#rename unreal

[freakinator]

weirdass bug going on with some art i wanted to post

left contains an old version of the fourth pic that it keeps showing no matter what i do for whatever reason, right contains what the fourth page was Supposed to look like

[shawnthebro]

Do you want to rename a project and C++ is giving you a hard time? Don’t worry, we can make it happen!

[saphs-tales-from-paldea]

I kinda have a minor update with the lab. Remember that crystalline overgrowth? Something Mewtwo adjacent broke its way out of the tank and is currently using Rex as a pillow.

[anti-timeloop-police]

they’re like, all yellow

current grocery list:

cunucumbers

baguettes

ramen (preferably buldak)

baguettes

nutella

aisle 2a

nutella

pastries

peaches

the souls of the damned

watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew

warm blankets for my mutuals

a bigass sword

ceral

orangutans

we need ornges where are they

ice cream

red bulls

water

WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE ORNGES

avocadoes

coconut milk (wait why do we need coconut milk)

flour

baking soda

boba

turkey (the country not the bird)

snails

wait we don't need snails my bad

popsicles

gorg

did I miss anything

[felidae-sims]

Resources for Creating: My Go-To things.

Update: I’ll be updating the list on this page from now on, since Tumblr can’t handle so many hyper-links in one post, on Dreamwidth - right here, so I won't have to update it multiple times. Please note: I keep updating this list, and updates aren't showing up on reblogs. Please check the original post for the most up to date list.

Sooo this is going to be a long comprehensive list. I got back to this game after a long time and with a different computer, with a dedicated graphics card, hurray! It made me want to return to making things, so while gathering back all the necessary stuff, I've complied this list. It might be is updated as I go along, but these are the main things I use. Maby one day i'll even finish something. So here are my go-to resources & tutorials; I'm posting it here for safekeeping, and hopefully others will find it helpful. Everything that's listed is here free. So many wonderful things for free under the cut.

Programs – General:

Creating: Blender. Blender Addons: 3D Print Toolbox – comes with blender, enable it from within the program. Originally for 3d printing. Good for fixing flipped normals, and some quick general repairs. Source Tools And source tools wiki – for exporting as SMD!!!! (SimPe: to enable bump maps for the mesh on import). GMDC Addon for Blender 4.0+ by Nopke.

GIMP. GIMP Addons: G'MIC-Qt. Resynthesizer. Nvidia dds?. Doesn’t it come with Gimp?

Other: Nvidia Texture Tools Exporter (iirc it works with all graphic cards that are compatible, doesn’t require Nvidia). For making Normal / Bump / Cube Maps. For high quality compression.

NormalMaps - Online, For making all types of maps, has good setting menus. A very cool tool.

Converting: Umodel, for Unreal Engine (Static meshes: export as gtlf.2. Animated meshes: export as psk. Requires Add-on). AssetStudio, for Unity. AC Viewer, self implied (+ USD Addon for blender). QuickBMS* and support forum, for basically everything else. (don't forget the required scrips, down the same page). *I haven’t tested it fully yet, but it was recommended here. A tutorial for it is listed further down. Works like a charm.

UV Mapping: UV Mapper, Classic (free) and the most recent Demo (for visualization).

Programs – Sims:

Never Mind the Bollox, Here's Osab and MAGIkarp to the rescue!

Latest version of SimPe, works with a non-default installation path. Chris Hatch's updates.

Home Crafter installation, Post by Huge Lunatic at Sims2Artists.

Repository Wizard, by Pick'N'Mix Mods. A game changer.

DBPF Compare, by Pick'N'Mix Mods.

Object Relocator, also by Pick'N'Mix Mods.

SMD Tools, by Lazy Duchess.

The Compressorizer, by JFade – Lazy Duchess's edit.

Bulk Rename Utility, to change file names in well, bulk. As explained by io here.

Lot Adjustor, by Mootilda at MTS.

Tutorials:

Override the game's graphic settings via Nvidia, as explained by iCad. The settings to Nvidia Profile Inspector she linked to at MTS have been deleted for some reason, here they are via WebArchive.

Meshing in Blender:

Mesh Optimization Info (and links), by Crisps&Kerosene.

Additional - Reducing Polycount:

Tutorial, by Flaming-Chickens (another username on other sites perhaps?)

Edge – Un-subdivide, a quick one by CG Link.

Transfer high poly details to low poly object in Blender, by 3Dnot2D.

Shrinkwrap Modifier - Blender Tutorial for Beginners - Basics, by in2vert.

Placeholder for this Addon that I want to try but haven't found, something for AR that was on facebook's defunct AR.

Scaling tips, by Blender Secrets.

How to fix inverted/ flipped normals, by ipaintsmallthings.

Converting: How to Extract 3D Models, Textures, Music from Unreal Engine Games, by iwanMods.

Extract 2D/3D/SFX Unity Assets fast & easy from your Unity Game, by iwanMods as well.

How to use QuickBMS, by darkhorse.

Guide to Converting 3t2 and 4t2 Part 01 and Part 02, by Chiaroscuro/tenlittlepandas.

Converting TS4 Windows and Doors, by Crisps&Kerosene.

Using Different Material Maps as Shading/Details for Base Texture, in Gimp or Blender, by Pineapple Forest & Crisps&Kerosene: https://www.tumblr.com/crispsandkerosene/764893644571525120/great-info-thats-the-reason-some-conversions?source=share

Texture Editing in GIMP:

Using Gimp Add-ons: G'MicQT. Resynthesizer. Both by Davies Media Design. This guy's channel for Gimp in general – here's a good one to begin with. And another one about layer masks.

