my pure chaos!

[Jevil laughs yet again.]

[The clip then cuts to narration]

“Everyone knows that top cakes are a useful item. But, did you know that top cakes are also good for blowing up?????”

[The scene cuts back to Berdly's presentation after Jevil's interruption.]

[Berdly is standing in front of the green screen. He looks visibly annoyed that Jevil interrupted his speech. He has been interrupted yet again by Jevil and now he's just fed up. He doesn't care that the screen is still green anymore and just wants to finish his speech.]

Berdly: Listen, I'm gonna finish this presentation regardless of what Jevil is doing.

[Berdly continues his speech as if nothing even happened even though Jevil continuously tries to interrupt him.]

[Berdly then burst into song, playing the Tally Hall song Greener while the other members of the band jumped out from the audience onto the stage and played the song together.]

[The background is the same green screen of the presentation. The song plays as everyone performs their instruments and dances with them. Susie is playing drums, Ralsei is playing accordion, Kris is playing bass, and Berdly is playing guitar. Lancer shows up unexpectedly and starts playing harmonica. At the end of the song, everyone bows for applause.]

THE END

[sometimes-sleeby-octopus]

I posted 5,651 times in 2022

That's 4,649 more posts than 2021!

85 posts created (2%)

5,566 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@hebbic

@looney-mooney

@yepiamthesmileyface

@grim-ghastly

@the-town-fool

I tagged 524 of my posts in 2022

#my art - 49 posts

#dhmis - 47 posts

#the stanley parable - 43 posts

#art - 29 posts

#tsp - 26 posts

#tspud - 23 posts

#the stanley parable ultra deluxe - 21 posts

#stanarrator - 19 posts

#for later - 19 posts

#illustration - 17 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#some may be like ‘oh he’s a cis dude so you must be cis’ but i will go ‘my pronouns are they/them and my gender is unknown even to i’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Dhmis - FEELINGS (fan script)

Disclaimer: I am not British, sorry if that makes it weird

Content Includes: Violence and Extreme Anger that leads to violence

And so it begins:

(Like usual, a new version of the intro song plays)

There’s three of us!

There’s three of us!

Look closely and you’ll see

There’s three of us

Just three of us

It’s him and you and me

And everyday we all hang out

To find out what we talk about

Red: And I think I am remembering

Yellow: And it hurts my brain to…(singing stops) what?

Duck: Remembering? Remembering what?

Red: I dunno, I think it’s…all the things that have been happening to us.

Duck: What do you mean?

See the full post

38 notes - Posted November 3, 2022

#4

“The World Began Anew” (Stanley and the Narrator Have Feelings Pt. 3)

Warning/Notice: So cheesy, shorter, and it’s a slow burn ahead <3

The world began anew.

Stanley winced slightly. He had been taking a nap after falling asleep to the narrator’s calming whispers. He knew the narrator had his tapes, he knew he didn’t always forget, but he also knew that the narrator didn’t always remember and Stanley wasn’t sure the tapes would either. Should he keep hope? Would not having it hurt less?

His mind quieted once he realized the narrator was not speaking. Perhaps he remembered and skipped his intro! Or maybe Stanley had spaced out for so long that he had already finished. Or maybe-

“I remember.”

Stanley looked up at the ceiling, letting the hope seep into him.

“Stanley, I remember!” the Narrator shouted joyfully, laughing in relief, “I remember your dog and my body and our conversations and our past! I remember it all!”

Stanley jumped for joy while crying happily, “You remembered!”

As their laughter and excitement died down into a calm, yet giddy feeling, Stanley and the Narrator (indirectly) looked at each very fondly.

“Oh, I almost forgot about my body, dear boy! Let’s go fetch it so we can look at each other as I keep remembering!”

It was a very quick process with the help of the adventure line. Both Stanley and the Narrator felt at home as the Narrator drifted into his comfortable metal and embraced Stanley once again. The adventure line curled around both of them, and they stayed like for a nice while.

“This is lovely, my dear fellows, but if you would not mind, I’d like to have some more adventures!”

Stanley nodded and cheered, “Let’s go!”

===

“Okay, so we’ve tried finding everything already within the game on purpose, but what if we looked for holes?”

See the full post

38 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

#3

Bro I put most of the Stanley’s Parable intro into AI Dungeon to write fics and the latest one is fricking crazy because Stanley’s boss threatens to kill him if he doesn’t help him buy a fridge

53 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

#2

I got feminine hips but I ain’t afraid of eighth graders

67 notes - Posted January 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I got sucked into the Stanley x Narrator ship so I present to you: A falling in love fic collab with ai dungeon

Stanley and The Narrator Have Feelings

WARNING: Very cheesy, I was just having fun with it so yeah

This is the story of a man named Stanley. Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was employee #427. Employee #427's job was simple: he sat at his desk in room 427 and he pushed buttons on a keyboard. Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk, telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order. This is what employee 427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others might have considered it soul rending, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job. And Stanley was happy. And then one day, something very peculiar happened, something that would forever change Stanley, something he would never quite forget. He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he realized that not one, single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow. No one had shown up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say hi. Never in all his years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation. Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time, but as he came to his wits and regained his senses, he got up from his desk and stepped out of his office. All of his co-workers were gone. What could it mean?

This is what Stanley had thought of around a month ago. He was now fully aware of his situation and in figuring it out, he got to know the Narrator. The Narrator was the one who had given the orders, who had told Stanley exactly what to do, when to do it, and in what order. Stanley didn't always obey, but that kept things interesting, when the Narrator ordered him around that was. Nowadays, Stanley and the Narrator decided on adventures together, as their fondness for each other had grown.

One day, the Narrator told Stanley that he had a surprise for him. "I have a delivery for you today," he said. "From a friend of mine." "The adventure line?" Stanley guessed with a smile. The narrator chuckled, "You've guessed it".

Stanley was led to a giant shipping container, just like the ones on the docks. The container was at least fifteen feet tall and as wide as a house. "Can I open it?" Stanley said excited. "I've never seen it opened!" The Narrator gave in and told Stanley he could open the container.

Stanley looked at the container with wonder. "How do you open it?" he asked. The Narrator laughed, as he had expected the question. "I made you a button," he told Stanley with a grin. Stanley fidgeted excited, awaiting the button.

A platform slid away on the ground and a pedestal rose up to Stanley's abdomen. A red button the size of Stanley's hand shone in the light of the storage room. Stanley looked up at the ceiling, as if waiting the narrator's permission.

"Don't wait up on me, dear boy! Go ahead," the Narrator said. And with that, Stanley gently slammed the button and the container opened. He was surprised to see a pile of boxes stacked at the top, but he was even more surprised when he opened one and saw a robot the size of a refrigerator inside. "He could keep us company!" Stanley exclaimed to the Narrator, "Or maybe you could posses him so we can do a hand shake!" The Narrator agreed and told Stanley to do whatever he wanted, as he always did.

Stanley looked at the robot for a moment and said, "I'll play with him later. For now, I need to find a power switch, or else..."

"Go ahead and move him around," the Narrator said, "I trust your judgement."The narrator would never admit it, but Stanley’s remark about the handshake had him thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to meet Stanley’s eyes and hold his hands and sit beside him. He spoke up saying, “You can still do whatever you want, Stanley, but I would not be opposed to a handshake.” And once again, Stanley was surprised. "That's not a big deal, is it?"

"Oh no, not at all," the Narrator said. Stanley tried to contain his joy as the narrator possessed the robot. The narrator was much taller than him now, but he was not afraid. "Oh goodness," the narrator joked, "You still have to look up at me even now!" And with that he gave the robot a test run. It didn't move, and he laughed. Stanley pulled him towards him, giggling as well. Stanley thought the narrator’s hands were pleasantly cool and the narrator thought Stanley’s were pleasantly warm. “I like this,” Stanley whispered. The narrator nodded for the first time in his life. Stanley laughed with glee. As the narrator got used to his new body, he was also getting used to Stanley's touch. He needed help sometimes and Stanley was there for him. Despite being of metal, it made him feel warm inside. It's been so long since someone made him feel that way, he thought. He decided to test out a funny habit Stanley had: Pressing buttons.

He pressed the big red button from earlier. It gave him a type serotonin he never knew existed. He spammed the button saying, "I now understand why you like this, Stanley" he said. But then he pause, sulking a little bit. He apologized, "I'm sorry I made fun of you, Stanley."

Stanley looked up at him and his eyes appeared to soften. "I know," he said, "It wasn't very nice, was it?"

"It's quite all right," Stanley said, "It's good to have someone who can get a laugh out of me." The two of them laughed for a bit, until the narrator realized something. He blushed as he asked, "Can I give you a hug, Stanley?"

Stanley gave a shy little laugh, and the two of them embraced. The narrator felt his cheeks warm up. He was never this emotional, he thought. He pulled away and said, "Dear boy, I think I need to sit down. Too many feelings."

Stanley nodded in understanding, holding out his hand for the narrator to take. The narrator took it gently as they headed to the employee's lounge. The building had been empty for many years, but the couches were still comfortable, and the Narrator enjoyed the feeling of being able to sit.

Stanley sat down as well and hummed, content to simply be in the narrator's presence. The narrator felt nice, too. "I feel like something changed today, Stanley. I think I feel at home here," he said. Stanley thought about this for a moment and said, "Me too. It's kind of nice not having to talk to you through a ceiling." The narrator's lips turned up a bit at that and he reached over and took Stanley's hand. They sat like this for a few minutes, hand in hand.

"I want to tell you something, Stanley," the narrator said. He looked at Stanley's hand in his own and continued, "I really like you, dear boy. I'm glad I met you." The narrator continued to hold Stanley's hand, and a few tears rolled down his cheeks. "It is very nice to be able to like someone again." Stanley could do little other than smile at this. He let go of the narrator's hand for a minute and went to sit next to his dear friend, wiping the tears from the Narrator's eyes. Stanley rested his head on the Narrator's shoulder and hugged the narrator tightly. The narrator wrapped an arm around him as well and the two of them sat that way for a long time.

After a few minutes of silence, the Narrator said, "I would like nothing more than to stay with you, Stanley, forever."

Stanley chuckled lightly and nodded in understanding. "Me too." The narrator went quiet before mumbling shyly, "Stanley, you make me feel things. Good things but goodness, is it strange." Stanley laughed at that. "I've never had that happen before. It's nice." The narrator smiled at that.

"You make me feel things too, you know," Stanley said. "How would you describe how I make you feel?" The narrator asked. Stanley blushes and stuttered, "Well, humans call it love, it's kind of warm and it makes your heart beat fast but it's really nice and you don't have to feel the same and I know it's-" "I feel the same way" the narrator said calmly. Stanley stopped rambling only to turn as red as a strawberry. He was so embarrassed. He said, "We shouldn't be talking like this." He didn't know if making the Narrator feel this way was right. "And yet we do," the narrator said, meeting Stanley's eyes. Stanley held the narrator's face in his hands and hesitantly questioned, "Can I kiss you?"

"Whatever you want," the narrator replied, leaning in closer.

