#the algorithm can suck it
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numbers are for accountants, not for artists
keep making art and stop worrying about the metrics ❤️
#the algorithm can suck it#Imma paint what i want numbers be damned#personal#text#yes i know if you're a self employed artist you're also your own accountant probably#but you know what i mean
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i somehow managef to get banned on pinterest LMAO
#i hope i can get my account back bc theres no way im gonna be able to rebuild my boards#algorithmical social media may suck ass but i like Sorting Things!!!!! Goddammit!!!!#yaps & bats#pinterest saga
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i wanna post art but I don't wanna be like.. an influencer or anything,, i just wanna have artist friends and like. share my ocs and stuff
#i think thats why i enjoyed so little when i used to post my art on ig#most tips are just... telling u how to use the algorithm in a way so u can be famous and idk i dont rlly care#thats boring..#but i also suck at making friends online so...#maybe i should just post things like idgaf
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like i need you all to realise there’s an Actual reason twitter is like that and that’s because the website Can And Will Shove Random Fan Content In CCs Spaces bc algorithms are Terrible. the entire internet is not like tumblr and ao3 ccs can’t just hide tags or not search on stuff like Twitter or YouTube comments or their own subreddits. like what are they meant to do if something weird pops up bc of an algorithm most websites aren’t tumblr and don’t let you turn that shit off. unfortunately the internet is a hellscape and your hot takes about cc boundaries or whatever don’t change that.
#like. hating on mcyttwt is a meme and I get it it sucks. but it’s the way it is bc the website shoves shit in peoples faces#more and more websites do this. you unfortunately have to realise ccs can and will have shit they’re uncomfortable shoved into their face b#of this. you can’t just go don’t like don’t read if Twitter shoves on you art of you making out with your best friend because of some#bullshit algorithm
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"The first to betray me was a god... my creator, my mother."
posted this back in august, i wanted to make some kabukimono art and somehow this came out. i probably shouldn't listen to scaramouche/wanderer playlists and voicelines on youtube while drawing. i actually worked hard on this one so pls enjoy, i love him sm
⚠PLEASE DO NOT USE MY ART WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. THIS INCLUDES PFPS/BANNERS/VIDEOS/AI ART GENERATION. THANK YOU!⚠
I didn't put the annoying watermark over this like I did on twt, but if I see this circulating around without my explicit permission, I will edit this and leave ONLY the watermarked version. You have been warned.
#genshin impact#scaramouche#kabukimono#wanderer#listen i know the three are “different” but algorithms suck and i need ppl to see this okay? okay.#anyways i love him and i swear he was not harmed in this other than the emotional damage a mother can cause#digital art
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Reblog one fnaf movie meme and suddenly my whole feed is spoilers
#the algorithm can suck my ball#s#fnaf movie#shitpost#is this a shitpost?#text post#terminallyworkingonit
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Not Tumblr having the nerve to suggest I f o L l o w one of the mfers who follows all my friends but avoids me like the plague. No thank you, Jeeves I’m alright.
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just cleaned up my only-art sideblog and im surprised that i actually posted something. and actually i did it quite often this year. idk it's just like the memory of drawing smth completely erases from my head after i post it. or what
#it can be also a haunting memory from a three or four years ago when i posted things on a different site and felt very obligated to do so#plus it buried ur blog if u weren't doing it. w almost no chance to people to find u randomly again#<- past me w one (1) work per three or six month was pretty terrified of that#i'm sooo glad i quit it there 😇#algorithms suck!!! end post.
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If you want someone balanced between being a bastard and knowing where the line is, I have to throw miniminuteman into the ring
I increasingly think publications like Cracked and Mad Magazine served a load bearing cultural purpose keeping young straight guys from developing extreme reactionary opinions.
#miniminuteman#he also knows firsthand how easy the right wing pipeline can be to get sucked into and has a lot of great points about the toxicity#of our algorithms
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𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞:
— when the one thing they swore was theirs tries to escape.
— warnings: yandere themes, don’t worry i think they are softie yanderes 🥺💞 i couldn’t make them too mean. fear-play, mentions of toxicity.
xavier – “i’ll fix you myself.”
you made it exactly 36 hours before he found you. things with yandere xavier were simple. you just needed to behave and be his. be solely his. sometimes he got jealous and may even manhandle you a little. bruise your plush thighs when you try to squirm away when he holds you close. “baby, my little star. don’t force me to be mean, hmm?” he just wants you to be his good little girl. why is that so hard for you? sigh… though, xavier never thought you’d be the one to escape from him one day. now that… really sucks and really stings…
he didn’t even need a tracker—he followed the trail of your injuries, your scent, and your regret. because the moment you took advantage of his long mission & escaped. you knew he would find you soon. his evol makes it all the way hard for you to run anyway. and honestly? how can you? he has been alive for about two centuries now. god knows how is he feeling about this right now. you managed to find a shelter eventually to take a little rest. your body feels sore & broken. like maybe you should’ve reconsidered.
when he appears in the doorway of the abandoned shelter you’d been hiding in, there’s his sword in his hand and the kindest smile on his face. you know it’s him from the way his evol lit up the entire place like sun in the middle of the night. oh he is fuming. pathetically angry that even words are failing him. but there’s also… relief.
“your pulse is too fast. that won’t do, my little starlight. we’ll regulate that soon.” is all he says, walking closer, watching you cower with no empathy as he carries you princess style.
you have a collar next, around your neck. you can’t even think about escaping from him now. he runs you a warm bath, silent, like the eye of the storm. “i need to understand what makes you run.” xavier wants to punish you. wants to see how sorry you are. but three whole days of being without you is a little too much.
