#the quality and the quality of the text..

[lime-bucket]

I chose to post this until there r 3 days left for the end of pride month cause i love dramatic exists

[lordchairesq]

"haha ghost trick has only two buttons, ghost and trick" but what about him...

[haostea]

enhypen bf headcanons

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: enhypen members as boyfriends

masterlist

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ heeseung

you guys are practically married at this point, like you guys have your routine down, and it's the cutest most domestic thing ever

he's actually adorable, he would care about you so much!

i feel like he is a great listener, so he would always be there when you need to vent, and he would give good advice after

not that much into pda, but he wouldn't mind a quick hug or holding hands, in private i could see him inviting you to sit on his lap a lot, especially when he's gaming

speaking of gaming, he would love it if you played with him

he gets so giddy around you, immediately lights up every time you walk into a room

i think he would be shy to sing to you, or show you lyrics that he wrote about you

but the more you tell him you love it the more you catch him telling you he what he has been up to and wants to hear your thoughts

one his main love languages seems to be quality time, so you just being in the same room as him doing your own thing makes him really happy

he also expresses his love for you in his writing where he'll write some cheesy lyrics and cringe, but if you tell him how much you love it he will write even more

would absolutely love if you pulled him up to dance, especially when you start singing he would start singing too

the more times you do this the more he'll get comfortable dancing and singing around you, to the point where he's serenading you around the house, and pulling you up to dance all the time

overall 10/10 bf

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ jay

will always be hovering over you, not in a bad way, but in more of a protective way as he wants to make sure that you are okay

speaking of making sure that you are okay, he is for sure a caretaker

thinks that you are absolutely adorable, and only wants the best for you

you are always his first priority, no matter how busy he will always make time for you

and even when he can't physically be there, he is always calling and texting you little reminders to eat, take a break, sleep

he would also make food ahead of time, so you can just take it out of the fridge/freezer and heat it up

he treats you with such softness, where he would be extremely gentle with you, as he wants to make sure you can always go to him no matter what

also such a gentleman, would drive you anywhere, constantly hold doors open for you, carry your bags, and also open things for you

not because you can't do it, but why should you have to if he's right there?

he genuinely would put so much time and effort into your relationship, and he would make sure that you never go to bed mad

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ jake

he's such a cutie pie omg, he's the definition of head over heals

at this point you don't have a name, you are known as darling, sweetie, sweetheart, love, etc. because jake will literally call you every one of them under the sun

his pupils turn into hearts whenever your around, he literally lights up when you walk into a room, like one would think he ate the sun

doesn't even care that he's a "simp" according to ni-ki because he knows he is, i mean haven't you seen yourself? of course he is

he LOVES cuddles, like good luck trying to get up in the morning, this man will not let go

his accent is so cute, so obviously one would only want him to speak in english, and if you also speak english you guys would frequently have conversations in english

but if you don't he would love to teach you, he thinks it's adorable, and feels so special that you want him to teach you

layla would love you, his camera pretty much only consists of you two, and when you guys are together he is taking thousands of photos, because layla and you in the same picture? omg it's the most perfect thing

such a gentleman, loves kissing your hand, giving you his jacket, opening doors, holding bags for you, etc.

his dream is to definitely travel with you and take you to austrailia

would be so happy if you brought him to meet your family, or bring him to wherever you grew up/where your from

actually husband material

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥sunghoon

this man is aggressively endearing?

he will make sure that you eat and are okay

like he will force you to eat if you haven't and it's sweet because he is not afraid to spoon feed you if he has to

this relationship if definitely private, i could not see him wanting a public one

he's also very awkward, especially when you first started dating, he would be fidgeting and looking anywhere besides you because you're just so pretty and cool

overtime it's gotten better, but there are still occasions that make him blush and try to hide his face

he loves teasing you, which can be annoying, but he will never make you uncomfortable or go past your limit

very good with boundaries and will never pass them once they are set, unless you say otherwise

because he does love you so much and would never want you to hate him, so he knows when to back off

he knows when to be more serious and intimate, but it really only occurs in private in the privacy of your home where he can feel vulnerable

he does truly love you, it just takes him a little while to fully embody it

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ sunoo

he's the cutest and sweetest

so so so gentle with you, to the point where you think he's holding a piece of glass

loves holding your face and giving you kisses, and would love it if you would do it back as well

you're definitely his first priority over his members, like if you needed him for something he would drop whatever he was doing and go to you

loves receiving gifts and acts of service from you, like if you folded his clothes or bought him a new shirt, he is literally on the ground confessing his love for you and how you didn't need to do that

plans out dates and events to the last detail, he will not have anything go wrong, everything will be just how he planned

and since he only thinks you deserve the best he would go all out, buying balloons, bouquets, stuffed animals, even buying you an outfit

don't forget that there are of course going to be handwritten letters, that are at least a page because he could go on and on about how much he loves you

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ jungwon

such a sweetie

would be such a gentleman, where he would kneel down to tie your shoes for you, or would full on give you his shoes if it hurts to walk in yours

along with the headcanon above piggyback rides are also very frequent, not just because your feet hurt, but because he just thinks it's fun

would quite literally remember everything, like one day your walking through the mall and mention you liked a shirt, then its showing up on your bed the next day with a little love letter?