Stanley kissed the Narrator. It felt nice and right, and he didn't want to stop. So he didn't. They kissed, and it just kept getting better. As their lips parted, they smiled at each other. The Narrator placed a hand on Stanley's chest, leaning towards him, and the two of them continued to hold one another, softly kissing. As they parted, Stanley tackled the Narrator over and his companion groaned. "You're ridiculous. We were having a moment, Stanley," he scoffed with no malice. Stanley said nothing as he curled up next to the narrator, half lying on him like a pillow. "Your back's gonna hurt later, Stanley." "I know," Stanley said softly, "but I just want to be with you." The narrator held him in his arms. "Fair enough. I certainly don’t dislike this."

See the full post

76 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[robhorninginternalexile]

pleasure and protest

An essay about Covid-19 and the quarantine by Paul Preciado, published in early May in Artforum, concludes with a remarkably prescient sentiment:

It is imperative to modify the relationship between our bodies and biovigilant machines of biocontrol: They are not only communication devices. We must learn collectively to alter them. We must also learn to de-alienate ourselves. Governments are calling for confinement and telecommuting. We know they are calling for de-collectivization and telecontrol. Let us use the time and strength of confinement to study the tradition of struggle and resistance among racial and sexual minority cultures that have helped us survive until now. Let us turn off our cell phones, let us disconnect from the internet. Let us stage a big blackout against the satellites observing us, and let us consider the coming revolution together. 

When I first read it a month ago, it seemed far-fetched to me. It struck me as the kind of tacked-on rallying-cry conclusion that many critical essays end with, sounding a note of hope when their critique otherwise suggests the futility of resistance. But now it seems as though ”the time and strength of confinement” has actually turned into a surprisingly broad commitment to “study the tradition of struggle and resistance among racial and sexual minority cultures that have helped us survive until now” for those thousands of people now joining protests whose tone has been set and adopted from Black Lives Matter and other police- and prison-abolition movements. It can appear as though the “coming revolution” has indeed come, and de-alienation is taking place night after night in the streets.  

But that development doesn’t seem to have followed from Preciado’s plea that we “turn off our cell phones” and "disconnect from the Internet.” The uprising is not currently shaping up as a unified resistance to technology; rather it has manifested as a collective rejection of racist policing and all the societal manifestations of structural racism more broadly. That’s not to say that contemporary technology is not deeply implicated in sustaining and extending racism. The webs of surveillance it facilitates makes possible not only the old forms of discrimination and targeted oppression but new forms of embedded, infrastructural racism, whether that is a matter of the racist search results Safiya Umoja Noble details in Algorithms of Oppression, the systematic misidentifications of facial recognition technology that Joy Buolamwini has detailed, or the ways race is encoded and reified and leveraged, as Ruha Benjamin outlines in Race After Technology. Day after day, Chris Gilliard’s Twitter feed documents the tech industry’s complicity in structural discrimination and racist policing. Especially egregious are “neighborhood watch” platforms like Nextdoor, which are vectors for racist intimidation, and surveillance systems like Amazon’s Ring, which have proliferated through the company’s partnerships with police departments. 

So Preciado’s implied sequence of events seems backward: Our relationship to “biovigilant machines of biocontrol” — a.k.a. phones — begins to change when our relationship to resistance and liberation struggles changes first. (And then changes in relationships to technology feed into protest tactics and strategy, and so on.) 

For now, tech companies seem like they are on the defensive: For instance, IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon have been pushed (thanks in part to the researchers cited here) to abandon their development of facial recognition technology or temporarily halt its sale to police departments. Some workers at companies like Facebook have questioned their roles in fomenting fascism and racism. Yet it is also easy to imagine that tech companies will try to capitalize on any progress toward police abolition by proposing as alternatives its surveillance-driven forms of predictive policing and pre-emptive discrimination (like “cashless stores” which effectively prescreen customers, and other tech-driven forms of “targeting” that allow businesses to shop for customers). All the many forms of algorithmic screening will likely be touted as useful planks in efforts to “defund the police” by automating the police’s current function of enforcing modes of segregation and unevenly distributed economic exploitation. In Cloud Ethics, Louise Amoore details how companies have tried to sell AI tools to police departments that would, for instance, anticipate protests or identify targets for ICE by scanning social media and other forms of location data and network activity. These tools are marketed as police aids but they could be repositioned as automating the police away. Of course, this would not solve the problems presented by policing, but encode them in systems that would be just as impervious to change, abetted by the false sense of computational neutrality.  

It will likely require sustained protest and pressure to prevent tech companies from putting forward their usual methods (datafication, surveillance, solutionism, regulatory capture) that their business models demand. “Decollectivization and telecontrol” will certainly be attempted to contain the protests, even if they did not necessarily spark them.

In part, Preciado’s essay focuses on ideas of immunization as protection, as exemption from risks others are made to bear, and how these kinds of exclusions become the basis for communities. "The management of epidemics stages an idea of community, reveals a society’s immunitary fantasies, and exposes sovereignty’s dreams of omnipotence—and its impotence,“ he writes. (This makes me think now of the “qualified immunity” that U.S. police are granted to protect them from legal accountability for their actions, as well as how Nextdoor permits neighborhoods to defend their whiteness.) 

Epidemics are “sociopolitical constructions rather than strictly biological phenomena.” They don’t unfold according to some script dictated by a virus’s level of contagiousness; they enter into existing social relations and present an occasion for their rearticulation. Thus, Preciado argues, “the virus actually reproduces, materializes, widens, and intensifies (from the individual body to the population as a whole) the dominant forms of biopolitical and necropolitical management that were already operating over sexual, racial, or migrant minorities before the state of exception.” With Coivd-19, this is evident in the how white people have been disproportionately less affected, an index of their relative privilege. The refusal among white people to wear masks reflects and celebrates this privilege as well, which helps explain why health officials who recommend masking have been harassed and threatened by white mobs.   

Similarly, “cures” for diseases don’t proceed inevitably to those who need them; they aren’t distributed any more evenly than power, wealth, or opportunity. They too must first reannounce the existing power relations, which delineate who deserves to become “well” or immune and who should be lastingly pathologized. (If a cure threatened existing power relations, those in power  would seek to suppress it.)

For Preciado, the social course of pandemics and “cures” reflect the more general logic of “pharmacopornographic” forms of control — “microprosthetic and media-cybernetic control” administered through communication technology and pharmaceuticals, visual and literal stimulants. As Foucault  argued about power generally, these mechanisms of control are experienced not as restrictive but as subjectivity-granting, an expansion of pleasurable possibilities that secure the subjects’ assent. Preciado writes: “These management techniques function no longer through the repression and prohibition of sexuality, but through the incitement of consumption and the constant production of a regulated and quantifiable pleasure. The more we consume and the better our health, the better we are controlled.” 

I’m often tempted by this line of analysis to treat all forms of pleasure with suspicion — anything proposed as “fun” is probably a thinly disguised form of social control, enjoyment of which establishes just how much my psyche has already been formatted by the apparatus of domination. It then follows that anything that makes me uncomfortable proves I’m engaging in a form of resistance. But that unsustainable line of thinking leads nowhere. The point is not to demonize pleasure but to explicitly politicize it, to engage in political practices that sustain a different kind of subjectivity that enjoys other kinds of joy. In this conversation with Zoé Samudzi, Vicky Osterweil explains:

One of the things that scares police and politicians the most when they enter a riot zone — and there are quotes from across the 20th century of police and politicians saying this — is that it was happy: Everyone was happy ... The playwright Charles Fuller, who happened to be a young man starting out his career during the Philadelphia riots of 1964 ... talks about the incredible sense of safety and joy and carnival that happens in the streets.

I think riots and militant violent action in general get slandered as being macho and bro-y, and lots of our male comrades like to project that sort of image. That definitely happens, but I actually think riots are incredibly femme. Riots are really emotive, an emotional way of expressing yourself. It is about pleasure and social reproduction. You care for one another by getting rid of the thing that makes that impossible, which is the police and property. You attack the thing that makes caring impossible in order to have things for free, to share pleasure on the street. Obviously, riots are not the revolution in and of themselves. But they gesture toward the world to come, where the streets are spaces where we are free to be happy, and be with each other, and care for each other.

This is the obverse of the pleasure in consumption and individuation that Preciado describes, which in his analysis is anchored in the technologies that allow us to consume in physical isolation at home like would-be Hugh Hefners in our multimedia-enabled “soft prisons,” adrift in a fantasy of dematerialized insubstantiation. 

The subjects of the neoliberal technical-patriarchal societies that Covid-19 is in the midst of creating do not have skin; they are untouchable; they do not have hands. They do not exchange physical goods, nor do they pay with money. They are digital consumers equipped with credit cards. They do not have lips or tongues. They do not speak directly; they leave a voice mail. They do not gather together and they do not collectivize. They are radically un-dividual. They do not have faces; they have masks.  

There seems to be a lot of fetishization of “real” communication implied here — again as if digital communication were the main obstacle preventing people from collectivizing their bodies for revolution. But the protests now seem to suggest that while consumerism may have been an obstacle (i.e. the right-wing talking point that the protests are popular because people can’t go shopping), digital technology, which many have been leaning on and living through more than ever under lockdown conditions, hasn’t been, at least not yet, and not in the ways Preciado is suggesting. 

The threat posed by technology is not so much that it prevents people from having “real” encounters but that it can facilitate such encounters on terms that are already fully contained — imagine, for example, protests operating only within parameters deemed acceptable in advance by machine-learning simulations, or conversations that are pre-mediated to a degree that they can’t exceed the anticipated possibilities. Preciado is right that these experiences will be pleasurable; people generally take pleasure in being accommodated, from being recognized. But to detect the kinds of pleasure that are complicit with oppressive forms of social control, it is not enough to simply look for situations where screens are foregrounded and bodies are suppressed. It’s not enough to check our voice mail.

[giant-bean]

I tried some AI as both an artist and a programmer. I paid for an AI tool and made a few thousand images in a month. I found the artists intention was just not there. I could make beautiful images but not what I wanted. As an art director if I asked a machine and a person to make the same image my testing showed the machine would fail. That however will not always be true. As an artist testing the tools to try and see if it could be used in my art pipeline to improve my own speed and ability I helped train a machine and did not benefit from my testing.  Later I tried chat bots and tested writing code with them. I was able to make a good functional script after pointing out two mistakes the AI made. That was great a script that could have taken me an hour was done in less then 10 minutes. So I tried again and after 8 hours of trying to make a few more scripts not one of those scripts where functional but I had spent hours telling the machine where it had messed up and had trained it to do better next time. I helped improve it but all it did was waste my time and gave me one working script and other lines of code that while close to functional had no real usability.  I wanted AI to be a good thing. I wanted it to be a tool to help artists and programmers and be a tool to help humanity move forward. I wouldn't even mind if the tool could replace some jobs if we could get living wages for people rather then dumping humans in the gutter and having others actually wonder why crime was on the rise. I had high hopes and I admit I still have some hope but so far this is not a tool to lift the masses in any way. It is a tool to suppress and that dystopian future being presented to us as a free gift from billionaires who are pulling a reverse robin hood heist as they take from the poor and redistribute it as if its new. It is pissing me off that this potentially great tool is being used like this. They got mad when people wanted to redistribute the wealth but now that's exactly what they are doing with others wealth of talent and skill. They are stealing from Person A and B to give to person C and then Person C and D have there work given back to A. None of these people see any improvement to their standard of living from this false economy of free trade as none of them set a value on the trade. The value was set by a third party who didn't ask permission to take what they then gave to others while only they profit from the transaction.  I Have a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings about all this. I can see why people are using these tools ignorantly or fully aware of the risks. I see why people hate these tools ignorantly or fully aware of the risks. I am torn as to what the right way to move forward may be but for now I think our best bet as a society is to say no to AI until we can discus the “rules” and make this a tool that lifts humanity instead of one to subjugate it.    