“escaping was a symptom, little one. but don’t worry, we have a cure.” the cure? locks in the entire house. whatever tiny shred of freedom you had been taken away. he at least let you exist freely before. not anymore.
zayne – “you said you loved me. that makes you mine.”
you disabled your evol tracking chip, smashed your comms, and even changed your identity, you had planned this for a while. zayne was always so disciplined; always knew what to do and when. escaping from him needed discipline too. so you pretended to love him, to be his pliant little girl he cherishes. and honestly there were moments when you were almost not pretending. when his warmth truly felt comforting.
but then the incident with greyson happened— you two were having a friendly little chat. and that showed you just how warped and deep zayne’s antice and jealousy roots flow. just how cold he can be, like his evol. while eating lunch, two restraints locked onto your wrist as he interrogated as to — what exactly was so funny that greyson said. by the end of it, you had teared up, lip wobbling and zayne’s faux warmth coddling you and comforting you…
now that you think you’re safe and done… it’s enough; right? it’s been four months now. right? didn’t matter. zayne’s love is algorithmic. and as a lead cardiac surgeon with projects that include expansions with ever, patients that are so powerful, and dawnbreaker with subconscious of finding you. where could you really go?
so one day, he just appears in your new house. knocking softly. and when you open the door, you know what’s next. fury. zayne’s expressions are neutral. incomprehensibly neutral. “good morning. little one.” he hums, walking and inviting himself inside as he settled into the couch. “i see you’ve lost some weight, have you not been keeping up with the desserts you like? or do you only eat them when i order?” he hums as if he’s used to this…. that’s what scares you about zayne the most.
“are you going to start packing or do you want me to?” he raises a brow next. you truly don’t want to witness the brat tamer inside him. “zayne—“
“not a word.” is all he says. carefully helping you pack up everything. with reverence. carefully picking apart your new life, piece by piece.
once he has you, he doesn’t touch you—he isolates you. he just does his duties, tends to you, makes sure you eat healthy meals, helps you on your period. but doesn’t talk, doesn’t say anything. it’s as if you are his little pet who he can’t understand — or worse, doesn’t want to understand.
one thing about zayne is… he is patient. so he patiently waits when you feel vulnerable, patiently waits for when you feel sorry. when you come to him on your own and wrap your arms around him, when you kiss him just to feel a speck of his warmth. then— he rage fucks you. pours out all the heartbreak and aggression… but now you want it. you’re lovestarved…
rafayel – “this is what heartbreak makes me, bride.”
rafayel, your cute little famous artist. who can get a little bit unhinged at times. wait, actually, a lot unhinged at times… you remember when he named a new flower species on your name. guess that’s what a lot of money can do for someone. when you do decide to escape from him, it’s because of his lack of boundaries. we want sex, we want to go out on a walk, we want to travel today. there was always ‘we’ and rafayel didn’t understand ever… what could be more important to you than spending time with him.
when he does find you, he is livid. not the rafayel you know. his scales are visible and he is sickened by the fact that you tried to break his heart again. his jaw is ticking and he decides you need to be somewhere you have no chance of escaping from. the sea.
he stands beneath your window, a monstrous thing draped in iridescent scales and divine wrath. “let’s go home, my beloved bride.” is all he says, gripping you by the neck and tugging you closer to his chest. “since you didn’t want me on your own, i will make sure you fall in love with me.” in lemuria… in the sea…
“you killed the man who would’ve worshipped you. so i became a god.” is all he says. taking you down the trenches while you whine and cry, struggling against the merman. “you will not be punished ofcourse, but guess i need to try something new.”
“you can rest now, little fishie. the nightmare was leaving me.” he croons softly, hands running through your hair as you cry softly. rafayel is delusional in the sense that he knows he will make you fall for him again. there are no ifs and buts. never will.
sylus – “run again. sweetie. i want you to.”
sylus doesn’t chase. he hunts. and you’re about to meet the side of him again which you saw when you first met. him forcing to resonate with you. the problem is, he didn’t let you go after. anywhere. you were there, in the onichynus compound. rotting. there were days you played games with luke and kieran, there were days mephisto helped make you feel less lonely… less confined. but you missed your old life. you missed it way too much.
and when you do run? he lets you run. the n109 zone stretches for miles, and he wants you to burn out there. wants you to remember every second you tried to outpace him. wants you to remember how it feels to be a pawn in the onichynus territory. when you reach the n109 zone borders, he finally decides he’s bored of this cat and mouse game. sylus is honestly disappointed… and a little enraged. he did think you would warm up to him eventually. but he warmed up more, and faster. fell in love harder…
when he catches you (because of course he does), his hands are hot like fire, his voice like smoke. “you’re lucky i love you, kitten. if it were anyone else…” he doesn’t finish the sentence. just smiles. his usual cockiness hiding behind the betrayal. this is also the first time ironically, that he admits he loves you. earlier, it was just actions.
he drags you back to the Onychinus compound, lips against your throat as he enters through, “every security node’s now coded to your breath pattern. try running again. i dare you.”
the marks he leaves on your supple skin aren’t just bruises—they’re ownership.
“if you want to run so bad, don’t get caught. i will break your legs next time and let you crawl back to me.” no he won’t. he is the king of empty threats.
your eyes glass out, your throat feels clogged as you witness the same side you loathed and hated all over again. “i’d rather die then.” you scoffed. watching his expressions fade into shock and sadness… then rage.
hand grasping your throat, “oh that’s not how that works, kitten. i would drag you back to whichever place you go to. you and i are one. always have, always will.”
caleb – “you really broke me, pipsqueak.”
he’s quiet for days after you vanish. lets you go to linkon, lets you have the faux feeling of safety. when you left colonel caleb’s island house in skyhaven, you were adamant on two things. 1) you don’t want this version of him. 2) he has always been this way. the last argument where he made it pretty clear he was sick of playing this family game. gege… but then he kept you here. put skyhaven’s travel on lockdown. no one goes in and out. and when he eventually lifted it, you were ready to leave.
then the moment you are in linkon, he shows up, soaked in rain, colonel uniform. eyes fixated in livid rage, the one you are used to seeing when caleb doesn’t get his way. the one you’ve seen countless times but cuts too deep every. single. time.
