#// casually exposing myself :)))

[jelloia]

I mean from what I can tell, Artemis could easily have casual pull, like he’s a genetically perfect billionaire physically in his early 20s, who has cheated death, is arguably immortal, like suits, and has gone to space. He’s like the anti-Barney Stinson.

EXACTLY !!! like even disregarding those points you mentioned, his intelligence combined with his humor is already extremely attractive... get it together artemis!!

[saltroclus]

Waiting patiently for more Rich Gay Vampire fits in S2 (before Loumand discovered Yohji Yamamoto goth-leisure or whatever)

[smoozie]

Saw a post hating double life and guys I have to confess Last Life is my least favorite.

I've actually (fully) watched the MOST pov's for it, so it isn't even a bias from lack of exposure.

My enjoyment from the life series comes from the interactions between people, and Last Life didn't give a great opportunity for a lot of strong alliances. With not only the boogeyman, but also the inability to team as reds and nonreds, all alliances were were up in the air.

I don't hate Last Life by any means, the drama caused by the boogey betrayals and reds begging their friends to join them is lovely. I live for that. But there is only so much of it. I much prefer the series with closer alliances (the clockers, mounders, monopoly mountain, boat boys, bad boys, etc). But I don't dislike any of the series teehee

[soldier-poet-king]

It's way past my bedtime and I'm horrifically sad in an empty way lacking meaning and I could call in sick but I'm not /actually/ sick and if I stay home to read and cook all day my mother will be like 'oh well ur not really sick obvs' but it's like....the brain... Staying back and making soup and pasta for the week's meal prep and reading a book probably WOULD help

[fairy-switchblade]

when I was in my mid teens my baby femme identity merged dramatically with my emo identity (which was merging into everything at that time) and I deadass wanted to get married to a very nice, very cool butch lesbian with dyed black hair, piercings, tats, a leather jacket, also a vampire, the works. This was the vision:

I need you to understand, I went into detail with this. The first dance was to check yes Juliet, I decorated an all black first home for us in Sims. I had Mads M, in character as Hannibal Lecter, marry us. The cake is black on the outside, red on the inside.

And then like most people, I grew out of it by the time I hit college.

And then, like any sane person, I grew right back into it again, 13 year old me knew what was UP oh my god. This, or nothing including Mads.

[seilon]

you really don’t realize just how common smoking still is in the states until you work at a restaraunt

[abyssruler]

i don’t think i’ll be able to do it justice if i wrote one. so if anyone writes smut with scara’s boss please tag me 😁

[warriorfujoshi]

once more it is upon us!!! the SATURDAY of SERGEY!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩😤😤😤😚😚😚😚

[zzyzxtourguide]

I see you KieraM on Pinterest-

[sunnibits]

hm. this art may actually be a little too thirst motivated

[vacant2007]

The intersection of trauma/negative experiences related to being afab + being a trans man is so weird and uncomfortable. I feel like a double-negative in the sense that I both feel threatened by men, and like I'm a threat for being one of them. I struggle to trust or forgive men, but womanhood doesn't suit me at all. I want advice and assistance on learning how to help myself move on from the stuff I've had to deal with, but absolutely none of the readily available resources was made for people like me.

[calamity-bean]

I do have to say, though, that although I really liked getting to watch Claudia evolve in this episode, I do prefer the circumstances of Claudia's turning as portrayed in the novel/film, wherein Louis drains her in a moment of his own weakness and hunger. I have always found the profound guilt he carries from that to be fundamental to his relationship with her, and to have the show entirely remove any culpability he had in her death — to make him solely and unambiguously a rescuer, guilty for her fate only insomuch as he brought her to Lestat and asked Lestat to turn her... Well, it just removes that element of complexity from the characters and is, imo, less thematically rich. I don't think that the idea that Louis indirectly inspired the riots that caused the fire is anywhere near as powerful or convincing a source of guilt/culpability as directly feeding upon her.

Another aspect of this change is that the show has removed the element of Lestat essentially baby-trapping Louis to prevent him from leaving him, so really, all of the dynamics in the family are different. I do not think that "different" equates to "bad," and I've been trying not to judge the show against previous iterations, because it's very clearly doing its own thing and is probably best enjoyed as its own thing. Certainly, even if the show had decided to hew closer to the original vibe of Claudia's turning, I wouldn't have expected the details (e.g. plague) to be the same. But in this case, I think the way this particular change was handled simplified Louis's moral situation, put both him and Lestat at a greater distance from Claudia's turning in terms of their own emotions and motivations, and was just not what I would personally have preferred.

[leebrontide]

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.

[ktempestbradford]

I have been on a Willy Wonkified journey today and I need y'all to come with me

It started so innocently. Scrolling Google News I come across this article on Ars Technica:

At first glance I thought what happened was parents saw AI-generated images of an event their kids were at and became concerned, then realized it was fake. The reality? Oh so much better.

On Saturday, event organizers shut down a Glasgow-based "Willy's Chocolate Experience" after customers complained that the unofficial Wonka-inspired event, which took place in a sparsely decorated venue, did not match the lush AI-generated images listed on its official website.... According to Sky News, police were called to the event, and "advice was given."