Hey, do y’all remember how Tencent said they were developing faceID AI to identify people in riots, and then they suddenly created an AI art generator to turn your selfies into anime?

Do y’all remember that time that someone discovered facial recognition cameras couldn't see through Juggalo makeup, then Facebook had a fun “see what you'd look like with Juggalo makeup” thing, and then facial recognition cameras could suddenly see through Juggalo makeup?

Do y’all remember how, on Twitter, Elon started a tirade against artists who ask for credit when their art is reposted, and he suddenly he created one of the first big art AI programs?

Do y’all remember how AI destroyed the field of freelance translation, despite the inferiority of the machine translations, because companies didn’t care about the quality of the translations? They just wanted it done for free?

Do y’all know how companies will see a lot of money going into a New Tech Thing (like, say, AI art apps) and will jump to try and implement that New Tech Thing into their tech? For example, how it felt like every big company and celebrity had an NFT to sell?

Just wondering.

[spiftynifty]

TeeVee Podcast’s Voltron s8 review

I’ve been waiting eagerly for TeeVee’s review of s8. If you recall, their s7 review was what gave us the man getting choked up about Shiro’s relationship. 

The link to the podcast is here but if you’d prefer a sort of transcript, here are some of the highlights for me. I didn’t always catch who was speaking but I wrote down initials where I could. S=Shanon, A=Antony, M=Moises, C=Chip D=Dan. The panel is divided on their feelings on the season. 2 of them seem to have hated it, one liked it, one thought it was fine, and one feels mixed about it. Anyway here we go, some great quotes ahead. 

Under the readmore cuz it’s long. 

S: "After 7 seasons of a show that was going to be one of the animated series of the decade, they not only did not stick the landing, they fell on their butts, rolled off the mat, off the lines, into the judge's table and their leotard popped open"

"A lot of the plot was callbacks to things from seasons ago that we really probably didn't need to see again." "I wasn't entirely sure that they weren't gaslighting me."

Man Shannon is calling out some great points. She's calling out the dropped druid plot thread, and wondering what the point was of showing Lotor's past when he's dead, and nothing can change in his present and his redemption can't really happen.

A: "endings are hard. I was disappointed with this season [...] it was let down by poor plotting and that final battle made me throw my hands up in despair most of the time. But I have enormous sympathy for the EPs. Maintaining a longform episodic story is hard. And to pull off an ending that satisfies even MOST of the audience is harder yet. and let's not forget they were always upfront that vt always had 'editorial interference' from up top. Toys, the fact that it's aimed at children, corp resistance to some of the more modern social issues that they've tried to tackle. THAT SAID, we don't know what happened on this production, who had the final say, what they argued over. and I say this cuz a lot of the fandom drama over it assumes a LOT over how media and entertainment like this is made that simple ARE. NOT. TRUE. Some of the stuff I've read has been ABSURDLY offbase, like that there were different writers rather than just 1 the whole way through which ignores how TV is made. And if you think these writers just go off and write a script without talking to anyone first and then they come back with something that must be filmed without any changes, THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. [..]we don't know who made these decisions. The studio isn't always the bad guy. Sometimes they rescue things that would otherwise have been a horrible mess. And unless you were IN THE ROOM, you don't know, and neither do any of us. So let's all bear that in mind. [...]You can't lay the blame OR credit on any one person. For any of this." 

They're laughing & making so much fun of the final 3 episodes and how baffling they were. 

"Don't even get me started on Voltron merging with Atlas [and the crew disappearing] that was a bad, bad idea." 

"But that was the ONE time Shiro was back with the team!"

a couple dudes are relatively ok with the Allura death because we've never seen a WOC heroically sacrifice herself for the universe and usually it's the Shiro hero character D: They also point out that technically she wasn't fridged so.. yay?

Antony and Shannon vehemently disagree. 

A: "My problem with that ending was more just that it was... not. good." he makes a comparison to RotJ where Vader still dies and it's his SON, who lives, who 'redeems' him. "This was none of those things. It felt like a terrible lesson. You can be so evil that you kill literally billions of people for 10k yrs but if you say sorry just before you're about to be executed it's alright, dw about it, we'll put the universe back to rights. NO, that's a terrible lesson!!"

S:"They had the LIONS. That's my problem. Throughout this series we've had stakes going up but there has always been a trading of ideas, what can we do, what can we figure out, up to the point where they wind up sacrificing the castle, but they go through steps before that 'is there anything else we can do’. And here, there's not even... she didn't even get to say goodbye to Coran! This is the one character, WOC, and she has sacrificed throughout this entire series. She lost her planet. She lost the last connection she had to her father in the AI. She kept LOSING things over and over to the point where she sacrifices her crown to help Shiro. and the thanks she gets is that she has to turn around and say nope I've got to away and fix all of this and apparently never see you all again. It really, REALLY REALLY bothered me. All of my friends who have CHILDREN who watch this show, universally the kids were upset and angry and tearful and HATED that outcome. This did not feel like a triumph. Having to lose Allura like that robbed any kind of triumph in the success of saving all the universes. And I think that's one of the reasons that this last part of the season sits so poorly with me. I feel like it should have ended in a triumphant way. even if it meant losing a couple of the team members or the lions. Of course that takes away the toy aspect which is why that's not an option. We already had several tragedy arcs in this series. Zarkon, Honerva, and Lotor had tragedy arcs. Why does Allura have to have one too? We've had enough." 

Antony & Shanon KILLIN IT on this podcast y'all.

C: "This series relies so much on 'oh wait, there's a new upgrade', 'oh wait, there's this new thing'" A: "Well that was the entire final battle." C: "So there's this handwavy Allura has to sacrifice herself. The heavy lifting wasn't done to make this an earned moment."

S: "I do think, whether it was at the direction of DW or WEP (Vld IP), without those little epilogue cards, there is the potential opening that Allura might be able to return.[..]It was open to interpretation."

One guy likes the Shiro ending for the surprising progress aspect, even though he's not thrilled about how it was put together. also he isn't convinced the epilogue wasn't planned. He likes a lot of s8 but all the stuff he likes is tied to stuff that he really didn't like.

S:"The shiro card is the other reason that I think those things were shoved in. For me, that turns Shiro's entire character into a token when he wasn't before. When they introduced his sexuality, it was done BEAUTIFULLY. There was this conversation with his significant other a mature relationship that ran into its problems and therefore couldn't happen anymore. Adam could've been Adele, and nothing would have changed about that conversation. It was not the defining characteristic of Shiro. It was just something else about him."

S: "And then s8 happens and Shiro is divided from everybody on the team. There are so few interactions of any kind that aren't just barking orders. or making plans. Keith is the prime example. Their friendship had been a backbone of this series and suddenly they can't even stand more than feet 5ft from each other. 

A: “It’s barely evident, yeah.”

M:”And the same with the rest of the main cast. And if they had set that up at the end of s7, that he’s going to go into the background a bit, it wouldn’t have felt as weird.

S: “And they didn’t! S7 was miraculous in the fact that even though he’s no longer in a lion, he’s still got a vital part to play in the series. And s8 erased that. It pretty much neutered him! And the kind of message is once you've revealed this character to be gay, we've gotta keep him out of the way. And if they had not put those end cards in, again the fact that he's a gay man is just the fact that he's a gay man and it's not any bigger or smaller aspect of his character, but they did not EARN him marrying random bridge crew member #3."

A: "and RETIRING! A man who LEFT adam because he felt he had to go and fight."

A: "He left the guy he loved before because of his devotion to"

S:"To fighting to making things right"

A:”To being a soldier and doing the right thing.”

C:”Isn’t the whole point then that he achieves that?”

M:”The fighting’s over and he can leave that behind and he can actually be happy.”

S: “He wouldn’t’ve. I don’t see it.”

M: “I violently disagree.”

C: “I think it was a nice endcap for his character."

Moises also likes this because it’s not a BYG scenario and he gets retired. Shannon is extremely exasperated by these takes. 

S:”For me, it’s like Tangled. You go through Rapunzel and Flynn, going through their adventures, getting closer, getting to know each other, they save each other, things like that. And then she’s reunited with her parents and then we get and endcap that says ‘for political reasons her parents decided they needed to marry her off to the prince in the next county, sorry’. That would’ve had people RIOTING. Thats not how you do a story with characters that people care about. And to shove shiro off onto this random character that we--his name is never spoken!”

A:”No he had like 3 lines in the entire season.”

S:”He had 3 line sin the season, you don’t know his name unless you watched the subtitles, and in the audio narration for the visually impaired, they called him Adam in the endcap. They called him Adam! They fixed that now. It feels like a hugely clumsy attempt to grab the woke points for a character that didn’t need them.”

Moises then talks a little about Shiro and Keith and how he and Shannon both thought there was something there, and still do, but they can’t know what happened behind the scenes and to theorize on the intent of that relationship is “conspiracy theory land” and trying to decide what the writers were prevented from doing is like “reading tea leaves and chicken bones”. He references people extracting things from his own writing. 

M: “As much as I wanted to see that relationship flower and flourish, the fact that it didn’t, look, it’s one of a million times that’s happened for me, with fiction, where things didnt turn out the way I wanted to see them.”

S:”I’m talking about 2 different things, as far as Shiro’s character, vs shipping  issues. I feel Shiro’s character was done a disservice that if they were going to end him in a relationship with another man, they didn’t earn it by throwing that little endcap on.”

M:”Yeah, they could have brought back one less robeast or something.”

S:”The other thing is, I think there is enough out there as far as interviews with JDS and LM to show that at the very least I think they meant to leave it openended. Again  if you take out that endcap, the last shot includes a shot of just Shiro and Keith, together, same screen, looking up as the lions go away, without saying anything further. I know I pie in the sky hoped that they were gonna kiss this season when we did our s7 recap and yes that was the shipper in me talking. I truly did not expect that they would be able to go that far. What I did not expect was for them to tear it down. And I feel like that’s what they did. Between the complete absence of interactions in s8, and then throwing that epilogue in there.”

Dan doesn’t understand how that could be because he sees no reason for them to do that. Shannon patiently explains about DW’s history with LGBT characters but Dan insists that the creators told the story the way they wanted to and he’s fine with Shiro getting a marriage even if it’s a character they don’t know. 

Overall the panelists love the show still, and in most cases prefer to consider it in the realm of s1-6 with a weak final double season (7&8) or that the show ends after s7. They would all love to know how long the NDAs last, a making of perhaps, to know what the heck happened and what changed along the way. Big mood my dudes. Big mood.

[kuuxkat]

[EN] Interview with Aki Hata

Original CN TL and Pictures: here CN TL： zegao​​​​​ (nyamazing) EN QC by: @yujachachacha​​

Yuja did lots for this TL. Thank her guys =)

It was mostly delayed due to IRL stuff.

Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.

I’m not posting the image of the TL, sorry about that. Stealing images aren’t cool.

Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.

The contents are under the cut.

Interview With Aki Hata

The Radiance of Aqours: Searching for the Answer

Aki Hata—the composer and lyricist of all of the songs of “Love Live! Sunshine”.

The “answer” that was obtained from the youthfulness of Aqours as they ran with all their might is...

From the song that gave Aqours their initial fame, “Step! ZERO to ONE”,

To the song that lit up Season 2 Episode 12, “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD”.

In addition to the songs for the subunits as well as the lyrical world of Saint Snow,

In this interview, she discusses the feelings she had placed on the 1st and 2nd seasons of the TV anime.

​

Q: How did you view the story of Season 2 of the TV anime Season 2?

I was reading the script as I wrote the lyrics, and I really cried every time. There are some things in this world that are unattainable no matter how hard one tries. The way they met that challenge really made me feel that it was “indescribably beautiful”. In addition, I feel that the 2nd season was a reflection of reality, it was really compatible. I was still in a state of confusion when I first wrote “Step! ZERO to ONE”, but at this point, in my heart this song has become a key note of the story. And afterwards when the second season kicked off rapidly, in the process the lyrics were gradually woven into the story. From there, I felt that fate had a hand in it. I personally feel that “this song being used here was really fitting, right?”. I don’t know if everyone has the same feeling that I did. From a state of confusion to hearts being one, it was really incredible.

 Q: Did you see the performance at Metlife Dome during the 2L tour?

I did. Although the stage itself was very energetic, in terms of the atmosphere it was quite frigid (laughs). In a half-exposed environment, looking at their posture where they wanted to make the entire venue fall (for them), and to let their intent be transferred to everyone, I feel their determination in accepting this huge vacuum and to go all the way (with it).

 Q: So that means you felt self-awareness and responsibility during the performance?

That’s right, I felt the intent and realization of “I wish to let everyone enjoy more”. As the previous project was hugely popular. “They’ll definitely be compared to that”, “if the effect wasn’t ideal, would it be my fault?” -- For them to be able to take on all of this burden, I feel that they are very strong too.

 Q: I feel that the songs by Aqours during 1st season, the charm point resides in a sense of “stumbling around”. The impression of the many lyrics was that: “Although I don’t know what the end result would be, but in any case let’s try it”. A feeling like that. It’s evidently different in the 2nd season. Or rather, should we say that feeling of stumbling was harmonized?

As by the 2nd season, they would have found their own goal. They weren’t becoming anyone, but rather were radiating their own light. They would have kept that glow firmly etched in their hearts. At that time, I was thinking, life’s own answers would remain in one’s heart’, this fact and the story are seamless aligned. It let me feel that there was a resonance -- the answer was truly in one’s heart huh? For the lyrics side on the 1st season, I wrote them with being very straightforward and plain in mind. For example, in “Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai?”, I thought: Did they discover “it” at the very end by relentless asking questions like this? As without asking, they wouldn’t have found the answer.

 Q: Let’s turn the focus to the period between Season 1 and Season 2 then. After “HAPPY PARTY TRAIN”, should we say that the model changed? It feels that the stumbling part of the lyrics was set aside for a while too.

 That’s right, amongst them I added an element of more maturity in then. Although it is a new way forward, but it wasn’t 100% a happy feel to it. As I feel that, everyone would want to see an Aqours that grew up and would be able to sing sad songs, right? Thus, although the main focus would be running towards the end goal, and how the destination could barely be seen, secondly it’s the reality of the story itself. Everyone would have realized it, if vaguely, but meeting any obstacle in reality, at times you would feel that: “Although you are seemingly able to ‘see’ the turning point, but in reality you can’t do anything about it.” I feel that for this current generation, there are more harsh situations in reality that the current younger generation has to face. Rather, I should say that this is a generation where dreams are hard to achieve? Even if they wish to stumble and do their best, but problems in reality would be blocking them immediately. The story exists in a setting like this, so I feel that I definitely need to let everyone have that sense of foreboding to it.

 Q: So that is to say, rather than searching for the truth between the layers of the story, you would rather focus on what is projected on the observers?

That’s right. I hope to create a situation where everyone would be able to accept it fully. At such times, one should let everyone enjoy a little “sadness”, as sadness is also a form of enjoyment too (laughs).

 Q: (Laughs) Hata-sensei, among the songs in the 2nd season, which songs touched you the most while you were writing them?

I guess it would be “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD”? I like the beginning parts. So it has the lines, “Ashita e no tochuu janaku / ima wa ima da ne” (“It's not halfway to tomorrow, now is now”). Basically it’s all towards the future, but there are no complex rhetorics to it at all.

  Q: The incomparable happy “today” that only exists for that very instant - for one to understand this perspective and to sing this line, is truly saddening.

And, although we are speaking of the future, but I feel that everyone wouldn’t be able to project their mind set for going ahead. I feel that, the girls probably don’t totally know how their future would turn up. Although they noticed lots, but they won’t know everything. The world is filled with unknowns. They might not know, but they also seem to understand lots of things - rather one can say that it is a paradoxical sadness then?

 Q: That is to say they have their own degree of self-awareness then? But for now, “this” is enough.

That’s right, that’s exactly it. As there aren’t many people who would be able to enjoy the present without being bound by the past. I feel that enjoying the present is a very wondrous thing, so I hope that everyone would try to enjoy it. As we all know, even if we truly wish to enjoy the present, we’ll be robbed of our feelings and vision by many various things. To express this point without complex jargon is difficult. Although adding the phrase “instant” would solve problems, I feel that they shouldn’t say that.

​

Q: I feel that, the 2nd season’s OP “Mirai no Bokura wa Shitteru yo”, the most defining line of the lyrics was, “Mirai o doushiyou kana!? (“What shall we do about the future?!”). Although the future can be freely chosen, but the end result isn’t always what one hopes for. But at this stage, everyone still believes everyone’s future is up to their choosing.

That’s right. Singing “What shall we do about the future!” would perhaps have that unbelievable feel of “perhaps we can truly force the change” I guess? “Having the sky and seas as comrades” would also make one think: “Really??” This could also be due to them being exposed to warmth from lots of people, perhaps their inner soul having being touched by a sense of enjoyment to being loved as well? I feel that, acceptance the truth that one is loved is something that is very difficult. If one is loved too strongly, one would always be a little suspicious, right? But I feel that for them, perhaps they won’t ask “why”, but would rather “be able to accept straightforwardly” the truth that one is being loved by everyone. So for “the sky and sea as comrades”, the meaning of that should be their own hometown, the place that they lived on as their comrades? Everyone really loves their hometown, this is what they call jimo ai (lit. “local love”)  (laughs).

 Q: With regards to “Awaken the power”, seeing the animation on Episode 9 of the TV anime I felt that, here comes a very incredible song, huh (laughs).

(Laughs) Ah, I really am very happy (about this). How do I put it, I have my own self-awareness on how narrow my views are, admitting it openly, will let one grow swiftly? However, process of noticing this point, I guess would be very painful? As one must let something that one had firmly believed in be wrecked after all. But that is only because one’s view is too narrow -- briefly looking around the surroundings and one would realize, previously one would feel saddened about wasn’t depressing at all. The moment one’s view is expanded, they’ll really want to try it out. You can also choose to retreat if one is afraid of being injured, so as long as you tightly hug the world you had previously, you’ll be able to be protected. But if one knows all this, but still has the realization to say, “wait a minute...”, I would really want to have a toast to that courage (laughs)!

 Q: (Laughs). The songs by Saint Snow are very low-toned with high BPM, in some sense the entire feel is the direct opposite of Aqours “sparking” feel. Are there any particular points of note while writing their lyrics then?

It’ll be “a battle with one’s heart inside” then, I guess? Their attitude towards dreams, the level of their self-awareness -- through these comparisons, they displayed a sense of gentle innocence that is different from Aqours.

 Q: For “DROPOUT?!”, the parts where Leah sings, the lyrics included, were especially great.

My goal was to show that: “Even if they were going to fall into despair, the soul would remain beautiful”. From the angle of my personal interest, I like this song very much as well. Suffering will let one grow up rapidly, so I also tried imagining in the direction where “Saint Snow” would need to go through many difficulties, this very harsh and serious route.

​

Looking at Aqours, I became aware that being innocent isn’t embarrassing.

Q: For the second wave of the subunit songs, I even felt that Hata-sensei was being too serious about it! (laughs)

Well~~ Looks like the fact that I love the subunits is exposed, huh (laugh). Should I say I like them? I should say that I’m given more freedom to express them?

 Q: CYaRon!’s “Kaigandoori de Matteru yo” is truly a masterpiece.

I especially like that song (laughs).

Q: The tune started off as a gentle stroll, but in the end nothing happened at all. That point itself was startling enough.

I thought about trying various things while writing songs about friendship, so I thought of how there I heard of a song from overseas that’s akin to a story by itself. That song would be like an image of youth. It would actually just be depicting something trivial, but everyone would have a strong and deep resonance of: “I can empathize with this feeling”. Although by itself is purely how one would not get along with friends, and was stubbornly walking down the streets by the seaside (laughs). But it carries a huge weight in one’s heart. It’s simply a small minor thing, but seemingly carries with it 80% of the world’s sadness with it.

 Q: For Guilty Kiss, firstly the title song “Kowareyasuki”—it’s a staple Guilty Kiss song.

A sense of having absolutely no confusion.

 Q: As for the coupling song, “Shadow gate to love”, I would like to ask directly, what exactly is “Shadow gate”? (Laughs)

(Laughs). I guess it’s… the self in one’s heart? … It’s like, “I might not let you turn back, all right? I would exist in one’s heart too.” Like that, although it does seem to be stirring it up a little. I considered two sides of things at this part. Although I do think that high school girls would say the phrase “musk” I guess (laughs), but I do want to let them say that.

 Q: Amongst the lyrics of the second wave of the sub-unit songs, the phrase binetsu (微热, lit. feverish) didn’t appear even once, right?

It’s something that I sealed away intentionally. I’m trying to see how long I can hold it in without using it -- while right now it’s getting hard for me to hold back (laughs).

Q: (Laughs). Speaking of this, I hope Hata-sensei could explain to us the charm of the phrase “微热/binetsu”.

 All right. So we are chatting how Aki Hata likes about the phrase binetsu, right? (laughs). This is something before passion, the state where passion first began to show itself. That very brief, mythical state, that is the passion that I like the most. It still exists at the stage of fantastical love, or it perhaps can be something very brief. And I guess it means a disguised innocent passion? One’s thoughts might be pitiful but beautiful, amongst them it would reveal a tangible strand of mystic to it. One would be slightly dizzy with that knowledge - it would be a feeling like this. In one’s life, perhaps this is the state of mind that I would love the most. A young girl’s love can be called “binetsu”, a girl’s thoughts is surely “binetsu”. Perhaps all girls could emotionally understand this state of “binetsu”? A mystery that only girls know, a secret that belongs to girls -- this would let people feel that it’s cute, right?

 Q: The way that AZALEA let one immerse in them comes out strongly as well.