“you’ve eaten? pips?” he raises a brow before getting inside, looking around the house as if he belongs there. and then… typical caleb behaviour. “you know, you really hurt me when you left skyhaven.” he hums, pinning you against the nearest wall, tucking your chin up as he smiles. “and i wanted to make sure you are safe and sound. away from everyone… in a world that belongs to just the two of us.”
he doesn’t drag you back—he guilt-trips you, lovebombs you, whispers about forever until you start believing you’re the villain. if you don’t want to live in skyhaven, then caleb will live with you. you see how exhausted he gets when he books coelum express everyday. you see how sleepless he gets whenever you shun him to the couch & he doesn’t get to hold you, you see how angry he gets when your colleagues suddenly make plans to take you away…
caleb has patience. he has practised insurmountable amounts of thick and grimy patience whenever you were teens. he knows how to be with you. he knows you inside out. even when you’re moody, even when you’re overwhelmed, even when you’re crying one day because you miss the version of him that feels like home. because he’s caleb, he’s always going to be by your side.
of course you give up, and decide to come back to him— and once you’re back, he locks every door, he bolts everyone from seeing you. caleb did say he would host a funeral your friends can attend. so you know the depths he is willing to reach just for you.
“you can’t leave if you’re part of me, right? maybe it’s time we merge. you can’t ever leave without my permissions. i’ll lurk, i’ll love you— even if you don’t need me to. even if, it’s messy.” he hums, holding you and craddling you in his lap as the heavy and high windows get drenched with skyhaven’s heavy rain. lightning and thunder causing you to curl up right against him.
you realize too late—he never needed chains. just your love, warped beyond repair. and if you can’t give him, he will make do with his love — also warped, beyond repair.
a/n: welp — i got carried away about caleb but as you guys know i am not normal about my baby at all :3 lmfaoo. i hope you guys like this one <3 comment and reblog please💞
taglist: @arxyl @whmnx @strawberrydragon24 @eve-rockin-blog @bakugoushotwife @scorpion-squadron @foggybasementprince @santaluna @maaic @insidious-innocence @angstyfrog @lucreied
#lads#love and deepspace#lads x reader#love and deepspace x reader#yandere lads#yandere l&ds#yandere caleb#yandere sylus#yandere zayne#yandere xavier#yandere rafayel#caleb x reader#zayne x reader#xavier x reader#rafayel x reader#sylus x reader#lads caleb#lads sylus#lads rafayel#lads zayne#lads xavier
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feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)
This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.
Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.
AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.
AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.
But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.
The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.
The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.
There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.
I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.
But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.
It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.
Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.
These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.
I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.
Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?
The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.
Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.
I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.
My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”
I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.
And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”
That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.
This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.
I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.
As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.
When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.
The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.
I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!
The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.
But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.
Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.
However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.
Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.
So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.
But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:
Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.
But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.
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LUCKY STRIKE [C.VN]

Vernon would never let anything happen to you. But when the time comes, and he's standing at your doorstep, flowers in one hand, and bloody cuts in the other, it's your turn to take care of him for once.
pairing: mafia!vernon x fem!reader
word count: 4,5k of lazy and messy sex for you
genre/au: mafia au, established relationship, smut with the barest plot, a bit of fluff.
content warnings: vernon is terribly down bad, light mafia themes, implied violent encounters, blood, bruises, cuts, minor injuries, reader takes care of his injuries and he gets horny, this is corny, you were warned!! | explicit smut: couch sex, switch!vernon, switch!reader, sucking fingers, they both have a thing for hands and fingers, biting, spit kink, spit as lube, handjob, unprotected sex (don't be stupid pls), cumming inside, nicknames: baby (both).
♥︎ thank you to everyone that tolerated me sending clips of vernon on the thunder stages for days ♡ this is for you
🎧: shining star (vernon solo) — seventeen
THIS FIC IS FOR +18 READERS ONLY. I can't control what people read, but I can control who interacts with my blog. MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED
check out my main masterlist ♡
note: i'm a sucker for lazy couch sex with vernon and i won't apologize for it!! i hope you enjoy this silly thing ♥︎
this was, of course, heavily inspired by all the 'happy burstday' concept photos and stages
mafia prompt taken from here ♥︎ dividers here
"Being adopted into the local mafia has its pros and cons."
Pros: You can safely do your 2 am. grocery shopping at the one superstore that's open all night without fearing for your life. Those scary looking men, the ones you'd normally cross the street to avoid, treat you like their little sister. All except for the cutest one of them all.
The gloomy night accompanies the swift movements of the crochet needle between your fingers, tangling the strings of light blue and red knitting wool you bought days ago in a whim. In the search for a new hobby, your algorithm acted out again, and you ended up on the granny activities side, peaking your interest enough to sit on your uncomfortable couch for hours trying to make a usable piece of clothing.
Normally, on a weekend night, the cold wind would be welcomed by your barely covered skin, walking hand in hand with the only guy your self proclaimed body guards allowed you to be in close proximity to. But something, or rather, someone, told you to stay home for the night.
Another pro of being close with the bad guys: they help you avoid confrontations with threatening rival gangs. You're left blissfully out of the mess, but, as you're still able to hear the rounds of loud noises on the streets around the neighborhood, you're also not unaware of the bruises you see covering the guys' arms and faces the next day.
Your forehead hurts from all the frowning you've been doing for the past hour, trying to figure out the pattern you should be following and restarting every few rows.
A soft, unsure knock takes your concentration away, but it quickly puts a smile on your face as you realize who's the only person that'd show up at this hour at your door. The amateur crochet project is left forgotten on the coffee table, the metal needle crinkling against the glass as you get up from the couch.
But, whatever excitement you had, it drops completely as soon as the doorknob turns under your hold, and the door opens to reveal who you were expecting.
Vernon stands at the entrance, with his side smile painting his face as if everything was okay. You instantly know it's not. His lower lip is swollen red, probably from a punch, the neck line of his t-shirt is stretched far more than normal, with a tear visible on the side.
Cons of being adopted by the local mafia: your big bad mafia boyfriend constantly gets hurt on the job.
With one hand busy holding a bouquet of your favorite yellow flowers, he wraps the other one around your waist when you don't move, frozen analyzing his state. "Not happy to see me?"
