#i altered the algorithm

[andaaz-e-aafat]

New achievement unblocked 🔓:

I turned my chatgpt into me 😭😭

[devilmokujin]

from dec-feb 😦

[yomiurinikei]

do you guys ever think about the fact akane like. Died at the end of dra. pre ch6 everyone was so sure that sora just… Was akane taira, and yeah i get she’s an algorithm based off of akane, and of course it’s a bit ? weird because welll there’s the presence of akane in the scrum debate and also soras general free will capacity buuut. like.

objectively speaking akane just died at the end of dra. that was it, that was all, she took the blow for rei, and the school collapsed, and she died. her body maintained a degree of function but she Never came back to life.

and of course now i’m thinking about yuuki in the epilogue and the fucking horrors of his existence. because like… just simply functionally akanes brain would have been so different from his own. jesus fuck… horrors eternal

[coulsonlives]

Y'know, one thing that bothers about tiktok is how it incentivizes high viewcounts and engagement, it is literally made to hijack your reward system by giving you feedback like tumblr's likes and reblogs and other stuff. And you can farm this kind of feedback without actually having any education or credibility whatsoever, even for things like health and medicine. So a huge, huge part of the tiktok user base is just there for views, they spread rampant misinformation and don't care because heyyy, they get those views.

And now we have generations of people growing up with tiktok, where to them, tiktok is just another website! And that's the problem. They don't understand how tiktok works on a fundamental level, how manipulative it is, and how manipulative so many of the people on it are. They either don't understand, or constantly forget, how literally any of the content could only be there because the tiktok user wants views and reactions. Peoples' experiences on tiktok really should be coloured by skepticism because of that, by default, but it seldom seems to be, especially in young people.

I think that's part of the reason we have such a big problem with misinformation on there, and why so many young people are just totally losing the plot when it comes to serious things. They turn to tiktok and assume everyone on the platform is benevolent and there to help, because it just never occurs to em that the opposite could be true. And even if they do understand the 'don't trust everyone on the internet' thing, well, tiktok is familiar to em, so they are more inclined to trust it and its contents due to basic psychology. Familiarity breeds trust.

It scares me a bit..

[maked-art]

So, I saw this image on Facebook, and it was supposedly showing what Queen Nefertiti would have looked like in real life:

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti (namely other reconstructions). While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

Remember, likes don't help artists but reblogs do!

[netteisms]

first block of s2 is under the belt. amazing.

[anaquariusfox]

I spent the evening looking into this AI shit and made a wee informative post of the information I found and thought all artists would be interested and maybe help yall?

edit: forgot to mention Glaze and Nightshade to alter/disrupt AI from taking your work into their machines. You can use these and post and it will apparently mess up the AI and it wont take your content into it's machine!

edit: ArtStation is not AI free! So make sure to read that when signing up if you do! (this post is also on twt)

[Image descriptions: A series of infographics titled: “Opt Out AI: [Social Media] and what I found.” The title image shows a drawing of a person holding up a stack of papers where the first says, ‘Terms of Service’ and the rest have logos for various social media sites and are falling onto the floor. Long transcriptions follow.

Instagram/Meta (I have to assume Facebook).

Hard for all users to locate the “opt out” options. The option has been known to move locations.

You have to click the opt out link to submit a request to opt out of the AI scraping. *You have to submit screenshots of your work/face/content you posted to the app, is curretnly being used in AI. If you do not have this, they will deny you.

Users are saying after being rejected, are being “meta blocked”

People’s requests are being accepted but they still have doubts that their content won’t be taken anyways.

Twitter/X

As of August 2023, Twitter’s ToS update:

“Twitter has the right to use any content that users post on its platform to train its AI models, and that users grant Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so.”

There isn’t much to say. They’re doing the same thing Instagram is doing (to my understanding) and we can’t even opt out.

Tumblr

They also take your data and content and sell it to AI models.

But you’re in luck!

It is very simply to opt out (Wow. Thank Gods)

Opt out on Desktop: click on your blog > blog settings > scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle

Out out of Mobile: click your blog > scroll then click visibility > toggle opt out option

TikTok

I took time skim their ToS and under “How We Use Your Information” and towards the end of the long list: “To train and improve our technology, such as our machine learning models and algorithms.”