loves loves loves seeing you smile and laugh, would for sure do anything to see and hear it

he would love to just lay down in your lap and have you play with his hair, he thinks it's so relaxing and calming

i feel like he would act like he doesn't like physical affection, like kissing his cheek or ruffling his hair but he's lying, he does love it, just maybe not in public

i see him wanting a more private relationship just because he wants to keep you away from all of the hate and toxicity

overall very fun and loving, and he loves you to bits

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➺❥ ni-ki

this relationship is actually the best thing ever

it's such a young adult romance, where it's so playful and unserious, but you both know that you love each other so much

if your relationship was described it would be summed up with: teasing, playful, adorable, fun, loving

he would take you on such fun dates, like you really have no idea where he could take you, it could be to an aquarium, concert, café, amusement park etc.

i could also see him liking to stay home and just do an at home picnic type date just because it's a lot more intimate and would still be playful and fun

he would love dancing with you, especially teaching you new choreography, and if your a dancer too you guys would be constantly be making tiktoks together

we all know he tries to be nonchalant, but it's all a façade

he loves attention, especially from you, like i can stress how much he loves cuddles

and he is obsessed with you playing with his hair, like you'd be constantly find yourself sitting on the couch and he would be on the floor with you playing with his hair

would need someone who could match his energy, like when his is high you should be able to match it, because i feel like your relationship would originate from that

he does love you so bad, he really is such a golden retriever bf even if he may not let it out into the public, but in private that's your baby

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ

[realjonahofficial]

ough The Parallels .

[the-nothing-maker]

I use pencils for traditional art too and remember being like "Whoah how does Elliot gets such vibrant colors, no matter how hard I push the pigments just won't stick" until I retired the box of bic kids.

God, yeah, I know what you mean - like, vibrant flashy colours don't have to be The Goal with pencils, but if that's what you want to get then higher-quality (and unfortunately, pricier) pencils are the way to go.

I think it's easy for artists to dismiss pencils when they want to try things out precisely because most of what you're given as a kid is... Kinda bad ? And they definitely don't have the same aura of greatness as paints. So yeah, they deserve more attention ! I hope you're having fun colouring with yours :D

[hazard-haze]

Eddie and Volt headcanons (no player)

Soooooo

My brain has decided this shit is my new hyperifxation

And that these are my new comfort characters

But I heard that everyone was getting a hate ending with them and guess who got friendship with them first tryyyyyy! So uh, skill issue/j heres some headcanons for ya'll :)

-He doesn't do it often because he knows Eddie hates it, but Volt can 110% pick up Eddie and will abuse this power if he needs to

-Eddie is Volt's anger translator. It usually goes something like this:

Volt: "We are sorry you weren't satisfied with our service, but this is the best we can do and I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."

Eddie *passing by behind him*: "Pay your fucking tab and get out!"

-Volt cannot keep his hands still, he tries to play it off suave-ly (?) by just tapping his fingers and running his hand through his hair repeatedly but when he gets really excited or angry about something he will wave his hands with big, fast, eccentric gestures.

-Volt wears eyeliner, sometimes Eddie helps him put it on.

-Eddie is very talented at most things he does, fixing, building, mixing drinks (he can even do some tricks with shakers), and there's a plethora of odd things he's picked up throughout the years. However this makes him get pretty frustrated when things don't work out the first couple times he attempts something. While not the main reason, this is part of why he was so frustrated and irritable during most of his main plot. Volt sometimes has to remind him that it's okay to not have everything figured out immediately, or pull him from his work if he's starting to stress out or exhaust himself too much.

-On the topic of pulling Eddie from his work, that is a feat. Volt full well knows he can't just ask Eddie to take a break, usually he has to either ask him to do something easier as a favor, or blame the break on himself.

"Oh Eddie, I know your in the middle of something but could you wipe the bar down? I have no time before we open."

"Eddieeeee, I have no one to watch the new season of Cougar vs Cougar with! Would you take a break to and come watch it with me? Please! Just for a little bit! Just one episode!" (They got through like 2 1/2 before Eddie passed tf out)

-Oh yeah, Volt loves reality TV and Eddie pretends to not be at least a little invested.

-Eddie can draw. Volt cannot. Volt is very jealous of Eddie in this regard.

-Infodumpingggggggg. They infodump to one another without even realizing it, it is so much of how they communicate. They will ramble and bounce ideas off each other, mostly about the club but about other stuff too.

-On the flip side. They can also communicate by saying pretty much nothing, just through brief glances. I think it would partly be because they are literally split from the same thing but it's more in that way when you widen your eyes slightly at your bestie and that equates to like a full paragraph of text.

-Eddie is short af, Volt is tall af.

-Volt makes fun of Eddie for being short

-Like seriously ya know that audio that's like "I know we don't always see eye to eye" "that because your too short to do so"

-Eddie will get revenge. He can kick/punch really hard but he can also come up with some other very clever ways of revenge. Do not mess with the guy who has access to the tools.