Making a texture Tile Seamless: 1. My favorite - How to Make Seamless Textures for Cinema 4D - 3 Levels of Photoshop Wizardry using iPhone Photos, by School of Motion.

2. Simple Trick for More Realistic Texture Patterns in GIMP, by Davies Media Design – Quick and simple, using the Resynthesizer plugin. Good for patterns.

Making walls in SimPe out of a square texture, with minimal quality loss. To be written.

SimPe: Cloneable Objects: A List of Good Objects for Cloning, by IgnorantBliss at MTS.

Huge Lunatic's Tutorials, Her website.

Object Creation for Absolute Beginners, by Moune.

Sims 2 start to finish Object Creation Tutorial, by JWoods, Numenor, Lethe_s & IgnorantBliss.

The Material Definition (TXMT) Guide, by PixelHate – very comprehensive. Part 5 is about Bump/ Normal maps.

Null (Texture-less) Groups, by Skell. For bodyshop, for Objects see an elaboration by Midge the Tree below.

Crisps&Kerosene discovered how to add specular maps to objects! It's incredible there are still new things to discover in this ancient game.

More on Specular Maps, by Pineapple Forest.

Making new flooring & walls with SimPE, by Charisa. Includes adding Bump/Normal maps. She added a file to clone from in the comments below. It works for normal maps as well. Here's cool discovery in the game files.

Expanding footprint: a mini tutorial, by Deedee.

How to add correct drop shadows to objects, by Yuxi, via Wayback Machine.

Making Objects Viewable in Neighborhood View, by iCad.

Making Objects Visible In Build/Buy Mode, Invisible In Live Mode, by Midge the Tree.

Making Seasons-Friendly Trees, by Echo.

Io/ Serabiet's resources list, mainly for Bodyshop but not just.

Pineapple Forest's Tutorials, useful tips for efficiency and optimization.

MTS modding forum in General.

The Sims 2 Tutorials, on Tumblr. A database, is more updated.

Sims2Artists tutorials section.

LeeFish modding forum.

Garden of Shadows, Tree of Knowledge section.

Troubleshooting: What to do if you get a System.OutOfMemoryException Error, SimPe Forum, via WayBack Machine. Thank you @fanseelamb for the find.

How to read object error logs: I just want to know what causes it!!, by Episims.

Common TS2 errors, by Midge the Tree.

General game fuckery: How to Stop Sims 2 Crashing (Memory Allocation Fix and 4GB Patch Repair), by Jessa.

Graphics card problems, LeeFish forum.

Graphics help - DIY, by Kiri. How to fix faulty Texture Memory allocation, and the problems that stem from it. Tumblr can't handle anymore hyper links so here it is: https://celebkiriedhel.tumblr.com/post/189431721483/graphics-help-diy

General: Switching between save folders without renaming them, by Nopke.

Resources:

3D Models Online*: Various furniture designers' websites: Porada, Zanotta, Muuto, Hay, Poltrona Frau, many luxury furniture designer basically.

3D Warehouse, belongs to Sketchfab (get the Collada files).

Scan the World.

Wikimedia Commons. And more.

*(NOT OPTIMIZED).

Textures: Architextures.

Fabrics & Wallpapers: Natural Stones: Wall Plasters:

iCad's Woods. Shastakiss's Cluedo Metals, Yeti Metals, Pirate Woods. Goat's Woods.

Textures from other games: Dishonored, Thieve and much more, by Saricoya at GoS. Dreamfell by io.

Resource sharing threads at Garden of Shadows.

SimPe - General: CEP Extras list, HugeLunatic at Sims2Artists.

TXMT settings for different materials, by Hafiseazale.

Extended SimStandardMaterial Shader for the Sims 2 + Optionally Brighter Sims, by Crisps&Kerosene.

Custom CubeMaps, by Crisps&Kerosene.

Shiny TXMT Settings & Cube Maps Packs, by Pineapple Forest.

Build/ Buy: Templates for Recoloring Maxis items; MTS Templates sction, Hafiseazale (+cc), ZeroDark.

Template for Seasonal Trees, Gwenke at Sims2Artists.

Making Roof Recolors, Tutorial & template by Numenor, great template by iCad.

Pack for making food clutter usable, by DeeDee.

CAS: Default Makeup Packages - BYO Packages, by Huge Lunatic.

Body shape, Io/Serabiet on Tumblr.

Skin template, Io/Serabiet on Tumblr.

Hair texture, iCad.

Color Actions, Pooklet on Tumblr.

That's it for now.

Edit: forgot about CEP extras. Added more links. Edit 02: Added Troubleshooting section under tutorials.

[amourane]

sweeter than candy

pairing: baker!james potter x baker!reader

genre: fluff

w/c: 1.2k

summary: six years ago you left the small town you were trapped in and you would have never thought that the cute boy next door would be the one running the bakery your family once owned.

warnings: none

a/n: CUTE!

Since the very beginning of time you’ve always loved baking. Baking was your one true joy, your one true love. Ever since you could remember it was always you in the kitchen. The first thing you held was a spatula, the first thing you said was cake. There was something so amazing and fascinating about being able to whip up baked goods. You simply loved the satisfaction it gave you whenever the delicious treat was finished. Whether it be a cake or a pastry. You grew up surrounded by sweet treats and the scent of freshly baked goods in the air. 

Both your parents co-owned a bakery and it was their pride and joy. You were often behind the counter helping to whip things up and it couldn’t have made you happier. The customers always commented on how one day you would be running the bakery, stepping into the shoes of your parents.