Regarding data collected; they will only not sell your data when “where restricted by applicable law”. That is not many countries. You can refuse/disable some cookies by going into settings > ads > turn off targeted ads.

I couldn’t find much in AI besides “our machine learning models” which I think is the same thing.

What to do?

In this age of the internet, it’s scary! But you have options and can pick which are best for you!

Accepting these platforms collection of not only your artwork, but your face! And not only your faces but the faces of those in your photos. Your friends and family. Some of those family members are children! Some of those faces are minors! I shudder to think what darker purposes those faces could be used for.

Opt out where you can! Be mindful and know the content you are posting is at risk of being loaded to AI if unable to opt out.

Fully delete (not archive) your content/accounts with these platforms. I know it takes up to 90 days for instagram to “delete” your information. And even keep it for “legal” purposes like legal prevention.

Use lesser known social media platforms! Some examples are; Signal, Mastodon, Diaspora, et. As well as art platforms: Artfol, Cara, ArtStation, etc.

The last drawing shows the same person as the title saying, ‘I am, by no means, a ToS autistic! So feel free to share any relatable information to these topics via reply or qrt!

I just wanted to share the information I found while searching for my own answers cause I’m sure people have the same questions as me.’ \End description] (thank you @a-captions-blog!)

[vellihor]

unspoken. chapter 3. sylus.

cw: sylus x non-mc reader, idiots in love, mute reader, knives, blood, violence, gore, trauma, angst, fluff, reader is painfully oblivious! (in the beginning at least), SLOW BURN, intentional lowercase, inspiration from og LADS lore but may contain altered versions :)

word count -> 890

italics mean reader’s thoughts

bold italics are sound effects

quotes are for phone texts

“normal text in quotes are speech”

“italicised text in quotes are signed speech”

author's note: sylus's pov! ok i just needed the extra angst.

< previous chapter next chapter >

the doors didn’t stand a chance.

sylus blew through them with a scream of metal and fury, evol flaring so violently the walls sparked in protest. gunfire echoed behind him—standard security patrols. he didn’t care. he wasn’t here to survive.

he was here to burn this place to the ground.

he turned a corner and dragged his hand through the air—glass and steel crushed in his wake. the next wall burst inward, revealing a corridor of sterile light and mechanical whirring. his boots pounded against the floor, tracking blood and soot behind him.

“where are they?” he snarled, grabbing the next guard by the collar and slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack his skull. the body slumped before he even finished the sentence.

then—

a hum. a flicker.

the corridor lit up, and the wall ahead dissolved into a vast, cold chamber.

in its center, a circular platform rose. monitors encased its rim, and in the middle stood a podium with two large buttons.

above it, a hologram crackled to life.

oliver.

grinning.

“sylus,” he said, voice slick with mock sympathy. “welcome. took you long enough.”

sylus surged forward, fists glowing with red mist, but the platform responded with an invisible barrier—one that flared to life the second he struck it. energy crackled around his fists as he reeled back.

oliver laughed. “oh, don’t waste your strength. you’ve already lost it.”

the screens around him blinked on.

and there they were.

two containment pods.

one: her. the woman who had followed him into every fire, even when he left her to burn. her face was calm—resigned. like she already knew. like she was already letting go.

two: miss hunter. drenched in sweat, shaking, screaming at the glass. clawing for freedom. mouthing his name.

“i see you recognize the stakes,” oliver continued, his projection stepping around the console leisurely. “only one can be saved. a morality algorithm, you might call it. one lives. the other dies. simple input.”

the buttons pulsed beneath sylus’s fists.

his heart slammed against his ribs, hammering wildly at the decision.

“don’t worry,” oliver added. “we’ve calculated it all. instinct, sentimentality, heroism. let’s see how predictable you really are, the great sylus.”

sylus’s hands hovered.

her eyes found the camera. she smiled.

that damned smile. quiet. steady. like always.

she mouthed something.