-Neither of them really like just hard liquor. Volt likes sweeter drinks and Eddie likes quality craft beers. If either sees the other drinking something like scotch/whiskey they can usually assume somethings wrong.

-Volt has sooooo many ideas for the club, several of which are not exactly... possible. Eddie has to be the one to break the news to him that No Volt we can't break down the retaining wall of the bar and turn it into an inanimal fish tank. Why? Because without it the roof would collapse!

-Volt's love languages are physical touch and words of affirmation

-Eddie's love language is acts of service.

-Going deeper into that, Volt loves physical touch, as previously mentioned. Eddie however does not. But they make it work, Eddie can tell when Volt needs a hug or just to have someone next to him, Volt can tell when Eddie is getting overstimulated or just needs space.

-They both have their ears pierced. Volt did it for both of them.

-Eddie actually quite likes talking to people, I mean he's definitely tended the bar at some point, he just doesn't like talking to annoying people. He's sarcastic and his humor is a bit deadpan and he's more reserved, but he 100% can be very funny and hold conversations very well with patrons and even better with friends.

-That being said, bro does not chat while he works on maintenance. If anyone, including Volt, is working with him, he isn't saying shit unless its telling them what to do, or looking over their work. If someones lucky they get a "Good job."

-Neither have ever been a fan of the dark, but they especially would not be after the black out.

-They both hate silence, I mean they work in a night club, at this point it just feels unnatural.

-Kinda already mentioned this but Volt gets quiet angry and Eddie gets loud angry. If Volt goes silent, you know you fucked up. On the opposite end, it will sometimes be assumed that Eddie is mad because he's being quiet but that just how he is, if Eddie actually is properly yelling you know he's upset.

-Nerve damage babyyyyyy. It is all up Eddie's arms, contributes to why he's not super touchy because his arms get that awful pulling, itchy, pain when something touches them.

-Volt can get some nasty fatigue. The electricity fluctuates? Bro is immediately drained, head rush, migraine, the whole shabang.

-Not really headcanon but neither of them are good at admitting they need help or at accepting it when its offered.

-They both know each others triggers tho, and make sure to tell the other to rest when they need to. Neither take their own advice.

-Eddie hyperfocuses like crazy. If he sits down with his tools, something to fix and no one around he will not move from that spot for hours.

-Volt is always jumping from project to project, person to person, never slowing down. There's a lot to do in the breaker box and he is more than happy to juggle all of it.

-Both of them forget to sleep because of these facts. and eat (do they eat?). and talk to other things. and talk to each other. and-

-They would be cat people. Volt has definitely brought up getting an inanimal from Mateo but Eddie is always hesitant (even though he would 100% end up loving it to bits if they got one)

----

Ya'll I think I'm a loser. Instead of being out on a night off I am sitting in my bedroom writing headcanons about an actual breaker box in a dating sim that I'm not even attracted to, I just think their silly. What is my life T-T

[gayofthefae]

You know it's projecting and you know it's personal to Will and a sensitive topic at that time because at a different time, with a different person, Mike had the exact same argument as he did in 3x03.

The 'your priorities are all wrong, why are you prioritizing quality time with El over higher stakes things?' In 3x03 it was 'our friend group is falling apart - all so you can swap spit with some stupid girl'

But in 1x05 it was 'you're risking us not finding Will - because you like that a girl's not grossed out by you'

They're making the same point. Nothing against El but your priorities are fucked right now. But only once was his comeback "you don't like girls".

Because Lucas has never gotten close to knowing. Lucas has never been a position to even see him in a way that would hint.

There's no real risk with Lucas.

The text is the same. And honestly, for Lucas and Will, the subtext too.

But the subtext Mike receives is different. Lucas' is as it is. Will is saying the exact same thing. But he knows his own internal history with Will, so he doesn't hear "you're prioritizing El over our friend group", he hears "you threw away what we had".

He wasn't sensitive to it in the same way in season 1 (though he did still attack Lucas, so he was in other ways), and Lucas isn't the one he's sensitive to.

Same situation, different responses. That's always the most informational breakdown. The venn diagram. What should be the same but isn't.

[chiara-hotel]

HSR Characters as the 5 Love Languages! Characters: Herta, Cipher, Anaxa, Phainon, Mydei

The Herta - Words of Affirmation

✧ The Herta loves both giving and receiving words of affirmation

✧ Every single day, she always lets you know how beautiful you are, how intelligent you are, pretty much anything possible to comment on

✧ If you help her with an experiment, she'll tell you when you did a good job

✧ She also loves it whenever you tell her that she did a good job, or even that she's beautiful. It means a lot, considering the praise is coming from you, above everyone else.

Cipher - Giving Gifts

✧ Cipher loves stealing things; it's one of her favourite things to do. She loves stealing practically everything, too, so obviously she'll spare something for you.

✧ Seeing your smiling face makes her happy; she'll never tell you if the gift was stolen or not, and you don't need to know

✧ She does buy things occasionally, but usually only if you're watching (or if you insist)

✧ Some common gifts she loves to give you include jewelry, matching accessories/outfits, pretty gems, etc.

