#but also in reference to in general nonsense

[sweet-beezus]

Ohhh you wanna fuck around and write about it SOOOO BAD HUH

[lilithofpenandbook]

Sometimes Severus comes up to Minerva. Right up behind her when she's busy. He'll stand there for a good minute as she works on marking assignments and cursing the boy's youthful energy and brilliant eyes- both of which directly responsible for his finishing his work in half the time it takes her.

"What is it, Severus?" Minerva sighs. Might as well get the obligatory nonsense over and done with, she was due a dose of Severus's antics by now (Merlin forbid he go more than three days without bothering her with nonsensical questions or infuriating wit).

"Am I ugly, Minerva?" he asked. Never there was a being with such innocence in their voice.

Minerva took a moment to take in a breath and silently call on all her patience and all her strength. "Yes, very." Her tone was blunter than the knives used to decorate at Halloween- an incident with some particularly idiotic third years had them ban anything sharper than the corners of a book during the Halloween celebrations.

Severus gasped as if stabbed. "What? Minerva, I thought we were friends!"

Minerva snorted. "Any time we interact, it's completely against my will."

"Minerva! you lie so shamelessly it shocks me." Severus made as if to swoon, a hand clutching the right of his chest.

"You must be shocked; your heart isn't where it should be."

Honestly, Minerva had to admire the fact that the insolent little kitten did not falter in his dramatics with her pointing out the key flaw in his act. If anything, he seemed to be encouraged.

"Ay! The pain of the shock, it has spread throughout my chest! Ah, I cannot breathe!" Severus swayed on his feet, leaning against the chair that Minerva was sitting in. "Oh, how your lie shocks me!"

"Well, then, you had better tell me what exactly I lied about," Minerva said briskly, "before you gasp all the air out of your skinny little lungs, laddie."

"You said," the boy said, a sudden glint in his eye and none of the apparent weakness, standing to face her and one of those long, delicate fingers pointed straight at her, "you said, that our interactions are without your will."

"That is no lie, what part of this looks like it's my will?" Minerva replied, knowing full well she wasn't going to appreciate the cheeky answer Severus had prepared for her.

"Why, the part where you remain for my company, mother," Severus replied, his voice light. "Surely, if you didn't want this, you would have, in your infinite wisdom, simply have employed your great power and assumed your famous feline form and just walked away from me."

Minerva fought her smile. His cheek was infuriating while his logic impeccable. "Perhaps I am simply conversing my energy, you arrogant wee rascal."

"You? Too lazy to avoid a nuisance?" Severus scoffed. "Minerva, you wound me. Don't you know how I know you? You've done much more to avoid the mildest of annoyances, do you truly think I believe that you are here against your will merely to converse your energy?"

Minerva let him see the flicker of a smile disgusted as a smirk, letting the bothersome raven have a little treat for his cleverness, hinting to him that he had essentially won this particular argument. "At my age you no longer have the patience to waste on annoyances. You learn to value your peace. You will understand that some day, I hope, little one."

"And if I die, my hair still black and my skin still smooth?"

Merlin, did the child have a turn towards the morbid. Minerva ignored the voice in her that told her that this would have been a retort of her own had she been in a similar conversation.

"Then you'll die a fool."

"A fool, perhaps, but my funeral will be the biggest," he replied, moving to sit on her desk and grabbing the biscuit jar. Minerva intercepted, lifting it from his grip and replacing it with a towel. His protests died in his confusion at the towel, and Minerva huffed and began to wipe his hands as if he was a child. She did not trust him to correctly clean his hands after handling goodness knows what when experimenting with his potions and she didn't care if he knew it.

"Aye, and how did you figure that?" she asked.

"Surely if I die young, I shall be the first. Therefore you all will be part of the funeral-"

"What makes you think I would want to attend your funeral, you little rascal?" She let go of his hands, almost satisfied that they weren't contaminated.

Severus ignored her and instead took a biscuit from the jar. "You will all be there, therefore I will have the biggest funeral. If I die old, you all shall be gone, so my funeral will be the smallest."

Minerva tried not to think of how depressing that sounded, how lonely it seemed. For a brief moment she felt guilty for being so old and he so young. She involuntarily could see him in her mind's eye, going through their funerals until he stood alone. She and the others- Rolanda, Pomona, Poppy, even Fillus and Hagrid- they were all of an age, weren't they? They could expect their lives to reach the end around the same time, surely? Severus was but a child next to them, he'd stand alone one day.

Minerva tried to ignore the ache in her chest at the thought of him standing alone. Merlin, no. He was far too young. No.

"You truly are besotted with the morbid and the miserable, you melanchonic masochist," she said, her tone just a trifle too sharp to be a simple retort.

Severus paused, swallowing the biscuit. Then he answered. "Ah, but the morbid is much more fascinating, the forbidden has a certain thrill, dear mother." His voice was a little softer, and his fingers, slightly coated in crumbs, were gentle when he tapped her forehead. He was sorry he upset her.

"You and your thrills," Minerva scolded, "yet you cannot even eat a biscuit without making a mess of yourself." Yet even as she spoke, the hand that she used to swipe the crumbs away, was gentle, almost tender, in its movement. She had quite forgiven him.

How could she remain angry? At this boy who looked at her with a scowl of indignation yet whose deep, dark eyes twinkled with mischief and cleverness and brilliance, who stood taller than her, yes, yet was far more delicate in his build than she had ever been, whose hair was as dark as hers had been in her youth, carelessly falling across his forehead. No, she could not remain angry.

If only he had been in Gryffindor, perhaps then she would have noticed him sooner. Or rather, if only her eyes didn't only open for her Gryffindors. How this boy could ever look at her without resentment and anger, she didn't know. Then again, he had been so incredibly isolated and lonely, was it any wonder he let go of his rightful grudges and instead accepted her friendship?

Minerva blinked as if soot from the fireplace got in her eyes. She didn't want him to notice the tears that almost inevitably formed whenever she thought about him. Who would have thought that she'd cry so much for the little devil?

"I'll leave you to your work, dear mother," Severus said cheerfully, hopping off her desk.

"Aye, after you've cleared out my biscuit jar, you villain" Minerva grumbled, looking into the empty jar. Severus shrugged.

"You ought to see it as a compliment towards your taste, really," Severus said. "But I see I have taken the last of your patience"- for indeed, Minerva looked ready to strangle him- "so I shall take my leave. Good night, my good Headmistress, and may you have peace in the silver embrace of the moon!"

And with a laughing twinkle in his eye and a boyish bow, Severus Snape left the room.

Minerva sighed. She wasn't sure if it was out of relief, or because she may have felt some sorrow at his departure.

The door opened again, and a rather meek Severus poked his head in.

"Er, Minerva?" he asked.

"Yes, Severus?"

"Er." Severus stepped in, looking away from her, walking with the awkward gait of a newborn foal, and the nervousness of a deer. "Er, Minerva?"

"Yes, Severus?"

"Am I really ugly, mother?" His voice was a whisper. His raven hair curtained his face, hiding his shame at asking such a pathetic question, and his fingers picked at one of the cuticles of a nail.

Minerva smiled, and walked to him. Softly she brushed the boy's hair out of his face and gently tucked it behind his ear.

"Only as long as you let yourself believe it, dear heart."

[quatregats]

Also I realize that the answer is probably just reading enough period sources but as a linguist I really do need to pick Patrick O'Brian's brain about where in the world he got his different speech patterns from

[athena14044]

i am once again contemplating drawing all of padme's (50+) costumes

[stressedsnicketstudent]

What are you people talking about where in the books do they talk about generation long winters. Genuine question because I read them up to the 4th and they are filled with older characters (non-teenagers) talking about the Multiple Winters that have occurred during their human lifetimes. Iirc during the time of the books it has been an exceptionally long summer of like 10ish years

Someone over on Discord asked, "I'm morbidly curious: How BAD is A Song of Ice and Fire in terms of the authenticity George claims it to be?"

My reply was straightforward:

The long and the short of it is that ASOIAF is basically a vehicle for GRRM to present both his rape fetish and his Hobbesian view on human nature and has less historical accuracy than Frozen or most other Disney movies.

