#And it's pattern recognition

[pasiphile]

I've gotten so used to people misusing chatgtp for everyfuckingthing that when today a colleague proposed to use it in a somewhat actually good and functional way my brain just. Crashed. For a moment.

[karnalesbian]

she commit acts of intercourse on my erogeneous zones until i achieve sexual climax

[stinkybrowndogs]

I’ve decided to start a new conspiracy theory that coonhounds don’t actually exist. the setter people are frantically shaving their dogs in between shows and then showing them again as “coonhounds”. So they can win extra ribbons I presume.

[prokopetz]

Look, if you suspect that someone has done a joke edit of an image, but you can't see the difference, don't sit there playing Where's Waldo; load the original image and the suspected edit up in separate tabs with identical zoom levels, and rapidly toggle back and forth between them. Don't even look for anything in particular – just flip them back and forth as fast as you can. Even single-pixel discrepancies will immediately become obvious. Make the human brain's fuckass pattern recognition work for you rather than against you!

[dark-skin-fem]

[starry-eyed-psychopomp]

My favorite thing to do with MXTX series is to look at her books in the context of her previous works

Liu Qingge mourning for five years and taking in a disciple that Shen Qingqiu recommended feels like it eventually snowballed into Lan Wangji adopting A-Yuan

Xiao Xingchen is just the beta version of Xie Lian

Moshang’s ADHD/Autism, “oh my god he hates me”/“why is he not responding to my proposals :’(“ dynamic is a significantly more comedic version of Wangxian’s dynamic and the “come back to Gusu with me” miscommunication

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are the fucked up, irreconcilable precursor to the Xianle Trio and the main way MXTX made their relationship fixable was by inverting the class difference

If we were going further with the Xianle Trio comparison, Xie Lian is basically Mu Qing and Feng Xin’s Jiang Yanli

Shen Jiu and Wei Wuxian have immensely similar methods of dealing with their trauma. I.e., repressing it to the point that the worst of it can’t even be viewed in flashbacks, and deliberately allowing everyone around them to think the worst of them. They both have specific traumas (SA and forced cannibalism, respectively) that are never explicitly confirmed in the text, but are heavily implied by their actions after the fact. You could also draw a parallel between Shen Jiu only feeling comfortable around women in brothels and Wei Wuxian preferring to spend his time with the dead (and specifically his ghost jiejies).

This form of repression as a response to trauma is shared by Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian, and contributes to their being unreliable narrators, but weirdly doesn’t apply to Shen Yuan. Shen Jiu is the one who gets the treatment that would eventually be reserved for MXTX’s protagonists

Wangxian in general has elements of Qijiu in their dynamic, with the aforementioned trauma, as well as classism and INSANE MISCOMMUNICATION, but Wangxian, for their part, have much stronger moral backbones and are actually absurdly good with kids. That difference is probably why Qijiu is more often thought of in the same vein as Xiyao, since Xiyao is the fucked-up parallel-and-foil to Wangxian within MDZS

Not only are the books all about the inherent value of kindness, but MXTX often has her stories’ morals be stated by children (the Juniors in the Second Siege of the Burial Mounds, the little kids playing Sunshot Campaign, the merchant boy in the Banyue arc defending General Hua), the idea being that children generally have a purer view of the world, not yet overtaken by the cynicism and mob-mentality common among the adult characters

[seabeck]

Me, trying to explain how to can tell the difference between species of plants and fungi:

[definetelynotavampire]

[the-rebel-archivist]

It took a minute to piece together why Davrin's armour was so familiar despite being such a unique warden design but then it finally clicked. And it's brilliant.

Davrin has griffon rider armour.

Modernized, of course - it's been almost 500 years after all. If Garahel's armour took some inspiration from WWI pilot uniforms, Davrin's pulls from WWII, drawing on the vibe of the classic leather jacket with the wide, high collar taking the place of lambswool.

It's debonair and cavalier, a griffon rider for these modern times of 9:52, but it keeps the same colour scheme and basic elements of brown leather on blue cloth with sparse metal elements. And there's even a nod to the leather scales on Garahel's shoulder on Davrin's.

[anne-is-confused]

Captain Francis Crozier, at Furthest North.