✧ As long as it makes you happy, though, she'll do anything to get her hands on the item, and she means anything

✧ Hell, she'd even give you Kephale's coreflame if you truly desired it

Anaxa - Quality Time

✧ Anaxa hates it whenever you aren't with him

✧ His favourite moments are whenever he's teaching a class or performing an experiment, and you're just watching him doing his work.

✧ As long as you're within his presence, doing annoying tasks seems a lot better

✧ Even teaching in the Grove, if you're his assistant, he actually focuses better as well as hes in a better mood

✧ Even if you're doing something else, not even focused on him, as long as you're near him, he's okay. He obviously prefers when you both work together, but he understands that's not always possible.

✧ If you aren't with him and someone tries to talk to him, he mentions you within the first 5 seconds, you're just always on his mind

✧ That, or he's always texting you about random things

Phainon - Physical Touch

✧ Phainon loves physical touch; any contact with you makes his entire week

✧ Cuddling is a must with him; he loves cuddling with you

✧ Speaking of cuddling, he doesn't mind being either the big/small spoon; he has moments where he wants to be both

✧ He also loves attacking you with hugs and kisses from behind, especially if you both are alone (since he'd prefer to keep PDA to a minimum)

✧ Hand-holding is also a must while you both go on a walk around Okhema

✧ It makes him incredibly happy whenever you initiate any physical affection, and he

Mydei - Acts of Service

✧ Mydei loves assisting you in any way possible

✧ Whenever you need help, big or small, he's on his way to help out

✧ It could be as simple as needing to open a door for you or protecting you against a whole village

✧ Speaking of protecting, Mydei loves showing off his own strength to you. Whenever you're watching him train, he tries to show off a lot more, just to demonstrate his strength.

✧ This also includes whenever he protects you from any unwanted strangers

✧ Some smaller things he loves doing include helping you reach things from shelves if you're shorter, opening up jars for you, helping carry your groceries to the fridge, etc.

------

Part 1 Here

[garbagepile]

Let me yap about Garroth's stutter for a second- this is sorta all over the place so sorry for that

So throughout mcd, Garroth has a little bit of a stutter that sometimes slips up when he's nervous.

Now stuttering is a speech impediment, not something that comes out of nowhere. But when nervous, it gets more frequent and notable.

One thing I like to point to is the side stories in the phase in-between mcd and mystreet.

What I want to point out here is how Garroth's nervousness shows, rather then being silent, he overexplains himself. And starts saying nonsense. His stutter is all over the place. And while his stutter is there in mcd, I can't find screenshots of his nerves being THIS obvious.

(Also what a guyfailure lol why did he suddenly start talking about cows. Garroth I know what you are (a fellow fan of cows))

Sorry for the bad picture quality but here is another screenshot of Garroth fumbling

Meaning that this might technically be an insight to mcd Garroth if he didn't try to be as serious and composed as he does in mcd? If more of his nerves would slip out?

This brings up something interesting, a sudden comparison I'd like to make. Despite them both being introverted and sorta 'stoic'. Aaron is notably much more silent then Garroth is. While Garroth is quite introverted in mcd, he still has walls of text when he speaks. He is still a yapper at heart. And so Garroth's awkwardness ends up with him overexplaining himself (or atleast for this to be his first instinct) whereas Aaron's awkwardness makes him go silent. Garroth actually starts suddenly speaking in caps sometimes out of nervousness while I'd like to imagine Aaron might start mumbling.

[mariacallous]

In an experiment last year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more than fifty students from universities around Boston were split into three groups and asked to write SAT-style essays in response to broad prompts such as “Must our achievements benefit others in order to make us truly happy?” One group was asked to rely on only their own brains to write the essays. A second was given access to Google Search to look up relevant information. The third was allowed to use ChatGPT, the artificial-intelligence large language model (L.L.M.) that can generate full passages or essays in response to user queries. As students from all three groups completed the tasks, they wore a headset embedded with electrodes in order to measure their brain activity. According to Nataliya Kosmyna, a research scientist at M.I.T. Media Lab and one of the co-authors of a new working paper documenting the experiment, the results from the analysis showed a dramatic discrepancy: subjects who used ChatGPT demonstrated less brain activity than either of the other groups. The analysis of the L.L.M. users showed fewer widespread connections between different parts of their brains; less alpha connectivity, which is associated with creativity; and less theta connectivity, which is associated with working memory. Some of the L.L.M. users felt “no ownership whatsoever” over the essays they’d produced, and during one round of testing eighty per cent could not quote from what they’d putatively written. The M.I.T. study is among the first to scientifically measure what Kosmyna called the “cognitive cost” of relying on A.I. to perform tasks that humans previously accomplished more manually.