That's actually a good way to think of it, now that I've said it--he's Family Unfriendly, they're Family Friendly, but both have the same relationship with History: just Pure Aesthetic with no consideration for how the worldbuilding would work.

[narriose]

Saint Nerevar’s Companions

Queen Almalexia ☆ Alandro Sul ☆ Sotha Sil ☆ King Dumac ☆ Voryn Dagoth ☆ Vivec

Aka I’ve seen so many people described as his close companions, I’m convinced it’s an allegory atp.

Headcanons/Straight up fanfic about these relationships

Almalexia

I feel like her ruthless/soft duiality was there from the beginning, but she never showed the latter due to being afraid of any sort of vulnerability. I think maybe she was threatened by rumors of some upstart warrior preaching unity and organizing on her land and she might have even tried to kill him. I think then Nerevar would drop everything and march up to her castle dropping a blade of the assassin by her feet. Almalexia would ask "What else is a queen to do in a situation like this?" Maybe Nerevar says “A queen is to elect a general.” To which Almalexia would respond “It I would be scandalous to elevate and outsider to such a prestigious role.” Then Nerevar would go like “Then we’ll have to remedy that.” with bedroom eyes etc etc. I think maybe she was able to feel vulnerable around him for the first time, which scared her. Also possibly what here corruption spiral was about that she got from the tools. Something about expecting Nerevar to betray her first. And then later her motherly nature as a god is another mask on top of her ruthless self so she could be in total control.

Alandro Sul:

We do not know much about him but I suspect he met Nerevar when he was uniting the Ashlander tribes. I personally see one of the tribe tasks be something like defeating Alandro Sul in battle of honor, which proved his strength and resolve. I like to also think that like the claim that he was Azura's son is mainly because he was serving her to the very end, pursuing the tribunal after what happened at red mountain.

Sotha Sil:

In my mind's eye he was very reclusive and resigned due to a chronic and potentially terminal illness(an interpretation of his childhood) and perhaps offered to help Nerevar who was traveling with Vivec at the time with magical aspects of their adventures? something something, navigating ancestral tombs and dealing with daedric shrines. Maybe he taught Vivec to read and write? Idk I see Nerevar inspiring Sil to feel life and passion again. I picture his corruption train of thought to be that despite his resignation as a sagely character prepared for his fate, he still wanted to live so much and seeing godhood as his way to do it.

Dumac:

We don't know much about him but I think that perhaps he enjoyed Nerevar's company precisely because he wasn't highborn and knew of other places in the world. I picture them playing some kind of strategy board game and having long conversations. Nerevar would intently listen to everything Dumac would say about the Dwemer society(He was eager for his society to thrive too) and that intrigued Dumac. At some point he was spilling secrets he was not supposed to, and I think when Dumac realize that Nerevar did not expose that information to anyone, that he could really trust him. I think maybe he was one of the few people that Nerevar expressed doubt about not feeling confident enough to accomplish his task of unification causing Dumac to commission the Moon-and-Star ring which turned out to be a placebo, because Nerevar already had what it took. (Seriously the stats on that ring are hilarious)

Voryn Dagoth:

So before meeting Nerevar, he was a leader in his own right and a powerful mage. I feel like the way they met was: Nerevar wanted an in with the dwarves but he needed an introduction. House Dagoth was supposedly the only house the Dwemer had good relations with and so Nerevar went to Kogoruhn. I think his house would be very very traditional and uptight, without any nonsense but sort of had a strange nobility to it. Nerevar would aproach Voryn and before he would even say anything, Voryn would straight up go "Are you just here to butter me up for a reference" and Nerevar would go "So it's not working?" And I think this sort of like honest disregard for procedure and playfully terrible diplomacy is what drew him in. Eventually he would soon go from a solemn, responsible leader, to Nerevar's servant wrapped around his finger. Nerevar's advances at first would be treated without any regard for the longest of time. "I'm not your wife" Voryn would say and then one day he found himself by Nerevar's side, ready to move mountains for him. And his corruption would be around being tired of feeling like a servant and wanting to feel more equal to him.

Vivec:

I like to picture him having like a Senpai/Kouhai thing with Nerevar with a serious case of hero worship.(Based on even his name being inspired by Nerevar) To me, before ages made him the person we meet in Morrowind, he had sort of the same vibe as a kid that got famous online too soon and too far, stunting hisdevelopment in weird ways. Maybe Nerevar saw the potential in him and asked Sotha Sil to teach him how to read and write. Maybe after a lifetime spent as a brute, his creativity exploded leading to him eventually becoming worthy of being Nerevar's advisor. I do think that at first it was Vivec reading a bunch of bad poems to them and Nerevar encouraging him. And his corruption would probably have to do with wishing for Nerevar's spotlight. Like I feel like Vivec was not a balanced and wise sounding god figure for the longest of time judging by his writing and what people say about him. I also like to picture him and Almalexia competing for Nerevar's attention.

Anyway, that's what I've got, feel free to add or correct or anything.

[schizopositivity]

Hearing people throw around the words "delusional" and "delulu" so often when they clearly don't know what it means is so silly to me at this point, but also a little frustrating.

Like I heard someone in a video say "she's the worst type of delulu, where she actually is in a different reality" while describing someone being cocky and overconfident.

As a reminder, delusional means someone is holding a belief or altered reality that is persistently held despite evidence or agreement to the contrary, generally in reference to a mental disorder. Delusions are typically beliefs that exist outside of objective or common reality (so not something subjective like "this art is good"). It is often unshakeable, people can't be talked out of their strongly held belief even if it is completely nonsensical. They typically cause a disturbance to your life, unlike a spirituality or religion that you enjoy.

So someone saying "I'm the most attractive and most talented person in this room" might be annoying, but it is that person's subjective belief. It's your subjective belief that they are not, but neither is right or wrong because it is subjective.

Having a crush on a celebrity and wanting to marry them and imagining that happening is a conscious choice, it's a daydream. Meanwhile delusions are not conscious choices, it is a symptom a person has whether they want it or not.

It's important to uphold the true meaning of this word, because it describes a mental condition that impacts many people. Having the words definition change by making it mean other things does harm us. If we want to open up to a friend about a serious mental problem in our lives by saying "I have delusions", that person should know the gravity of that, and not think it's some fun quirky personality trait that everyone has.

Also the way people misuse the word tends to be in a negative or insulting way, aimed at the delusional person. But delusions dont indicate anything about the delusional persons personality and morals. The delusions are caused by a mental health problem and not chosen by the person. This is important to remember when people have strange, mean, self centered, taboo, or scary delusions, it doesn't mean that a person wants to believe that, they can't control it.

So please try and use the words "delusion" and "delusional" correctly, don't give it a cute trendy nickname like "delulu". And try and educate the people around you about the actual meaning of these words, and the impact of misusing them.

[ms-demeanor]

Hi, I share your strong pro-medicine, pro-vaccines, anti-woo beliefs. I also have chronic digestive issues and insurance that won’t cover the useful specialists. The gastroenterologists I’ve encountered are helpful for making sure my insides look okay but they don’t seem to have much training around nutrition and food science. Nutritionists are unlicensed and I find them about as trustworthy as chiropractors, and I can’t get insurance to cover a registered dietician. The internet is saturated with pseudoscience junk and “miracle cures”, and in moments of desperation I’ve fallen for some of them. Luckily I haven’t been harmed by anything so far, but I don’t think they helped much either.

I was wondering if you or your followers have any resources on IBS and/or GERD that are scientifically sound and written for a general audience? Or advice for identifying when pop-sci-style “food science” articles are a scam?

I deeply regret to inform you that I was so annoyed by this exact problem that I literally went back to school to start working on getting a degree in nutrition and got two and a half years into a second bachelor's degree before realizing I wouldn't be able to get into any programs in my area that I could afford because the local state schools aren't accepting second bachelor's applicants. (Cal State Chico, I love you and you are too far away, it's not meant to be)

Nutrition information online is completely infested with woo and I am hesitant to point people toward one of the good resources I used to reference because it is politically batshit.