[cobalt-the-noodle]

cow tools and Pattern recognition

so. I like old newspaper cartoons such as Calvin and Hobbes, or, for today’s rant, The Far Side. But aside from reading them, I also enjoy reading ABOUT them.

now, many already know of the Cow Tools comic, but if you don’t, here it is

Now, this comic, for those who don’t know, once caused mass confusion and panic due to one little detail. One of the Cow Tools happened to resemble a handsaw. This led to thousands of people across the US during the comic’s original printing to decide that this means all the other objects were supposed to be other human tools[ as built by cows].

now, unfortunately, this is not the case. The joke was that if cows made tools, this is what they’d look like.

but the fact so many came to this conclusion and spent months [yes, MONTHS] trying to piece together what the cow tools were “supposed” to be says a lot about the human mind’s pattern recognition and stubbornness. Once we decide a conclusion is the “correct” one, we stubbornly try to prove it with any evidence we can piece together, usually utilizing pattern recognition alone if that’s the only evidence we can find.

now there’s two things this reminds me of, and one is FNAF lore, so I’m not touching that with a forty-three and 7/8ths foot pole.

the other, of course, is pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology. How many of these theories rely on pattern recognition, like terrace farms actually being staircases for giants, or mountains being pyramids or treestumps?

Cow Tools provides a great microcosm of this phenomenon. The only difference is that Earth doesn’t have a cartoonist in charge who can explain that the joke isn’t that deep.

in conclusion, sometimes a cow tool is just a cow tool, no matter what your eyes are telling you.

[chocokeyboard]

Triying and playing more with that ibis paint filter! This was so soo fun to do...

[chirrups]

could we get more pmd au? loving your designs for everyone :D

your wish is my command, lovely anon! i shall fetch the creatures

[malthedreamer]

Pattern recognision test lol

[vaguely-concerned]

I really really like that lucanis reaches the 'there must be some way through this' realization 'off camera', so to speak, while presumably looking at rook explaining the situation to spite. it just. hits right. he gets that moment to himself after 'this place is a nightmare, why would I want to stay here' to come back into focus, to gather himself and think it through in peace, outside of the demands of anyone’s gaze (including the player’s!), while rook takes care of spite’s confusion and urgency and distress as he can’t himself in this shattered state. they're inside his soul, but he still gets that moment of privacy, with rook and spite there and supporting but not intruding. idk there's just something so good and right-feeling about it. rook's presence in lucanis' mind at its most vulnerable and frozen could have felt SO invasive if the quest wasn't written as skillfully as it is, and I get skeeved out by that kind of thing incredibly easily so it's a testament to how well it's done that it always feels safe and supportive. lucanis has had both his bodily and psychological (slash spiritual/existential) integrity and autonomy violated so brutally and repeatedly, and having even the way the camera perceives him here grant him the dignity and respect and privacy of soul he hasn’t experienced in a long time… it’s a whole thing huh. No wonder it’s taken me a while to put it into words lol 

(also what a contrast to what solas and rook have got going on, and what a sly way to slide the point of comparison in there to build to the thematic whole. the solas version of this IS of course wildly invasive and skeeves me out but in the intended delighted horror movie way. solas, too, was let into someone’s soul through the cracks in the wake of a traumatic event, and he IMMEDIATELY sought to turn it to his own benefit and use that trauma as a weapon against them fhdsja I’m sorry but it’s just such a character-revealing instinct for him to act on without hesitation and I love how terrible he is, it’s all so unforgivably premeditated and consistent.

rook acting out of the desire to make sure lucanis is ok vs. solas going ‘well. When life gives you oops killed my friend, make dead friend poisoned lemonade and make his loved ones drink it. this sunk cost fallacy isn’t going to perpetuate itself’ is such a neat contrast and it’s not in your face about it but it’s still there, deep and solid down in the thematic narrative. rook doesn’t do anything to or in lucanis’ mind, really — they negotiate their way through the layers of defense and are let through, and they help him make the whole thing more explicable, but they never exert any force or go rooting around for anything that doesn’t present itself to them first. solas goes about gathering ammo for when he's going to nothing personel kid this person from like the first moment fhdskh doesn't waste a second before he's on that gaslight gatekeep girlboss grind. the fact that the game goes out of its way to show there IS a respectful, non-selfish and kind version of this process makes what solas is doing even more deliciously awful (glee) and rook and lucanis’ relationship (platonic, romantic, whatever it might be in any given playthrough) all the more moving to me)

[reality-detective]