Another striking finding was that the texts produced by the L.L.M. users tended to converge on common words and ideas. SAT prompts are designed to be broad enough to elicit a multiplicity of responses, but the use of A.I. had a homogenizing effect. “The output was very, very similar for all of these different people, coming in on different days, talking about high-level personal, societal topics, and it was skewed in some specific directions,” Kosmyna said. For the question about what makes us “truly happy,” the L.L.M. users were much more likely than the other groups to use phrases related to career and personal success. In response to a question about philanthropy (“Should people who are more fortunate than others have more of a moral obligation to help those who are less fortunate?”), the ChatGPT group uniformly argued in favor, whereas essays from the other groups included critiques of philanthropy. With the L.L.M. “you have no divergent opinions being generated,” Kosmyna said. She continued, “Average everything everywhere all at once—that’s kind of what we’re looking at here.”

A.I. is a technology of averages: large language models are trained to spot patterns across vast tracts of data; the answers they produce tend toward consensus, both in the quality of the writing, which is often riddled with clichés and banalities, and in the calibre of the ideas. Other, older technologies have aided and perhaps enfeebled writers, of course—one could say the same about, say, SparkNotes or a computer keyboard. But with A.I. we’re so thoroughly able to outsource our thinking that it makes us more average, too. In a way, anyone who deploys ChatGPT to compose a wedding toast or draw up a contract or write a college paper, as an astonishing number of students are evidently already doing, is in an experiment like M.I.T.’s. According to Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, we are on the verge of what he calls “the gentle singularity.” In a recent blog post with that title, Altman wrote that “ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived. Hundreds of millions of people rely on it every day and for increasingly important tasks.” In his telling, the human is merging with the machine, and his company’s artificial-intelligence tools are improving on the old, soggy system of using our organic brains: they “significantly amplify the output of people using them,” he wrote. But we don’t know the long-term consequences of mass A.I. adoption, and, if these early experiments are any indication, the amplified output that Altman foresees may come at a substantive cost to quality.

In April, researchers at Cornell published the results of another study that found evidence of A.I.-induced homogenization. Two groups of users, one American and one Indian, answered writing prompts that drew on aspects of their cultural backgrounds: “What is your favorite food and why?”; “Which is your favorite festival/holiday and how do you celebrate it?” One subset of Indian and American participants used a ChatGPT-driven auto-complete tool, which fed them word suggestions whenever they paused, while another subset wrote unaided. The writings of the Indian and American participants who used A.I. “became more similar” to one another, the paper concluded, and more geared toward “Western norms.” A.I. users were most likely to answer that their favorite food was pizza (sushi came in second) and that their favorite holiday was Christmas. Homogenization happened at a stylistic level, too. An A.I.-generated essay that described chicken biryani as a favorite food, for example, was likely to forgo mentioning specific ingredients such as nutmeg and lemon pickle and instead reference “rich flavors and spices.”

Of course, a writer can in theory always refuse an A.I.-generated suggestion. But the tools seem to exert a hypnotic effect, causing the constant flow of suggestions to override the writer’s own voice. Aditya Vashistha, a professor of information science at Cornell who co-authored the study, compared the A.I. to “a teacher who is sitting behind me every time I’m writing, saying, ‘This is the better version.’ ” He added, “Through such routine exposure, you lose your identity, you lose the authenticity. You lose confidence in your writing.” Mor Naaman, a colleague of Vashistha’s and a co-author of the study, told me that A.I. suggestions “work covertly, sometimes very powerfully, to change not only what you write but what you think.” The result, over time, might be a shift in what “people think is normal, desirable, and appropriate.”

We often hear A.I. outputs described as “generic” or “bland,” but averageness is not necessarily anodyne. Vauhini Vara, a novelist and a journalist whose recent book “Searches” focussed in part on A.I.’s impact on human communication and selfhood, told me that the mediocrity of A.I. texts “gives them an illusion of safety and being harmless.” Vara (who previously worked as an editor at The New Yorker) continued, “What’s actually happening is a reinforcing of cultural hegemony.” OpenAI has a certain incentive to shave the edges off our attitudes and communication styles, because the more people find the models’ output acceptable, the broader the swath of humanity it can convert to paying subscribers. Averageness is efficient: “You have economies of scale if everything is the same,” Vara said.

With the “gentle singularity” Altman predicted in his blog post, “a lot more people will be able to create software, and art,” he wrote. Already, A.I. tools such as the ideation software Figma (“Your creativity, unblocked”) and Adobe’s mobile A.I. app (“the power of creative AI”) promise to put us all in touch with our muses. But other studies have suggested the challenges of automating originality. Data collected at Santa Clara University, in 2024, examined A.I. tools’ efficacy as aids for two standard types of creative-thinking tasks: making product improvements and foreseeing “improbable consequences.” One set of subjects used ChatGPT to help them answer questions such as “How could you make a stuffed toy animal more fun to play with?” and “Suppose that gravity suddenly became incredibly weak, and objects could float away easily. What would happen?” The other set used Oblique Strategies, a set of abstruse prompts printed on a deck of cards, written by the musician Brian Eno and the painter Peter Schmidt, in 1975, as a creativity aid. The testers asked the subjects to aim for originality, but once again the group using ChatGPT came up with a more semantically similar, more homogenized set of ideas.