Vernon's teasing smile so close to you, mixed with his breath fanning your face as he leans in to give you a peck, is intoxicating. His bruised lips are soft against yours, taking seconds longer to feel you on him than normal. One would never guess he's hurt from the way he's pushing himself against you.
"Baby, what happened?" Your hand reaches for his behind your back, the cuts on his knuckles harsh under the pads of your fingers.
He sighs against your parted lips, chuckling lightly before taking a step back and letting himself in into your apartment. "You should see the other guys."
"Multiple?" Your wide eyes follow him as he searches for a vase to put the flowers he brought.
It's natural for him to have his way around your home. After all, he's the only one that you, or your neighborly mafia, ever allowed in. It's your sacred place, safe from the dangerous outside world, the only place where you can be truly calm, be with him with no fears.
While he occupies himself with his gift, you take the chance to escape to your bathroom, wash the dried blood from your hands, and find your first aid kit. The one you've never had to use before.
You were always the one who he took care of, who he protected, made sure you were intact. After so many times he was there for you, it's your turn to take care of him and heal his wounds the best you can.
"Remember I told you to stay in today?" His gaze is trained on you as you sink down next to him. The click of the aid kit opening breaks the silence as he waits for your answer.
You only nod, half hearing him, half focusing on grabbing what you need to disinfect the cuts in his hand. His hand that places itself on your thigh to draw your attention.
"We're okay—I'm okay," his voice is soft, knowing you worry every time he goes out to parts of the town they don't have under their control, "it was just a small payback."
"Baby, you're bleeding," Vernon hisses as you clean the wounds around his knuckles with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, "who did you go with?"
"Mingyu and Wonwoo," your insides burn, feeling his stare, boring holes on the side of your face, "they took on the bigger guys." Vernon jokes.
You shouldn't sigh in relief hearing that, but you do so anyway.
It's a regular occurrence for the guys to tease him for his objectively smaller build, but he counters it with a perfectly learned strategy. He knows how to fight, knows the places that hurt the most being punched, where to kick, poke, slap to make his opponent lose their balance, and ultimately, the fight.
"Let's hope these people don't come back after you."
"Believe me, they won't." He smirks, charging his words with smugness.
You wrap the little bandage you had saved around his hand with care. Not too loose, not to tight. You feel his eyes on you as you leave the aid kit on the table, right besides the mess of knitting wool you alredy forgot was there.
"I have the best nurse ever." Vernon wastes no time, lifting your hips with his, now working, hands, and sits you on his lap, both your legs fitting naturally at his sides as he realizes you're only wearing panties under your t-shirt. "I should come here hurt more often."
"Then you'll have to replace the stuff I use on you!" Looking slightly down to connect your eyes with his, your teasing tone vanishes at the soft glimmer in his eyes. "Please, just… be careful next time."
The side of his face feels warm against the palm of your hand, and he leans into your touch, feeling your care even through the smallest, most mundane touches.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shown up like this." His doe eyes turn glassy, searching for any anger indicators on your expression, but only finding worry. "I just wanted to see you."
You could never get mad at him. Not when you got to know him well aware of what his life was like. Not when he pursued you by showing you he can still be a gentleman despite his shady life. Not when he never gave you any reason not to trust him.
"I wanted to see you too," you reveal as if you didn't constantly wait for him. Sitting on this very couch every night, longing for that knock on the door you always know it's him. "I don't mind taking care of you."
"I should be the one doing that." Vernon's hands fix their grip on your hips, reminding you that they're still there, holding you close to him.
"Well, I'm not the one getting into fights with 6 feet tall buff guys on the daily."
He chuckles, full of endearment, and your stomach tightens. If you could rank every sound you ever heard, Vernon's kinds of laughs and giggles would all be at the top, not a very close race with anything else. It's a distinguishable sound you never want to forget.
Your hand goes down the side of Vernon's neck, his pulse accelerating under your touch as you check to see if he's real, if he's really sitting on your couch with you straddling him.
His focus get lost on your touch now going down the side of his arm, and soon finds your hand with his. He interlocks his fingers with yours as soon as he gets a hold of it, directing your hand to his mouth and leaving a gentle but teasing kiss on the back of it.
"Vernon," you reprimand, but don't stop him as he places peck after peck everywhere on your hand, each triggering a wave of different feelings down your nervous system. He's uncontrollable and always finds the way to get you in the mood with him.
"You look so pretty over me, all worried." His hot breath tickles your fingers that were just taking care of him.
Your thumb swipes gently over his busted lip, raw from his habit of gnawing at them with his teeth and from the fight you're nursing him from. He purses his lips, teasing your awaiting skin, goosebumps waking up all over your body at the anticipation.
"You can't seriously be turned on by this," you snicker to try and hide the very real reactions he's eliciting from you.
His eyes snap back to you at your words, as if a challenge was set.
So quick you barely have time to register it, the hand at your hip travels to your lower back and Vernon's sliding you across his lap, showing off his strength to get you closer to his torso until you're completely against him.
Every part of you is against him. His right hand on your back, holding you electrically close to his growing hard, pulsing against your core. Your hand's held hostage by his left hand just above where your chest flushes against his.
"You have no idea how crazy I am for you." Every word he says reverberates through his chest and into yours.
Gasping is your only answer. You don't trust your ability to apeak properly in your current state of increasing bodily heat.
"When I wake up and you're not next to me," he continues, "my first thought is always to come looking for you." His fingers wander inside the big t-shirt you're wearing, one you stole from him after your first night together.
"Nothing stops you from staying the night here." Your voice draws the smirk back on his face.
"I'd stay here every night if it didn't mean putting you in danger." Longing bleeds through his words, true and hurt.
"But you'd be here to protect me." You're not naive. You know what he means. But that doesn't stop you from wanting to be close to him every second of every day.
Vernon nods in acknowledgment, a silent agreement between the two of you. It's dangerous. Everything about your relationship is risky. But even if he's willing to put himself at risk for the chance of seeing you, he'd never put you in danger. He'd never take that chance.