Of course I do like all the subunits, but AZALEA would probably have the highest synchronization with my personal feelings? I feel that this subunit, is a manifestation of priestesses to something that I would like to express. I guess this change happened during the 1st Live? After seeing their performance, it is my personal opinion that, I can let them carry even more (on their shoulders), I could let them walk on the direction of passion x philosophy (laughs)**. **TL Note: Although uncertain, it could be a pun on “Tokimeki Bunruigaku” instead.

 Q: (Laughs) I feel the same, that is why “GALAXY HidE and SeeK” became a MVP-level title as well.

Thank you very much. I feel that AZALEA expresses the sense of “loneliness” very strongly. Or should I say that that they are able to match the sense of unrealism and loneliness very strongly? I guess it’s probably in the direction of “the me that no one else notices were discovered by you”. A secret held between you and me?

 Q: From now on, for 3rd Live Tour as well as the movie are waiting for Aqours. Do you have anything you wish to say to them?

For them who are on the stage, I guess I would like to say is probably, “Do show us more of what you got”? I purely hope to be able to continue watching on. Everyone have been working very hard, so I hope I can sing and play along with them more.

 Q: At this point to Hata-sensei, what is “Love Live! Sunshine!!” and what is “Aqours”?

I guess it’s something like “an innocence that’s on the verge of being forgotten”? Looking at Aqours, I became aware that being innocent isn’t embarrassing at all. Although right now, as an adult there are things you wish to conceal, but looking at them I do feel that, showing that side wouldn’t be wrong at all.

​

Aki Hata’s stories with books

If we’re counting data/information, my monthly intake would be huge. So if I really start sharing, one book wouldn’t be enough. But if it’s a recent one, then Leonardo’s Judas (レオナルドのユダ) by Mayumi Hattori (服部まゆみ) gets my shoujo heart thumping again.

[kaz-foxsen]

I Asked DALL-E 2 and Midjourney to Show Me the "Meaning of Life"

As an illustrator, when I learned of the existence of art-generating AIs, I imagined two future scenarios: one of being caged in a giant sterile Walmart, cursing the robots who Terminated my reason to live and condemned me to endlessly shuffling inventory while muttering to anyone within earshot, "'They terk er jerbs!'"; and one of connecting my brain to a computer to spew out my every whimsical idea like an out-of-control printing press, never again stuck mourning good-but-half-baked concepts gathering dust on my shelf. Art isn't the kind of profession that first comes to mind when discussing human livelihoods on the chopping block of automation, but this new tech appears to have some wonderous and terrifying potential. I am a human, and humans are cats-- if there's a box, we must open it.

I've experienced the creative-block-busting power that generative art can have on the imagination when I used Mandelbulb3D to create fractals. These abstract images, evocative of otherworldly objects and settings (like the one above), tickled my brain, and I started imagining histories and purposes for them. My (The?) imagination hungers for meaning and compulsively seeks it. If it's served a pile of nonsense (like a dream), it'll cobble together something resembling a plot, or at least a description, whether or not you intend to.

Driven by curiosity (and some hope for a new perspective), I wondered how an art AI would respond if I fed it the prompt “the meaning of life”. Would it create something inspirational? A “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” joke involving the number 42 perhaps? A distillation of what the human race thinks is important in life?

Midjourney

First, I tried Midjourney in the Discord app. You type in a text prompt and get 4 variants. You can pick which images you want MJ to generate new (or higher resolution) variants of. It's possible to write prompts in a way to better control the results, but I kept the prompt simple because I'm new at this and wanted to see what would happen.

Ok, seeing a lot of water, but water has been used a lot as a metaphor for life stuff.

Upper Left: looks like a person contemplating their surroundings and something mysterious. Makes sense.

Sunsets: something about beginnings and endings-- that's standard "life" stuff. A transitional time of fleeting beauty, so be present if you don't want to miss it.

Lower Left Hourglass/Goblet: an hourglass is a classic symbol of impermanence. Also reminds me of tarot's suit of cups.

Lower Right: a figure ascending?

Upper Right: something I'm not sure I'd be allowed to show you, but could describe as a hot-dog-shaped cloud with an unfortunate water feature emptying into the ocean. Also, it's sunset. Then I had Midjourney create some hi-res versions:

It's a lot more interesting now. It looks like portal to a village bathed in golden light is trapped in some kind of tumbleweed-like ball of brittle dying vines. Good metaphor potential there. What the metaphor would say... hell if I know. ~shrug~ Near a glowing white mushroom-tree with tendrils of light appears to be a tiny grim reaper carrying a scythe on his shoulder. Perhaps he's the groundskeeper of the ball. Is it a window or a trap? I'm not sure what that slippery black whale-eel in the sky is, but it makes me think "Hieronymus Bosch tried to paint a jumbo jet." I like how there's random squiggles in the lower right corner reminiscent of a signature painted in a fantasy script.

Pretty. It's like the universe is reflected in the cup.

Definitely looks like the mystical ascension of a lightly robed figure now. Also, their head might be floating away. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I had MJ generate variations on the cup-like image, which are pretty neat. They look meaningful.

Next up is DALL-E 2:

I signed up for the waiting list in June and got the invite in my email in August.

Oh look! More water and sunsets! I'm sensing a theme. Beaches seem appropriate-- they're a strange border where civilization meets the prehistoric abyss where life began. Grains of sand that might've once been boulders glitter at your feet. It's a magical place where you can take off most of your clothes and lie in the dirt without reproach. These give me an Instagram-filtered motivational post vibe. All they're missing is inspirational quotes. At a distance, they look just like photographs. You might even say that the first three look perfectly cromulent, but upon closer inspection, the illusion of sensibility can collapse in spots, like how the "plot" of a dream suddenly makes no sense upon waking.

Is that a human, or did a mage order a shambling driftwood elemental for delivery? What appeared to be a group of people walking and chatting on the beach turn out to be bundles of sticks and cloth lashed together into crude effigies. Perhaps the Wet Bandits are trying to steal the beach from the youth surf club and need to be scared away. One of the "scarecrows" appears to have a white ball for a head, so I'll name that one Wilson. 😄

"Cromulent" is the perfect descriptor for this effect. If you're not familiar with "The Simpsons", it looks legit. It has letters like a word should. When used in a sentence, its apparent meaning is "to be legitimate", but it's a fake word made up for a joke.

This one's pretty amazing. I'd just airbrush out the 2 stray fibers on the right sleeve.

This one got a cynical chuckle out of me. The world's crappiest jigsaw puzzle seems like an apt metaphor for life's messiness. You have this image of what a jigsaw puzzle is supposed to look like-- all the pieces should fit together into a shape with smooth edges, no gaps, and when you step back and look at it, you see a complete picture, maybe a pretty painting of dolphins or something. But this monstrosity? What is it even supposed to be? Any toy designer attempting to hand this crap in to their boss would be immediately fired for coming into work high on every drug in existence because clearly, there was no end product nor user experience in mind. Yet, somehow... there sit the pieces, linked together and arranged in a basic order that forms a complete... something. From an overall perspective, it's a very pleasant image. I like the warm, but calm colors and the sense of realness that the textures lend it. It evokes the desirable imperfections of homemade crafts-- a sense of folksiness and of upcycling something out of common, overlooked resources like cardboard. I feel like trying to read meaning in these AI images is like a Rorschach test that probably says more about the viewer than the creator. The TLDR conclusion: Life = sunsets, beaches, and the world's most disappointing jigsaw puzzle. Maybe AIs can understand what it means to be human!

Additional info (in case I need to include it):

Midjourney's Terms of Service: https://midjourney.gitbook.io/docs/terms-of-service. It says, "If you are not a Paid Member, Midjourney grants you a license to the Assets under the Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 Attribution International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode"

[aion-rsa]

Why Reminiscence and Westworld’s Sci-Fi Futures Feel So Real

https://ift.tt/3kcD6o3

Lisa Joy has always been skeptical about notions of objective truth. She’s even second guessed her own memory on how key moments in her life occurred. Such admissions suggest a remarkable sense of awareness and perspective. It also marks a canny instinct for creating compelling visions of our collective future… even if we’d rather not personally go to such places.

Both Westworld, the HBO television series she co-created with writing partner and spouse Jonathan Nolan, and Reminiscence, which marks her feature film debut as a writer and director, are layered in ambiguity and the dawning realization that the world is not how we think it appears. In the case of Westworld that comes in the form of robots realizing they’re trapped in preordained loops; in Reminiscence, it is the humans themselves who must confront their own delusions, particularly the ones we tell ourselves about the past.

In the new movie, Hugh Jackman plays Nick Bannister, a man who peddles fantasies for future Americans after generations of war and climate change have left coastal cities like Miami and New Orleans on the brink. As the water literally rises around his feet, Nick and his customers get lost in imaginary yesteryear via technology that allows them to relive any memory, no matter how distorted. It’s a grim scenario that makes the robot revolution look cuddly by comparison.

Yet when we sit down to talk with Joy, she admits she really is as nostalgic as Nick: She just recognizes the lie within her reveries.

“I consider myself somebody who’s very skeptical of the objectivity of the narrator, even if I am narrating my own story,” Joy says. “Is that how it really happened or have I varnished the story over time or changed it based on the retelling? So I’m always really concerned with what was the objective truth of a memory and am I close to it or has it become corrupted?”

The concern with unreliable narration is perhaps why Reminiscence works so effectively as noir. If Westworld gave a sci-fi sheen to the black and white tropes of old Oaters, then Reminiscence inhabits the moral grayness of film noir. Joy even cites Out of the Past (1947) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) as touchstones on her own vision of the future. But just as important as the ghosts of the past are the people in this moment telling their story—and thereby making new memories.

Unlike her director, Thandiwe Newton does not consider herself a nostalgic person. For the Emmy winning actress, nostalgia is the memories you obsess over because you weren’t mentally present when they occurred. And she tries to always be present for the memories she knows she’ll care about: time with her children, mainly, and fleeting moments of family.

“Everything else is not real,” Newton says. Yet she also is clearly present for relationships that matter to her, including Joy. Before being cast as Watts in Reminiscence—the assistant and former war buddy of Jackman’s character—Newton worked with Joy on Westworld, the series which won her that Emmy. And the actress paints a very vivid memory of their first meeting over a FaceTime call which was initially supposed to be just with Joy’s husband and Westworld co-writer, Jonathan. 

Says Newton, “The first time we met I was breastfeeding my son, Lisa was breastfeeding her daughter. I was [initially] on FaceTime with Jonah… So we’re having such a great conversation that goes on for such a long time, and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, can I just bring my baby?’ So my husband brings my baby and I start breastfeeding, and literally off-camera, Lisa pokes in and says, ‘Oh, I’m here, actually, with Zoe and we’re breastfeeding!’ And I’m like, ‘Woah!’ So it ended up being me and Lisa, lactating together, talking and I’m like I’m in! I’m in, Westworld, I’m in.”

For Newton the moment crystallizes why Joy’s storytelling has such candor and prescience. Says Newton, “I give that example because it shows you we’re both aware of being a woman in this industry and what we present at face value… and right at the beginning of our relationship, we exploded that stereotype, and that’s what she and I have been doing ever since, exploding stereotypes.”