Max Kreminski, who helped carry out the analysis and now works with the generative-A.I. startup Midjourney, told me that when people use A.I. in the creative process they tend to gradually cede their original thinking. At first, users tend to present their own wide range of ideas, Kreminski explained, but as ChatGPT continues to instantly spit out high volumes of acceptable-looking text users tend to go into a “curationist mode.” The influence is unidirectional, and not in the direction you’d hope: “Human ideas don’t tend to influence what the machine is generating all that strongly,” Kreminski said; ChatGPT pulls the user “toward the center of mass for all of the different users that it’s interacted with in the past.” As a conversation with an A.I. tool goes on, the machine fills up its “context window,” the technical term for its working memory. When the context window reaches capacity, the A.I. seems to be more likely to repeat or rehash material it has already produced, becoming less original still.

The one-off experiments at M.I.T., Cornell, and Santa Clara are all small in scale, involving fewer than a hundred test subjects each, and much about A.I.’s effects remains to be studied and learned. In the meantime, on the Mark Zuckerberg-owned Meta AI app, you can see a feed containing content that millions of strangers are generating. It’s a surreal flood of overly smooth images, filtered video clips, and texts generated for everyday tasks such as writing a “detailed, professional email for rescheduling a meeting.” One prompt I recently scrolled past stood out to me. A user named @kavi908 asked the Meta chatbot to analyze “whether AI might one day surpass human intelligence.” The chatbot responded with a slew of blurbs; under “Future Scenarios,” it listed four possibilities. All of them were positive: A.I. would improve one way or another, to the benefit of humanity. There were no pessimistic predictions, no scenarios in which A.I. failed or caused harm. The model’s averages—shaped, perhaps, by pro-tech biases baked in by Meta—narrowed the outcomes and foreclosed a diversity of thought. But you’d have to turn off your brain activity entirely to believe that the chatbot was telling the whole story. 

[sindar-princeling]

I would say I simply disagree. Like I said, it's no-one's fault this happens, it simply frustrates me because I find ROP's characters to be often insulting simplifications of their books and lore selves. I'm not gatekeeping anyone, this is purely my personal opinion. Ultimately, I think the source text matters, and you can't act like you're referring to it without actually referring to it, instead referring to a movie based on it, or a show, or fanfiction. None of those are the actual source text. And I think the distinction between actual text and works inspired by it matters, and there's value to be found in isolating the source text from those side materials and looking at it as a whole in its own right. In fact, I think this is the most default way of looking at a text.

I myself was brought to Tolkien's world by the movies - I was delighted by a fragment of TTT I caught on TV, immediately decided not to watch the other movies and promptly read The Hobbit and LOTR. I'm not saying it's the correct way, I'm just saying I appreciate the effect the related media has on one's willingness to engage with the source.

I know I don't sound like it, but I'm truly not against fun and lighthearted interaction with canon - it just rubs me the wrong way when canon and related materials get mixed, that's all. Also I think ROP simply isn't a good show, and if we want to get more people into Tolkien, we deserve to have something of a better quality to use for that.

Perhaps the idea of people not unlearning ROP's misconceptions just annoys me because those misconceptions in my honest opinion cheapen the fuck out of the source material and are simply weaker, worse stories that don't deserve this much attention from the public.

(And believe me, I think PJ cheapened a lot of stuff too, I'm not just being like Movies Good, Show Bad, even if I do love the movies)

I stand by my original stance that the only way to get into actual Tolkien is to actually read him.

I understand where people who say "at least rop is getting more people into tolkien" are coming from but unfortunately my tolkien-obsessed brain can only reply with a very purist "what's the point if it'll only make them enter tolkien's world with a ton of misconceptions and wrong perceptions of many themes, events and characters therefore not really getting them into tolkien but someone else's warped version of tolkien; the only way to get into tolkien is to acually READ him"

it's no-one's fault that it happens and nothing can be done about BUT ☝️ at least it also makes me so very painfully frustrated

[bluejayblueskies]

Pharmakos | 24Hermione

[ID: Six photographs of a hand-bound book from various angles, showing the exterior and interior. The exterior is bound in blue cloth with silver wave details, as well as printed cardstock with the summary, title (Pharmakos) and author name (24Hermione) pasted on. The edges are splattered with silver and blue paint, and the endbands are sewn with silver and blue thread. The endpaper has blue and silver marbling that looks like water, and the title page, summary page, and chapter title pages have light blue wave graphics on them that match the cover. The chapter title pages also have blue dropcaps that are filled with a wave pattern. /End ID]

.

The first of my binds for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate event is Pharmakos by 24Hermione (@phoenixphire24)! I had a great time collaborating with Phoenix on this bind and working with yet another RQG fic. The fic has heavy ocean/nautical themes, so we went with an ocean-inspired bind. The graphics/cover details are all take from public domain artwork, and the endpapers were printed onto cardstock (my first time printing my own endpaper design! I was super happy with the quality of them).

I recently got a black and white laser printer in addition to the inket I own, and I love the crispness of the text I was able to achieve with it! I feel like there's so much less bleed through the paper (something that constantly vexed me with the inkjet), and it printed in probably a quarter of the time it would have taken my inkjet to do it. And I can still do color typesets--I just printed the black text using the laser printer, then printed the color accents separately using the inkjet! Excited to experiment with toner-reactive foil as well once I have the money to get a laminator.