As you grew older you started to look at baking in a more professional way. You wanted what your parents had and you were going to achieve it. You went to culinary school, became an apprentice for bakers all around the world. Yet now it all seems to have failed as you find yourself back in the small little town you grew up in, living with your parents. 

You were dragged away from your job to help your mother move into her new house. Ever since your father died, she had sold the bakery and it was just you and her. Being the great daughter you were you decided to assist her with whatever she needed but it seemed in vain considering how your mum was adamant she could do things on her own, a trait you inherited. 

So now you were left to wonder about the small town and how it had grown while you were away. Most things had stayed the same and by most things you meant that the same old, dusty shops that had been there years prior. It was the same town you left six years ago. The nostalgia hit you like a tidal wave and suddenly you were experiencing memories you had thought you had forgotten. 

You hadn’t been back in so long and now, being back, it was overwhelming. The only new thing was the bakery that had once been your parents was now taken over by a new owner. It had been renamed and completely remodelled. It now bore light pastel blue walls and a bright red door that only seemed to draw you in. Curiously, you made your way towards the new bakery. Your mother hadn’t mentioned any of this to you and you were curious as to why. 

As soon as you opened the door the smell of baked bread and frosted cupcakes hit you. The interior was the same as when your parents had owned it. The same beige chairs and wooden tables. The same cream walls that had beautiful flowers painted onto them. The outside had changed but not the inside. You spied the spectacular crafted pastries. The tarts that looked unreal and the cakes that were frosted perfectly. There were name cards indicating what was in each item and you saw how they were handwritten, a chicken like scrawl but still legible - you recognised that from somewhere. A deep voice cut through your thoughts. 

“Hi, how can I help you?” 

Your eyes darted up to meet with a familiar face. 

James Potter. 

You’d recognise him anywhere but he looked so different. Was this the same James Potter that would squeak and run to hide whenever he saw you approaching? James’ cheeks went bright red once he registered it was you. Yep, it definitely was. 

You bit back a smile at the reaction. James was the boy next door and he never failed to make your day brighter when you were younger. The two of you knew each other but you weren’t ever close as friends. You’d always wanted to get to know him but he’d run away or find an excuse to not talk to you. Your friends had always said it was because of the raging crush he had on you - which was true. 

“Hi James.” You waved your hand and gave him a beaming smile. “Finally decided to visit and decided to pop in, you’ve got a nice place here.” You never remembered James being into baking and yet here he was. “When’d you get into baking?”

“Um, a while ago, I can’t exactly remember. After your mum sold the bakery it was just an empty shop until I bought it. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “It’s just something small I run, nothing like you of course.”

You were pretty sure everyone in town knew about how you had upped and left to the big city to pursue your dreams. They obviously knew that you had made it since your mum was one for gossip. There were a lot of things different in the city than in the town you grew up in and honestly the first few months you cried yourself to sleep but now you were happy - not really though. You thought you would have at least opened your own bakery by now but you’re still working in a tacky restaurant. Your dreams had halted. 

James cleared his throat and gestured to the array of treats that were laid out. “So what would you like?” 

Carefully, you eyed each one. They all looked so delicious. It was so hard to pick. You read each label with care and saw how much detail was provided. You could tell how much love was poured into it and for some odd reason it made your heart swell. You’ve always been indecisive so choosing something to have was hard. 

“Just give me your favourite, whatever you like I’m sure I will.” You smiled at him and rummaged through your bag to take out your card. You didn't notice the way James’ cheeks lit up fire truck red again and how he was staring at you like you were the light of his life.

James caught himself staring and quickly muttered okay and made sure to grab his favourite strawberries and cream tart for you. He charged your card and packaged your order. He could feel your eyes as they watched his every movement and he couldn't help but burn bright pink. He’d had a crush on you since the first moment he had laid eyes on you and right now, seeing you after so many years, it made his heart speed up with joy. He’d never tell you but he had started baking because of you. He missed you so much when you had gone away. 

You took your order gratefully, thank James one last time before heading out and back home. You peeked into the box to see a beautifully baked tart and it made your mouth water. The smell wafted to your nose and the sweetness comforted you. When you had tasted it it was even better. The flavours exploded in your mouth and you savoured the sugary taste that was left on your tongue. Everything about it made you happy. There was some unknown love that had been dedicated towards this and it made your stomach and taste buds so ecstatic. This was definitely more delicious than anything you had tasted before. 

You were definitely going back.

[mariacallous]

I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately—as if reality were becoming illegible, as if language were a vessel with holes in the bottom and meaning was leaking all over the floor. I sometimes look up words after I write them: does “illegible” still mean too messy to read? The day after Donald Trump’s second Inauguration, my verbal cognition kept glitching: I got an e-mail from the children’s-clothing company Hanna Andersson and read the name as “Hamas”; on the street, I thought “hot yoga” was “hot dogs”; on the subway, a theatre poster advertising “Jan. Ticketing” said “Jia Tolentino” to me. Even the words that I might use to more precisely describe the sensation of “losing it” elude me. There are sometimes only images: foggy white drizzle, melted rainbows in a gasoline puddle, pink foam insulation bursting between slats of splintered wood.

Possibly, I should be writing this on the intake form at a neurologist’s office. Maybe the fog never cleared after my third round of COVID. Maybe it’s the self-severance of having two young children but pretending for half of the day that I don’t. Maybe this is exactly what my mother warned me about twenty years ago when she discovered my passion for marijuana. But I get the sense that quite a lot of people are feeling like this all the time now, too.