It’s also perhaps why Newton was eager to join Joy in Reminiscence for a role that’s miles from Westworld’s Maeve, a robot initially scripted to be a seductive saloon madam who’s turned into a ferocious freedom fighter. By contrast, Reminiscence’s Watts is simply a fighter, and even a sharpshooter who turns out to be far more ruthless than Jackman’s Bannister. The actress reveals to us they incorporated her own real-life capacity for sharpshooting into the role.

“Of course, I’m a great shot,” says Newton. “Every time I’m at the shooting range, I’m the one who [hits the target] every single time. And I couldn’t care less about being a good shot. In fact, it’s an embarrassment to me, I don’t want to be a good shot. I hate violence, I despise guns. But it’s ironic that one of the best scenes I’ve ever been in, in my life, was the scene where [Watts saves] Bannister’s life. I’m a badass in that scene! And yeah, I don’t like violence, but with me and Lisa Joy, it’s a whole other thing.”

Of course that dash of violence and spectacle is in service to a vision for a future rooted in the greater dissolution of American society. This is presented as the legacy of climate change, and it feels far scarier than the menace of robot cowboys taking to the streets.

Says Joy, “On Westworld, I have so much to be paranoid about in my work. Sometimes it’s the AI apocalypse and sometimes it’s nature smiting us [in Reminiscence]. I do think though it doesn’t take much of a prophet to understand the problem with global warming and the repercussions it will likely have on our lives. So the reason it’s presented as almost a backdrop to all the action in the film is because I think it’s time we just accept this is happening, and the question isn’t, ‘Is it going to happen?’ but ‘how will we adapt? How will we deal with what’s coming down in the future towards us?’”

Read more

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Daniel Wu, who plays Saint Joe in a short but pivotal scene in Reminiscence, had long conversations about exactly that with Joy. While his character has brief screen time, the New Orleans drug lord represents an ugly possible outcome of the American experiment if things continue on their current path.

“In the dialogue there’s a little bit of where Joe says to Bannister, ‘Your kind were drafted, but people like me were interned, put in camps,’” Wu recalls. “So we talked about a civil war happening and something racial happened with racial trauma, where I was put in an internment camp and that created a serious chip on this guy’s shoulder but also created this serious need to survive. So after he got out of those camps, he then slowly grows up in the ranks of the underworld of New Orleans and became this drug dealing kingpin.”

It’s a dark vision for the future, one which Joy seems to suggest could be inevitable if we continue to be so backward-looking, including to the point of embracing the racism and hate of previous centuries. Considering Westworld itself is also a series where rich elites attempt to travel back to the “good ol’ days” via elaborate theme parks, it’s worth wondering if Joy thinks we’re already doomed with crippling nostalgia as a society?

Says Joy, “I feel like what makes me more nervous is an inability to look back at a shared past. The way in which we’ve become so siloed in our experiences, and the way in which we consume media and news, and even history, the way we learn about it, that we’ve each begun to craft our own subjective narrative about history and the world. And I think that’s very, very dangerous.”

Nevertheless, the artist tries to add a silver lining, particularly in regard to how art can help bridge gaps when all else fails.

“I [have] so many cautionary tales about the future, but there is a thing that makes me optimistic,” she says. “And that is that even though we’re siloed in so many ways, and we can refute and feel immediately antagonistic to certain thoughts or concepts when we start discussing them, I think one of the greatest bridges that people have and cultures have is the arts. Because it gives you a story and allows you to live it fully in the same way that others experience it when you read from the first page to the last, or when you’re in the movie theater watching from the first moment to the last. People may draw different conclusions, but music, arts, movies, those become the touchstones of a shared cultural identity. And that to me is very important in keeping the fabric of a society healthy.”

Reminiscence is in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, Aug. 20.

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The post Why Reminiscence and Westworld’s Sci-Fi Futures Feel So Real appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[spikewriter]

I’m working with AI in my writing at this point. It is an incredibly useful tool, and has helped me get a project moving again I was stuck on for two years. And it’s because I’m working with it that I think it’s terribly important for guardrails to be put into place now. The WGA is right to say they need more than a meeting and Powerpoint presentation, because corporate boards are going to want to cut writers rooms if they can get computer generated scripts that cost them a fraction of a script fee. Quality? That’s not necessarily their concern if they can sell commercials or turn a profit.

Remember, television is not there to entertain you, it’s there to sell you things. Shows are the vehicle for delivering the eyeballs to the advertisers. And, I’m sorry, but some of Buzzfeed’s healines might actually be improved by a little AI.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that if you haven’t tried ChapGPT, do so. Poke around in the program see what you can generate. Try some prompts on Midjourney or one of the other AI art programs. Why? So you are more familiar with it. Dig into what they say about how they gather information to train the dataset. The time to start pushing for guardrails is now—and you’ll be more effective doing so if you have some familiarity with the tech. There’s a lot of misinformation out there—and there are also some dubious practices being used by the folks behind these programs in their dataset training. But if you want to influence the discussion, learn more.

This AI stuff is too scary is gonna ruin us all.

Not Tom-related, but certainly affects public figures…

https://twitter.com/realmeetkevin/status/1658955545121021952?s=46&t=lyucfcsRkpQ5p45ZmKRvDw

Yeah, they aren't there yet, but this is definitely what people are looking at. People thought Deep Fakes were hilarious.... until they take your job.

Related, Erik Voss did a video on this for his Deep Dive channel. Again, not 'quite' there, but won't be long. And that's what writers and now actors are talking about in their contract negotiations/strikes.

[zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog]

AI Affiliate Bots Review And Bonus

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How Do You Incorporate Affiliates Normally into a YouTube Video clip?

I assume among the most convenient methods to do it is in fact when you're mosting likely to do a testimonial video clip. So if you're evaluating a particular item, I would link to that product so your customers can actually go purchase that product too, especially if it's something that you enjoy. That's probably the most convenient means to incorporate affiliate web links. As well as it's additionally a wonderful means to generate income from any type of video clip that's not sponsored. So whenever you have favorite points or your favorite items or evaluations, you can throw in an affiliate link to aid individuals recognize where to find the item you're talking about.

Where Do You Put the AI Affiliate Bots Hyperlinks?

And also you placed the associate web links in the description of the video clip?

Yep. Connect links listed below in the summary. You want to beware how many web links you place in the description due to the fact that YouTube suches as to keep people on YouTube.

Yeah. The concern from a Search Engine Optimization perspective is that YouTube, their goal is to maintain individuals on YouTube for as lengthy as feasible, seeing as much material as possible, involving with as numerous videos as feasible, seeing as several advertisements as feasible. Therefore if your video finishes the viewing session for a viewer, like they see your video clip, after that they click that link as well as most likely to that firm's web site and also get the item, that's great for you, but your video might potentially not execute. If every person who enjoys the video clip took you up on that offer, your video clip might potentially not carry out in addition to it or else might.

Yet that's kind of the equilibrium is you've reached balance like I'm establishing an audience, however I require to make it lasting. So in some cases it makes fantastic service sense for you to go ahead and use an associate. As well as other times you're like, you recognize what? Maybe not on this AI Affiliate Bots video clip because my major objective for this video is simply to obtain it to place really high.

I think you have to decide on in between earning money or involving an audience on each video that you do on YouTube.

What regarding Legal Disclaimers and also Those Sorts Of Things?

Have you had to do that? Just how does that job?

Yes. Well, it's a smart suggestion to put someplace in your summary that you might be utilizing associate links, sort of like your FDC disclosure, but it's kind of like an associate link disclosure. I think that's a clever point. Even though YouTube hasn't appear stating you need to do that, generally you need to just to be extremely, extremely secure.

As well as it develops count on with your visitors.

Yes. Your customers recognize what's going on. Various other disclosures, I believe that's it.

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[danganrebirth-voices]

Court is now in Session! - Danganronpa Re: Birth Voices Class Trial announcement!

Hey everyone, so today we’re finally proud to announce, after over a month and a half of scriptwriting, that we at danganrebirth-voices will be holding our own, fully-fledged, Class Trial!

Wow! I listened to the trailer and it sounded amazing! Tell me more about this!

So, as said just above, this Class Trial script has been written by our Rokudou VA and we’re very excited to share it with you all! So, this is a full class trial full of debates, rebuttal showdowns, accusations and of course, executions! It will be presented as a fully voiced audio drama and we plan to release it on both YouTube and iTunes. 

This sounds so cool! How long will it be? Where are you currently at with the script?

Currently, we are in the final editing stage of the script and it clocks in exactly 11 800 words or 35 Google Docs pages. We estimate that the recording will be at least an hour to an hour and 20 minutes long.

Wait, what’s Dangan Re: Birth, anyway? What is it?

Dangan Re: Birth was originally an April Fools joke created by @MiwasibaS and his friends, centred around a killing game at Kaihou Academy. The protagonist is Ayumu Fujimori, the Super High School Level Unlucky Student. The profiles of the students and more info can be found both on the official DRRB blog in Japanese, or in English on the Danganronpa Wiki. 

Is this canon?

TL;DR: No.

Long version: Nope. 

Wait, wasn’t Saiji the first victim? Wasn’t there an infirmary? Why aren’t you just creating a class trial based off of the creator’s story?

This scriptwriting for this class trial started on the 2nd of April, only a day after DRRB was even revealed. By the time that @MiwasibaS started posting the story, we were already 13 pages into the script and had the murder planned out almost completely and frankly, we were too petty to give up all of our hard work. We intend to follow MiwasibaS’s original plan loosely, whilst also changing up plot elements to differentiate the stories.

Will we actually be playing as Ayumu? How are we supposed to shout “No, that’s wrong!” into Youtube??? help pls??????

So, as this is an audio drama, it is a fully non-interactive experience. Unfortunately, we have neither the time, nor the money, nor the expertise to make such a thing happen.

What’s a Monodora? Where’s Monokuma?

Monodora is a floating AI which is described as essentially being a floating Monokuma head with cat ears and a tail which can summon things from “dimension pockets” at will. For all intents and purposes, he’s just Monokuma under a different name.

Akira’s VA sounds different from his intro. What gives?

Unfortunately, our old VA for Akira had to leave the project due to personal issues, which meant that he was unable to voice for our scripts. Akira is now being voiced by the amazing Bostoboy (Here’s his Tumblr and CCC, go follow him!)!

I don’t like ___’s VA! How do I get them fired?

Just remember that we’re fans, just like you, and this is a fan project. Or a fan project… of another fan, or something. Basically, we’re in it for fun, and this is supposed to be a fun thing which we share with the community. We’ve had a blast making this for everyone to listen to.

Wait, does this mean that I won’t ever be able to listen to the first victim’s beautiful voice? 

;)

Who dies first, anyway? I bet it’s Marin. She’s too cute to live.

:)

Why did you just do the Class Trial? Why not Daily and/or Deadly Life?

Well, the Class Trial is the best bit of a chapter, and it wouldn’t be too hard to explain what had previously transpired. Besides, imagine Ayumu just shouting evidence at you for an hour without any visuals or anything. That’s just boring.

Do you have permission from @MiwasibaS to make this?

Indeed! @MiwasibaS is aware of this project and has given his express permission for this project to go ahead.