If you are looking at a food science article on the internet and are trying to figure out if it's a scam the big red flags to look out for are:

anything claiming to be a silver bullet; there are no silver bullets, no magical treatments, no one weird food that will fix the problem or one weird supplement that will make everything better.

Over-emphasis on a specific type of diet (diet as in "all the food that a person consumes" not as in "weight loss tool") for a general population. It's irresponsible to recommend a rigorous, restricted diet to a wide variety of people because people are so different that one diet that works for one person (say a vegan diet) might be unhealthy or difficult to manage for another person who would thrive on a different diet (low fat, low carb).

Anyone who tells you to cut out an entire food group or macronutrient is a liar who is trying to get your money. Unless it is your personal medical doctor who is saying "you need to stop eating grains" you do not need to stop eating grains and should not stop eating grains. You also do not need to stop eating fat, or eat only protein, or cut all fruit out of your diet. (caveat: there are some conditions that require a very low fiber diet, but even on that diet there are some fruits you can eat)

Beyond that, what you can do to make sure you're getting the best information possible is:

look up the author of any article you're looking at and see what else they've written; check what their qualifications are. See the people they interact with or have collaborated with. If they work heavily with people who are, say, antivax or proponents of raw milk, you should not trust their work.

If you see something that claims to treat your condition or help with nutrition, search "[subject] research study" or "[subject] scholarly research" and see what comes up. Read at least a few papers on the subject and see if there's a consensus or if there are broad disagreements. Get into the habit of looking up the impact scores of journals and researching the history of the journals.

Learn to recognize the woo keywords with your particular illness. For celiac that's "leaky gut," and any article I come across that discusses "leaky gut" gets extra scrutiny because sometimes there are legitimate reasons to describe a "leaky gut" but more often there are woo nonsense reasons. One really good way to figure out what the woo keywords for your illness are is to search "[your illness] + [woo huckster]", so "celiac + joseph mercola" or "celiac + the food babe." (those are good starting places to see what woo is popular around anything nutrition based, really; nothing those two say is trustworthy) you can also try "[your condition] + [specific type of medical woo]" with, like, "chiropractic" and "homeopathic" and "holistic" in the second box.

Be wary of positive assertions without evidence. If someone is making an affirmative statement and they aren't providing a citation, be suspicious.

Anyway. Good luck. It sucks out there.

[littlestickfish]

...I'm sorry, I wasn't going to say anything, but this post is so fucking silly, I just can't

"Religion was man-made!" ....as opposed to what? Alien-made? Dolphin-made? Zebra-made? Who else is out here on this planet making religions other than humans?

It's like "your mental illness is all in your head!" like? Yeah? Where else would it be, my ass??

"Game over!" ....gurl what 🤣🤣

Game over

[ladyrosemone]

Open arms

This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms

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LADS x No-Mc

Tw!: Thoughts about attempting to take one's life (superficial but there), reference to depression, reference to therapy.

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The time after a breakup shouldn't hurt this much, but you have the right to feel this way after going through five in a row in the space of half a year.

Eros must hate you, what did you do to him? Did you offend him in some way? Is it because you said Valentine's Day was a day dedicated to compulsive, capitalist buying and selling without any real love? You was kidding! You were younger and wanted to be cool, not because he should curse you like Apollo after mocking your archery skills!

Maybe if you hadn't done that, you wouldn't be in your apartment right now, eating chips and drinking sugary Coke, watching a romantic comedy that's not funny at all, suddenly crying as if your brain wanted to remind you in every scene between the protagonists that you're not experiencing that, that you're the filler character who helped the male lead realize he actually loved the female lead and leave her at the altar on their wedding day. Yes, that specific.

So what now? What's next for the poor extra in her own movie? The one who didn't ask to be the woman in the trial? What's left for her?

You don't believe in destiny, or in happily ever afters that come out of nowhere, or in all that Valentine's Day nonsense (Yes, now it's against you, Eros), but maybe, just maybe…you need a divine sign, something to push you out of the hole you've been hiding in since your last breakup.

…

Of course, nothing would happen, why would it? The universe is just a collection of molecules about to collide and cause another Big Bang at any second—

Ring Ring! Ring Ring!

- Hello? -

- Hey! - Ryan, your dear paramedic friend, whom you've unfairly been avoiding since Zayne admitted to loving someone else - How are you? I heard it didn't work out with that colonel -

There was no need to reply; your silence was the only response you'd been using lately - Look, I have this pass for a hike to Mount Huangshan, all expenses paid, the girls are going too! -

- I don't know, Ryan, I don't feel ready -

- I understand - He sighs - But it's not fair that you rot in your house while the others go off in some kind of…polyamorous relationship, It's not fair! -

- …What about them? - In the background, his friends could be heard scolding him for being so direct, for saying that over a phone call, for saying it in the first place, while the man tries to defend himself, even he sounds remorseful.

- We didn't want you to find out like this - admits a female voice, her friend Minji, the most sentimental of the five, a creative soul who, indirectly, was the one who encouraged her to go out with the artist.

- Come on! It's time to leave your cave! - Yinou's voice chimes in, strong and demanding, a leader who doesn't leave any of her people behind.

- Come on! Please come with us! - chimes in a smaller but no less strong voice. Daiki was the most protective of the five, also the most vocal in his thoughts and a guiding light on their craziest adventures, just like the one you can experience if you decide to go out.

But can you? Leave your nest, your dark but comfortable home, safe from the pain other people can cause you…

- Sorry guys, I…- The television flashes with a colorful commercial, the happy music and vibrant images catching their attention. She's a presenter, a smiling woman who talks about support groups, techniques for leaning on someone when you can't do it alone.

"And remember, if you have to lie to yourself to be happy, you have to get out of there"

Even if it was a generic phrase, a self-help brand slogan, a product being sold with a yellow phone number, those words echoed in your head.

What are you doing? Why are you letting yourself get so down? Why do you give so much weight to the pain? There's a whole world out there! But what if…

No, you shouldn't think like that even if it's the easiest thing to do, you shouldn't believe that even if it's the most comfortable thing to do, you shouldn't give up - Come pick me up first thing in the morning -

The echo of the celebration had never made you feel so happy before.

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Trust the process, you always tell yourself, trust the process.

Accepting that outing was the best decision at the time, the fresh air felt like a respite for your cramped limbs, walking made your muscles remember how to move, you'd even say you enjoyed catching up with your friends, each busy with their own lives and careers who still made room in their schedules to hang out with you.

But when the euphoria wore off, when the trip ended and everyone went their separate ways, you felt that loneliness again, suffocating you until you were breathless, with the thoughts that were once your allies now the most powerful enemies that have tormented you. You don't want the solitude of your apartment, suffocating and tense, like a horror movie playing every minute and every second. The saddest thing is to think that once this place was your sanctuary, your safe place, and now it's nothing more than a memory of things that were.

It shouldn't feel like this. You don't want to feel like this anymore, but you don't know what else to do or where to look…

Unless…no…you won't sink that low, you can do it on your own; but the way it's gone with this, taking it on yourself only makes you sink deeper into a grave you don't want to reach yet. A broken heart really shouldn't feel like this, but it feels like the world is ending, like nothing makes sense anymore and the only way out is the unthinkable.

No! Stop thinking like that! Why do you suddenly think like that?! You're not like that! You're brilliant! Smart and charismatic! You're interesting and feisty! Loyal and caring! Kind and honest! You're so much more than they thought you were worth…! Why do they keep showing up?!

You're tired of feeling like this; helpless, exhausted, and tearful, as if any breeze would knock you down, you hate how it feels, the weakness in your bones and the weight of the world on your shoulders. Seriously, of all the things that could have brought you down, was a bad love the reason? Pathetic.

- You're not pathetic - you find yourself whispering, your subconscious (or maybe conscious) trying one last time to put up a fight -Just tired…-

You should seek help.

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Years ago, you believed in fairy tales.