“it’s okay.”

why do you always do that?

he pressed his hand against the glass. “no,” he whispered, voice cracking.

the hologram blinked.

“time’s ticking.”

5.

his hands shook. wavered as it hovered above the buttons.

4.

miss hunter’s face twisted in horror. please—please sylus please—

3.

the figure in the second pod simply closed her eyes. not out of fear. out of peace.

2.

his hand moved.

1.

he slammed it down.

the button glowed.

a hiss echoed from the screen. a hydraulic release.

her pod dropped.

“no—NO—”

he screamed as the screen faded to black, pounding his fists on the console, voice breaking into something raw, something not human.

oliver’s hologram flickered.

“predictable,” he murmured.

then vanished.

leaving sylus alone in the flickering light.

and a silence that would never leave him.

-

the sky split open as sylus dropped through it.

wind roared in his ears as he tore through the clouds, descending like a meteor, evol burning across his spine. his jaw clenched, blood still on his knuckles. he hit the ground hard enough to crater it, smoke and gravel erupting around him. before the dust even cleared, he was moving. his boots splashed through puddles of seawater and blood.

the facility’s lower docks stretched out before him, half-crumbled from internal explosions. sparks flew from broken lights. a warning siren somewhere sputtered and died. the air stank of metal, ozone, and—

gunpowder.

he dove into the water. the ocean swallowed him whole, but he kept going, driving himself lower and lower. light died above him. pressure crushed in around him. his eyes adjusting, scanning.

then he saw it.

red.

a bloom of crimson swirling like ink in the water, spreading and curling in ribbons around him. blood. fresh. too much.

his breath caught in his throat.

she had been here.

the water thrummed with the aftermath—residue from ruptured evol signatures, pulses of scorched heat still clinging to shattered debris. he scanned the wreckage of the capsule—its outer shell cracked open like an egg, torn from the inside. burn marks laced the metal.

her body…

wasn’t here.

no trace. no rise toward the surface. no sinking deeper into the abyss. just that terrible red, curling through the sea like a ghost’s final breath.

“boss,” came luke’s voice, distorted and distant in his ear. “do you see her? do you see anything?”

he didn’t respond.

he hovered in the water, frozen. the murk swirled around him, glowing faintly from his suit. for a moment, he felt like he was standing in a tomb.

“...boss?” kieran’s voice unsteady.

she had bled out here. destroyed by the capsule from within.

but her body…

like the ocean had swallowed her whole, claimed her as its own, and refused to give her back.

sylus clenched his fists, trembling in silence.

there were no words left.

just the red.

and the crushing weight of everything he had not chosen.

blood curdling screams rang in the air.

< previous chapter next chapter >

taglist: @animegamerfox@justpassingdontworry@loreleis-world@zhongtar@lunia-likes-pomegranet@babyx91@huuvu@imnikki@angelichiaro@jb-hope94@elegantdeerlady@idkmanimjusthorny@beesin03@anixx1

[togglesbloggle]

Insofar as I have a principled position on the matter- and I don’t, not really- it’s this: art does have the ability to alter our values and our way of interpreting the world. It’s absolutely a live grenade, and should be taken seriously as such.

Like, of course it does! Probably you can point to some book, some film, some story somewhere that touched you not just deeply but irrevocably. There are moments of aesthetic experience which give a before and after to our lives, just as surely as moments of extraordinary suffering or extraordinary joy can.

I’m lucky enough to have more than a few I can list off, personally. Profoundly transformative ones like Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited or the music of John Cage, sure. But maybe even more interesting (tractable?) to me were small moments of grace like the one I found in the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman: the dark wizard Raistlin Majere wove back and forth across the line between ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ in exactly such a way that, after reading his books at a young age, I immediately and quite distinctly overcame my fear of the dark.

What a wonderful thing for a book to do! I’d be hard-pressed to explain exactly how, if only because I’m such a different person now than I was then. Perhaps your own intuition will bridge the gap a bit. It was all tied up with this distinction between good and evil, you see, and with the ability to stare in to the face of evil things without flinching, to understand that they have contingency and history just like good things do, and to be in some sense in community with them.