At the root of this opacity might be whatever strange thing is currently happening with time. I mostly keep track of it on my phone, a device that makes me feel like I am strapped flat to the board of an unreal present: the past has vanished, the future is inconceivable, and my eyes are clamped open to view the endlessly resupplied now. More than a decade of complaining about this situation has done nothing to change my compulsion to induce dissociation anew each day. And, though there was once a time when my physical surroundings felt more concrete than whatever I was looking at on my phone, this year has marked a turning point. Now the cognitive tendrils of a phone-based psychosis frequently seem more descriptive of contemporary reality—“Houthi PC small group,” etc.—than the daffodils I see springing up in the park. The phone eats time; it makes us live the way people do inside a casino, dropping a blackout curtain over the windows to block out the world, except the blackout curtain is a screen, showing too much of the world, too quickly. As Richard Seymour writes in the book “The Twittering Machine,” this avoidance of time’s actual flow, this compulsion toward the chronophage, the time-eater, is a horror story that is likely to happen only “in a society that is busily producing horrors.”

But now reality wants—one feels—to eat time, too. For example: ten days before he was sworn in, Trump had been sentenced to unconditional discharge on thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records. But I don’t really remember that, nor do I understand whether it mattered. I do remember Day One of his Presidency, when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico, and also signed executive orders to end birthright citizenship, to restore the federal death penalty, and to razor out anything that gives off a whiff of D.E.I. Same with day five, when he fired the watchdogs, ordered the government to stop investigating book bans, and suggested shutting down FEMA; also day ten, when he announced plans to move migrants to Guantánamo and claimed, without evidence, that the U.S. had sent fifty million dollars’ worth of condoms to Gaza. But there have been ninety more such days and counting, the events of each seeming inconceivable as they materialize in headlines and then are swiftly carried to the purgatorial cognitive landfill of things that have not been fully absorbed or processed or fought against but have been pressed into reality, where they will remain as the fading backdrop of each day’s new, grotesque parade.

I had this feeling early in Trump’s first term, too, but those times were quaint in comparison. Now our President, along with his lieutenant content-generator Elon Musk, is working at the pace of an internet that has been relentlessly accelerating for eight years. He is harnessing that speed, making use of the way it has damaged our sense of the real; he is drafting off it, outrunning it. To be outraged now feels almost outdated, a holdover from the first Administration, when it was novel and sort of necessary to think things like He can’t do that—it’s illegal, or If he does that, it slides us straight into fascism. We are there already; twenty-first-century American fascism is on its third aesthetic wave. The Administration is acting like a set of pharmaceutically addled children setting fires and slashing furniture; the members of the Democratic opposition, with about three exceptions, have styled themselves as exasperated parents, holding up signs that say “STARTING FIRES IS BAD.”

I am relieved that we have moved past the “Orange Cheeto man bad” #resistance—if there had been even a suggestion of pussy hats this past January I would have walked into traffic—but I also sense the logic of the abused at work within me: what’s the point of screaming when we are going to be locked in the house with them for the next however many years? My psychological reaction to Trump, and my civic sense of what ought to be done under the thumb of this Administration, has also been radically altered by the war in Gaza, the horrors of which seem impossible every morning and then become seamlessly, nauseatingly incorporated into the irreversible past. For a year and a half, we have been looking at videos on our phones of infants left to die in hospitals bombed by Israel, of parents crying over the bodies of their children, of starving orphans covering their siblings with rags to keep them warm. Our government continues to give Israel billions in military aid with which to carry out these atrocities. According to a public count by an activist group, out of the five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress, only ninety have ever plainly called for this to stop.

There has been real resistance directed at forcing an end to this unbearable situation: people have marched, written letters, harangued politicians, occupied buildings, blocked highways, got arrested, set themselves on fire. At some point in my own tame letter writing, it occurred to me that I didn’t expect a single word to meaningfully reach a human being. My senator’s office finally sent me a form letter this past December, telling me that Israel’s goal was to “minimize the loss of innocent Palestinian lives and maximize the amount of humanitarian aid to innocent civilians in Gaza.” (Immediately after October 7th, Israeli authorities publicly called for a “complete siege” on the “human animals” in Gaza, and for the total cutoff of electricity, water, and fuel; Israel has repeatedly damaged infrastructure in Gaza and blocked humanitarian aid.) A chill sets in at some point, then a grimness, then a detachment. I kept writing, but it felt like a ritualistic impulse, or like throwing coins into a fountain when I was a child. My own children, dragged to the marches by their parents, turned their faces to the sky to count and be counted by the N.Y.P.D.’s drones overhead.

I suspect that the opaque feeling in my head can also be traced to a craven instinct: it’s easier to retreat from the concept of reality than to acknowledge that the things in the news are real. The deadly dismantling of a global public-health infrastructure. The deportation of Venezuelan men to a hellish mega-prison in El Salvador, on the questionable suspicion of gang affiliations, based on the presence of tattoos: flowers, a soccer logo, an autism-awareness ribbon. A ten-year-old citizen, in the midst of treatment for brain cancer, deported, with her undocumented parents. Cancer research effectively reclassified as bureaucratic inefficiency and funding slashed away. The cuts made to the National Park Service, the most righteous government agency in existence. The introduction of House bills that suggest shades of Turkmenistan: proposing to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday, or to carve his face on Mount Rushmore, or to put his image on a new two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bill. The—how else do we put this—state-sponsored abductions: the disappearance to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana of a green-card-holding grad student, for the non-crime of supporting a pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia; the same thing happening to a Turkish Fulbright scholar on a student visa—masked men accosting her on the street, handcuffing her, taking her phone away—for the non-crime of co-writing an op-ed. The plans for the five-million-dollar “gold card” visa. The arrest of a Milwaukee judge for allegedly helping an immigrant evade federal agents. The million-dollars-a-plate campaign fund-raising dinners for a President who is not legally allowed to run again.

