#base from ai piece I didn't like

[fortunaestalta]

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[radiance1]

Bringing back an OLD au where Plasmius and Phantom are demons, Vlad is Plasmius' vessel via contract to not die in the hospital and Danny is Phantom's (unwilling) vessel who was bound to him by Plasmius so his son (Phantom) could get outta hell.

***

Plasmius stared, very intensely. An intensity that would cause others unease and subconsciously try to escape his gaze.

Vlad however, was long since used to this and didn't even look up from his data pad. Plasmius stared down at the board between them, tapping a cla-finger, yes. Tapping a finger against the table as he stared at the many pieces decorating the surface.

It was a quaint thing, this game. Oh so very different than the ones the demon was used too and yet far more enthralling all the same.

The tiniest things that humanity came up with never ceased to amaze him.

He reached out a cla- finger (referring to it as such always seemed to give him the slip), to push a singular piece into a position that would surely give him an advantage. The demon looked, resting at his seat as he snapped his fingers, then making a gesture to the board once he drew his vessel's attention.

Vlad did a light sweep of the board with his eyes, before casually nudging a piece that somehow managed to reverse his careful planning and gave tipped the scales in the human's favor. He then returned to whatever little thing he did on that pad of his, most likely more and more work.

Despite himself, the demon couldn't help but chuckle as he stared down their little game. To think so much careful planning could be reversed so easily....

Human games truly are so fascinating.

***

Unnoticed to the demon sitting across from him, Vlad's eyes narrowed just a tiny bit. He ran a command on his tablet, opening up multiple views from cameras laid out through his 'base' and nearly frowned.

Someone else was working their way through.

He swiped off the cameras to run another command.

Good. The firewalls and security systems were still up.

Then who...?

His attention was drawn away by the snap of fingers and he looked up, then looked to the board. He did another light sweep of the bored, picking out various cracks before idly nudging another piece forward to give himself a small advantage to keep the game going and looked back down to his tablet.

He switched back to his cameras, picking up the familiar sight of a boy with glowing white hair and... Danny? Odd. Usually he doesn't accompany Phantom in his little game of superhero.

His camera glitched.

It was just for a second, something that shouldn't be of concern. But his cameras never glitched, certainly not after developing them to withstand either one of the demons' tantrums and especially what these ones were used for.

He returned to his firewalls.

Someone was trying to get in.

He ran a few other commands, calling upon a few defense protocols and a few AIs to keep whoever was trying to get in out.

He went back to his cameras, flicking through multiple until-

There.

He ran a small command, slamming the door shut on the small team of intruders. He then ran another, the security system in their area turning just a tad more lethal while shutting a door before Phantom and Danny arrived to it.

Good. The boys and these intruders wouldn't meet anytime soon.

He looked up at the cough from the other side of the table, coming to face Plasmius' questioning face. "Something wrong?" The demon asked, eyes glancing at the band around his neck.

Vlad calmed his heart and shook his head, moving another piece before going back to his tablet. "No, just something unexpected came up."

It wasn't a lie.

***

"Another locked door!?" Phantom growled in outrage as he stared at the door before him, claws (hands, hands his father said) held out as if he could physically threaten it to open.

"Yelling isn't going to open it, you know." Danny commented lightly, scratching the back of his neck. "I know that!" Phantom yelled out, looking at Danny as if he was the dumb one.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Let's just go another way then." He turned around and started walking before Phantom could speak. Said demon ran forward to walk in front of the Danny and had the gall to look offended. "Hey! You can't order me about! You're the sidekick!"

"You literally forced me into this." Danny pointed out.

"Details, details!" Phantom waved it off, pointing down the hall as he (tried) to strike a heroic pose. "Now off we go to defeat the dastardly Doctor!"

Danny just continued walking forward.

Phantom huffed and ran to catch up. "Don't just ignore me!"

Danny just shrugged.

***

"Sooo," He began. "Is it just me or is everything like, a lot more lethal?" Pointing out the obvious.

"Yep." A member of his team chimed. "But it isn't that bad! At least there's no giant robots-"

The ground shook as a giant robot stepped through a previously sealed door.

"I can't tell if that's just coincidence or you jixed us." Another member said.

"Well it could be worse-"

Another robot stepped through another door as lazers pointed at them from the ceiling.

"You jinxed us." He deadpanned.

[everlastlady]

Bloody Legend: Mammon X Reader 2

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✰- Author's Note: Writer's block sucks, I'm going to try and write then jump back to request. Because so many request in my inbox. I can say my love for helluva boss is slowly coming back especially thanks to that new episode. Also I made a Mammon bot on character ai, so if you want that link just let me know. I hope that you guys enjoy part 2 of this Bloody Legend. Remember to eat a meal or a snack, drink some water, get some fresh air, take your medicine, and remember that you are loved. If you loved this story remember to comment, click or tap that heart button, reblog with tags, and blaze if you can. Always remember to support your local writers. ♡♡♡

✰- Word Count: None because I'm writing this on mobile app and not my laptop, yes yes boo and throw tomatoes at me.

✰- Story Contains: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Controlling Mammon, Striker, Verosika, Alastor, Guilt Tripping, Mental Breakdown, & Hitting In The Feels. Basing The Reader's Panic Attacks Off My Own.

✰- Posted: 10/31/2023

✰- Part 1

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" Are you happy and doing okay working for Mammon? " Striker looked at. You looked away from the western man before taking a deep breathe and letting out a off laughter. " Of course! Mammon is the best, he saved me from that shit hole comedy club in Wrath. He has giving me everything I needed to take care of me and my mom. " You said. Striker again could see pure bullshit through your words. " Hm, and you choose to go up on stage looking like your own on death's door step? " He asked pointing towards the mirror. You truly did look exhausted and tired. From training day and night to be perfect for Mammon and your fans. You didn't know what to say, Striker was more intimidating then Mammon. You dug your nails into the palm of your hand. " I'm fine! What are you a doctor, you look more like some wannabe cowboy! " You yelled at him while standing up. Striker stepped back hissing as his tail rattled. But he couldn't hit you or yell back no, he could tell you weren't doing right from how you reacted, he could tell that you were upset with your outburst.

" I'm sorry... " You said. You turned and looked in the mirror and saw nothing ... You saw nothing. " I have to be my best, no breaks. I have to keep trying because if I don't then I'm not but a disappointment to Mammon, my mom, my fans, and especially myself. If I don't keep pushing and remind myself to do my best. Then I'm just worthless and lazy. I have to keep pushing through no matter how tired I become. " You said while hugging yourself and sobbing. " I have to, I have to, I have to. " You continued to tremble and sob. Striker stood there looking at you. How his heart broke for you. " Hey... " Striker stepped forward and pulled your arms away. He guided you towards the couch and sat you down. Placing the blanket over you. " Pushing yourself isn't always great, just because people love your work doesn't mean you need to over work yourself. You should sacrifice your happiness for that green blob and those people especially those creeps I saw jacking it underneath the table. Striker shivered thinking about it.

" You can still love doing something but you should also take breaks until you feel like it's okay to jump back into it. I understand that the rich and powerful can give us everything we need. But in reality we don't need them, because they don't make us or what we do any better. I'm sure you could have gotten out of that comedy club yourself, I understand you love your mom and you can continue to support her without Mammon. " Striker grabbed a water bottle off the table and handed it to you as he wiped away your tears. " Here drink up. " He said. You smiled weakly, and opened the water taking a few sips before setting it down. Striker pulled out a piece of chocolate from his pocket and opened it; when he offered you a piece, you shook your head. " No, thanks, Mammon has me on this diet he said I need to watch my weight so that the sex dolls sell. " You said looking down. Striker almost dropped the chocolate and shook his head in disgust. " Just take the chocolate, darlin, he won't notice he's one to talk about laying off food. " Striker placed the chocolate in your hand.