THIS CHARACTER ISN’T WRITTEN EXACTLY LIKE @MIWASIBAS DESCRIBED THEM AS REEEEEEEEE

Woah, woah, calm down. We’ve tried to match the personalities of the cast to how they were described as much as we could, but there’s only so far we can go as native English speakers before we have to let our headcanons and imaginations take over. Since we’re not the original creators of Dangan Re: Birth, we do not have access to any of the backstories and such that MiwasibaS may have laid out but not released publicly, and this makes it much harder to write them. Of the notable differences between MiwasibaS’ descriptions and this script is Nico not being as lazy, Mitsunari being treated a bit more normally, Seishi not being as suspicious and not including Ayumu’s gender reveal within this script. Don’t worry, though, we love these characters as much as you do and aim to give them all justice!

Are you going by the NISA translation when it comes to talents or the raw, translated versions? Are characters being called by their first or last name?

As this is originally a Japanese project, we’ve decided to go with the translations of “Super High School Level” and having characters call each other by their last names (except for Seishi who calls everyone Mr/Ms <First Name>).

Are you going to make more of these? 

This depends largely on the reaction of the community, but the more attention we get, the better!

Will you take my murder suggestion? I have this great idea where Mitsunari kills Ayumu, but it was actually his hidden third puppet, Inu, the dog and….

Alright, I’ve read this giant wall of text. When can I listen?!

We don’t have a solid release date set, but we’re looking at around a late June-July release. We only have one person editing, characters like Ayumu have 230+ lines to record, and some VAs are more active and available to record than others so it will take a while to get to you all, but I promise you that it’ll be worth the wait!

How can I help support this project?

You can help support us by sharing this post and spreading the word online, with your friends, etc.! The more the better! We want to reach the far confines of the fandom with this project. Additionally, if you are a good audio editor, we'd love to hear from you! Just send something in our asks or submissions box and we'll make contact with you :) You can find us on Discord here, please feel welcome to join us!: https://discord.gg/wWBT537 - Mod Saiji

[ehsbha]

The Price Comparison Website Design Information Technology Essay

Introduction For someone who wants to save lots of money, and receive the simplest value for money, they'll meditate comparison shopping. Though it sounds deadening, but it can actually be challenging and rewarding. Analysing brands to seek out out the simplest value for the worth are going to be helpful to everyone. It’s not only for to urge the simplest products for his or her family, but also will help to save lots of money future . albeit they don’t exactly exercise frugal living altogether areas of your life, they will still practice comparison shopping to urge the foremost of cash when certain purchases are made.(1)

Shopping comparison now a days is quite comparing prices. Finding the most cost effective items it not the most purpose, detecting the simplest quality items for the smallest amount amount of cash is that the main challenge. That’s why comparison shopping is becoming an industry of its own.

Comparison shopping engines are suchlike a typical program , where we will search for a selected item of interest. then it comes as an inventory of price and retailer. It also shows customer review to see before buy anything.

To make a price comparison site isn't automatic basically it's a manual task. got to create automatic scripts to undertake and make automatic all that manual work. Just editing feeds manually is extremely time consuming albeit we just consider alittle range as merchants don't provide data to us during a way that the worth comparison site must work properly.

Read More: عروض تلفزيونات

Three steps to a price comparison site

1: Universal data feed importer with Data handling, auto categorisation, data ruleset manager, character manipulation, find and replace, delete and merge facilities. interface, administrator accounts/admins

2: Advertiser login and reporting services, universal product data services, universal site scraping services to gather feeds for merchants that cant/won’t provide them

3: Marketing tools, traffic managers to watch incoming outgoing traffic to form sure purchased traffic is equal or but the money/sales we are making from our own site for those purchased keywords.

In today’s era of low-carbohydrate diets and obsessive exercise routines,

people are more careful with food choices.(2)To cover the 21st century necessities nutriment restaurants accommodate a budget food quickly. Is that food healthy enough? Regrettably, these foods aren't always the healthiest choices. So how tourists or new people can find good foods but cheap price in their locality?

As the present economic problems within the UK is fluctuating and day by day its getting fractious , I’ve started questioning which restaurant food is that the cheapest and giving better deal to the attract their customers. i made a decision to try to to a touch comparison check, taking prices from some major restaurants. This project is aimed toward demonstrative price comparison website where people can compare foods, restaurants and value of their daily needs. they're going to even be ready to read reviews from customers who have already dined within the same restaurant they're trying to find . I even have tried to elucidate all the technologies of behind the scene of a Price Comparison website.

The Web may be a user-directed medium, where people adopt information-seeking strategies to save lots of time. they have a tendency to not seek information during a linear fashion. Instead, they believe the visual cues that give off the strongest signal that their answer is nearby. People direct their attention to those areas and ignore everything else.

AIM: to style a restaurant comparison website.

Objectives: Agree aim with supervisor and develop set of objectives.

Build a solid understanding of web developing and management .

Discuss and agree initial design approach with supervisor.

Background research on web development tools like HTML, SQL, PHP , JAVASCRIPT and ASP.NET

Discuss prototype design with supervisor and agree implement

Implement website.

Test and check the knowledge provided.

Implement database.

Data Importation and Manipulation

Information updating

Test the database

Link the database and website.

Link the database with the company’s in order that the database are often dynamic.

Make the web site secured for the customer

Testing experimentally the proposed approaches

Renewing results and write project report.

Deliverables Project arrangement form

Initial project report

Prototype working demonstration

Detailed logbook with all project data, experimental result and outcomes recorded.

Presentations and viva

Project meeting record sheet

Technical Background and Context There are many price comparison websites. it might be hard-fought to compete with big names like Kelko or pricerunner. Compare to those my website is bit different. i'm comparing restaurants. Imagine we visited someplace in Spain and haven't any idea about nearest restaurants and foods. i prefer to possess Indian foods but don’t know where I can find good Indian restaurants there. Then my website will step in. Just write down area name choose food type that sit. All local restaurants will show up. Even we'll ready to compare customer reviews and costs . it's many job to try to to . But primarily i'm getting to test some limited places and restaurants.

How to Build a Price Comparison Service To start making a price comparison service is sort of challenging. Some technological expertise involves in it. counting on the category of design we might wish to demonstrate, this sort of project could require prodigious amount of financing. After huge research I even have described below basic idea step by step the way to start a price comparison service.[3]

Step 1

The most important thing in starting price-comparison site is to order the indispensable bandwidth and server for hosting purpose. variety of companies are often found offering affordable bandwidth and server to set-up website. Before purchasing got to make certain server provider supports server side scripts like PHP, JAVA and also allows database program like SQL. Own laptop or desktop are often used as a server by installing program like Wamp server, Xamp and Apache.

Step 2

If i might wish to design my website during a highly specialized format i'd got to hire professional web developer. Some freelance programmers will show through basic internet search. If we might wish to choose freelance programmer it's essential to see whether or not they have performed this type of task before or not.

Step 3

In that case I even have decided to not getting to hire programmer, I still be ready to provide my service by using Content Management System (CMS). Through a CMS I can produce my content by employing a user friendly dashboard application. This content is then formatted into users viewable fascinating internet facing application. Several free content management system are often found through internet search.

Step 4

After successful running of website got to get the word out about the service i'm providing. the straightforward way is to seek out bloggers who wants to go to my site and write reviews. This word of mouth can create magic within the internet community.

Step 5

Next thing is to select up an advertising and affiliate site which will allow me to try to to display banner and text ads about my site. All affiliate plans isn't same and not even pay same rate.

Technology The most challenging a part of comparison website is the way to collect go back merchants. a method is to contact with them and collect data directly from them. Retailers will supply their own lists of products and costs . Then these are matched against original database. this will be done by mixture of human labour and knowledge extraction. [5]

Another common way is to gather data thorough a knowledge feed file. Merchants provide information electronically during a set format. Comparison website then imports data. Consolidation of knowledge feeds are often found from some third party businesses so we don't need to import data from many various merchants. Affiliate networks like Linkshare and Commission Junction also add up data feeds from various merchants and supply it comparison sites.

Third approach is to crawl the online for information and costs . during this method Comparison service scans retail sites and collects information instead of expecting them to provide data. this is often also referred to as ‘Scrapping’ information. Suitable for smaller independent sites to urge strait prices from the web site they have .

Crowd-sourching is another technique. Through this system price comparison engine can acquire data from almost any source without complexities of building crawler. Even don’t got to found out data feeds. Actually during this technique visitors import data. Price comparison site collaborated the info with related inputs and eventually add with their main database using collaborative filtering, AI or human labour. Wishabi which may be a Canadian based price comparison site is an example that applies this system .[6]

Anyways, some combination of those approaches are often used also . it's hard to mention which one is best , it only depends sort of business.

[simonposting]

here are some books I enjoyed in 2019

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe — Benjamin Alire Sáenz

is about a boy (aristotle) meeting a boy (dante), becoming friends, and then wondering why he doesn’t like hearing about him kissing boys at college (spoiler alert: it’s not homophobia (well, maybe a little), it’s the other thing!)

Ari is quite an angry young man, with an almost stream of consciousness narration that I found very compelling — the conclusion felt a little rushed to me, but overall: I loved it.

I read this at the start of the year and didn’t keep detailed enough notes so unfortunately don’t have much else to say. Sorry.

Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky

an ark leaving the destruction of earth behind finds a habitable planet populated with Evolved Spiders

I got this for Alex as a Christmas present and he then suggested I read it and yeah, good choice, me. The spiders’ outlook is Weird and Alien and they really struggle to communicate with humans, even when they do manage to Make Contact, because both sides have very different understandings of what is obvious and therefore doesn’t need stating.

Some of the human ark sections felt a little unnecessary but you need to be invested in both sides of the inevitable confrontation for it to land properly, so fine.

There’s also some great stuff with a woman in stasis and an AI copy of her she left to keep things running for her.

The Magicians — Lev Grossman

Our protagonist discovers he’s a magician and packs off to magical boarding school, and despite this taking at least half the book, the actual plot is when he then discovers Legally Distinct Narnia is real and heads off for a jolly adventure that turns out to be largely horrific and traumatising.

The pacing is all over the place, and there’s the classic gay secondary character who doesn’t get to actually do anything despite ostensibly having a friendship with the protagonist close enough to consider him family (he even sleeps with him at one point, in a threesome with a woman, but the narrative and every character treats it as just the protagonist and woman sleeping together). But! Everything comes together in the end in a very satisfying conclusion which left my thoughts coming back to it for months afterwards.

The sequel is just terrible though.

In Other Lands — Sarah Rees Brennan

Is also about a boy discovering magic is real and heading off to magical boarding school, but this one is in the fairy realm, rather than just hidden Hogwarts style.

It tries to do something with the very militaristic society, but I’m not sure it ever actually reaches a point (protagonist pushes for more diplomacy with other races and I guess succeeds but the results all kind of occur “off-screen” so don’t feel hugely meaningful), and likewise with the matriarchally sexist elfs (which doesn’t land because where the humans are patriarchally sexist, they have female warriors and leaders, who are important in the narrative even — the elfs have no male warriors or leaders, and also are notably more puritanical, so it doesn’t mirror well?). And the protagonist is constantly spectacularly annoying.

But it’s gay, so.