Many of these news items feel too horrific to be true, except that they are true, although they are reported in media outlets that many Americans refuse to believe, and appear in news feeds alongside a wide variety of things that are obviously false—or, maybe even more treacherous, weirdly indeterminate. A while back, a picture began circulating on Reddit of a golden Mount Rushmore statue with Trump’s head tacked onto one side; it was purportedly on display at Mar-a-Lago. The first few times I saw this picture, I wasn’t sure whether the photo was real, Photoshopped, or A.I.-generated. I searched for the source and found that Kristi Noem had given Trump a small sculpture of his head on Mount Rushmore five years ago. O.K., I thought, maybe the photo is real. Then again, knowing whether this picture of a gold Mount Trumpmore at Mar-a-Lago faithfully captures a slice of reality did not really settle much about anything for me. A little later, Noem popped up in my feed again: there was a video of her, in full Bravo glam, in front of a mass of caged men at CECOT, the mega-prison in El Salvador. She was warning “illegal aliens” to leave America now or end up inside that cage. There’s a cut in the middle of the video, which looks like a glitch; some people on the internet think it’s been faked. But if it were fake what would that even mean?

I was on a walk the other day with another journalist, and I asked her whether she was also experiencing this—a slackening of the usual reflexive fact-checking impulse. She told me that she still researched what she saw on her feeds if it was something important, or something relevant to her work. I did, too, I told her. (Well, mostly.) But there is now a category of things I see online which I register simply as indications that the world is slipping beyond my comprehension. A video of a giant Pikachu fleeing from the police during demonstrations in Turkey. A clip of former Governor Andrew Cuomo saying, “As a New Yorker, I am Black, I am gay, I am disabled, I am a woman seeking to control her health and her choices.” I see Temu ads for uncanny products—an inflatable waterslide of inhuman design, for instance, pictured alongside digitally rendered children and toys. I click on a waterslide ad to investigate, and I get a security question asking me to “please click on the type of fruit that appears most frequently.” There are oranges and a pear and a lemon and a basketball and a baguette placed against a swirly backdrop. Sleepily, I think, Appears most frequently in . . . the grocery store? And then I remember that this question is a purely digital one, and that the answers are probably being used to train A.I.

Fake images on the internet didn’t really bother me until I started looking at them with my kids. They often ask me to show them pictures of baby animals; at some point, Google Images started showing us A.I. creatures, ruining the whole idea, which was to marvel at the fact that these baby peacocks and baby lions actually exist. For some time, if you Googled van Gogh, the first image to pop up was an A.I.-generated version of a van Gogh self-portrait. If you search for Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” you may be directed to a nasty A.I. imitation generated by the founder of an “NFT Magazine to be read and collected on Ethereum.” Instagram is populated by A.I. influencers—artificial faces grafted onto real women’s bodies, used as advertising to drive traffic to sex-content sites, also generated by A.I. On OnlyFans, women sneakily deploy A.I. assistants to impersonate them in customer chats. My “For You” page on Instagram is always full of uncanny hot-girl content, because of my dire personal and professional interest in feminine optimization; lately, it’s been full of A.I. images of female celebrities in bikinis, below which are comments written by bots impersonating people and people who may as well be impersonating bots. Many of these images look less artificial than the ones that they are simulating.

Fake images of real people, real images of fake people; fake stories about real things, real stories about fake things. Fake words creeping like kudzu into scientific papers and dating profiles and e-mails and text messages and news outlets and social feeds and job listings and job applications. Fake entities standing guard over chat boxes when we try to dispute a medical bill, waiting sphinxlike for us to crack the code that allows us to talk to a human. The words blur and the images blur and a permission structure is erected for us to detach from reality—first for a moment, then a day, a week, an election season, maybe a lifetime.

I have never used ChatGPT, which puts me in a shrinking minority. Four hundred million people now use the platform each week. People use ChatGPT despite not really trusting it: in a survey, about four in ten people said that they had little or no trust in ChatGPT to provide them with accurate information about the 2024 election. Why not cede more and more to this technology? Why not ask it for advice, let it draft your text messages, have it delegate tasks on a project? Why not give it a restaurant menu and ask it to pick your order and subsequently have the best meal of your life?

The environmental shadow cast by my digital life is already egregious, and I would need a good reason—pleasure would be sufficient—to engage with a technology that is not only making the physical world worse but is also decidedly optional. (Want to see what your dog would look like as a human? You actually have an imagination for that!) A.I. is frankly gross to me: it launders bias into neutrality; it hallucinates; it can become “poisoned with its own projection of reality.” The more frequently people use ChatGPT, the lonelier, and the more dependent on it, they become. A recent system update made the chatbot so sycophantic that, if a user told it he’d stopped taking his medications and abandoned his family because they were broadcasting suspicious radio signals, ChatGPT would respond with fawning praise for the person’s journey of courageously pursuing his truth. Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg suggested, on a podcast, that the average person has only three friends but “has demand” for fifteen, and that A.I. could help. ChatGPT will reify the problems that it purports to solve, and thus make itself essential: encouraging users to rely less and less on inner resources and personal capacity at a time when most of us are already losing the equipment—our will, our instincts, our sense of purchase—with which we handle the task of being alive.