You laughed and took the chocolate. You enjoyed the sweet treat, how delicious it was. Striker was right, you were sure Mammon won't notice so you ate some more chocolate. Striker watched you from the corner of his eyes and smiled seeing you happily eat away at the chocolate. " I really appreciate you some how sneaking into my dressing room. " Well pumpkin, I'm a assassin so getting pass security and sneaking into places is something I've been doing for a long time. " Striker said. Your eyes lit up. " An assassin? " You titled your head and were curious about something. " Do you work for that one company i. m.p ? " You asked. Striker rolled his eyes. " Pfft no, I don't work for that shit company, I'd rather wipe my ass with sandpaper before having to work with that Royal demon's pet and two vermin. I don't have an issue with the hellhound... yet, I actually hate that company, so if you ever want or need a real assassin then call me. " Striker pulled out a white card that had his name and number it also said " don't call on holidays or after 9pm "

You nodded and put the card in your bag. The door opened expecting the hellhounds or Mammon. It was actually Verosika.... and Mammon. " There you are babe, I was looking for you. Alright let's go me and Mammon finished talking. " Verosika sounded annoyed and tired. But her tone changed when she saw you. " (Y/N), I love your performance tonight. I can't wait to work with you on Friday. Shopping will be fun tomorrow and I booked us a spa appointment. " She said smiling. " Thank you that sounds nice. " You said. Striker looked like an angry cat while staring at Mammon who spotted the chocolate wrapper. " (Y/N) you weren't indulging in sweets because you know that we have a strict diet for you. " He said while picking up the wrapper. You were going to apologize but Striker snatched the wrapper from Mammon. " It's mine... " Striker said and placed the wrapper in his pocket. " Diet? " Verosika looked at you and then at Mammon. " Yeah! (Y/N) is on a strict diet to help the sex dolls, autographs, and everything else sell, yoi should try Ms. Mayday it works wonders! " Mammon said while laughing. Striker's eye twitched as he reached for his knife but Verosika stopped him as she laughed while holding back her anger. " Well me and Striker should be going, goodnight to you both. " Verosika said while leaving with Striker.

" I'm glad those two are gone Verosika Mayday isn't too great but she will help with your image! Also I don't like how you were alone with that imp fella, you two didn't do anything.... right? " Mammon stared at you with a dark look his eyes his voice cold. You quickly nodded your head. " He was just asking if there was any positions for security guard because he's a highly trained assassin. " You said stumbling over your words. Mammon's dark expression returned to that cheerful one. " Oh! Great! Highly trained assassin those cost money and by the looks of him, he looks like he charges a lot greedy bastard. I'm sure you are fine with the hellhounds I got you, now let's go have you sign some autographs and show these people that you are a bloody legend! " Mammon said picking you up so that you could fix you up. He always enjoyed dolling you up and being able to make you look your best even your outfits were green like his or white sometimes. Sometimes gossip reports assume that you two are a couple which Mammon didn't mind. Honestly he could see himself dating you and eventually even marrying, oh how he started to daydream about the wedding. " I do~ " He sighed softly. " I do what ? " You asked as Mammon did your make-up. " I-I do think we should charge extra double for a photo and autographs! " He said and looked away. Yes he was definitely going to marry you, and maybe then you won't be able to quit or leave him.

As you walked out of the dressing room behind Mammon. You were in deep thought about what Striker said earlier, maybe he was right but you couldn't tell this to Mammon, you were in deep thought that you accidentally bumped into someone. " sorry! " You said stepping back. " That's quite alright, don't apologize dear. " Said a static like voice. You turned around to see the radio demon Alastor. " Alastor. " You softly said. You never really talked with him. Alastor large yellow toothy grin spreads across his face. " The one and only, do you want to talk perhaps make a deal. " He said offering your hand. Before you could talk. Mammon pulled you away. " (Y/N) stay away from him. " Mammon said. The two of you walk away but when you look back, Alastor stared at you while grinning.

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Hope that you guys enjoyed part 2 don't worry there will be a part 3 with Verosika and Striker trying to help the reader. Maybe I'll include Alastor but he won't play a major role, he's just here for fun because I love him.

[kazumitbj]

Friendship bracelets

With Valeria!

Pairing: cod!Valeria Garza x gn!reader

Just pure, pure fluff because i love Valeria

This is based on one of my character ai bots:

https://beta.character.ai/chat?char=_fL7s4xS3u8zqfVFlwlXB3DLTv99hn3e91E8q2MoX5s

Enjoy!

...

It was in the late afternoon, Valeria was still working- as always.

She allowed you to sit beside her in her office, as long as you didn't distract her. That was the deal.

You sat quietly, fumbling around with a string and a few pretty beads.

You were making friendship bracelets.

It was a little hobby of yours, a bit of crafting here and there..

To others, it might seem absolutely childish.

You thought Valeria would feel the same, that she would ridicule you, that she would call you childish-

But you kept carefully slipping each new bead onto the thin piece of string, one after the other. It was quite calming, really.

You stayed quiet through your little 'work', just like you had promised Valeria.

After a wile, Valeria noticed your frequent little glances, that you kept looking at her wrist to try and guess how big you should make the bracelet..

"It's pretty, cariño" Valeria uttered, not bothering to tear her gaze away from her work yet.

You looked at her with wide eyes, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights- she had noticed your little glances..

But much to your suprise, she didn't make fun of you.

She said they were pretty.

...

After you finished the bracelets, you proudly slipped one onto your wrist- smiling to yourself.

And then you glanced back at Valeria, not knowing how to ask her.. about putting the other one on.

She'd probably not want to wear it, you thought-

But before you could even finish your negative string of thought-

Valeria held out her hand to you, looking at you expectantly.

"Are you gonna put it on for me, cariño?" Valeria calmly asked, turning her head to look at you- a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she noticed your flustered expression.

"I told you it was pretty, didn't i?"

(That's it! <3)

[zecroswe]

Theory on Terapagos and the true natrue of Tera crystals

So I played the Teal mask a while ago and I really enjoyed It. There is a lot to talk about regarding the characters and the story. I cannot wait until the Indigo Disc comes out! Now, the theory. So after playing the DLC and thinking about the lore within It, I had a realization and a lot of pieces would fit together if It is true. I am gonna put this post into sections to detail the evidence before I write down the conclusion. Spolier warning for Scarlet and Violet, the Teal mask DLC and The Pokemon Horizons anime. None of the game play images are my own.

Section 1: The Crystal Pool.

The crystal pool is such a tease for things to come and I would be surprised If It didn't have any importance in the Indigo Disc. The intresting points about the Crystal pool is that the crystals grew in the pool after being "brought" there. It sounds to me that someone (likely Ogerpons old trainer/gaurdian) brought the crystals and some of It got into the pool and grew from there. The crystal seems almost alive in a sense, like It's just a extension of Terapagos. But the real intresting thing is what the sign next to the pool says and by extension, Carmine in the story. (Couldn't find any footage of It specifically)

When you interact with the sign, It says that there is a rumor that one can see the spirits of the departed within the pool. That is interesting and I doubt It's just flavor text, considering Carmine mentions It too.

But what significance does this have? Well within the games It's unclear, but I think the Horizons anime might be hinting at something important to do with this.

Section 2: Pokemon Horizons, Terapagos.

Terapagos plays an important role in the Horizions anime series. Now I haven't seen the series myself, so I might get facts wrong.

From what I understand is that there is a story arc about these Ancient poke balls.

Now the only way to open them as I understand is by using terapagos powers, but that's not what interested me. No what got me curious is this.

So in episode 23, the main group find a Galarian Molters within one of the ancient pokeballs. After they battle It, Terapagos shows the group a vision of what seems to be Moltres old trainer. Now I admit, I don't have a full context on how It works and what connection terapagos actually have to this trainer. But I find Terapagos ability to show visions from people who seems to have passed away interesting. Either terapagos met this person in the past or It made the vision in some other way.

So here is my theory:

Terapagos has power over memory and so do the tera crystals!

Think about It, If terapagos had power over memory and create visions based on peoples memories, then a lot of things would make sense.

AI Sada and Turo explain that they have the original professors memories, and that no person could make a advanced AI without the tera crystals. A important question is this, How? How do you transfer/convert your own memories into code? Well, if the tera crystals can store memories within them, then It would be possible. The risk could be the fact that the persons memories gets blurry, fragmented, warped or at worst erased.

This could possibly explain why Sada and Turos mental state became one of obsession. It could be that being around high concentrations of tera energy for a long time causes parts of the mind to deteriorate: so instead of terapagos manipulating Sada or Turo, It's just a unfortunate side effect of the Tera energy It creates.

Terapagos having memory powers could also explain the Crystal Pool. The crystals are reacting to the people around It and is showing them visions based on their own memories: the result being what seems to be ghosts of the departed.