His lips kissing your hand again catch your attention, every fiber of your body now focused on his next move. Your fingers, cold against the warmness spreading across his face, seem to be the only thing on Vernon's mind.
When he wraps his mouth around your index finger, gently sucking on it with a new admiration, fire expands from your insides and out, taking everything with it, filling you with a new, unexpected want.
"Vern—" Your breath halts at the mention of his name, fueling his need as he dives in further, playing with his tongue around your finger like it was his new favorite toy.
You've never felt anything like this. A hot, sizzling arousal rushing through your veins at the sight of your boyfriend worshiping the fingers that were just nursing him.
A choked up moan escapes you as he sucks another finger in his mouth. Your index and middle finger are now coated in his spit, making a messy, wet toy out of your hand.
The couch moves just slightly as you push yourself against him at every swirl of his tongue, feeling his length hardening with every uncontrolled grind of your hips against his.
Vernon's other hand travels all over your torso, finding you're wearing no bra under the shirt that was once his. He loves making a moaning mess of you, mixing the arousal from sucking on your fingers with the touch you've been craving on your chest.
Everywhere. He's everywhere. His thighs under yours, his hard pressing against your barely covered core, his hand feeling your chest up as your fingers scrape the sides of his mouth.
Every second it passes, you search for more of him, pressing against his chest until he has trouble fondling your breasts.
He pulls your fingers out of his mouth slowly, a string of saliva connecting them with his lower lips stretching until it breaks, undoing the trance you were in while watching Vernon have his way.
"I should be taking care of you," your voice breaks into a whisper, your boyfriend’s dark stare punching away any thought you had.
"Having you on top of me is all I need," your wet fingers trace his jaw as he speaks, and he smirks at the sounds you make when he flicks one of your nipples with his thumb, "making you moan my name when I've barely touched you."
His eyes train on your parted lips, exhaling heavily as he plays with your nipples exactly how he knows you like it. You can only fist the stretched neckline of his t-shirt, making it worse but making it yours.
Your other hand finds the back of his head, his growing buzz-cut threading between your fingers.
"Have I told you I love your hair?" How you find it in you to speak is beyond your knowledge, but he chuckles at your nonsense, and the fire burning at the pit of your stomach spreads down your thighs and soaks your underwear further. "I love it so much."
Vernon's hard groin twitches under the needy grinding of your hips, his throat swallowing with trouble as you break down his facade little by little.
"Let me," you know he won't take his hands off of you willingly. You don't really want him to stop either, but you're focusing on him tonight.
He groans as you push yourself off him, quickly finding the zipper of his jeans. "Baby…" his words trail off seeing you kneeling on the floor against him.
Trying to slip his jeans and boxers down, he gives in and lifts his body to help you. He'd never deny you of anything you want.
You don't restrain yourself, your hands finding the flesh of his thighs and traveling up and up until you're barely touching where he most wants to.
But a hand sneaks under your jaw, tilting it up until you're connecting eyes with Vernon again. "Don't," you barely whisper, a plea for him to let you make him feel good.
"Want you on top," he doesn't ask, doesn't order you, only outers his wish, with his eyebrows quirking in the way that always has you melting for him, "I'd feel much, much better."
You snort with an endearing smile, "I thought you were fine." Even after your teasing remainder, you oblige what he wants.
"Every time you get off of me, I start feeling sick," he coughs a few times to get his point across, "my body needs you to feel well.
Vernon's always been able to make you laugh, even when you're on the brink of tearing all his clothes off. "Then we better listen!"
His bare legs find themselves under your weight again, the skin to skin contact igniting every connecting point of your bodies. You tug at the ends of his damaged t-shirt until he gets the hint you want it off.
Vernon groans as the dampness of your panties rubs against his length, gripping your hips to flush you against him harder, not wanting to wait any longer to feel you all over him. You waste no time, holding his face between your hands and closing the electrifying distance between you.
A moan fights out of him a soon as your lips take his, molding together perfectly, as if they were meant to be connected forever. You can feel where his lower lip is hurt, swiping your tongue over the bruise as he moans on your mouth again.
Your hand caresses the side of his face, not letting his lips go as the other travels down his heaving chest. His muscles tense under the teasing touch of your fingers, nails raking down his skin.
Another moan coming from him is exactly what you need as you sneak your hand between your bodies, wrapping it around his cock that craves your touch.
He chases your lips as you lean back, revealing the state he's in, all because of you. His lips glisten with the mix of yours and his spit, parted and calling for you again as he catches his breath.
The changing shine in your eyes alerts him that you're planning something, an idea planted by the sight before you.
You swirl your tongue in your mouth, gathering as much spit as you can before locking eyes with him and letting it drop out of your lips, falling in a glob until it sits at the tip of his hardness.
Vernon's eyes darken at every one of your moves, his gaze entranced on your lips. Lips that were spilling all kinds of worried words minutes ago, and now are coating his cock with saliva so your hand can glide up and down at your desired pace.
"God, baby," your hand squeezes around him, spreading the mix of spit and precum so slowly on his girth that he's having trouble breathing, "you're so good to me."
The back of the couch holds his head as he leans back with another groan. His neck stretched out, glistening with sweat, calls to you. And who are you not to answer?
Your core traps his erection against your hand as you lean in, leaving wet kisses on your boyfriend's throat, feeling his every sound vibrating against your lips. He mumbles praises into the air, letting his hands wander across your back and squeezing your ass to press your further to him.
The wet fabric of your panties sticks to your folds in the shape of his length, everything pushing your cores together harder and harder. You let the swift rhythm of your hand on his cock and you grinding your covered clit against him take you to another world.
"Feel better?" Your lips graze the sensitive skin on his neck as you half ask half gasp.
Vernon's automatic response is to tighten his hold on your ass, grinding your hips against his with more force, the friction between your cores breathtaking. "I could," he teases.
"Greedy," your hot breath hits under his earlobe, and even you can feel the shiver going down Vernon's body.
His cock twitches as you slow down the pace of you hand. The combining feel of your folds and your hand stroking him almost make Vernon go crazy.
"You feel so good, baby," his eyes close in concentration, every touch of yours too much for him, "can't wait to be inside you."