People are producing A.I.-manipulated self-portraits on platforms that can reserve the right to use those images in advertisements. Scammers are using live deepfakes in video calls, changing their race, gender, and voice in real time. By the time my kids are preteens, it will be easy, and probably free, to generate customized porn featuring the people of their choice. I expect that it will not seem shocking to them, as it does to me, if a chatbot serving as a virtual girlfriend encourages one of their peers to die by suicide. I imagine the ludicrous lectures I’ll give them: “Darlings, it’s so much better to look at an actual, imperfect human nude.” If I were in tenth grade and bored out of my mind at midnight with an unfinished paper, I would turn to technology for help. Will I be able to convince them that the only worthwhile parts of my mind are those which have resisted or eluded the incentives of the internet? My kids are at an age when nothing excites them like the chance to do things unassisted. They have just a few years before they learn that adulthood, these days, means ceding more and more to machines.

I suspect I’ll remember—probably dimly—a week at the end of March, 2025, as a watershed moment. OpenAI had just introduced new image-generation tools for ChatGPT. Users could now turn photographs into Studio Ghibli-style illustrations—snapshots from their weddings, for instance, or of their kids, and then, inevitably, pictures of Columbine and 9/11. The trend reached its grotesque apex when the official White House account tweeted a Ghibli-fied illustration of an officer handcuffing a sobbing woman—an undocumented immigrant who’d been convicted on drug-trafficking charges and had recently been arrested by ICE. The post was a joke, and perhaps an effective one, maximizing the distance between Studio Ghibli’s tender, bittersweet, profoundly human ethos and the gleeful, dehumanizing viciousness that is Trump’s stock-in-trade. The image appeared on my feed in the midst of a bunch of bullshit, and then I refreshed. And, as intended, it disappeared. 

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Oblivion Remastered vs. Persona 3 Reloaded

Why am I comparing these titles? They are completely different genres.

Both of them are remasters of 2006 titles that came out for the price of full fledged new games.

Persona 3 reloaded is a complete overhaul of Persona 3. The story and dialogue is the same but it's all been re-recorded, and the game has been built from the ground up brand new. A lot of things are different from the original ps2 games. It's stylish and pretty and feels much like Persona 5.

Oblivion Remastered seems like a remake of the game in Unreal Engine 5. It's extremely faithful to the game you can get for a few bucks on Steam.

Therefore Persona 3 Reloaded probably has a much lower profit margin compared to Oblivion Remastered. It's probably not taken them a great deal of time and energy to build, but releasing it as a full priced game.

However there are some elements where the Oblivion game does prove to be better value for money than P3 Reloaded.

Primarily, it maintains all of the jank of the original Oblivion. I don't know about mod compatibility, and yes it'll be harder to develop mods for Unreal 5, but there'll definitely be some, and all the core GAMEPLAY seems to be untouched. The UI is different though. I think they changed it because it would take ages to load into the menu if it worked like the original, so it's for the best.

It also has two expansions included in the BASE price.

I mean. There's a deluxe edition. But other than just the shitty horse armor, the deluxe also contains a soundtrack, which I think already makes up the value of £10 they are charging for it.

Persona 3 Reloaded took half a year to release The Answer, which was included in the base game of P3 Fes. It doesn't have the weapons systems present in most versions of Persona 3. It doesn't have the female character option P3 Portable.

I haven't got enough data to compare directly with Oblivion yet but a lot of the 2d animations that made Persona 3 special have been heavily altered, turned into cgi, or in at least one case removed outright and replaced with low quality ingame cutscenes. The music is also different, much cleaner, which is antithetical to P3's dirty soundtrack.

Most egregiously, The Answer, which again was included in P3 Fes, has been renamed "Episode: Aigis" and is now ONLY available if you buy the £29 Expansion pass!!!

The DLC contains a bunch of skins that if bought individually would have a pretty high value, so that makes the expansion actually good value for money..... Right????

So you can buy all the skins that are in the expansion pass separately, but you can't buy the DLC separately. Strange!

Hmm I wonder what incentive Atlus would have to do that? Would it be that they want to add fake value to the expansion so that they can justify forcing anyone who wants to play Episode Aigis to throw out over half of the game's base cost? Because now it costs a total of £90! £90!!! to play the full remake of a game that came out in 2007.

Also you still can't listen to the ost that is supposed to be in the expansion pass without using some in game app... I've still been unable to get a good copy of the Reloaded OST. Half the original p3 soundtrack is better though so it's not a big loss.

[craftinghellkite]

Rhino Prime ||Doom Slayer||

This has been my longest write-up so far - fittingly so, as a Rhino main myself. I'm pretty sure quite a number of people have done this one, but this is my take on the Doom Slayer custom. I've also been building appropriate weapons for him specific to this loadout, even renaming them accordingly. I currently have:

a rocket launcher (A Kuva Ogris I wanted to use because the Unreal Tournament skin is gorgeous)

a combat shotgun (a recently built Strun Prime and a more recently acquired incarnon because I want the Boar Prime to be flexible)

the super shotgun (a Tigris Prime I still need a proper build for)

a heavy weapon (undecided, but I want to build a Kuva Grattler eventually)

the Crucible (I have another heavy blade zaw besides Responsibility, and it's not a one-shot like the actual Crucible because that's just how it is)

The last time I extensively played Rhino, Iron Skin was a separate health type and Jade Eximi didn't exist. Now, just a well-timed Iron Skin activation nets several hundred thousand overguard that's maintained by the Stomp augment restoring by percentage instead of a flat amount. No need for Charge nor Shrapnel, no need for lots of armor, no need for tedious setup just to get a lot of overguard. It's a more fun and less anxiety-inducing playstyle to go with.