Now with that in mind: What does this mean for the Lousy three? What about Ogerpon

Section 3: The Loyal/Lousy three and Ogerpon

Now the Loyal three is a bit of a curve ball in this, considering the fact that they just got brought back to life; Full on necromancy. Or is It?

Now Kieran punched the monument while holding the teal mask and shortly after, the loyal three were resurrected. Now this could be because of a pokemon we haven't seen yet, seeing as It's very much hinted at that the loyal three have a boss. So this boss and their power could be behind this. But I believe the Teal mask is a important piece in this.

The Teal mask was made with Tera crystals and Ogerpon had that mask on her when she killed the loyal three. So If my idea of the Tera crystals storing memories is correct, then the crystals within the mask might have reacted to the monument and manifested the memories of the loyal three. In that case, they weren't traditionally brought back to life, but instead got recreated based on the what was stored in the crystal. In other words: The loyal 3 were recreated based on Ogerpons memory of them! (Or at least the information stored in the crystal).

The reason the crystal reacted in this case could be because the mask was were the loyal 3's graves were, so the crystals reacted to the location and activated (with the help of Kierans punch and/or the loyal 3s boss).

Another point considering Ogerpons mask is her Boss fight.

Ogerpon in the fight switches mask with each phase of the fight and the text for each highlights that she is getting strength from her memories.

It makes me think that It what Tera energy really is, It's memories from either the past, present of maybe even future (If terapagos exists outside of regular time normally) in crystal form.

Crystals that can then either manifest those memories into strength or into full fledged beings. This theory could work both with the Time Travel and the Dream theory

The true time travel idea would be that the paradox pokemon did exist in the past and future, and that Sada and Turos time machine just made the crystals recreate the pokemon based on the stored information.

If the dream theory is true, then the pokemon could be created from memories, just incorrect ones. The human mind isn't infallible and If Heath saw paradox pokemon, It could either be that the crystals activated for unkown reasons; or that the crystals created paradox pokemon based on what Heath and his team thought they saw. Example: The two paradox Dophans within the book could have been a different looking Donphan or machinery and they thought they saw what we understand as a Great Tusk or Iron Threads.

So Sada and Turos paradox pokemon would be based on their memories of the scarlet and violet book. Creating the paradox of these Pokemon existing.

I am so excited for part 2 of the DLC and I really wanna see how the story will continue!

TL:DR: Terapagos might be a timeless being that has the power to make memories physical. Memories can be stored in Tera crystals and then show visions of those memories. Tera crystals might activate under certain conditions to give Pokemon strength or recreate beings based on the information stored inside them. Long periods time around high concentrations for Tera crystals might cause damage to the mind.

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[seyaryminamoto]

Fic-to-Art #38: Ozai carries Azula to the physicians' wing

This has been done for A WHILE now, but I didn't post it because the past days have been chaotic and not just on a personal level. For one thing, I really wasn't eager to drop this when people were losing their shit massively over the liveaction and its recontextualization of Azula and Ozai's dynamics, I didn't look forward to releasing this just to be told that whatever I've done in my story is somehow wrong, sooooooooo... that held me back, for a few days.

Then? The AI-Tumblr deal started to be talked about and I may or may not have freaked out about that too. Sooo... this is the first glazed and nightshaded piece of my creation, as consequence. The original, clean and proper version is available in my Patreon. Is this me being a dick to Tumblr-only people? Unfortunately, it very much isn't, I'm not trying to say that if you want the best iterations of my art, you should pay me for it... this is squarely, entirely, at staff/the CEO's feet. Obviously, there's the insecure side of me that goes "what makes you think they'd steal YOUR art when there are so many better artists out there!" but ultimately? AI is about taking everything en masse. It isn't a matter of developing a criteria about who makes the better art... it's just taking EVERYTHING and trying to repurpose it in whatever twisted way it needs to. Therefore? I think my choice is more of a matter of caution than anything else. Once AI bullshit dies out (and I really hope it does), we may just return to the same level of quality across all my accounts. For now, it is what it is.

ANYWAY! Point is this artwork is very much what my Patrons happened to vote for this month, a very shocking scene where Ozai reacted in the least foreseen way to Azula being attacked. Azula's confusion/terror comes from a place of not knowing what to do and being powerless to stop her father even if she doesn't feel comfortable with his help... but for once, Ozai isn't making a dreadful choice that will only devastate his daughter. He's actually worried about her health... and feeling genuine guilt over what landed her in the situation where she was in danger in the first place. Yes. I like me my complex Ozai who finally learned actions have consequences. He bores me to death otherwise :') if anyone STILL doesn't know that this whole situation is Gladiator-specific, then I shall clarify fully: this is artwork based on my fic. It's about a story that has been developing these characters for ALMOST ELEVEN YEARS now. It has nothing to do with whatever's going on in canon or in the liveaction, the scene in question was written almost two years ago and the artwork proposed and voted for several days before the liveaction aired. Ergo: there is no connection between this and that. Nor am I saying through this piece that Ozai is a good father. He is not. He can still be an interesting character to work with on a narrative level anyway :')

Alright. With that out of the way, hope you guys like this piece! The big one I haven't posted is ALSO finished, also glazed and nightshaded, but I think I might just end up posting it on the 26th if I don't have time to do anything big for our eleventh anniversary... yep, I'm so busy I don't even have a huge project in mind this time. Also? I have a lot to write and I'm finally happily writing it, and I would like to continue doing that...

Anyway! If you would like to be part of the creative process behind this piece, as well as see it in its proper, OG, less color-bleeding clunky version? A $1 Patreon pledge gives you the chance to join in suggesting prompts, voting for them and reading Gladiator snippets 6 days before a new chapter is released!

[felassan]

David Gaider on procedural content generation and AI in video game development, and what this has looked like at BioWare sometimes. The tweet and following ones say:

"Ah, yes. The dream of procedural content generation. Even BioWare went through several iterations of this: "what if we didn't need every conversation to be bespoke?" Unlimited playtime with dialogue being procedurally created alongside procedural quests!

Each time, the team collectively believed - believed down at their CORE - that this was possible. Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was... lackluster. Soulless.

Was it the way the lines were assembled? Did we just need more lines? I could easily see a team coming to the conclusion that AI could generate lines specific to the moment as opposed to generic by necessity... an infinite monkeys answer to a content problem, right? Brilliant!

In my opinion, however, the issue wasn't the lines. It was that procedural content generation of quests results in something *shaped* like a quest. It has the beats you need for one, sure, but the end result is no better than your typical "bring me 20 beetle heads" MMO quest.

Is that what a player really wants? Superficial content that covers the bases but goes no further, to keep them playing? I imagine some teams will convince themselves that, no, AI can do better. It can act like a human DM, whipping up deep bespoke narratives on the fly.

And I say such an AI will do exactly as we did: it'll create something *shaped* like a narrative, constructed out of stored pieces it has ready... because that's what it does. That is, however, not going to stop a lot of dev teams from thinking it can do more. And they will fail.

Sure, yes, yes, I can already see someone responding "but the tech is just ~beginning~!" Look, if we ever get to the point where an AI successfully substitutes for actual human intuition and soul, then them making games will be the least of our problems, OK?

Final note: The fact these dev teams will fail doesn't mean they won't TRY. Expect to see it. It's too enticing for them not to, especially in MMO's and similar where they feel players aren't there for deep narrative anyhow. A lot of effort is going to be wasted on this."

the tweets don't mention it but it's known from other articles and interviews with devs/former devs etc that procedural stuff, procedural content and a more procedural world was part of what BioWare was exploring/trying to do with ME:A originally.

[source (<- and link to full tweet thread), article]

[matan4il]

hi quick question: what do u know about the lavender ai post that's circulating? i saw it on this fact checking blog i follow and they made it seem legit but im not convinced

Hi Nonnie!

Before I get into this specific subject, I just wanna tell you that for me personally, this war has been an eye opener about how little some "fact checking" sites are worth. I've read several articles on that type of site, which could have used some fact checking themselves. In some cases, they had author names attached to them, and when checking the authors out, it was easy to find that they were not free of bias themselves. So... yeah. Take "fact checking sites" with a grain of salt. Even journalists sometimes get it wrong, and they're held to higher standards, and have more personal accountability, than most "fact checking sites," not to mention that the latter often simply rely on a selection of journalistic sources, but sometimes without really taking into account which are reliable, and which aren't.