Thing is, the people who paid to go were obviously not expecting exactly this:

But I can see how they'd be a bit pissed upon arriving to this:

It gets worse.

"Tempest, how could it possibly--"

source of this video that also includes this charming description:

Made up a villain called The Unknown — 'an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls'

There is already a meme.

Oh yes, the Wish.com Oompa Loompa:

Who has already done an interview!

As bad (and hilarious) as this all is, I got curious about the company that put on this event. Did they somehow overreach? Did the actors they hired back out at the last minute? (Or after they saw the script...) Oddly enough, it doesn't seem so!

Given what I found when poking around I'm legit surprised there was an event at all. Cuz this outfit seems to be 100% a scam.

The website for this specific event is here and it has many AI generated images on it, as stated. I don't think anyone who bought tickets looked very closely at these images, otherwise they might have been concerned about how much Catgacating their children would be exposed to.

Yes, Catgacating. You know, CATgacating!

I personally don't think anyone should serve exarserdray flavored lollipops in public spaces given how many people are allergic to it. And the sweet teats might not have been age appropriate.

Though the Twilight Tunnel looks pretty cool:

I'm not sure that Dim Tight Twdrding is safe. I've also been warned that Vivue Sounds are in that weird frequency range that makes you poop your pants upon hearing them.

Yes, Virginia, these folks used an AI image generator for everything on the website and used Chat GPT for some of the text! From the FAQ:

Q: I cannot go on the available days. Will you have more dates in the future? A: Should there be capacity when you arrive, then you will be able to enter without any problems. In the event that this is not the case, we may ask you to wait a bit.

Fear not, for this question is asked again a few lines down and the answer makes more sense.

Curious about the events company behind this disaster, I took myself over to the homepage of House of Illuminati and I was not disappointed.

I would 100% trust these people to plan my wedding.

This abomination of a website is a badly edited WordPress blog filled with AI art and just enough blog posts to make the casual viewer think that it's a legit business for about 0.0004 seconds.

Their attention to detail is stunning, from how they left up the default first post every WP blog gets to how they didn't bother changing the name on several images, thus revealing where they came from. Like this one:

With the lovely and compact filename "DALL·E-2024-01-30-09.50.54-Imagine-a-scene-where-fantasy-and-reality-merge-seamlessly.-In-the-foreground-a-grand-interactive-gala-is-taking-place-filled-with-elegant-guests-i.png"

"Concept.png" came from the same AI generator that gets text almost, but not quiiiiiite right:

There are a suspicious number of .webp images in the uploads, which makes me think they either stole them from other sites where AI "art" was uploaded or they didn't want to pay for the hi-res versions of some and just grabbed the preview image.

The real fun came when I noticed this filename: Before-and-After-Eventologists-Transformation-Edgbaston-Cricket-Ground-1024x1024-1.jpg and decided to do a Google image search. Friends, you will be shocked to hear that the image in question, found on this post touting how they can transform a boring warehouse into a fun event space, was stolen from this actual event planner.

Even better, this weirdly grainy image?

From a post that claims to be about the preparations for a "Willy Wonka" experience (we'll get to this in a minute), is not only NOT an actual image of anyone preparing anything for Illuminati's event, it is stolen from a YouTube thumbnail that's been chopped to remove the name of the company that actually made this. Here's the video.

If you actually read the blog posts they're all copypasta or some AI generated crap. To the point where this seems like not a real business at all. There's very specific business information at the bottom, but nothing else seems real.

As I said, I'm kinda surprised they put on an event at all. This has, "And then they ran off with all our money!" written all over it. I'm perplexed.

And also wondering when the copyright lawyers are gonna start calling, because...

This post explicitly says they're putting together a "Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Experience" complete with golden tickets.

Somewhere along the line someone must have wised up, because the actual event was called "Willys Chocolate Experience" (note the lack of apostrophe) and the script they handed to the actors about 10 minutes before they were supposed to "perform" was about a "Willy McDuff" and his chocolate factory.

As I was going through this madness with friends in a chat, one pointed out that it took very little prompting to get the free Chat GPT to spit out an event description and such very similar to all this while avoiding copyrighted phrases. But he couldn't figure out where the McDuff came from since it wasn't the type of thing GPT would usually spit out...

Until he altered the prompt to include it would be happening in Glasgow, Scotland.

You cannot make this stuff up.

But truly, honestly, I do not even understand why they didn't take the money and run. Clearly this was all set up to be a scam. A lazy, AI generated scam.

Everything from the website to the event images to the copy to the "script" to the names of things was either stolen or AI generated (aka stolen). Hell, I'd be looking for some poor Japanese visitor wandering the streets of Glasgow, confused, after being jacked for his mascot costume.

HE LIVES IN THE WALLS, Y'ALL.

[cats-and-cacti]

Uh oh! My cohort group chat started talking about Lorde! A subject that I am Absolutely Incapable of being normal about!

[rorsry]

dont know if this means anything but my first step to learning to be comfortable in my body is learning to be uncomfortable in it first