Obviously for your age, a child who imagined himself flying on dragons and ruling castles that were actually playgrounds. But at the end of the day, you believed in happy endings and in love that triumphs in the end.

But you had to grow up, and when you grow up, you must forget that.

You don't have a tragic story, you weren't a laboratory experiment, or an enchanted princess thief, your parents didn't die in a dramatic accident or anything like that, just one day…you decided to open your eyes, to understand that not everything is like in fairy tales where the righteous always win and the wicked are punished. Life isn't black or white, it's a blurred gray that swings like a coin about to fall, these are lessons you learned like anyone throughout their life. Perhaps what's different about you is that you hide the emotional aftereffects that come with the lesson, good or bad, you repress it inside like someone who keeps jewels in a safe.

It wasn't fair, but it was the cards you were dealt that made those relationships not work out; but if there's one thing you should be clear about now and always, it's that it wasn't your fault they ended this way; no, repeat it in your head, you did enough.

You loved enough, listened enough, cared enough, and now you've suffered enough. Look in the mirror one last time and begin your own relationship with yourself; heal yourself little by little, but return to being that person who shines on their own.

It will take time, a lot of time, but you have the patience and companionship to achieve it. You don't need a partner or a spouse, not right now.

And that's okay; now is the time to heal.

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why I don’t like AI art

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2, and in BLOOMINGTON at MORGENSTERN BOOKS on Apr 4. More tour dates here.

A law professor friend tells me that LLMs have completely transformed the way she relates to grad students and post-docs – for the worse. And no, it's not that they're cheating on their homework or using LLMs to write briefs full of hallucinated cases.

The thing that LLMs have changed in my friend's law school is letters of reference. Historically, students would only ask a prof for a letter of reference if they knew the prof really rated them. Writing a good reference is a ton of work, and that's rather the point: the mere fact that a law prof was willing to write one for you represents a signal about how highly they value you. It's a form of proof of work.

But then came the chatbots and with them, the knowledge that a reference letter could be generated by feeding three bullet points to a chatbot and having it generate five paragraphs of florid nonsense based on those three short sentences. Suddenly, profs were expected to write letters for many, many students – not just the top performers.

Of course, this was also happening at other universities, meaning that when my friend's school opened up for postdocs, they were inundated with letters of reference from profs elsewhere. Naturally, they handled this flood by feeding each letter back into an LLM and asking it to boil it down to three bullet points. No one thinks that these are identical to the three bullet points that were used to generate the letters, but it's close enough, right?

Obviously, this is terrible. At this point, letters of reference might as well consist solely of three bullet-points on letterhead. After all, the entire communicative intent in a chatbot-generated letter is just those three bullets. Everything else is padding, and all it does is dilute the communicative intent of the work. No matter how grammatically correct or even stylistically interesting the AI generated sentences are, they have less communicative freight than the three original bullet points. After all, the AI doesn't know anything about the grad student, so anything it adds to those three bullet points are, by definition, irrelevant to the question of whether they're well suited for a postdoc.

Which brings me to art. As a working artist in his third decade of professional life, I've concluded that the point of art is to take a big, numinous, irreducible feeling that fills the artist's mind, and attempt to infuse that feeling into some artistic vessel – a book, a painting, a song, a dance, a sculpture, etc – in the hopes that this work will cause a loose facsimile of that numinous, irreducible feeling to manifest in someone else's mind.

Art, in other words, is an act of communication – and there you have the problem with AI art. As a writer, when I write a novel, I make tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of tiny decisions that are in service to this business of causing my big, irreducible, numinous feeling to materialize in your mind. Most of those decisions aren't even conscious, but they are definitely decisions, and I don't make them solely on the basis of probabilistic autocomplete. One of my novels may be good and it may be bad, but one thing is definitely is is rich in communicative intent. Every one of those microdecisions is an expression of artistic intent.

Now, I'm not much of a visual artist. I can't draw, though I really enjoy creating collages, which you can see here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/albums/72177720316719208

I can tell you that every time I move a layer, change the color balance, or use the lasso tool to nip a few pixels out of a 19th century editorial cartoon that I'm matting into a modern backdrop, I'm making a communicative decision. The goal isn't "perfection" or "photorealism." I'm not trying to spin around really quick in order to get a look at the stuff behind me in Plato's cave. I am making communicative choices.

What's more: working with that lasso tool on a 10,000 pixel-wide Library of Congress scan of a painting from the cover of Puck magazine or a 15,000 pixel wide scan of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights means that I'm touching the smallest individual contours of each brushstroke. This is quite a meditative experience – but it's also quite a communicative one. Tracing the smallest irregularities in a brushstroke definitely materializes a theory of mind for me, in which I can feel the artist reaching out across time to convey something to me via the tiny microdecisions I'm going over with my cursor.

Herein lies the problem with AI art. Just like with a law school letter of reference generated from three bullet points, the prompt given to an AI to produce creative writing or an image is the sum total of the communicative intent infused into the work. The prompter has a big, numinous, irreducible feeling and they want to infuse it into a work in order to materialize versions of that feeling in your mind and mine. When they deliver a single line's worth of description into the prompt box, then – by definition – that's the only part that carries any communicative freight. The AI has taken one sentence's worth of actual communication intended to convey the big, numinous, irreducible feeling and diluted it amongst a thousand brushtrokes or 10,000 words. I think this is what we mean when we say AI art is soul-less and sterile. Like the five paragraphs of nonsense generated from three bullet points from a law prof, the AI is padding out the part that makes this art – the microdecisions intended to convey the big, numinous, irreducible feeling – with a bunch of stuff that has no communicative intent and therefore can't be art.

If my thesis is right, then the more you work with the AI, the more art-like its output becomes. If the AI generates 50 variations from your prompt and you choose one, that's one more microdecision infused into the work. If you re-prompt and re-re-prompt the AI to generate refinements, then each of those prompts is a new payload of microdecisions that the AI can spread out across all the words of pixels, increasing the amount of communicative intent in each one.

Finally: not all art is verbose. Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" – a urinal signed "R. Mutt" – has very few communicative choices. Duchamp chose the urinal, chose the paint, painted the signature, came up with a title (probably some other choices went into it, too). It's a significant work of art. I know because when I look at it I feel a big, numinous irreducible feeling that Duchamp infused in the work so that I could experience a facsimile of Duchamp's artistic impulse.

There are individual sentences, brushstrokes, single dance-steps that initiate the upload of the creator's numinous, irreducible feeling directly into my brain. It's possible that a single very good prompt could produce text or an image that had artistic meaning. But it's not likely, in just the same way that scribbling three words on a sheet of paper or painting a single brushstroke will produce a meaningful work of art. Most art is somewhat verbose (but not all of it).

So there you have it: the reason I don't like AI art. It's not that AI artists lack for the big, numinous irreducible feelings. I firmly believe we all have those. The problem is that an AI prompt has very little communicative intent and nearly all (but not every) good piece of art has more communicative intent than fits into an AI prompt.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/25/communicative-intent/#diluted

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[cryptotheism]

hey. i can't think of a nice way to ask this. why does so many occult things have hebrew letters that don't spell anything? (see lower tetragrammaton in that post) are they just random hebrew letters or is there some reasoning behind them?

I believe you're referring to this image by (if I recall correctly) Elphias Levi.

A comprehensive explanation would be worthy of a book, but the short answer is: the "western" in western occultism is generally defined as "the intellectual tradition created by the interaction of Judaism and Hellenic philosophy."

Generally speaking, western esoterica has weird hebrew text magic because it is copying Jewish Hebrew text magic, and Judaism has Hebrew text magic because it is copying Islamic Arabic text magic, and Islam has Arabic text magic because they translated a bunch of Greek books that had Greek text magic. And a lot of those Greek books were probably influenced by versions of Judaism that don't exist anymore. And the Jews and the Greeks were both copying the Egyptian text magic who were also copying everyone else in return.