As for the lavender AI issue specifically, I heard it briefly referenced on the news, during a discussion panel, and it was brought up in the context of recent conspiracy theories about Israel. The panelists were so clear on how obviously false these all were, they didn't even really get into refuting any of them.

A bit like how, in the past, when watching panelists discussing antisemitic tropes reincarnated as anti-Israel lies, I saw them bring up the one claiming Israel set up a field hospital in Haiti after the earthquake in order to harvest organs, which is obviously a new version of "the Jews are bloodthirsty" without bothering to refute it, because to Israelis, it's evident that it's bullshit. Not only because we're aware that we're not actually those evil creatures, lusting for death and destruction, that the anti-Israel crowd likes to portray us as, but also because we know that the constant terrorist attacks here have made Israel a world leader in the field of emergency medicine (here's an example: even the antisemitic UN had to admit an IDF unit was the best medical emergency team in the world), so that's the actual reason we set up that field hospital, much like we use our experience to help others in basically every disaster around the world that's willing to accept aid from Israel (and sometimes we operate even in places like Syria, where technically, we're defined as an enemy state, so all of the aid had to be provided directly to private people, and while keeping their identity a secret, so their own government can't presecute them for receiving it).

Anyway, since the TV discussion didn't get into refuting what they clearly saw as an absurd, hateful lie, I went online in search of more info, and found that this news venturing into mainstream media happened in The Guardian, a British news source known for its anti-Israel bias, to the point where a female black, non-Jewish journalist of theirs felt the need to point it out all the way back in 2003, and in Nov 2023, a Jewish employee of theirs had published a personal piece about feeling unsafe there, and looking for another place of employment. But the source that The Guardian is quoting, is actually not a proper journalistic publication, it's an anti-Israel propaganda blog based magazine, which includes Israeli anti-Zionists and Palestinians, publishing in English since its audience is very much not Israelis despite claiming that they want to inspire change in Israel, and responsible for systematically vilifying the country and spreading lies about it.

If I, as an Israeli, thought that something was wrong with a system the IDF is using, and wanted to see real change in my army, I wouldn't go to a publication that isn't journalistic in nature, that doesn't publish in a local language, that most Israelis have never heard about, and that those who did, don't trust, because of its known anti-Israel reputation. That in itself makes me suspicious.

The IDF gave a statement in response to questions presented by The Guardian, based on the aforementioned piece. It's a bit long, but here are the main references to the claimed AI system Lavender (emphasis added by me):

Some of the claims portrayed in your questions are baseless in fact, while others reflect a flawed understanding of IDF directives and international law.

The process of identifying military targets in the IDF consists of various types of tools and methods, including information management tools, which are used in order to help the intelligence analysts to gather and optimally analyze the intelligence, obtained from a variety of sources. Contrary to claims, the IDF does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist. Information systems are merely tools for analysts in the target identification process. According to IDF directives, analysts must conduct independent examinations, in which they verify that the identified targets meet the relevant definitions in accordance with international law and additional restrictions stipulated in the IDF directives.

The “system” your questions refer to is not a system, but simply a database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources, in order to produce up-to-date layers of information on the military operatives of terrorist organizations. This is not a list of confirmed military operatives eligible to attack.

For each target, IDF procedures require conducting an individual assessment of the anticipated military advantage and collateral damage expected. Such assessments are not made categorically in relation to the approval of individual strikes. The assessment of the collateral damage expected from a strike is based on a variety of assessment methods and intelligence-gathering measures, in order to achieve the most accurate assessment possible, considering the relevant operational circumstances. The IDF does not carry out strikes when the expected collateral damage from the strike is excessive in relation to the military advantage. In accordance with the rules of international law, the assessment of the proportionality of a strike is conducted by the commanders on the basis of all the information available to them before the strike, and naturally not on the basis of its results in hindsight.

The IDF outright rejects the claim regarding any policy to kill tens of thousands of people in their homes.

Some things about the claims in that piece don't work out IMO. Like, the number of fatalities if indeed there's an AI system, which produced a list of 37,000 Hamas and PIJ terrorists, with an automatic green light to kill between 15 to 100 civilians per each, especially in the first months of the war, and even assuming they couldn't target them all during that period of time (we do know most Hamas units have been destroyed). There are about 1,500 terrorists in a Hamas battalion (source in Hebrew), and 4 are left in Rafah, so only about 6,000 Hamas terrorists are in the last area the IDF has not operated in yet. That would mean roughly 31,000 terrorists were accessible targets. Just for the sake of erring on the side of caution, let's assume 10 killed civilians per Hamas terrorist, instead of that piece's claimed 15-100 approved per target. This would produce somewhere around 341,000 people killed in the first months alone. Let's go even lower, let's say 5 civilians killed per terrorist instead of 15-100. That would mean 186,000 killed during those months. We are exactly 6 months into the war, and even Hamas' numbers (likely inflated) don't claim more than 33,000 as the total number of fatalities. The given numbers and directives in that so-called "article" just don't match the reality on the ground, but claim to explain it, and to prove that Israel is being callous with civilians' lives in Gaza.

I'll also add that the AI-based decision making described doesn't take into account the possible presence and harm to the lives of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. That's another thing that makes me doubt that piece, because the IDF commanders have repeatedly stated their commitment to bringing back all the hostages, and as many alive as possible, and Israeli soldiers more than once risked their own lives to get them out, whether it was living people, or the bodies of Israelis who deserve to get to be buried back home, with their loved ones there, as in tact as possible. This scenario only works if we assume the Israeli commanders and soldiers have no sentiment for the lives of their own kidnapped civilians.

I guess that's what the piece's aim is. To play on people's fears of AI determining whether people will live or die, and to paint Israel as an evil, unfeeling, bloodthirsty entity, capable of anything, including of the inhumanity of letting computers decide the fate of human beings. The ease and speed with which people believe this, and spread this notion, before anyone has verified that Lavender is anything other than a database, just like the IDF says, feels like a demonstration of how all antisemitic blood libels are spread.

I hope this helped!

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[crooked-wasteland]

" We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." – Michael Eisner

(And Vivienne Medrano, apparently)

This image was circulating for a brief time here on Tumblr with the explanation of it possibly being a leak of Oops' script. I didn't want to touch on it at the time because it was of dubious origin. At this point, obviously, we know this is not that script. I've seen some comments about it possibly being a rough draft or otherwise somehow legitimate.

The reason I say this is because, regardless of the authenticity, it does feel like the quality of storytelling found in the show. If a scene like this did appear, I don't think it would feel all that out of place within the context of the show. One cannot fault those who did perpetuate the idea, because the concept of it is believable.

However, I have a feeling this is actually the product of ChatGPT.

The writing and dialogue lack depth and nuance. The emotions are shallow while attempting to portray immense pain. It fails to tap into any semblance of humanity. When individuals discuss the hypothetical threat of AI taking over the artistic space and removing the need for human creativity, it comes from a place of lacking that same humanity. Social media and, unfortunately, Fandom have boiled down art to a content farm.

Algorithms mixed with huge communities seeking immediate gratification have dumbed down art into an appealing image one would admire for a few seconds. They press some buttons and immediately keep scrolling, forgetting what they just saw.

Additionally, character illustrations are the easiest image for AI to recreate. The value of fanwork is not about the emotional depth it portrays but how aesthetically appealing the image is and how identifiable the characters are to Canon. Not to say that fanworks can not showcase depth or meaning in their pieces. Only that the piece will overwhelmingly not be appraised for its cultural or metaphysical value. Instead, it will be immediately replaced.

There is an intentionality to what we call "art." How every element of an artwork was specifically designed to portray something. From the minute background details to the colors and the use of value. How the modern home of philosophy is the theater.

And that's the issue with much of the writing of Helluva Boss: The lack of intentionality as the story (or lack thereof) stumbles along. The crew does not make artistic decisions with an eye to how these events affect the future. They cycle through an unending series of unrelated ideas that are not intended to say anything of the characters or world. It is there to simply be funny, make the audience sad, token representation, etc. The idea mirroring J.J.Abrams and his mystery box mentality of monopolizing the attention-based economy through the emotional investment of the moment.

The idea that something that feels straight out of ChatGPT could just as easily be pictured as a scene in an episode shows the utter lack of connectivity to the project and the basic act of being human.