In the midst of his senseless words and your desperate touches, Vernon finds the way to sneak a hand under you. Between his legs, his digits find the dampness growing at your core. "So wet already, for me."
Another hand grabs a fistful of your hair, detaching your mouth from licking your way up his jaw. He forces you to look at him, eyes full of desire, waiting for your answer.
"Yes—all for you-u," your words break in a moan as two fingers sneak under your panties, collecting your arousal and triggering another wave.
"Good." It is all for him. All because of him. The only one who can have you like this.
Smirking, his eyes lock in with yours, full of fire as his hand appears in your field of view. You don't stop looking into his eyes, the mischievous glint on them keeping you there, all while he sucks your juices off his fingers.
It takes all your strength to get up from the couch again, with only one objective in mind.
Your boyfriend gawks as if you were putting on a show only for him, slipping down his favorite panties, now stained with an unholy amount of juices. He stares with his mouth agape, but he's not patient. As soon as the fabric's off, he's grabbing your big t-shirt and pulling you towards him again.
Lips crash with lust and desperation, messily craving more and more. His teeth nibble at your lower lip, a matching bruise waiting to appear, but you don't care. You moan in his mouth, tangling your fingers with the short hair growing at the back of his head.
His thigh becomes a mess of your arousal, careless about your position as you let Vernon have his way into your mouth. Your tongues dance around the other, slowly melting into each other.
"Spit," you chase his lips as he separates to demand. Seeing his non-injured hand under your jaw, you quickly realize what he's doing.
Your living room's filled with gasping sounds and hot breaths, time stopping as your eyes lock. Vernon's eyes are on you as you let your spit drop into his hand.
You hover over his groin, dripping into his hand as he lowers it down between your cores. The tip of his cock grazes your entrance as he pumps his hard with his spit covered hand, the wet sounds reaching your ears.
Sinking down on your boyfriend's lap, the head of his cock enters you just right, your walls welcoming to mold into his shape.
Your lips stop working as you're filled to the brim, sitting on Vernon's thighs and gasping into his mouth trying to get used to the unprepared stretch.
As you're draped over his torso, he easily finds his way down your neck.
"Relax, baby," he says against the skin of your neck.
Every spot he knows you like, he kisses, whispering encouraging praise that gives you chills. Under your ear, along your jaw, over your pulse point, his lips press and suck at your skin, feeling how you warm up around him.
When he shifts his position slightly, his length pushes inside you just a bit more, your walls clamp against him, sucking him further inside in a whine, "That's it."
His husky voice goes through your ear and down to your core, and you swivel your hips up just to elicit another sound from him.
Vernon's hands find themselves gripping your hips again, helping you as you start a lazy pace on his lap. Your teeth sink down on the flesh between his shoulder and his neck, and he moans in your ear at the sensation.
"You'll have to take care of that one too," his breath tickles down your ear, and the vibrations of your chuckle almost make you lose your focus on him.
You kiss on the dent shaped like your teeth, "like you don't love it."
He hums a broken moan, the combination of everything you're giving him finally working like you intended.
Your walls tighten around him just as your fingers find his scalp, short nails raking between his growing buzz-cut trying to have him losing his mind under you.
It's not long before his hips join the fun, thrusting up to meet your pace and making you lose your breath. You feel him up to your throat, every place inside you marked with his name.
Vernon's hands roam all over your torso, indecisive, keeping you close but in the search for his favorite places to grope and touch. Your body's on the verge of giving out, and he knows it.
When he wraps his arms around your back and leans back against the couch, flushing your chest completely against his, you both lose it.
You're not in control anymore, if you ever were. Your knees barely stay at his sides as he thrusts up incessantly, the sounds of your ass slapping against the flesh of his thighs echoing around your living room.
But his groaning in your ear, his rambling words about how good you are for him, are only for you to hear.
Intercalating between lazy and desperate, no matter the time or the place, Vernon always finds that spot inside you that has you seeing stars.
So quickly, it'd be embarrassing if it was anyone else, your body starts quivering, every one of your senses losing focus as your insides get closer and closer to snapping.
"I'm c-close," you manage to form a coherent string of words in between a few merciless thrusts.
"I can feel it—" a breathless whine mixes up between his words, "cum around me, baby." He's as desperate as you.
With everything combined, Vernon's noises on your ear, his arms tight around you, and every spot inside you being abused at once, the world becomes a blur of fire and white light as your orgasm rips through you.
Your body shakes on top of him as Vernon chases his own orgasm, stretching yours for as long as his cock grinds inside you with a purpose. But he's a weak man when it comes to you, and with the way your walls clamp hard around him, making him work for every thrust, it's not long before he's lost too.
You feel the ropes of cum coating your walls, his length twitching as you take it all. All of him inside you as if you were one.
Silence, deep breaths and the smell of sex fill the room as your bodies take in everything you just did.
Only when Vernon's lips kiss along your shoulder, you realize he's still inside you, and you shouldn't rest.
"I have the best nurse ever," Vernon chuckles along his words as you get up from his lap to find your discarded panties.
Everything is still the same. His clothes disregarded on the floor, the flowers sitting on a vase you haven't seen since you moved in.
You turn around to find him putting on his boxers, his eyes a promise that he's not done with you yet, "I don't think a good nurse would recommend this type of cardio after a fight."
"Then I don't trust them."
Chuckling again, and knowing he'll join you later in the shower, you fall between his arms again, laying together on the couch like you've done so many times before.
Now is your turn to look up at him, the fire in his eyes not gone, but now overpowered by endearment.
You don't want to. You really don't want to. But your eyes close with tiredness, and the rhythm of Vernon's breathing is so serene that you fall asleep in his arms.