The guy who made this symbol specifically, Elphias Levi, was basically a weeb for Judaism. The 15th-18th centuries had a lot of guys like that. They liked Judaism, some of them even liked Jews, but almost universally they weren't that good at speaking and reading Hebrew. So their takes on the Hebrew text magic involves a lot of mistakes and misspelled Hebrew words. Which is tricky, because the authentic Hebrew text magic also involves a lot of misspelled Hebrew words, but they're misspelled for complicated reasons that rabbis argue about. Elphias Levi was not a rabbi.

But! That also doesn't make this symbol nonsense. There is a logic to the placement of the Hebrew letters, but that logic isn't based solely on Jewish mysticism. It's based on the interpretation of Jewish mysticism through other textual corpses, namely hermeticism and Christianity, or interpreting Jewish mysticism as one of many elements in a broader philosophical environment.

[secretlysimpash]

a quick omegaverse Ghost x Fem Reader thing

!!! MDNI !!!

warning(s): reader uses she/her, typical A/B/O shit (knotting, scents, marking, slick, mention of pups), mates at first sight (or at first scent, ig), slight breeding kink if you squint, slight poly or shared mate at the end of you really squint

pt. 2

pt. 3

Imagine being the pretty little omega who follows Laswell around whenever she visits 141's base, or pack house, or whatever it is they have. You're the assistant to the beta, usually wearing a scent blocking patch over your glands for these visits. Its advised by Laswell, even if the patches are itchy.

Laswell's on base for a meeting today, one with the General, a Commander, and her long-time friend Captain Price (or "John", as she always refers to him). You were advised, or warned, to stay in the car or the surrounding area by the base. Do not enter. You...Make the executive decision to ignore that order and begin wandering the halls of the base, staying far from the meeting room...Patch-less.

The base is empty anyway...Why would she tell you to wait outside? But you quickly realize why when a rutting Ghost picks up on your scent, blood in the water. Suddenly, you're being herded into his quarters and he's shoving his face against your scent gland, inhaling like he needs your scent to survive. This man is all animalistic growls and rough touches as he moves you to his bed.

Your inner omega stirs awake, responding to this absolute beast of an alpha. The scent that's usually hidden behind the patch fills the room, mixing with his own woodsy, leathery scent. You whine when his tongue darts out to taste you, and he responds with a raspy voice.

"Omega...Mine..."

Slick forms between your legs from those words alone.

He sinks his teeth into your scent gland, binding you two as mates.

. . .

Hours pass during that meeting. When Laswell can't find you in the car or the town after its over, she blows your phone up with texts and calls. About a half hour of looking, and you still don't turn up. Before she can call in a missing persons report or something, John texts her, tells her he found you. He warns that she should give you a moment.

Laswell, just wanting to know what happened to her assistant, is having none of this "oh just wait for a little bit longer" nonsense. She barrels into the base, seeing John standing outside of a door. She can't pick up on scents, but it might be the reason for the troubled look on his face. His hat is off, and his hair looks like he's been tugging on it.

Before he can stop her from entering the room, she throws the door open and is met with...One hell of a sight.

You, being held close to Ghost's chest. He's completely bare, and your clothes are in shreds on the floor. There's marks all along your neck...But you don't seem to be in any pain. You're actually asleep, peaceful. When Laswell takes a step into the room, Ghost growls a warning to her.

"Ghost...That's my assistant, and we're leaving."

"She can't." He rasps out, resting a hand on your belly. "Still stuck."

"Stuck?"

"On my knot."

A look of shock and horror from Laswell.

"She's my mate now. My omega."

An attempt at words which fails, each sentence from the Lieutenant throws her for a loop.

"And she will have my pups. I'll knot her again and again until it takes." He drawls, his hips shifting slightly beneath the thin sheet that Laswell can only assume John hastily draped over you two for privacy sake.

Even in your sleeping state, Laswell swears she sees you smile...Hears a purr raise from your throat.

John promptly pulls Laswell out of the room, closes the door, and tries to explain that it...Might be best if you stay with Ghost for now, apologizing all the while, sounding guilty for his Lieutenant's actions. But don't worry, he'll make sure the sergeants stay away from you!

The sergeants that Ghost shares everything with...The same ones who are also going into a rut soon.

It'll be fine.

[twilightkitkat]

Everyone knows that Deadpool can break the 4th wall. It's a large part of his charm: being able to directly address the audience and make popculture references that don't exist in the MCU.

It's a common gag in fanfiction for Logan to be slightly weirded out by this but to just let it go.

But can we talk about the implications of knowing about 4th wall? The potential?

Imagine Wade, knowing that he's trapped inside a story that nobody else is aware of. Knowing that his fate is in the hands of the storywriters and that if he doesn't perform well for the audience, his universe could cease to exist. Knowing that he's just a character and being completely alone in that knowledge.

Knowing that he's played by an actor. Knowing that nothing is really in your control. Knowing how your fate rests in the hand of corporations and money. (Knowing nobody is safe as long as they can be used to further your character development.)

He knows that there's a plot and the general rules of it. He knows that The Conflict can't be resolved that easily and when the end of the movie is coming. He knows how to tell narrative death flags.

He partially makes references to keep the audience engaged (to keep his existence renewed) and partially because it's funny to see everyone confused over a joke only he gets.

But every reference is trying to see if anyone else knows, too. He's throwing out the bait. (Trying to see if anyone knows that the world they're living in is fake.)

And everyone sees him as crazy for it. Schizophrenic, manic, insane. (And maybe he is. It's not like he can prove it to anyone.)

Wade assumes things about the world and they're generally correct. He knows the rules of the game, knows the writers, and has a razor-sharp intuition that has his allies questioning him sometimes (he knows popular tropes).

And so, when he realized that he was in a movie with Logan, he made a lot of assumptions. That they would have to work together. That they'd overcome their differences and grow closer.

But most importantly, he assumed the limits. Disney wouldn't make an openly gay character, would they? Deadpool is fine because he's a joke but Wolverine would never be seriously gay, even if he was queer in the comics.

So he sees it as safe to flirt and joke because it wasn't going anywhere. Being gay was funny to the target audience, but that was it. It'd never be taken seriously in a superhero movie. (Especially with characters as popular as Deadpool and Wolverine.)

Wade was either getting Vanessa or nothing. That was how the story was written.

So he never takes Logan's feelings seriously. He cared about him in a very family-friendly bro kind of way and that was it. He doesn't even consider the idea of romance. He jokingly flirts and spews innuendos, but they never went anywhere. Wouldn't go anywhere. Ever.

And Logan is confused because he thought Wade was attracted to him, yet he keeps brushing him off as friendly when he tries to be sincere. He one time legitimately shared a bendy heart straw with him by Wade's request and Wade just played it off as a bit.

And also, Wade keeps making references he doesn't understand. That nobody understands. And he'd chalk it up to saying random shit except Logan starting paying attention and it's all oddly cohesive and creates a singular story. It ties together in ways that complete nonsense doesn't.

And that's leaving out Wade's "intuition." How he makes comments about "tropes" and "cliches" like they're in a movie except that he ends up being right. Almost every time. It's like he can predict the future, but in a vague yet oddly specific way. Like he can see how things are going to go.

And sometimes, when Wade thinks Logan isn't paying attention, he notices how he mutters to himself in dread. And how something bad almost always happens after.

It makes him disturbed and painfully, achingly curious. What was Wade seeing that he wasn't? It could be that Wade was a secret prodigy, but that didn't seem to be the case? Some of this was too specific and far-fetched.

(All while Wade laments over the lack of agency in his own life, subject to the currents of the story while being painfully aware of it. He couldn't live a life of blissful ignorance like everyone else. It's like he saw a tsunami hurdling toward him—even if he ran away at full speed, the plot always caught up to him somehow.

Trust him. He'd tried to outrun it.)

[fairytaleendingss]

Hello! I’m loving Room For One More, and you said you were taking requests?

This is kind of a general one, but could you do another chapter focusing on Remus’ chronic illness?

I struggle with severe chronic pain and chronic illness in general and haven’t had a relationship in 5 years bc of it (it’s hard to meet people and a lot of people see it as a burden, unfortunately) so seeing cute fluffy things with chronic illness representation gives me hope for the future 😅

Thanks for the consideration :))

- ✨💚

Room for One More?