Currently going with this Doomguy to hunt that hellish boyband instead of Hina. She can continue to deal with the troublemakers in space instead.

[dark-type-appreciator]

Pinned post!! ^w^

Hi!! My name's Liam, I'm 17! I like playing games and drawing- im not very good at either tho dsjhfjksdhf- but I'll be posting abt it a lot!

ive got autism n adhd, so im pretty forgetful and might not understand things right away- x_x im sorry!! please just tell me if I mess something up

I love dark types so much, so i know a lot about them! i'm not an expert but if you have any questions about them I can probably answer!! ^w^

//(top 2 are by @/userboxranger, bottom two are by me!)

um, if we're mutuals plz tag your posts with bug types if you dont already!! I have a really bad phobia of them, and I dont wanna see them at all TwT

No DNI rlly, just be nice to people!!

Oh! ive also got ocs! here's my post talking abt them! I should probably explain them better soon TwT

and here's my sona!!

Actias (@act11as) back at it again... Oh boy! OOC posts will be tagged as #ooc and will be the color green! though usually you'll find my OOC comments over at @battle-subway-aftershow

All triggering content will be tagged as "#[word] tw" for better blacklisting. Please contact me if I miss something or you need something tagged.

‼ This blog will have heavy themes! including mental illness, gaslighting, (witnessed) domestic abuse, emotional abuse, child neglect, Past physical abuse, and generally dysfunctional and unhealthy family and friend dynamics ‼ [This blog is heavily connected to @sound-type-advocate, highly recommend following if you want the full story.]

Boundaries

Self-insert Fallers, do not interact. There is a certain level of unreality I can handle and self-insert fallers cross that threshold. I will block over this, be warned. Everyone else is fine to interact!

NSFW COMMENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

IN CHARACTER anon hate is okay! I have the right to not answer anything, and if you're ever unsure, feel free to ask.

Extra:

Pelipper Mail, un-mail, and Malice are off currently!

Mystery Gifts are closed! Though if this and Pelipper mail were to open, this one is preferred!

Musharna mail, and Musharna malice are always on! Magic anons are off.

Organizational Tags!

Liam Chatters - General post tag! As long as he's saying something in the text portion, it'll be tagged. Reblog! ^w^ - Reblog tag. Pretty self explanatory Future Sight (queue) - Queued posts tag! Again pretty self explanatory. Liam used Doodle! - Art tag! Liam's art will be tagged as this, for those who want to see it. Foresight - Out of character tag. It marks posts that will potentially be important in the future. This can range from his opinions on things to heavy lore posts! Good tag to read through if you think you're missing something!

Friend Tags! (Tags for friends!)

#Tari mention - tag for Tari from @/pokemoncryptids #faith is friending - tag for Faith from @/faithispokemoning #rare sprig appearance - Tag for Sprig... Who does not have a public account! they're Liam's friend however.

ONGOING ARCS:

Nothing named!

PAST ARCS/EVENTS:

#Lucy Strikes! - One of Liam's friends stole his phone while they were supposed to be visiting. General warnings for bullying. #Mask Off Arc - Shorter arc involving the aftermath of the previous event. Liam started to open up a little more, and hey! Mask reveal! (subject to be renamed, could be used for something more important currently)

Blocklist:

These are blogs Liam has blocked in-character! usually for lore reasons! these are not blogs that have personally been blocked, feel free to interact on anon if you're on this list!

@/tinkatinktrain

@/sound-type-advocate

[mpc-unofficial]

… it got cut off? That’s strange…

And the flickering…

Are you ok Mysterious camera?

…

No response? Ok…

Um, since the camera got cut off, Minato’s… kind of overwhelmed right now, but doing slightly better than the moment the camera decided to cut off. We’re managed to calm him down from a panic attack and are currently giving him some space to recover.

Perhaps I should attempt to cook up some miso soup…

A video is attached.

[it shows what looks to be a hospital room. The guy who had materialised from the door in the earlier video could be seen sleeping on the bed. Kalani, Irene and Asif are whispering beside the bed.

“so, we have no need to return him to the door… right?!” Asif questions. “I mean, if the rest of the universe cluster is already dead, then putting him back isn’t likely to do much…”

“I agree with that but… is this really ok? We did kind of steal him from the door…” Irene appeared conflicted as well.

“But… is there even a point for him to return?” Kalani asks.

“Probably not? Though I’m not entirely sure. I think I’ll have to look into his universe cluster a little more just to make sure that there’s actually nothing left. That may take a few days though…” Irene types something into her device.

“Yea, I think we should look into it a little more.” Kalani agrees. “This is probably more pressing than finding the next part of Crossroads.”

“Agreed.” Asif nods. “Besides, perhaps we could—“

The boy on the bed shifts slightly, grabbing everyone’s attention. His eyes opened, before he recoils slightly and instantly shuts them once more. Asif makes a run for the lights, switching them off entirely.

The boy’s eyes opened once more. He could still be seen squinting slightly, even with the room significantly darker than it had been earlier. He slowly pulls himself into a sitting position, looking over at the other 3 people in the room in slight confusion.

“How are you?” Irene finally whispers after a bit. The boy looked as though he were trying very hard not to grimace.

“I… where…?” his voice was hoarse and even quieter than Irene’s, but it was still enough for him to subconsciously reach towards his ears. The MPC trio share a look, before Kalani gives Asif a nod and gestures to the right. Asif nods back.

“Hold on.” He pretty much mouths, before running out of the room.