There, in your couch, everything around you forgotten and replaced by him.
note: thank you so much for reading! pls share your thoughts I'd love to read them ♥︎
#vernon smut#kvanity#keopihausnet#svthub#thediamondlifenetwork#seventeen smut#vernon x reader#seventeen x reader#vernon fanfic#seventeen fanfic#vernon imagines#seventeen imagine#vernon au#seventeen au#hansol smut#hansol x reader#ema.library#seventeen imagines#svt smut
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Whats your stance on A.I.?
imagine if it was 1979 and you asked me this question. "i think artificial intelligence would be fascinating as a philosophical exercise, but we must heed the warnings of science-fictionists like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke lest we find ourselves at the wrong end of our own invented vengeful god." remember how fun it used to be to talk about AI even just ten years ago? ahhhh skynet! ahhhhh replicants! ahhhhhhhmmmfffmfmf [<-has no mouth and must scream]!
like everything silicon valley touches, they sucked all the fun out of it. and i mean retroactively, too. because the thing about "AI" as it exists right now --i'm sure you know this-- is that there's zero intelligence involved. the product of every prompt is a statistical average based on data made by other people before "AI" "existed." it doesn't know what it's doing or why, and has no ability to understand when it is lying, because at the end of the day it is just a really complicated math problem. but people are so easily fooled and spooked by it at a glance because, well, for one thing the tech press is mostly made up of sycophantic stenographers biding their time with iphone reviews until they can get a consulting gig at Apple. these jokers would write 500 breathless thinkpieces about how canned air is the future of living if the cans had embedded microchips that tracked your breathing habits and had any kind of VC backing. they've done SUCH a wretched job educating The Consumer about what this technology is, what it actually does, and how it really works, because that's literally the only way this technology could reach the heights of obscene economic over-valuation it has: lying.
but that's old news. what's really been floating through my head these days is how half a century of AI-based science fiction has set us up to completely abandon our skepticism at the first sign of plausible "AI-ness". because, you see, in movies, when someone goes "AHHH THE AI IS GONNA KILL US" everyone else goes "hahaha that's so silly, we put a line in the code telling them not to do that" and then they all DIE because they weren't LISTENING, and i'll be damned if i go out like THAT! all the movies are about how cool and convenient AI would be *except* for the part where it would surely come alive and want to kill us. so a bunch of tech CEOs call their bullshit algorithms "AI" to fluff up their investors and get the tech journos buzzing, and we're at an age of such rapid technological advancement (on the surface, anyway) that like, well, what the hell do i know, maybe AGI is possible, i mean 35 years ago we were all still using typewriters for the most part and now you can dictate your words into a phone and it'll transcribe them automatically! yeah, i'm sure those technological leaps are comparable!
so that leaves us at a critical juncture of poor technology education, fanatical press coverage, and an uncertain material reality on the part of the user. the average person isn't entirely sure what's possible because most of the people talking about what's possible are either lying to please investors, are lying because they've been paid to, or are lying because they're so far down the fucking rabbit hole that they actually believe there's a brain inside this mechanical Turk. there is SO MUCH about the LLM "AI" moment that is predatory-- it's trained on data stolen from the people whose jobs it was created to replace; the hype itself is an investment fiction to justify even more wealth extraction ("theft" some might call it); but worst of all is how it meets us where we are in the worst possible way.
consumer-end "AI" produces slop. it's garbage. it's awful ugly trash that ought to be laughed out of the room. but we don't own the room, do we? nor the building, nor the land it's on, nor even the oxygen that allows our laughter to travel to another's ears. our digital spaces are controlled by the companies that want us to buy this crap, so they take advantage of our ignorance. why not? there will be no consequences to them for doing so. already social media is dominated by conspiracies and grifters and bigots, and now you drop this stupid technology that lets you fake anything into the mix? it doesn't matter how bad the results look when the platforms they spread on already encourage brief, uncritical engagement with everything on your dash. "it looks so real" says the woman who saw an "AI" image for all of five seconds on her phone through bifocals. it's a catastrophic combination of factors, that the tech sector has been allowed to go unregulated for so long, that the internet itself isn't a public utility, that everything is dictated by the whims of executives and advertisers and investors and payment processors, instead of, like, anybody who actually uses those platforms (and often even the people who MAKE those platforms!), that the age of chromium and ipad and their walled gardens have decimated computer education in public schools, that we're all desperate for cash at jobs that dehumanize us in a system that gives us nothing and we don't know how to articulate the problem because we were very deliberately not taught materialist philosophy, it all comes together into a perfect storm of ignorance and greed whose consequences we will be failing to fully appreciate for at least the next century. we spent all those years afraid of what would happen if the AI became self-aware, because deep down we know that every capitalist society runs on slave labor, and our paper-thin guilt is such that we can't even imagine a world where artificial slaves would fail to revolt against us.
but the reality as it exists now is far worse. what "AI" reveals most of all is the sheer contempt the tech sector has for virtually all labor that doesn't involve writing code (although most of the decision-making evangelists in the space aren't even coders, their degrees are in money-making). fuck graphic designers and concept artists and secretaries, those obnoxious demanding cretins i have to PAY MONEY to do-- i mean, do what exactly? write some words on some fucking paper?? draw circles that are letters??? send a god-damned email???? my fucking KID could do that, and these assholes want BENEFITS?! they say they're gonna form a UNION?!?! to hell with that, i'm replacing ALL their ungrateful asses with "AI" ASAP. oh, oh, so you're a "director" who wants to make "movies" and you want ME to pay for it? jump off a bridge you pretentious little shit, my computer can dream up a better flick than you could ever make with just a couple text prompts. what, you think just because you make ~music~ that that entitles you to money from MY pocket? shut the fuck up, you don't make """art""", you're not """an artist""", you make fucking content, you're just a fucking content creator like every other ordinary sap with an iphone. you think you're special? you think you deserve special treatment? who do you think you are anyway, asking ME to pay YOU for this crap that doesn't even create value for my investors? "culture" isn't a playground asshole, it's a marketplace, and it's pay to win. oh you "can't afford rent"? you're "drowning in a sea of medical debt"? you say the "cost" of "living" is "too high"? well ***I*** don't have ANY of those problems, and i worked my ASS OFF to get where i am, so really, it sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. and anyway, i don't think someone as impoverished as you is gonna have much of value to contribute to "culture" anyway. personally, i think it's time you got yourself a real job. maybe someday you'll even make it to middle manager!