Chapter 13

Summary: You and Remus have some time to bond.

CW: Depiction of chronic illness, alcohol consumption.

Pairing: Poly!Marauders x fem!reader

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12

So I received this request a few months back and I feel really guilty that I haven't gotten to it sooner. I know how important representation is and I wanted to make sure I gave it a the proper time and thought it deserves. I also I wanted to include it somewhere that made sense to the plot of the story and I hadn't found a good spot previously.

I feel like I could've done better during this series in general with including Remus' illness and I'm going to try harder to make more reference to it in the remaining chapters. I feel that my representation of RA throughout this story hasn't been present enough since it was introduced and I'd like to try to capture a more accurate depiction of it going forward.

One again, I want to disclose that I myself do not suffer from any chronic illnesses, so I apologise for any inaccuracies that may be in here.

I hope this is what you were looking for, anon and sorry again that it took so long. Enjoy the chapter.

--

Mary was staring. Leaning up against the kitchen counter in her brand new apartment. It was her housewarming party. She and Lily had just moved in to a new place together and decided to throw a celebration. All of their friends were there, crowded around, drinking wine and listening to an eclectic shared Spotify playlist.

However, there was something not quite right about the picture she was looking at. She was watching from across the room as you and James danced together, laughing goofily as you pretended to know what you were doing. Beside you on the couch sat Remus and Sirius, snuggled up together, laughing at the display.

She narrowed her eyes as she watched. She was happy for you all, of course she was. She loved how happy you'd recently seemed, however, she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was something... off about the new sets of couples that had recently emerged in the apartment.

"Is everything okay, love?"

"Huh?" she was snapped from her thoughts as Lily came to stand beside her, rubbing a gentle hand down her girlfriend's arm.

Lily chuckled. "I wanted to know if everything's okay. You look like you just bit down on a lemon."

Mary raised her brows. "Do you think something weird's going on with them?"

Lily glanced across the room. "No? I think they look happy."

"Hmm, maybe," Mary responded, unconvinced. "I just feel like there's something we're missing."

Lily just smirked, taking Mary's glass of White Wine from her hand. "I think you've had a few too many glasses of this tonight."

Mary rolled her eyes affectionately. "Nonsense. I don't know what you're talking about."

Lily leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to her girlfriend's waiting lips.

---

The energy in the room was high as Mary's playlist gave soundtrack to the evening. You and James were dancing around the room, utterly embarrassing yourselves while Sirius and Remus sat curled up together, Sirius throwing his head back and groaning dramatically every time a Taylor Swift song came on.

"Come on, Sirius. You aren't fooling anyone!" James exclaimed towards his friend as he twirled you playfully. "I know you listen to 1989 while you work out."

"I do not," he grumbled, folding his arms across his chest. "Back me up here?"

He looked up at the man his lap was played across, however, Remus only shrugged. "Sorry love, you hum in your sleep."

Sirius sighed thickly. "You all are the worst. How am I supposed to maintain my rockstar image with accusations like these!"

"I say own it," you chimed in.

"Come on, mate! You know you want to dance!" James exclaimed, doing that stupid lasso throwing move towards him, causing you to let out a loud groan at his silliness.

"I do not," Sirius huffed petulantly.

"Yes you do!"

Sirius paused for a moment, weighing his options before rolling his eyes and begrudgingly standing.

James cheered as Sirius began to join in, moving goofily around to the music. You couldn't help but chuckle as you watched the two dance together. They were always a chaotic duo.

You looked over at Remus who was watching on affectionately.

"You want to join us?" You asked, extending a hand to the man.

He chuckled but shook his head. "I'm alright here, thank you."

"Oh come on, Rem," Sirius exclaimed. "It'll be fun!"

"I'm alright," he stated once more.

"Are you sure?" you asked.

"Uh, yes," he muttered bashfully. "Truth be told, I'm not feeling the best this evening."

"Rem! Why didn't you say anything," James all but shouted, moving to take a closer examination of his friend.

"It's nothing, really. Just my usual symptoms," he tried to brush off but you could see the crease of pain between his brows.

"Well, this won't do," Sirius muttered. "Come on, I'll take you home."

Sirius moved to find the car keys but Remus stopped him with a tug of his wrist.

"Sirius wait. I'm fine, I promise. You were really looking forward to tonight. Besides, I'm designated driver, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah," Sirius hummed, deflating slightly.

"That's okay. I can take you. I've only had one drink," you intervened.

"A-are you sure?" Remus inquired, looking at you guiltily. "I don't want to pull you away from the party."

You smiled at him. "It's okay. There'll surely be others."

"Well thank you. I really appreciate that," he responded sincerely.

"It's no problem, Remus. Let's get going."

--

Up close, it became all too apparent that Remus really wasn't feeling well. His eyes were shut and he was resting his head against the passenger window the entire way home, his face pinched in pain.

You couldn't help but cringe in sympathy. You wanted to say something but you weren't sure what would be helpful right now, if anything at all. So instead, you drove in silence. You said an internal thank you to whatever higher power encouraged Mary and Lily to move only 20 minutes from where you lived.

Remus sat up slowly, blinking heavily as you pulled into the garage of your building. You looked over at him, biting the inside of your cheek.

"The stairs are going to be a pain," you muttered sympathetically.

Remus sighed deeply and ran a hand down his face. "'Just have to get it over with I suppose."

You exited the car before making your way around to the passenger side to assist Remus. Where he normally would have seemed uncomfortable with this kind of doting, today he just felt grateful.

His joints were so stiff that he could barely make it up the stairs at all but with your support and a lot of effort you managed to get to the front door.

Walking into the apartment, you deposited him on the couch. He groaned and lifted his heavy legs up so they were stretched out in front of him. You sighed deeply as you watched.

"Can I get you anything?" You asked gently. You couldn't help the pang of worry that was congealing in your stomach as you watched him. He was looking extremely pale and there were drops of sweat beading across his forehead, an indicator of the pain he was experiencing.

"My wheat bag would be nice if it's not too much trouble," he muttered stiffly.

"No of course not!" you were quick to respond. "I'll be right back."

You couldn't help but watch him over the kitchen bench as the bag went around in the microwave. You bit your lip nervously. You weren't quite sure what to do to make him feel better. In the time you'd lived with the boys, you'd seen him go through a few flare ups here and there but nothing nearly as bad as this one, and you'd never been here with him on your own either. You'd always had one of the other boys to help out.

You thought for a moment about calling James or Sirius for help but you quickly dismissed that idea. You were being silly. You and Remus had on good terms as of late, you would even go so far as to call him a friend. And he'd taken such good care of you when you'd been unwell all those weeks back, the least you could do was repay the favour.

You straightened up as the microwave began to beep and hurried to deliver the bag to Remus.

He looked up slowly through tired eyes when you returned, smiling appreciatively.

"Where do you want this?"

"My right knee," he muttered and began to carefully lift up his pant leg.

Your eyes widened as he revealed the red, swollen joint.

"Remus! This looks awful!"

You gently placed the wheat bag on the appendage and he let out a gentle sigh of relief.

"Thank you. It's really not that bad."

You gave him a look that told him you could tell he was lying.

"You don't have to pretend to be okay, you know? I'm here to help. I want to know what's really going on."

He let out a breath and ran a shaky hand down his face. You watched as his front receded ever so slightly. In all honesty, he was too tired to put it on anymore.

"Do you mind grabbing the pills from beside my bed?"

You smiled at him gently. "Of course."

--

You spent the next while doting on Remus. You got him everything he needed, completed his usual chores around the house and even ordered food from his favourite Chinese place for dinner.

All the while, Remus thanked you profusely and you could see the guilt that lingered behind his eyes, despite your continuous reassurance that you were happy to help.