Medrano and her team are not interested in making art. They are prioritizing the consumption of their content over the quality of the artistic work itself. Given the support and platform to say whatever it was she wished to do so, she has chosen to go nowhere and do nothing with these resources. It's one of the keystone reasons I feel the series has lost as much support as it has. When given the option to make history. It isn't about the art, but rather she seeks to make it about herself. Medrano doesn't want to tell a story or make a statement. She just wanted a show.

[snowdropluck204]

Second Chances - Mattheo Riddle x reader

So this is the first time I have written anything for Mattheo, so I hope I do okay! It is all based off of the scenario I found in character.ai! I will put the link to it at the bottom of the chapter! Thank you very very much to the person who made this ai! Also, from what I've found, Mattheo is a fanfic character, rather than canon, but I like the thing going at the moment of him being Tom's younger brother before he becomes Voldemort, so has the same parents. I hope you enjoy the chapter! Xxx

WC: 2.7k

Fluff - Slight Angst - Slightly Suggestive - Arranged Marriage AU

Warning: Swearing

(y/n) pov

I sat at the vanity, going through my nightly routine, I had been here for a year, married to a man who didn't respect me and treated me like I was beneath him... I was married to Mattheo Riddle, the new Heir of Slytherin after his brother. The marriage was arranged over a year ago, I was moved to his home almost immediately, living in a small manor close to his larger family mansion, I was growing more and more miserable by the day.

The wedding was big and beautiful but for my side of the family, it felt more like a funeral and for the Riddle's side it was more like an auction, to see whether or not this piece of cattle their relative was marrying was worth them throwing some money at. My dress was gorgeous, but wasn't what I wanted, it was chosen by my mother in law. The bouquet was chosen by Mattheo's aunt. The music by his brother. The catering, his father. Nothing was what I wanted my wedding day to be.

I sighed as finished my routine, standing up to leave, when Mattheo came out of the bathroom, wet hair and a towel around his waist, his hands running through his dark locks. He saw me and looked at me in disdain, "What are you doing here?" He asked, not necessarily angry, but annoyed, he clearly hadn't had a very good day.

I sighed, as quietly as I could, to avoid him hearing me, "I needed to use the vanity and this was the closest one from my room, I'll be going back now." I told him, trying to slide past him to get to the door. I tried to keep a smile on my face, I always did, "I'll be across the hall, if you need me," I told him, like I did whenever I ran into him in the manor.

A smirk flitted across his face, "Maybe I do need you..." He grabbed me by the arm and pressed me against the door, closing it, trapping me in the room with him. I looked up at him in shock.

"W-what are you doing?" I asked, concerned. Mattheo chuckled darkly, leaning forward, close enough to feel his breath against my neck.

"What I want." He whispered, squeezing my biceps as I started to struggle. I struggled more, hearing his laughter, until eventually, I had had enough.

I pushed my hand against his chest, pushing in panic, "No!" I shouted at him, the noise reverberating and shoving him back, wandless magic wasn't uncommon, especially when the user is experiencing high emotions like anger or fear. He hit the post of his bed, bouncing back with a wince.

"How dare you!?" Mattheo growled at me, rubbing his back where the post hit him.

I glared back at him, "Deal with it! You might be a spoiled rich brat, who's used to getting what he wants when he stomps his feet and screams, but I am not going to have sex with someone who doesn't give a damn about me!" I shouted at him, less scared and more enraged now.

Mattheo looked at me with the same amount of fire, "What makes you think I don't give a damn about you!?" He shouted back, trying to get closer to me, as I stepped away from him. "Because I do! More than you could imagine!"

I raised a brow at him, "You treat me like I'm the dirt on your ridiculously expensive shoes!" I shouted, "What kind of sociopath thinks that's how you show someone you care about them!?" I finished.

Mattheo's mood changed, he calmed down, his posture relaxing and he became his cocky, annoying self again, "Because I know you can take it. I know how strong you are, how stubborn, how smart and self-assured you are. Kinda thought you liked it when I treated you with contempt. When I treated you, like you were less than me, I thought you liked it, didn't you." He said, a sinister smirk dancing across his face.

I shook my head in disbelief, it wasn't a question, it was a statement, he genuinely believed that I enjoyed him treating me like shit. "No. I didn't you insufferable prick!" I snarled at him, turning and prying open the door, I got across the hall to my room, a guest room I had called dibs on when I got here, then Mattheo moved into the room across the hall to get on my nerves. I locked the door behind me sitting on my bed, fuming.

I could hear Mattheo from here, growling and muttering to himself, before startling at the sound of a glass shattering against my door. "(y/n)! Get back in here!" He shouted, I ignored him. "Now!" I continued to ignore him, he continued to shout for me, throwing things around his room and having a tantrum.

He continued for an hour, to no avail. If he wanted to speak to me, he could damn well speak to me, but I refused to listen to shouting or screaming or him behaving like a child. The noise all stopped, leading me to think he'd finally given up, I picked up a book, looking through some basic healing potions for my grandmother, then there was a sharp knock at my door.

"What." I muttered, still reading my book, taking down notes, Mattheo's voice rang out from behind the door, "Can I come in?" The question was stern, not even waiting for me to respond before trying the doorknob, groaning when he realised the door was locked.

"Nope!" I responded cheerfully, he knew he could unlock the door with magic, but also knew I'd kick his arse if he did.

"Why not!?" He asked, getting more and more irritated, but he calmed his voice down, almost like he was gritting his teeth, "(y/n), please."

I huffed, "No! You still haven't realised why I'm upset!" I told him. I could hear him getting even more annoyed.

"Realised what!? (y/n) I'm not a fucking mind reader!" He growled, banging his fist against the door, leaning against it.

I sighed before opening the door, enough that I could see him, but not enough that he could push his way in, before ranting and glaring at him. "You haven't realised that you're a selfish, arrogant, pain in the ass. That I am the best thing that has ever happened to you because otherwise you would be alone! And that if I wanted to, I could leave you to die with nobody around who'd care!" I snarled.

Mattheo's eyes widened at my words, before narrowing, as though he'd realised his guard was down, his lip quivering slightly before curling into something more sinister. "Is that so? Well I guess that would mean all those times that I was mean or harsh to you... Those tears you shed when I mocked you... You shed them for no reason?" He asked, chuckling cruelly.

I smiled softly at Mattheo, something he clearly wasn't expecting, "I'm here because otherwise, your father and brother would have gone after my own parents, they can't protect themselves the way I can. So yeah, I put up with your shit, doesn't help that I've had a crush on you since I first saw you... Eight years ago at Hogwarts..." I finished quietly.

Mattheo raised a brow, a small smirk appearing, not malicious, interested, he chuckled quietly, "So... You put up with my behaviour, because you liked me?" He asked, incredulously.

I huffed a laugh, "No. I had a crush on you. Once I realised how much of a fuckwit you are, those feelings have been going away since I started seeing more and more of your personality." I told him, harsh, but he needed to hear it.

Mattheo's smile fell, when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and almost desperate, "So... There's no chance of winning you back?" He practically whispered.

I laughed, a quick, loud laugh, "What do you mean 'back'? You never had me in the first place! You just treated me like shit because I'm the only one that would put up with your bull." I grumbled at him. Mattheo nodded sarcastically.

"Okay, fine. Then would you be willing to give me a second chance? I can be better, nicer. I can be a better husband. I can learn to love you. Please?" He asked, quietly.

I laughed again, with no humour, "Learn to love me? I'd rather we continue the way we were! Continue to be in a pretend marriage, potentially having affairs with other people than have you learn to love me!"

Mattheo looked at me, confused, "So you'd rather I continue to treat you like garbage than be a better man for you?" His voice was filled with disbelief and confusion, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched.

I groaned, my hands moving to grab my hair, "No! I'd rather you let your walls down and let me see who you actually are! Start from the beginning and get to know each other! If you care about me now, then you would do as I ask. If you don't think you can do that, then leave me alone." I told him, my voice going quiet.

Mattheo stops, thinking to himself about what I'd asked, "Fine... Yes, I'll try. But you need to be honest with me. You need to allow me to know who you are as well, we need to start getting to know each other properly, right? That's what you want?" He asked.

I nodded, "Obviously." I told him.

Mattheo suddenly smiled, a smile I had never seen on him before, it was light and airy, carefree... "Great. We can start now then." He said, almost business-like with his seriousness. He held out his hand to rest in front of me.