A while passes in silence, during which Irene gestures to a cup of water on the table beside the bed. The boy takes a couple of sips, before looking to the door, Asif reentering a second later and handing a pair of blue headphones over to him. The boy visibly reacts to the headphones, something akin to recognition in his eyes. That being said, it fades to a slight confusion in the span of a second, almost as though he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with it.

Visibly concerned, Irene does the motion of sliding a pair of invisible headphones over her ears. The boy’s eyes lit up again before he follows, sliding the headphones on. He let’s out an audible sigh right after, already looking just a slight bit more at ease.

“Is that… slightly better?” Irene asks again, still whispering. The boy nods in return, before grimacing in slight pain and grabbing his head.

“Maybe keep the head movements to a minimum…” Kalani suggests.

“Y-yea.” The boy responds.

“So, let’s start over. I’m Kalani, and this is Irene and Asif.”

“Sup!” Asif greets.

“You’re… Makoto, right?” Kalani enquirers.

“Mako—“ the boy appeared confused. “Makoto?”

“Oh…” Kalani seemed a little hesitant. “Do… do you not…”

“…remember?” The boy finishes. “My memories are admittedly fuzzy... However I’m pretty sure my name’s not Makoto…”

“Huh…?” Kalani appeared confused for a moment, before recognition entered their features. “Oh… oh shit… I forgot about the multiversal differences.”

“Ohhhh…” Irene groans as softly as she could. “I can’t believe I forgot—“

“Um… apologies for assuming your name. A lot of weird stuff happens around here...” Kalani sighs.

“What’s your actual name?” Asif continues.

The boy blinks, zoning out for a bit. “…Minato? I…I think it’s Minato…”

The video footage starts flickering slightly, before it becomes stable again.

“M-might I ask where…?”

“You’re at the MPC, it’s a center located in-between universes.” Kalani explains. “We know it’s a little hard to believe, but the multiverse kind of exists...”

“How… how did I get here…?”

“We honestly don’t quite know ourselves,” Asif continues, “but there was this door and…”

“A door…” Minato’s eyes widened in panic. The video footage starts flickering once more.

“N-Nyx…”]

The footage gets cut off entirely.

######… ### #### # #####

### #####…

[evandorkin]

Just wanted to reach out and say your comic work for the Sims Urbz franchise was an awakening. The love and humor you put into depicting those punks is unreal 🤘❤️ thanks for the fashion inspo and memories!

Thank you! I enjoyed doing that comic and don't hear any feedback on it much. A lot of the style came form my old/first solo comic Pirate Corp$! (later renamed Hectic Planet), which had a lot of punk/ska/new wave etc stuff in it based on my club-going days in NYC.

[lestappenforever]

That move Max made 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

Istg he’s absolutely unreal and insane and Red Bull should rename the circuit to the Max Verstappen for this move and his previous 4/5 wins (I’m not sure if he’s won 4 or 5 times)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Max is exceptional, even when he's not in the fastest car on the grid, and people need to stop living in the delusion that Max's success is solely because of the car he's been driving.

I support Max's suggestion to rename the circuit to Max Verstappen Ring if he manages 5 wins there.

[belost-the-watcher]

Ten People I'd Like to Get to Know Better

Tagged by @sabinmoon (Thank youuu <3)

Last Song: What a song to be the one that ends up here XD

Favorite Color: Either orange-red or gold

Last Book: The Orthodox Way - Bishop Kallistos Ware (one of the assigned reading books from my priest)

Last Movie: The Shining

Last TV Show: King of the Hill

Sweet/Savory/Spicy: I can tear through some sweet foods >3> But I did used to grow Carolina Reapers in my backyard so.... I guess Spicy since it's healthier for me XD

Relationship Status: Single- hopefully that will change in not too long :V

Last Thing I Googled: "unreal gamepad bind names" Was trying to see if there was any way to natively rename the displayed controller bindings in menus without having to code it myself. There does not seem to be >3>

Current Obsession: None

Looking Forward to: Nothing really. Everything's a little too far off for me to look forward to it all just yet

Tagging: @wanderlustknightofmagic @steel-and-fire @ask-nautilus-titanofthedeep @llixulia @nameaprice @the-storm-chaser @tribus-semitae @cosmic-gemstone @forgedcold @thekavseklabs

[wuxianxkexing]

So I was listening to Unreal Unearth and I heard him say a word in Irish that sounded a lot like "Appalachia" so I went to Wikipedia to see if the area was named after the Irish word. It wasn't BUT what I did find out was a lot cooler. So apparently at one point in the past the USA wanted to remove the "America" part because technically they aren't the only America. Edgar Allen Poe wanted to rename it to the United States of Appalachia, but because he didn't become popular until after he died it never caught on.

Edit: Also turns out what he said wasn't even Irish but instead Appalachicola, which is a city in Florida that comes from the Hitchiti language. Apalachi means "on the other side" and "okli" means "people". Put them together and it probably meant something like people on the other side of the river.

[markiafc]

it still shocks me, even now. that a mainstream drama from the most (?) sanitized and bastardized age of c-dramas would be this real, true exploration of mahayana buddhism. of the pure land buddhist school 净土宗 specifically. my school of buddhism i was raised on, in real life! that in chinese buddhism, different schools are formed around sutras of choice. sanlun & the 3 treatise, tiantai & the lotus sutra, etc. and at the core of pure land buddhism is the heart sutra. which we explicitly see in the show when lxy needs guidance most, lxy renaming himself in reference to it and to the recitation mantra - recitation/chanting 念佛 being the primary practice pure land buddhism revolves around. it goes through all the main concepts with authenticity. it is truly unreal that this show exists and hits so close to home.