Carrie — Stephen King

I don’t need to tell you what Carrie’s about, right?

So, going into Carrie I already knew what the climax was, and I wondered if this would negatively affect my enjoyment of it. Turns out I shouldn’t have worried because it switches between the narrative as it happens, and journals/interviews/articles/etc. written about the events afterwards — “one of her surviving classmates” is mentioned very early on, so the fact that something terrible happens is somewhat of a foregone conclusion. Perhaps knowing exactly what does have an impact, but it’s unavoidable at this point really.

Also turns out the musical lifts a lot of very specific wording from the book to use in the songs, which is nice.

Meddling Kids — Edgar Cantero

when they were teens, four kids and their dog solved a mystery where a haunting was being faked by an unscrupulous property developer. now, three adults and the original dog’s grandchild have returned because maybe there was something else involved after all.

Obviously riffing off scooby doo (though none of the characters perfectly directly align) but with some Actual Supernatural Stuff — in tone I was expecting a sinister underlying mystery, where it’s actually a bit more just straight up fighting lake monsters (etc.), but it’s a good concept. The main obstacle in their re-investigation is their own reluctance to re-examine the traumatic experiences of their youth.

Some of the dialogue is written in script format? (But not all of it), which I got used to but I never understood why this choice was made.

Is also gay. Nice.

For the Time Being — Ruth Ozeki

is about a Japanese schoolgirl writing a journal about her life, and also about a Canadian woman who is reading said journal after it washes up on the coast.

I like reading books in which someone else reads a book, turns out. There are footnotes in the journal, often just explaining/translating specific Japanese terms, in context clearly put there by the woman reading it. She gets overly invested in reading this journal, to the point her husband has to gently point out that it was written years ago, you can’t find her to urgently help. 

I was never 100% certain whether the journal was a true story or not, even setting aside any of the supernatural hints.

Ash Princess — Laura Sebastian

is about a princess of a magical kingdom that was invaded when she was child, who then grew up a captive in her own palace. now she’s going to seduce the prince in order to murder him and throw the occupiers into civil war

Quirky fantasy courtly intrigue. Has some good stuff about how the occupiers treat her culture (she hates that her people’s style of clothing is ‘back in fashion’ now), and about her best friend nonetheless being one of the occupiers, and how she barely actually remembers her own religion really. Goes back and forth on whether she can trust the prince or not.

Doesn’t really conclude though, just sets up for the next book, which I get, but always kind of hate.

Wayward Son — Rainbow Rowell

The sequel to Carry On, which I adore.

Opens with an epilogue, because, our magical chosen one accomplished what he was magically chosen to do last book! The end! But then life goes on. He is probably depressed, and his relationship is not going super well, so let’s go road trip across America.

It’s a tiny bit ‘second book of a trilogy’, and the Road Trip thing feels a bit ‘and then we went to X place and Y happened and then we moved on’ leading to a slightly less overall cohesive narrative? But I still love the writing and characters and there’s some wonderful playing with how the magic system works (words have power from repetition, so spells are all expressions/quotes/lyrics — this means trying to cast British idioms doesn’t work in America).

Ultimately I enjoyed it but I think Carry On stands fine on its own and I don’t really feel that this actually adds much.

I also read several Discworld books — Terry Pratchett

I read the colour of magic years ago and utterly loathed it, so never bothered reading anymore. Turns out they get better! I should have listened! I’m going through roughly in order but skipping ones I can’t be bothered with. things like Pyramids (“all our gods have become literally real and now there’s three of them in the sky physically fighting over the sun”) and Moving Pictures (“we started making movies and accidentally started altering reality a bit, whoops”) are very much my taste.

Here’s to more good books in 2020

Thanks for reading xoxo

[taleshalance4]

Technology Resolutions for 2019

The end of the year is the time for New Year’s resolutions for many of us. How successful are you with your resolutions? We thought so. One reason for not completing your resolutions is that they are too general (“lose weight”). What if you tried to make some of your resolutions more specific by focusing on a single topic? In this roundtable, our experts weigh in on the idea of setting technology resolutions for 2019.

Our Panelists

Dennis Kennedy (DK), John Loughnane (JL), Gyi Tsakalakis (GT), Allison Shields (AS), and Alexander Paykin (AP).

Have you tried the idea of setting New Year’s technology resolutions? Why or why not?

DK: Yes. In fact, Tom Mighell and I have been publicly revealing our tech resolutions on our podcast for the last several years. Going through the exercise has been very useful to me. It gives me a structure to think practically about my own use of technology and, by going public, makes me feel accountable. My success rate has been good, but not perfect, and I’ve noticed that some of the original resolutions might evolve or change during the year, which is not a bad thing.

JL: Not previously. For me (and I suspect many others), New Year’s resolutions have not proven to be an effective means of implementing sustained change.

GT: If by “New Year’s technology resolutions,” you mean “an annual assessment of our technology,” then yes! Every year we review what we currently have, how well it’s working (or being used), and whether there’s something better available.

AS: I am not the biggest fan of New Year’s resolutions in general, preferring to set specific goals with concrete plans of action instead (I seem to get more accomplished that way). I have set technology goals in the past and have been successful at reaching some and not so successful at others. I do have some technology goals on my list for this year.

AP: Absolutely. Every new year is an opportunity for improvement. The trick is to implement the resolutions for New Years and not just make them—make them well in advance. Make Thanksgiving resolutions, then spend December figuring out how implementation would work, then on 1/1, flip the switch.

What themes or specific areas do you target or would you like to target with tech resolutions?

DK: I’ve been using a three-part approach. First, is there a technology pain point that I’d like to alleviate or remove? Second, is there a new technology, a new skill, or a more advanced use of a technology that I’d like to learn? Third, is there something I can do to advance my career, accomplish more with technology, improve processes, or enhance client service?

JL: In lieu of “tech resolutions” I would advocate for “tech commitment” focused on three things: ethics, education, and evolution.

GT: The most recurrent theme is resolving to resist shiny object syndrome. There’s usually a ton of new shiny stuff to try every year. The trick is figuring out what actually delivers something better.

AS: My tech goals have centered on either learning to use technology I already have better, more efficiently, or more consistently; implementing new technology to help improve my practice or the delivery of services to my clients; learning about new technology in the legal space, and turning off technology or reminding myself to use non-tech tools sometimes to reduce information overload.

AP: Major changes. You can upgrade to the new printer anytime. New Year’s should be for big things. Like as of 1/1, we will not use paper files for any new incoming matters. Or as of 1/1, we are switching to a cloud-based practice management system.

What 2019 tech resolutions would you like to share with our readers?

DK: These might change before I finalize them, but here’s my tentative list. First, automate standard tasks and routines by using tools like TextExpander and scripting. Second, I want to dive deeply into idea creation, capture, and management tools. Third, I want to experiment with a niche social media/networking tool called MightyNetworks to try to do some online community creation.

JL: Because the model rules of professional conduct include the requirement of technical competency, I would share a reminder about the fundamental ethical imperative of keeping informed of various technology and associated benefits and risks.

GT: Resolve to avoid shiny objects. Resolve to set S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals through which to measure the value of technology. Resolve to implement technology to measure your client development investments from start to finish.

AS: My main technology goals for 2019 include continuing to learn about new technology and how it affects my clients and their practices (including more about AI, blockchain, and cybersecurity) and implementing some new technology in my consulting practice, specifically webinar or course creation technologies to deliver online presentations or courses.

AP: A few from prior years: 1) Create all new matters in the practice management system and digitize five old (but active) files per week until all are in the PDS. Then, repeat with closed matters until all files are digital. Then, get rid of filing cabinets. 2) Put all files in the cloud and no longer save things to the PC’s local hard drive—ever. 3) Implement a scan on arrival mail policy. 4) Log all digital stamps and maintain an electronic mail log. 5) Invoice all clients electronically. This year’s upcoming resolution: Completely automate the engagement letter process and stop hand-finalizing engagement letter templates.

What are your strategies for achieving your tech resolutions?

DK: I put my resolutions into my task manager, Omnifocus, so they appear to me on a regular basis and I am reminded of them. I also break resolutions down into component tasks so my actual work to move the resolution forward is simpler and more doable. Making them public also helps me stay motivated. The S.M.A.R.T. approach to goal setting can also be very helpful.

JL: Becoming or staying technologically competent can be achieved through many means including joining relevant bar association groups, reading topical articles, and listening to a myriad of podcasts. Clients in all industries are affected by the accelerating pace of technological change—so speaking with clients about their evolving technology challenges is an effective means of staying current on challenges and opportunities.

GT: Set goals. Create a plan to implement. Implement. Measure your implementation against your goals. Rinse and repeat every quarter.

AS: As I mentioned above, I think resolutions are too vague for me—I like to set specific goals and then create a plan to reach those goals by breaking the goals down into smaller, more achievable chunks, and then set deadlines for completing those smaller goals or tasks. For example, if I want to learn more about AI and blockchain in 2019, my first step would probably be to find some resources—books, podcasts, articles, etc. and then set aside time to consume that content. I might even make a plan to write an article or blog post about one or more of these topics since that will force me to have to learn about it.

AP: I am moving the Word versions of my engagement letter far far away and integrating the engagement letter template as an automated document form in my practice management system. To avoid temptation and remind myself to do it electronically, I am leaving a file that looks just like the engagement letter Word file in the original directory, but even though I set it to have Word icon when I click on it, it’s actually a link to my PDS URL. That way the muscle memory and habit of going into that directory will be changed—by force if need be.

What tech resolutions would you suggest might work for many readers?

DK: I like my thematic approach and encourage readers to try that. Buying a new piece of hardware that you really want or trying a new software program or cloud service is also a great starting point. Learning an advanced use of a program you use every day (Outlook, Adobe) is another productive approach. For most of our readers, putting more effort into cybersecurity will be a great resolution.

JL: At one point, a number of lawyers viewed technology as a distraction from their primary practice. At this point, technology is core to the very existence of most clients and fundamental to practicing law effectively. I recommend lawyers view the commitment to staying technologically competent as more than a resolution—but rather as the fulfillment of an ethical duty that should help fulfill client needs and drive practice development.

GT: See my response to question three.

AS: I think everyone is different and has a different level of comfort with technology, but one of the easiest goals would be to look at the technology you already use and identify one to three ways you want to learn how to use that technology better in 2019. That might mean learning how to create Rules in Outlook to better manage your email and then creating time in your schedule to learn how to do it. Or it could mean learning how to create a new report in your practice management or accounting software or developing templates in your document management system to deliver services more efficiently to clients. Sometimes it helps to look at the most time-consuming or frustrating or repetitive actions you undertake regularly and seek out ways that technology can make them easier or more effective.

AP: 1) Create all new matters in the practice management system and digitize five old (but active) files per week until all are in the PDS. Then, repeat with closed matters until all files are digital. Then, get rid of filing cabinets. 2) Put all files in the cloud and no longer save things to the PC’s local hard drive—ever.  3) Implement a scan on arrival mail policy. 4) Adopt an electronic signature policy and an account with a company like DocuSign. 5) Invest in a VOIP phone system which follows you wherever you go. 6) Engage an off-site receptionist service like Ruby, and integrate it into your PDS. There are so many others…

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