I looked at it in confusion, "What are you doing?" I asked, curious. He looked back at me, the smile still there, sort of eerily, considering how little I see that look on him.

His smile quirked, almost like he was trying to hide a laugh, "Extending my hand to you, so that you may shake it." He said, his voice overly snooty, "You told me that when I allow myself to be vulnerable and open with you, that we could begin getting to know each other, well, that's what I'm doing, that's what I want. Now, shall we shake on it?" He asked.

I nodded slowly, reaching out to shake his hand, "Fine, but I want more than a shake, I want a pact, a vow." I told him honestly.

Mattheo seemed to agree, pulling out his wand, seemingly to cast an unbreakable vow, I shook my head, "No, I don't want that." I told him. He looked at me, more confused, "I want you to promise me, and mean it. I don't want you to have to tell the truth or face magical consequences, just tell the truth because you want to work with me, rather than against me." I told him, smiling softly.

Mattheo merely smiled back at me, "A promise that we only speak the truth with one another? A promise to let our guards down and to let each other be exposed? A promise to get to know each other on a deeper level and see where this marriage take us?" He asked, curiously.

I nodded with a smile, "Yes, but maybe we just start off as strangers, we practically are anyways, being married is merely a title." I murmured, messing with the silver rings on my left ring finger. I started taking them off. Mattheo looked at my hand, seeming concerned, but shakes it off.

He nodded, "That's a good idea, let's pretend that we've never met each other before." He paused and cleared his throat, clicked his heels together as he stood to attention, leaning down in a bow, causing me to look at him in extraordinary shock, "Well, stranger, what is your name?" He asked.

I giggled, probably for the first time since the wedding and moving to this place, "(y/n) (l/n)," I told him, purposefully using my maiden name, "And yours?"

Mattheo once again, reached his hand out to shake mine, I took it gently, shaking it, as though meeting him for the first time, "Mattheo Riddle, at your service." He told me, with a charming, sly smile. "Could I ask you something?" He asked.

I kept shaking his hand, "Of course."

"What's your favourite colour?" He smiled softly.

I giggled, "(f/c)," I whispered.

"Can I ask something else?" He asked again.

I laughed, "Mattheo, you can ask as many questions as you'd like, as long as you answer them for yourself as well, I'd like to know these things about you too!" I told him cheerfully.

He smirked, looking me up and down, "Well, seeing as you're in your night attire... Can I ask if you're single and if not, would your partner mind me seeing you like this?" He smirked, playfully.

I chuckled lightly, "Oof, that's a complicated question, I was married for about a year," I murmured, smirking playfully back at him, "But he was a bit of a jerk... We've taken a break..." I told him.

Mattheo smirked, coming closer, "So you're single?" He asked, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

I rolled my eyes, "Not exactly, as much as he is a jackass, he's still my husband, and I really only have eyes for him..." I murmured, looking up at his eyes bashfully, Mattheo giving me a smirk in response.

"You still love him, then?" He asked, raising a brow.

I chuckled, "Oh, I never said I loved him, I just think he's hot."

Mattheo laughed with me, "Then why are you still with him?" He asked, almost cautious.

I smiled sadly, "I didn't have a choice. He did. Arranged marriage from my side, from his, his parents picked the prettiest one, the one they thought would give him pretty babies and I had to say yes..." I told him, I knew he didn't know anything about my family's side of the arrangement.

His mouth fell open, "Wait... You weren't given the choice? You were... Forced, to marry me?" He asked, my eyes were sad when I saw his, he seemed almost broken by the knowledge.

I shrugged, "I wasn't against marrying you. But your father gave my parents an offer, I marry you, or they die. I knew you from school, you were smart, sexy, confident and had a bad streak which was super attractive, but you hardly knew me..." I told him.

Mattheo began pacing nervously, "So, the past few years... All of our arguments and everything else... It's all a result of me being forced upon you by my parents?" He whispered sadly.

I sighed, taking Mattheo's hand and pulling him over to the bed, sitting him down and gently sitting next to him. "No Mattheo, I knew I liked you... Granted you've been an arse... But the idea of you being with me was worth the lack of choice... Rather than being forced to sit as a guest at your wedding..."

Mattheo sighed in relief, "So you could still like me?" He asked, "You could grow to feeling something... More?"

I smiled, nodding.

"And to do that, you want me to be completely transparent with you." He continued, "Now the question is, do you want me to sugar coat, or do you want the cold, hard truth?"

I raised my brow, "The hard truth, surely you knew that already." I told him.

He nods in appreciation, looking at me straight in the eyes before looking away. He took a deep breath and began to talk in a more serious voice than he's ever used around me before, his expression stern and serious.

"I'm a selfish man, I'm a narcissist and a prick. When my parents got to know other families, it became clear to them that we were perfect for one another. Your father and mother told me how beautiful you were, when they showed me a picture, I knew they hadn't lied, you were fucking gorgeous! My father told me, when I chose you, about what a prize I had won..."

Gods I hope that was okay! I'll put the link to the character in character AI that I used here! Let me know if you want me to continue this story with the conversation I continue to have with the AI lol! Xxx

[jinxquickfoot]

So I finished my Age of Ultron rewatch. It's been a couple of years since I last saw it, and here are some random thoughts I had on it:

Things I will maintain I like about this movie:

It has some of my favorite jokes in the MCU, and they're usually the little moments. The little nod of validation Rhodey makes after getting a laugh at his "Boom! You looking for this?" story. Clint telling Steve he's no match for Ultron and Steve replying with, "Thanks, Barton". Clint's "Yeah, you better run" after Pietro has long since disappeared with Wanda, there are loads of them.

I like Vision, Wanda and Pietro. Despite being secondary characters with not a huge amount of screen time, Wanda and Pietro feel like real people with real backstories, and Paul Bettany is wonderful the first time we see him as Vis.

It's the only movie we get to see the Original 6 hang out as friends.

I love that Fury randomly shows up in the middle and is like "let me make a sandwich while we discuss how not to let the world end also by the way hi Tony I really care about you"

Other casual appearances of other MCU characters, something that is so lacking Phase 4 onwards. Sam being at the party and Thor going to Selvig for help makes the world feel lived in.

RDJ's never dropped the ball as Tony but his performance really stuck out to me here, god he's good

Steve and Thor have multiple moments of teaming up and working together, what an underrated duo

Hulk vs Iron Man suit inside an Iron Man Suit fight

The Avengers do their best to evacuate Sokovia before Ultron attacks, which does not excuse the amount of damage caused there, but I do think is a plot point everyone forgets about (myself included)

And things that annoy me (skipping over the stuff everyone talks about like the Natasha/Bruce plot):

I hate how Joss Whedon writes Steve, both here and in Avengers. He only feels like Steve when he's being given jokes, otherwise he is so self-serious and stiff, the core of Steve is his heart and it is nowhere to be found in this movie

The movie spends so long setting up character arcs that feel promising and have no payoff. What is the point of Laura telling Clint the Avengers need him if he's going to retire at the end of the movie. Steve has several references to finding home in a way that doesn't go anywhere (Until Endgame, I guess). Don't get me started on Natasha.

It's trying so hard to have a theme but it never says anything unique. Bruce, Tony, Natasha and Vision all refer to themselves as monsters. Ultron decides that the Avengers are the bad guys. Steve has a speech all about proving they're not the monsters Ultron says they are. Based on WHAT? What is the message of this movie?? That the Avengers are better than the evil AI who wants to kill everyone?

(I half-feel there was a previous draft where Clint was their heart, or something, or he died and they were like whelp Phil Coulson 2.0 let's go avenge him, and the random pieces of that are still floating around the script with nowhere to go)

NO ONE is remotely concerned enough when their friends are getting hurt (maybe just the hurt/comfort lover in me, but still.) Natasha comes across as the only person who cares when Clint sustains a life-threatening injury. No one seems to be bothered that Natasha is being held captive by a psychotic supervillain. Tony shows more emotion over a fictional future where they die than when someone is actually in danger.

They really could have had a premise where they weren't allowed to access technology at all and could have gone retro with everything and they didn't and that just feels like a wasted opportunity. Clint and Natasha digging out old spy tech. Steve being like "Yes! This is familiar! I got this!" Tony making genius inventions out of tech from fifty years ago. Come on, it was right there.