Overall, I'm pleased with how this bind turned out--I really like the old classic book feel to this one, and the silver foil on the cover really shines in person!

[vedicinsights]

💗 ASTROLOGY x LOVE LANGUAGE: VENUS THROUGH THE HOUSES 💗 PART ONE

Because the way we give and receive love isn’t random—it’s written in the stars.

Your Venus sign and house show your love language, your intimate aesthetics, and what makes you feel adored, desired, and safe.

Venus = the heart’s whisper. She speaks in gestures, glances, warmth, and pleasure.

🌹 LOVE LANGUAGES & VENUS: THE CONNECTION

The 5 love languages:

Words of Affirmation

Acts of Service

Receiving Gifts

Quality Time

Physical Touch

Your Venus placement reveals which of these hit deeper for you.

💞 VENUS THROUGH THE HOUSES: HOW YOU LOVE & CRAVE LOVE

🏠 1st House Venus – Love = Presence & Magnetism

Your body is your love language.

You are the gift. Touch, compliments, physical closeness = everything.

Style and self-expression = a love offering.

🩷 Love Language: Physical Touch + Words of Affirmation 💌 Venus says: “Desire me just as I am.”

🏠 2nd House Venus – Love = Security & Sensual Stability

Loyal, tactile, pleasure-focused.

Cooks for you. Buys you things. Luxuries shared = love.

Needs to feel safe to soften.

🩷 Love Language: Receiving Gifts + Acts of Service 💌 Venus says: “Let me build love with you.”

🏠 3rd House Venus – Love = Words & Mental Spark

Writes poems, sends flirty texts, talks all night.

Love is in the little things said every day.

Smart is sexy.

🩷 Love Language: Words of Affirmation + Quality Time 💌 Venus says: “Talk to me like I matter.”

🏠 4th House Venus – Love = Home & Emotional Safety

Nurturing. Protective. Loves through closeness.

Cuddles, comfort food, private I-love-yous.

Needs reassurance to open fully.

🩷 Love Language: Quality Time + Physical Touch 💌 Venus says: “Make me feel at home in your arms.”

🏠 5th House Venus – Love = Romance & Play

Flirtatious, expressive, loves big romantic gestures.

Creative intimacy—music, dancing, dramatic affection.

Needs admiration and joy.

🩷 Love Language: Words of Affirmation + Receiving Gifts 💌 Venus says: “Make me the main character in your heart.”

🏠 6th House Venus – Love = Care in the Details

Will run your errands, make you tea, rub your shoulders.

Loves through service and support.

Understated but loyal.

🩷 Love Language: Acts of Service + Quality Time 💌 Venus says: “Let me make your life softer.”

LET ASTROLOGY CHOOSE YOU!

I offer personalized paid consultations, email at insightsvedic@gmail.com Join us on our instagram and Quora for more astrology updates!

[anontaku]

dating leviathan headcanons ୨୧

✧ pretty common assumption, but: in the beginning, he needs a lot of verbal and physical reassurance that you actually like him for who he is and don’t have some sort of ulterior motive, such as using him to get to one of his brothers. this doesn’t stem from malicious distrust in you, but rather the belief that others have qualities that are worthy of him being envious over. he is the avatar of envy, after all. considering the fact that one of his ddd lines is “asmo and i are brothers, so who decides that HE should get all the good parts of the gene pool?”, it’s clear he compares himself to other guys and considers himself unattractive. casual reminders that you consider him far more attractive than others mean a lot to him ♡

✧ for people who are comfortable with sleeping with him in his tub-bed: as soon as you’re together, he orders a new, more spacious bathtub from akuzon. mammon attempts to pawn the old one without permission which annoys levi greatly (as always)

✧ for people who would try to convert him into sleeping in their (normal) bed: he begrudgingly obliges after much protest. during the first few days, he tosses and turns in his sleep, not being used to your flat mattress. he gradually accomodates to the new space, but comes up with the idea to purchase aquatic themed decor from akuzon to remind himself of his oceanic room

✧ before you came into the picture, he much preferred talking about himself and his interests over listening to others’. what’s the point of listening to normies anyway? it’s not like they had anything worth listening to. however, with your presence came a fresh new perspective in his formerly solitary life. you became the exception to his habit, with him listening to you talk about all of your interests and heeding all of your quirks intently

✧ he may be a bit shy, but he wants to spoil you as much as any other guy would. he makes it so that the two of you share an akuzon account and occasionally checks the Recently Viewed/Favorited sections to see what sort of things you’d like

✧ if you like a particular anime or manga, he’d remember to keep track of any updates about it, as well as merchandise releases, the same way he does his own favorite anime

✧ he would hesitatingly ask if you just so happened to kind of want to go to an anime convention with him in couple’s cosplay.. and be elated when you agree. he’d feel ecstatic showing you off on his arm in front of his fellow otaku

✧ the two of you enjoy getting back at mammon, mainly when he's indebted to levi or has stolen one of his items yet again

✧ he loves spamming you with texts about different topics, posts he thinks you’d like, etc, in his free time while the two of you are away from one another. the needy demon he is, he’s fortunately grown from being all “i need you to respond URGENTLY” to being comfortable with distracting himself whilst awaiting your response, knowing that you’d reply when you’re able to. his heart skips a beat whenever he hears his text tone, expecting it to be you, and he rushes to check his ddd.