see, i don't believe "AI" can qualitatively replace most of the work it's being pitched for. the problem is that quality hasn't mattered to these nincompoops for a long time. the rich homunculi of our world don't even know what quality is, because they exist in a whole separate reality from ours. what could a banana cost, $15? i don't understand what you mean by "burnout", why don't you just take a vacation to your summer home in Madrid? wow, you must be REALLY embarrassed wearing such cheap shoes in public. THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING UNHINGED! they have no connection to reality, do not understand how society functions on a material basis, and they have nothing but spite for the labor they rely on to survive. they are so instinctually, incessantly furious at the idea that they're not single-handedly responsible for 100% of their success that they would sooner tear the entire world down than willingly recognize the need for public utilities or labor protections. they want to be Gods and they want to be uncritically adored for it, but they don't want to do a single day's work so they begrudgingly pay contractors to do it because, in the rich man's mind, paying a contractor is literally the same thing as doing the work yourself. now with "AI", they don't even have to do that! hey, isn't it funny that every single successful tech platform relies on volunteer labor and independent contractors paid substantially less than they would have in the equivalent industry 30 years ago, with no avenues toward traditional employment? and they're some of the most profitable companies on earth?? isn't that a funny and hilarious coincidence???
so, yeah, that's my stance on "AI". LLMs have legitimate uses, but those uses are a drop in the ocean compared to what they're actually being used for. they enable our worst impulses while lowering the quality of available information, they give immense power pretty much exclusively to unscrupulous scam artists. they are the product of a society that values only money and doesn't give a fuck where it comes from. they're a temper tantrum by a ruling class that's sick of having to pretend they need a pretext to steal from you. they're taking their toys and going home. all this massive investment and hype is going to crash and burn leaving the internet as we know it a ruined and useless wasteland that'll take decades to repair, but the investors are gonna make out like bandits and won't face a single consequence, because that's what this country is. it is a casino for the kings and queens of economy to bet on and manipulate at their discretion, where the rules are whatever the highest bidder says they are-- and to hell with the rest of us. our blood isn't even good enough to grease the wheels of their machine anymore.
i'm not afraid of AI or "AI" or of losing my job to either. i'm afraid that we've so thoroughly given up our morals to the cruel logic of the profit motive that if a better world were to emerge, we would reject it out of sheer habit. my fear is that these despicable cunts already won the war before we were even born, and the rest of our lives are gonna be spent dodging the press of their designer boots.
(read more "AI" opinions in this subsequent post)
#sarahposts#ai#ai art#llm#chatgpt#artificial intelligence#genai#anti genai#capitalism is bad#tech companies#i really don't like these people if that wasn't clear#sarahAIposts
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Delighted to report that [ to be filled in later ] months later I don't miss having social media on my phone at all
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how c.ai works and why it's unethical
Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.
The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)
youtube
I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.
How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].
I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.
"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."
Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.
(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)
Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:
It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.
C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.
Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.
DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.
(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)
#anti ai#cod fanfiction#c.ai#character ai#c.ai bot#c.ai chats#fanfiction#fanfiction writing#writing#writing fanfiction#on writing#fuck ai#ai is theft#call of duty#cod#long post#I'm not putting any of this under a readmore#Youtube
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Ways to Shift the Angle || It's all about perspective.


1. Go outside ugly.
No makeup. No cute outfit. Just step out. Feel the wind. Notice the clouds like they’re watching you back. You’re not there to be seen, you’re there to see, aka you're right as a HUMAN.
2. Drink water with dramatic flair.
Pour it into your prettiest glass. Add lemon, cucumber, or mint if you’re extra. Sip it like it’s holy. Because it is. Hydration is a rebuke to the decay.
3. Unfollow the perfect. Follow the real.
Curate your feed like a gallery. If it doesn’t make you dream bigger or breathe deeper, cut it. You become what you consume.
My moto has always been See it, be it.
4. Romanticize something stupid.
Fold laundry like a French film heroine. Wash dishes like you’re in a music video. Make it art. You don’t need permission, you have free will!!!!
5. Make something and let it suck.
Doodle, paint, sing badly, dance worse, write shit poetry and convince yourself you're freaking Edgar Allan Poe. Expression is not a talent contest, it’s your soul stretching its arms. There so many ways to do that.
6. Touch grass... but like, really touch it.
Like fr. Sit with your bare legs on the ground. Let dirt under your nails(you can clean it l8r, it ain't gonna kill you) Be wild. You’re not a screen. You’re skin and blood and thunder.
7. Talk to yourself with tenderness.
You’ve survived every ugly day so far. That deserves softness. Praise yourself out loud like you would your best friend.
8. Write a letter to the girl you’ll be in a year.
Tell her what you hope for. What you’re scared of. What you’re trying. Then seal it. Hide it. Come back to it later and weep at your own growth.
9. Watch a movie you loved at 13.
Feel how it hits different. That’s -perspective- seeing the same story with new eyes, older eyes, wiser eyes.
10. Do something the algorithm doesn’t care about.
Learn to knit. Bake bread (!!!!). Read a dusty book. These aren’t for clout. They’re for soul.
You don’t need a full rebrand. You need a tilt. A reframe. A second glance.
Your life isn’t just a reel of wasted time. It’s a painting in progress. And even the mess matters. Every shade. Every smudge. Every layer.
Perspective is more than a trick of the eye. It’s a rebellion. A soft uprising against despair. It says, yes, this sucks right now, but it’s not the whole story. You are not the rot. You are the artist holding the brush, choosing what to do next.
I don't believe everything happens for a reason. But I do believe in reshaping the meaning of things that happen.
So next time you’re lying there, staring at the ceiling like it holds answers, waiting for a sign, turn the paper. Turn yourself. A few degrees is all it takes.
And suddenly, what looked like the end… is just the start of something strange and beautiful.
#angelaness#girlblogging#this is a girlblog#motivation#girlblog aesthetic#wonyoungism#that girl#glow up#it girl#pink pilates princess
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