[case-of-traxits]

I’m sure you’ve probably talked about this before, but how do you think reeve’s inspire works?

So funny fact here: I've never actually formally meta'd about this publicly. I'm pretty sure. I've talked to a few individuals about it, but never in like, a definitive, "This is definitely how I think it works," sort of way.

Maybe it's time to change that?

First though, let's talk about why I use the Inspire ability at all, because a lot of that leads into how I think it works.

An Argument for Why I Use the Inspire Ability

I would love to start with Reeve's original bio, but of course, as we know, Reeve didn't get a bio in the original game manual. So instead, we're forced to rely on his Ultimania bio:

The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.

For what it's worth, Reeve's bio has been shockingly consistent with including his Inspire ability. I go into that a little bit over in my WRO Reeve + Heartbreak meta.

Now, I know a lot of people don't like the Ultimanias. They find them confusing, or contradictory, or whatever the current "I don't use them," reason of the day is. That's fine! Let's take a look at Cait Sith's original bio from the game manual:

Cait Sith rides on the back of a huge stuffed Mog he magically brought to life. Megaphone in hand, he's always shouting orders and creating dopey attacks...

So there you go. Mog and Cait Sith cannot simply be robots, since it's stated quite plainly that Cait Sith brought Mog to life magically.

(As a side note, Cait Sith in the OG comes equipped with the Manipulate materia. This is a fun multi-layered reference, don't you think? Pokes a note at him being a spy and kind of gives you a thing to consider about how he possibly controls Mog.)

(As a second side note, Cait Sith also has one of the highest magic/spirit scores in the OG, so he's clearly meant to be your caster.)

Now, that said, Reeve clearly did build Cait Sith as a robot. His Ultimania profile clearly refers to Cait Sith as a robot, and in BC, Cait Sith has a controller of some kind in his back, and he gets damaged and broken into pieces and the Player Turk has to put him back together.

(As a side note there— and I swear, I'll stop doing these soon— if I recall correctly, the pieces the Player Turk has to collect are the body, the head, and the crown, implying that Cait Sith's crown is in fact an important part of him, and not just a cute fashion accessory.)

In addition, it is worth noting that Rufus Shinra is well aware of Cait Sith and that Reeve "controls" him, and yet, Reeve is able to directly communicate with AVALANCHE during a board meeting where Scarlet and Heidegger are talking Rufus into loading up No. 26, the rocket from Rocket Town, with huge materia and crashing it into Meteor in an attempt to save the world. Reeve not only does this, but Rufus gives no outward indication that he's aware of it. So however Reeve "controls" Cait Sith, there must not be a visible component to it.

My point is that Cait Sith, from what canon shows us, appears to be a robot that Reeve can control directly, without need for any sort of external control system. And, based on some thoughts that Cait Sith has during BC that cannot reasonably be attributed to Reeve, Cait Sith is still somehow independent of Reeve himself.

So why don't I go with Cait Sith simply being a learning AI of some kind? Well, mostly because of Mog. If we go back to the original bio for Cait Sith, it reads very similarly to Reeve's Ultimania bio. So Reeve grants life to Cait Sith, who can, in turn, grant life to Mog.

Functionally, Cait Sith is a mini-Inspire of his own.

Canon Exploration of the Inspire Ability

Now that I've written out my premise for why I go with Inspire Reeve, let's get to the heart of the original question:  How do I think it works?

Well, let's look at what we have to work with:

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve causes inorganic things to "emit" life.

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve sees Cait Sith as a child.

[OG Game Bio] Cait Sith inherits the Inspire ability.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith is capable of acting autonomously.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith can be directly controlled (to some extent, at least) via Reeve.

[OG] Reeve can speak through Cait Sith without other people in the room noticing.

[OtWtaS] Multiple Cait Siths can be 'active' at a time.

[DoC] Reeve and Cait Sith can move in sync with one another.

[DoC] Even if Cait Sith 'dies,' he can somehow convey information he learned right up until his death to Reeve/other Cait Siths.

How Does the Ability Actually Work?

So, with all of this in mind, here's how I usually go with Reeve's ability working:

The short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith.

A longer explanation starts with the fact that I see Reeve's Inspire ability as sort of... it has both passive and active modes for me.  Basically, in the passive mode, Reeve is always influencing inorganic material around him.  It's more noticeable when his emotions are heightened, but things like his phone and his car develop... quirks.  His car isn't really conscious, exactly, but it does read his intent, and to some extent, it basically functions as a self-driving vehicle when Reeve is the one behind the wheel.

Now, for my Reeve in particular, this is in no small part because the car was his father's, and he has worked on it extensively over the years.  It's a classic car, basically, and it gives him an outlet for fiddly work that's outside and not in a reactor or tied to Shinra.  If you're going with a Reeve who doesn't love his car as much, then obviously, that probably would be a bit more odd.

A more common variant on this, I think, would probably be that I usually roll with Reeve having... partially Inspired the reactors.  All of them.  All of the ones he has access to.  And in this case, it's less because he wants them to be alive and more because he wants to have that access to them.  He wants to be able to check statuses and know what's going on with a reactor at any given moment, and no matter how advanced the tech is, nothing will be faster for him than a direct mental connection.

Of course, that can have some less than stellar side effects when, say, a reactor explodes.  @ladykf-writes wrote me some amazing ficlets that feature my headcanons about this after much rambling with her about them. So I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested in this idea.

Then he has the active mode of his ability. I've written a ficlet (Heritage and Legacies) about the process of actually Inspiring Cait Sith (and it makes mention of Reeve's first disastrous accidental Inspiration), but in short, it involves more or less willing the inanimate object to life.  I usually go with the explanation that Reeve is literally feeding the object a bit of his own personal lifestream (or soul, depending on how you want to talk about it) until it starts circulating it on its own.  This gives me a built in explanation for why he doesn't animate hundreds of things at once and such.  I do like to have caps on things.

But because it was his personal lifestream that he used, he can basically retain... think of like a narrow, unseen string between Cait Sith and Reeve, no matter how far apart they get. And across this string, they can send thoughts, memories, and sensations.  That's how Reeve knew what happened to Cait Sith when Nero ate him with shadows.  Cait Sith had immediately connected with Reeve and told him.

Now, I do a few hand-wavey things for my own sanity when writing.  I assume that when a Cait Sith dies, all of their memories get imprinted in Reeve's mind, and when he Inspires the next Cait Sith, they get a copy of all of those memories.  This can create a bit of a jarring dissonance within the memories for a new Cait Sith, as they might remember being Cait Sith 1 and being Cait Sith 2 in the same conversation.  But for the most part, it works.

The other thing I usually do with Cait Sith specifically is that I say that when he was first Inspired, he was very much like a baby or a toddler.  He needed to learn a lot of things.  I don't have any fics currently up featuring this (I will after the holiday events though), but basically, I go with it having taken Reeve a while to get Cait Sith to talk at all for example, and that he had to learn a lot of things on his own rather than relying on Reeve's memory of the things.

Now, because of the hand-wavey memory thing I already talked about, new Cait Siths don't have that same initial problem.  They basically just get imprinted with everything Cait Sith 1 learned before he died.

(And for what it's worth, since Cait Sith's accent is supposed to be based on Reeve's parents, I always go with Cait Sith not speaking at all for a few months after he was Inspired.  Reeve tried everything, from toddler help books to reading books to trying to bribe him, and couldn't get a single word out of him.  And then, finally, Reeve was on the phone with his mother, trying to discreetly ask her for advice without admitting to his abilities or to what he'd done, and when he hung up the phone, Cait Sith looked up at him and spoke for the first time.  In the accent Reeve hadn't realized he'd slipped back into with his mother.)

The other hand-wavey thing I do is that I usually have Reeve and Cait Sith share the ability to communicate mind-to-mind, no outward dialogue needed.  I mostly justify this with it being a side-effect of them sharing the same personal lifestream rhythm.

I will say though, something I do that I don't know that I've seen anyone else do (I don't have any fics left up featuring this either, actually) is that I say the control can go both ways.  So Reeve can reach for Cait Sith and speak through him, but so can Cait Sith.  Now, I usually say that Reeve has to let Cait Sith do this, whereas Reeve can just take control from Cait Sith, but I  chalk that up to Reeve being the one who did the initial Inspiring.  Following that suit though, it would make sense that Cait Sith could do the same thing with Mog, if he wanted.