It was about 11pm when you found yourself sitting in the arm chair beside the couch where Remus was situated, watching Netflix together. Every now and then your gaze would flicker towards him, eyes flitting over his features in an attempt to assess how he was feeling. You couldn't help but take notice the way his lips pursed in concentration as his gaze stayed glued to the TV, or the way his hair, in need of a cut, was slightly disheveled and began to curl around the base of his neck. There was something endearing about him, you observed. He was handsome in a sort of tender and understated way. Where James was strong and buff and had a boyish charm, and Sirius' look was bold and unique, Remus' attractiveness was more subtle. He had gentle features and dark, kind eyes that you couldn't help but become lost in. There was something so intriguing and mysterious about him that made you curious to learn more, even during the times where you hadn't been friendly. He was unlike anyone you'd known before.

"You can stop worrying, you know?" He drawled lowly, not turning his gaze away from the TV.

You sat back in your seat, being broken from your thoughts. "I'm not."

"Yes you are. I can feel you looking at me."

"Oh well, excuse me for being concerned about you."

He sighed thickly. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Remus," your voice was small as you replied. There was so much on your mind, especially when it came to him. So much about him you didn't understand.

You bit your lip as you turned back to the TV, watching the colours flicker and flash through the screen, casting light in the otherwise dark room.

After a moment you heard a shuffling begin beside you. Your eyes widened as you turned to look at Remus, who was attempting to swing his legs over the side of the sofa.

"Remus, what on earth are you doing? You're in no position to be walking around right now."

"I'm not! I promise. I was just trying to make some room."

"Oh." Your brows furrowed as he scooted over on the couch. You weren't quite sure what he was trying to do until he patted the spot beside him, glancing up at you with hopeful eyes.

"Will you sit?"

It seemed a peace offering of sorts.

Hesitantly, you got up from your chair and moved to sit beside Remus. Once he was sure you were comfortable, he carefully placed the blanket he was previously using over both your laps.

You looked at him skeptically, unable to gather what was going on in his head. Remus was just like that. Completely unreadable. An enigma.

He cleared his throat nervously. "I'm sorry if I've been a little short with you."

"Remus, it's okay," you responded sincerely. "You're in pain. It isn't your fault."

He sighed. "I don't just mean today."

He turned to look at you, guilt clouding his chocolate eyes.

"I've behaved poorly towards you ever since you moved in. I know it's no excuse but if I'm being honest, I was scared," he didn't know entirely why he felt the need to say it. Maybe it was the medicine or the pain or a combination of both but you'd been so undeservingly kind to him this evening. And all these feeling had been swirling around inside of him for so long, they were ready to burst out of him.

"Things weren't easy for me growing up with... all this." he gestured absently to his leg that was now propped up on the coffee table. "People weren't always understanding about it. Especially when I was younger. It took me a long time to find a place where I felt accepted and not like I was an outcast or a burden. I suppose that means I don't take too kindly to change."

He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his walls slowly but surely begin to lower, as you watched him sympathetically.

"But that was no reason for me to be cruel to you when you've been nothing but kind in return. So for that I'm sorry."

You smiled gently. "Remus, that's okay. I understand."

You shuffled closer to him. "And I'll have you know that no one thinks of you as a burden. You have amazing friends who care about you so much. And as scary as it is to be vulnerable around new people, I promise I would never judge you. I'm always happy to help whenever you need me."

He let out a breath of relief, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He smiled at you kindly, appreciation pooling in his eyes.

"You're wonderful. You know that?"

His words sunk in to your skin and you felt heat rise to your cheeks, suddenly exposed under his gaze. Your eyes fell to your lap as a nervous chuckle escaped you.

Remus reached up, brushing a stray strand of hair behind your ear. The gesture was unbearably tender. You looked back up at him. His eyes flickered with vulnerability as a heavy tension settled between you, completely unlike the kind that has encompassed you before. Your heart began to race.

It was at that moment, the door burst open and James and Sirius stumbled into the flat.

"Honey, I'm homeeee!" you heard James call out, followed by a excessive amount of snickering from Sirius.

You pulled away from Remus suddenly, scooting back on the couch as if you'd been burned.

"You two are back early," you remarked in surprise.

"We just missed you guys too much!" James exclaimed as he came around the back of the couch and pressed a sloppy kiss to your cheek. His breath smelt like wine.

"How are you feeling, my love? Did Y/n take good care of you?" Sirius cooed, coming to sit beside Remus on the arm of the sofa and running a hand through the mans hair.

"She did a lovely job. I might have her replace you next time."

You chuckled and watched as Sirius pressed a hand to his chest and gasped dramatically in mock offence.

"I can't believe this! My own lover is replacing me. How ever will I go on?"

You giggled once more as Remus rolled his eyes fondly.

"On that note, I think it's time for bed, love." Remus turned his attention to you. "Thank you again for all your help tonight."

You smiled gently. "Don't mention it."

--

As you laid in bed with James' arms curled around you, sleep refused to come.

There was a heavy lump of guilt in your stomach and you didn't fully understand why. It wasn't like you'd done anything wrong. Nothing had even happened. You and Remus had just been talking, that's all. However, the feeling hung over you like a raincloud over your head.

You rolled over to face the boy beside you. The sweet boy who you truly cared for so deeply and you snuggled into his chest.

You shut your eyes tightly, trying to rid your mind of the thought. But as you began to drift off, it was Remus' eyes you saw.

You wondered as you fell asleep, if it was possible to have feelings for more than one person at the same time.

--

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[sightseertrespasser]

"I have a whole other tangent I could elaborate on about Tacnet specifically" Staring at you with big HUGE eyes. I would love to hear the tangent

Alrighty then.

First things first, what is Tacnet?

Sometimes also referred to as a Battle computer, Tacnet is short for Tactical Network and its ostensibly the worlds most demented excel spreadsheet.

In more literal terms, Tacnet is a type of supercomputer.

Supercomputers are incredibly useful pieces of technology. Able to run simulations, predictive algorithms and utilizing real world statistics to essentially speculate the past, present or future. The bottleneck for a regular old supercomputer is that someone has to sit down and manually input all the information necessary for those calculations.

You want to know what kind of gun made that specific bullet hole?

Well first the supercomputer needs the ballistics data off as many kinds of guns as possible, then it needs data on the material that was shot, and it also needs as much information as possible on the bullet hole in question.

You skip out on any of that input and the odds of the supercomputer being correct gets progressively lower.

Problem is, the supercomputer can’t actually think, and therefore can’t estimate how accurate its own calculations are. A computer works in total binary. If it only has the ballistic data for three kinds of guns, it doesn’t matter how much the bullet hole doesn’t match the data sets its been provided, the supercomputer will select whichever of the three matches the hole the most closely.

A computer, no matter how advanced, is incapable of knowing when it doesn’t know something.

But people on the other hand. . .

We turn now to an ambitious young R&D developer many millennia ago.

Once upon a time, this member of Research and Development was on the team responsible for designing new Cold Constructed mechs for Sentinel Prime. And they had a GREAT idea.

“I’ve got it!” They say, unaware of the ominous music rising in the background.

“The great powers of the supercomputer cannot be realized within its current limitations! Its greatest flaws are that it must be stationary, it must be manually fed information and all calculations it does generate must be reviewed by a thinking mech!”

Their coworkers groan. It’s too early in the morning for this shit.

“Therefore!” The mech says, quickly sketching out a box full of smaller boxes that is supposed to be a computer and the miserable approximation of a mech.

“We simply remove the separation, and make the mech itself the data intake for the supercomputer!”

Lightning crashes in the distance, someone tiredly gets the fire extinguisher. Again.

It’s not a hard sales pitch for a totalitarian government to go “Yeah we want super-cops. Here’s the money, make it happen.”

And in a tale as old as capitalism, an untested feature was rolled out with catastrophic consequences.

If you’ve read my tangent on how Crashes work, then you already know about logic cascades.

Tacnet is a supercomputer. A tool. Like any tool, it’s only as good as the person using it, and someone who really doesn’t know what they’re doing is liable to hurts themselves.

So what can Tacnet really do in the hands (or processor) of a master?

Some psychic-type level nonsense. Anyone who’s gotten the hang of their Tacnet, in their own fields of expertise, are able to know exactly what will happen before anyone else.