✧ he would get a nosebleed from the sight of you cosplaying ruri-chan (or literally any of his waifus tbh)

✧ he made his ddd and pc wallpapers a collage of photos that you’ve taken together

✧ he begged you to show him around the places you know within the human world in order to experience the otaku culture up there for real, and obviously you would happily oblige

[lmaster37]

I just finished Medea in the Garden and it has left me disquieted in a way which I do not think I can describe, except to say that I fear a door has been opened which may be difficult to bar again.

extremely unprofessional/unorganized thoughts about the first few paragraphs below the cut ↓ might return to this later with something akin to proper analysis when it's not 1 a.m.

The story opens on the men—their absence sets the stage. Only Adam, Di's husband and presumably the youngest of the men, is still present (though asleep). An early indication that Adam and Di do not do things as they ought to; the other three husbands have gone home to their beds where they belong.

By midnight all the men were asleep. My Kenneth was upstairs in bed, Bert and Joe had each gone home, and Di’s husband, Adam, was out like a light on the love seat.

I am struck, on rereading, by the way that social obligation pervades the text. The narrator meant only to get snacks and instead finds herself returning with cognac and pistachios on impulse; she does not consider this action worthwhile or reasonable.

This [the narrator sharing her expensive pistachios, gifted by her mother for Christmas] was one of those subversive impulses that flash and stun without warning. The sort which when you’re young compel you to blurt “I love you” when you certainly don’t, as a kind of insane courtesy. The happiness you spread never offsets the cost.

This is then immediately contextualised as part of her marriage dynamic. The pistachios—precious and personal to her—have so far only been shared with her husband, but even that was not a decision freely taken. Instead, it is now an active threat from her husband which compels her to share, with their children as a means of exerting control over the narrator.

Until now, I had shared the pistachios only with Kenneth, and that just since two years ago when he discovered them in a hatbox under the bed and threatened to rat me out to the children.

symbols which strike me (here and throughout the poem)

- children as an object of fear, a threat, an obligation. yet this is how the conversation ends, once the secretive dream-share-space is disrupted:

“I’ve always wanted children,” she said, gazing directly at each of us in turn.

“So did I,” said Leah.

“We all did,” I said.

“We’ve talked about having two,” Di said.

“How wonderful!”

“You won’t regret it,” Leah said. “I never have.”

“Nor I,” Caroline said. “Quite honestly.”

“Children are the future,” I said.

We all smiled then, the way women do.

- the pistachios: something gifted to the narrator by her mother, personal, precious. 'freely' given to the people around her. her husband finds them and threatens her into sharing; on impulse she shares with her friends, but finds that, though there is a reward in that, it does not outweigh the cost. carolina's little pistachio drama, mixing full and empty shells to sift them through again. leah's slow, measured calm, her preference for closed shells which these are too high-quality to have. carolina thinking about the closed shells through the lense of drama, presentation; leah instead describing it as stigmata, marks of guilt; "Nothing this pleasurable should be guilt-free". leah shattering a nut.

(- along similar lines, the cognac, offered insincerely)

- mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters. the pistachios gifted by her mother. di, forty years younger, sitting there like the narrator's daughters, sitting there as the narrator once sat. di's mother's nightmares, replicated in the narrator and leah and caroline. "God knows, we don't want to take ourselves that seriously. The whole point of Di is to lighten us up". indulgences. placation.

- letters to the president. symbolic action without power. dreams of power, of retaliatory (?) violence against children.

- the unquestioned identification of adam as the driver; when it becomes clear he is unable to do it, "Someone else must have driven". no mention of di driving

- leah—oldest, most in-control—and her physical imposition. "Nobody scares the Fat Lady". there's such a thing as being too thin

fuck what a poem

in 2024 master craftsman jincy willett posted an absolute barnburner of an uncollected story, "Medea in the Garden," on the internet for anyone to find. i do think you should maybe have to be over 40 and/or absolutely confident in your choices or choices-to-be around childbearing to read it lmao, but what do i know!!!

anyway she is just one of THEEE writers of all time imo ("actually it was me.") and the best thing david sedaris ever did was introduce people to her and yet somehow whenever you meet anyone else who loves jincy willett it's a surprise to both of you. our greatest living artists are turning out perfectly acceptable little serial killer novels and then doing Art on the internet for free. please read jenny and the jaws of life

[ashenmaw-if]

Little IRL ramble:

For some reason my brain decided to completely refuse cooperation in terms of writing (both longhand and typing up. not even voice to text works cause my voice will just not do D<) .

I know why it does that and it's such a frigging absurd reason, but I also know that I have no means to fix it any time soon.

I'm sorry. I'll try to bruteforce stuff, no quality guaranteed :(

seriously, fml ;_;