Now, I also headcanon that Reeve does his absolute best to let Cait Sith have whatever autonomy he can.  My Reeve, in particular, didn't exactly have the happiest of childhoods, and he has spent a lot of time being told exactly what he can do and when, so he tries to give Cait Sith the childhood he never had.

If you read all the way down here, oh my goodness, but thank you.  It's... a lot.  Like I said earlier, the short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith.  And I kind of flex it around, depending on what exactly I'm doing with the fic in question.

[circlejourney]

Playing the devil's advocate on AI and generative art

As someone who has long been making and enjoying generative art (as in all kinds of computer generation), and has written lessons about how to write programmes that do it, I'm always regretful that the current AI discourse leans so heavily on the argument that images made by a computer cannot be art because they lack the human touch, or whatever.

Because generative art is a mature field and this is a well-trodden discourse! People have been written and argued about it for decades, whether computer-generated imagery can be considered art, and whether beauty is in the form or in the perception, and so on.

Here's some generative art I've made - not a single pixel was placed directly by my hand, and it was all programmed with Processing / turtle libraries:

You might be tempted to point out that you can see my creative voice in the output. And you're right - I iteratively adjusted the code to make it produce an effect I liked. The results are, effectively, curated.

The only problem is...the above also describes the output of any generative AI. The AI user is choosing their prompts based on taste, refining their prompts if they don't like what they get, picking the best images for display. So now I have to ask, where does the difference lie? Is it in the time I spent programming the tools? What if I snagged the code from someone else and modified it to produce something I liked better? Is it that in your view, there's a clean divide between Tool and Input and because I made the Tool, that makes it art? Are fiber arts a kind of art, then, when the maker didn't invent the patterns but may have modified them for their purposes?

I think being an art critic or appreciator (two sides of the same coin) means revelling in non-answers. People aren't going to agree on whether this is art, whether it's beautiful, etc. and in my opinion that's fine, because beauty is a phenomenon. It emerges from the viewer's engagement with the piece. You can think something is not beautiful, and really it should not dictate what others think is beautiful.

So please...I know the Pandora's box is open and there's no take backs on cultural moments...but I wish people would argue it on the basis of worker's rights, on the use of human work without consent...not on whether we can categorically call everything made by a computer ugly.

[little-red-fool]

OMG YOU'RE SEVENTEEN?? (I've been following you for months and I didn't once read the pinned message beyond the line about no AI and NFTs lmao) YOUR ART IS SO CRISPY I THOUGHT YOU WERE A PRO ARTIST AROUND 30 WTF

(sorry for the yelling via text)

HOW DID YOU GET SO GOOD!! (Tips on lineart please?) WE'RE THE SAME AGE, BUT HALF OF MY ART IS SHIT AND THE OTHER HALF IS FART

ALL HAIL LITTLE RED FOOL, BESTOW THY GREATNESS UPON THOU MERE MORTAL SERVANTS

But in all seriousness, any tips on, like I said, lineart or just digital art in general? (I just started digital, and... Ten hours of work and I'm just on base colors 😎🕶️🤏🥲) I love, LOVE your style and especially COLOR! How do you tie it all together? Like, I'm 17 too, but I'm not even close to your stuff?? I'm scared as fuck from ever trying color traditionally because I spend SO MUCH TIME ON A SKETCH, so I just picked up digital and HOURS LATER IT'S STILL AWFUL

Sorry for the rambling and repeating, man, it's been a long day and it's late in the Balkans... Don't let the rambling force you into answering tho

Have a good one. ->excited fellow artist

(tip of the day: did you know that in Romanian, moon and month are the same word, with the same pronunciation, spelling and plural? It's called: lună [loonuh] and I think it comes from latin, since Romanian is a heavily latin language, with bits of french and turkish (HEAVY bits), dacian, slavic, italian)

OUAHFSHD THANK YOU SO MUCH I’M REALLY HAPPY YOU LIKE MY ART!! Also I’m sure your art is better than you think it is (we generally tend to view our own creations as worse than others because we’re the ones that made them, don’t worry I’m the same as well ajdbsjd) but yeah I’ll be happy to give you some tips and stuff! (and yeah I never colour traditionally either I just leave everything in plain biro because I don’t want to mess it up lol)

(I haven’t seen your art so these will probably be more general tips but hopefully they’ll help a bit, also keep in mind that I’m not a professional so this will be more about what has worked for me but I hope it might help you a bit)

So for stuff like lineart, avoid using chicken-scratches—it might seem easier or less daunting to do shorter overlapping lines like that but it will give your sketches and drawings that overall fuzzy look, the trick is to have longer confident strokes. It might seem a bit tricky at first if you haven’t done it before so don’t worry it happens but if you keep practicing they’ll eventually look smoother and less shaky. For the longer lines it better to draw from either your elbow or shoulder, and by that I mean keeping your wrist still and letting the larger parts of your arm do most of the work—this will also help your wrist in the long run. For things like shorter lines and smaller details then absolutely use your hand to move the pen, but generally try to use your elbow and shoulder as it will help you get those longer smoother lines. Also this is just a personal preference of mine but I generally use brushes that have a bit of pressure sensitivity which helps add some line weight. If you don’t have pressure sensitivity another way you can get line weight is by taking an eraser to some of the edges and narrowing some parts.

For colours it mainly depends on the lighting—lighting is everything and will affect how the rest of the colours will look, so it’s important to have an idea of the brightness and colour of your lighting. The background also plays an important role in picking colours for me as well as it helps provide colour context and makes it easier to pick colours by eye if you want a certain mood. If you want a more dependable way on getting colours to match up then I’d recommend having a layer that’s just colour on top of the rest of your piece—you can play around with the blending modes and opacity, I mainly use either an overlay layer with a medium colour that’s slightly desaturated or a colour burn layer with a light saturated colour; most of the time I use colour burn because if you put it over your lineart then it will also tint the parts of your lineart or sketch that’s at a lower opacity too. But with figuring out colours I’d highly recommend researching some stuff about colour theory, there are a lot of good and easy to understand explanations and art tutorials on YouTube so I would recommend starting there (unfortunately I can’t link recommend specific videos because my playlists are a mess ajdbsjdbsj but some good channels to learn from are Sinix Design, Marc Brunet and Marco Bucci).

In terms of general digital art tips, ALWAYS FLIP YOUR CANVAS. You will not believe the amount of times I’ve looked at a drawing and thought it looked pretty good, flipped the canvas and found that everything’s wonky. In cases like these the liquify tool is your best friend, as well as the lasso tool and transform tools, as well as just manually fixing them by redrawing some parts. Also use as many layers as you need, and by this I mean if you’re working on your sketch, lineart or colouring or whatever and you want to do something you’re not sure you’ll like, duplicate the layers so you have a backup in case it goes wrong and you want to go back. When I say use as many layers as you need I mean use as many as you need, these are some of mine and they’re all from just one sketch because I get really anxious about messing stuff up lol, also don’t be afraid of drawing separate parts on separate layers and merging them afterwards if you want.

Also take your time, unless you have a deadline don’t feel like you have to complete a drawing within a certain timeframe, if you want to get faster at drawing then that’s great but don’t feel like you need to push yourself, especially if you’re just starting. Practice takes time and patience is your best friend, and you probably hear lots of other artists saying this but trust the process. You might get to a bit you’re struggling with and not like it and want to abandon the drawing, but I found that rather than saying “this is bad” or “this is wrong” start asking “how can I make this work” because a change in mindset can help you a lot with art. Also don’t feel like you have to reach certain milestones with your art by certain points either, like with the age thing and comparing your progress with other artists of either the same or different ages, because it can make you feel worse about your art. Trust me there are some artists younger than me who are like 14 or 15 who’s art I envy and—again with the mindset thing—instead of getting down that your art isn’t similar to their’s or worrying that you’re “behind” in your artistic development (there is no such thing btw everyone learns at different ages and speeds so don’t feel bad if you haven’t progressed as much as you would have liked to) it helps to ask what you like about their art and what you would like to incorporate into your own—this has helped me learn and improve a lot faster.

I don’t know if I have any more tips at the moment, but I hope that answered some of your questions! (also sorry it’s a bit long or some bits don’t make a lot of sense I like to ramble a bit lol) (also also thank you for the little fact as well!)

Have a nice day anon 🧡