Let’s compare Smokescreen, Bluestreak and then Prowls Tacnets and how they’re used.

Every Tacnet starts the same, but can be developed and trained to excel at different things.

Smokescreen - Place Your Bets

Smokescreen has trained his to work best for gambling. “Training” can be anything from downloading tables of statistical analysis to personally observing the phenomenon and making notes.

Let’s look at rolling dice. If you rolled a six sided die, any number is equally likely to be rolled. Or 16.67 % odds for each.

So if 3 dice are rolled, then every total value outcome from 3 to 18 must be equal odds as well, right?

Nope! If three six sided dice are rolled, there is a 12.5 % (or 25% if you combine them) chance it’ll be a 10 or 11. And that’s out of sixteen possible outcomes.

So if you know the difference but your opposition doesn’t, then suddenly you have a huge advantage while betting. And this is just the most simplified example I can think of.

If you’ve got the time, statistics are absolutely wild and there’s a mathematical equation for pretty much anything.

All Smokescreen has to do to get good at a game is learn the rules and then plug in the numbers. You know how card counting will get you banned from most casinos? Well Smokescreens worked that out too. Talking to other players (collecting preexisting data points) he can find the average of how much he can win in a night before people get too pissy.

Another thing Smokescreen has going for him (especially over Prowl) is that Smokescreen is much better at reading people. He doesn’t just have statics on the games, but the players.

Mapping out the connections between individuals and taking personal motivations into account, Smokescreen at his peak can not only predict who the winners will be, but he can also predict who will loose on purpose, who will bet the most, who will cheat and who will seek to take their winnings by force.

Experience, experience, experience is the golden ticket.

Also, it’s Smokescreen himself who has to craft the profiles of his victims gambling buddies. Once fleshed out, Tacnet can do wonders mid game, giving Smokescreen room to focus on his social schemes instead.

Luckily, after the burning of Praxus, most people don’t really know what a Tacnet is truly capable of. So Smokescreen looses just often enough to keep folks from realizing that he always knows how every game will play out before they even start.

Bluestreak - Shoot Your Shot

Going in the opposite direction of utility, Bluestreaks Tacnet is all about kinetic calculations.

This fucker is doing the type of math that’s more letters than numbers. Constantly.

Air resistance, velocity, acceleration, gravity, weight, density, temperature, vector, displacement and time.

There’s equations that call for each and every one of those factors, usually in combination.

Your average sniper, even a good one, is usually considering wind speeds, the pull of gravity and the distance from the target when lining up a shot. Bluestreak is taking in all that and then working out the influences of about 15 more factors on top of that. Even before he’s picking where exactly on the target he’s going to hit. Since remember, if he’s got data on not just his own weapons but his enemies defenses, then it really becomes as simple as “would you like them disabled or dead?”

Aim is no longer a question of ability, but an equation to be solved.

Still, physical capabilities does play a part since a steady hand goes a long way towards realizing those calculations.

Tacnet may crunch the numbers, but Bluestreak is the one who has to find all the details relevant to the shot and pick which ones to feed to the machine.

Additionally, Bluestreaks Tacnet in particular has the experimental feature of massively increasing the amount of sensory data he can take in per second, effectively causing him to perceive things in slow motion. This is less something Tacnet is doing, and more a case of Bluestreaks own processor utilizing the bandwidth normally taken up by Tacnet.

Tacnet itself takes a substantial amount of power to run. Normally, it causes problems by siphoning too much power from other systems to do its job (see logic cascade crashes). But Bluestreak has the funny little quirk of somehow doing that in reverse. So when his sense of time dilation becomes maxed out, Tacnet isn’t running the formulas to help him shoot anymore, it’s just Bluestreaks own skills at that point.

Outside of that rare circumstance, Bluestreak is effectively playing with aimbot in real life.

Prowl - Know Your Fate

So we’ve established that Tacnet is powered by mathematical formulas and data collection.

What would happen if someone just, kept going? Kept feeding it? Building up more and more infrastructure for Tacnet to grow around until it has a point of reference for almost anything?

You get an oracle.

Prowl puts the Tactical back into Tacnet. He’s essentially the Jack of all Trades and Master of several of those subjects actually.

Sure, Smokescreen has him beat for behavioral analysis, and Bluestreak is leagues beyond what Prowl can calculate for trajectories. But no one has doubled down on what Tacnet can really do like Prowl has.

You know that (not actually true) statistic about how humans only use 25% of their brains? That’s your average Tacnet user.

Prowl just happens to be insane.

He is constantly taking in new data. He is constantly taking notes, making observations, stripping it down to the raw numbers involved and packing it away into monumental resource centers for Tacnet to refer to.

You ever see someone who’s really good with excel sheets and then see them do some shit you didn’t know excel sheets could even do?

It’s kinda like that.

If you’ve ever read the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, a lot of what makes Sherlock so effective is having such a detailed knowledge of the world around him.

Let’s go back to the bullet hole analysis.

Prowl could look at the bullet hole and tell you after two minutes: “It was this specific Cargo vessel at this time with an illegal weapon.”

From the outside, this looks like a baseless guess. But to Prowl it looks like this:

a) The gun must be a new imported weapon as nothing he currently has on file matches the marking its made in that kind of material.

b) The shooter not only missed their shot, but was shooting downward at an excessive angle. Indicating this was a very large mech firing downward at a much smaller target, likely a mini bot.

c) The shooter can be exactly tracked by looking at the local registry for recent out bound flights, specifically ones with no cargo.

Why? Because the shooter is most likely a transport shuttle. Easy access to imported goods, very large but not a war frame (hence the missed shot) and having failed to kill their victim, would flee town immediately without waiting to take on cargo.

Of those two minutes it took, he spent 1:30 waiting for the flight records to load so he could look up the name of the shuttle.

Scale those skills up to a war room, and Prowl not only knows why an enemy troop is retreating, but where they’re retreating to, what losses they must have taken and whether or not it’ll be worth it to finish the job.

Prowl isn’t smart because he has a Tacnet. Tacnet is OP because Prowl is that smart.

When I write his perspective, Prowl often has an accuracy percentage attached to his calculations. Tacnet isn’t the thing making those estimates. Prowl is the one judging how accurate Tacnets suggestions are.

Dudes just a freak.

—————————

In summary, Tacnet is like if you had every kind of calculator in your pocket and the only limit was how many equations you’ve added on and the amount of information you can feed it.

That last bit is the biggest challenge for Tacnet, as conflicting or flawed data can cause. . . Issues. Aka Logic Cascades. Aka “Why can’t I make it make sense.” Disease.

Let’s just say there’s a reason not many people know what Tacnet is capable of, as a lot of early Praxian Enforcers could be taken out by confusing emotions, plot holes, and particularly well executed magic tricks.

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when your new shiny police force can be hospitalized by watching Back to the Future 2.

Being one of the first Cold Constructs built with a Tacnet, Smokescreen figured out how to mostly get around that glitch early on and taught Prowl and Bluestreak how to do the same. In this particular setting, Tacnet is poorly understood and best kept mostly secret for those reasons.

(Bizarrely, between Tacnet and the radar uses of doorwings, Prowl and his brothers would actually be really good at predicting the weather.)

———————————————————————

Bonus bit: Good fucking lord it would absolutely terrifying if you could somehow combine Smokescreen, Prowl and Bluestreaks skills into like a Tacnet hivemind or something.

Though with wing speak, to an outsider that’s probably what it already looks like.

———

The three brothers look at the same bullet hole, silently communicating in a way the local non-Praxian officer couldn’t pick up on.

“Oh yeah, looks like Rotor didn’t like Brick cutting into his half of the dirty money. Slippery little guy but you can find both their hideouts here and here.” Smokescreen, the eldest, pulls up a map for reference.

Prowl is already out the door, Bluestreak is lining up a shot through the window.

“What is he. . ?” The other officer looks from Bluestreak. Then to Prowl, trailing off, “Where is the other one. . ?”

“Oh Prowls off to arrest the shooter.”

“But he’s a grounder, can’t Rotor fly?”

A shot rings out.

“Not anymore!”