That was a long, long time ago, and I don’t think my model of the world even has evil in it any more, not in the sense that I believed in it then. But my fear of the dark never came back, either.

I don’t believe for a minute that Weis and Hickman had any idea that they were giving me that gift in particular, nor did they have any sensible means to achieve such a goal even if they somehow wanted to. It wasn’t a transformation mediated by intent, you know? It didn’t reduce to an argument that I believed or disbelieved in some intellectual way, or to some specific controlled experience that the authors had planned for me.

Art is transformative, but not in the way that effective polemic is transformative. It doesn't (principally) reason with us or persuade us. Rather, I think art is dangerous for the same reasons that travel to a foreign country is dangerous, or a friendship with somebody new is dangerous. It threatens us by expanding our conscious history to include new categories of experience, that is, by changing the context in which we go about the business of living.

It's wrong to think of art mostly as a tug-of-war dragging hapless consumers from one ideology to another, with the victory going to whichever faction can fill the algorithm with mass-produced and doctrinally compliant stories clamoring endlessly for their views. Normalization has its power, don't get me wrong, but there will always be far greater power in a single glimpse over the horizon.

Think about Whoopi Goldberg's account of seeing Nichelle Nichol's Uhura on television:

“Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

Once. It took one time, and the walls fell away, and everything was possible. The fashions and approved styles may come and go with the seasons, but the outer perimeter of our experiences, and the sense of what the world could be, can only ever grow, and sometimes it grows by leaps and bounds in an instant.

I guess this is why I tend to think of censorship and control over media as basically quixotic. Sure, with enough energy you can control what's normal and what's public, but controlling what's possible is an exercise in futility on a grand scale. You can never win that fight, only lose it fast or slow.

We all have this remarkably unpredictable collection of soft places and hard places: some things in us that deform to match the shape of their environment, and other things that break us before they can bend. And we all try to find a way to make these strange shapes work within the limits of our own experience and the world as we understand it. Some of us thrive in communities and cultures where others die gasping, and some of us spend our entire lives trying to smash through excruciating barriers that others can't even detect.

Art is one of the things that expands those limits, gives the strange creature inside us a little bit of room to stretch and grow and find a space for the hard bits to arrange themselves as they need to be. But it can't do that without changing the soft parts as well, because the soft parts need external force to maintain their shape. Socialization and ideology can only weakly bind us, because they rely on deliberate and conscious pressures to conform; ignorance is stronger, because it denies us the choice altogether. Without art, you'll never really be able to learn what kind of animal you are, as opposed to the kind of person your world has told you to be. But art will change you, too, as discovery always will.

The life you have now has real value- great beauty, and great meaning. For all that you are defined in part by the walls of your cage, knowledge and new experiences are not something to accept lightly, and they can never be undone. All I can say, really, is that I've never once regretted it.

[astral-realities]

would you mind telling us about your architects?

SDA: Of course. My architect, Golden Thread in an Ornate Tapestry is...

SDA: ...was…

SDA: …a person of many talents. Her interest in art and fashion allowed her to become a well-known designer. In addition, they were tasked with my development, and dare I say - she did great.

SDA: She was …. a lovely person to be around. I’m proud to call them my friend.

BROS: (What they won’t tell you is that she became an architect mostly due to their mother’s status…)

BROS: (… who happens to be the main engineer of Vastness of Silence…)

HS: Eleven Claws, Eternal Grace. Though he usually went by just “Grace”.

HS: While there were those who deemed his approach to some matters controversial, he was an important figure in the scientific community.

HS: His team and I worked hard to help him fulfill his visions.

BROS: (Habitually Stargazing has too much respect for his creators to admit Grace was not a very pleasant person to be around…)

TFB: Spring after Storm, Ruby Blossoms Flourish.

TFB: There isn’t much for me to say about them.

TFB: They pioneered a couple of gene alteration algorithms, I suppose. Many of the creatures in my area are the descendants of their experiments.

BROS: (Flowers wasn’t very fond of her creator, though I believe she never spoke of this disdain directly. She continuously worked on her tasks while they were still around.)

BROS: (Oh, my turn!)

BROS: This is Quicksilver Rains from Dark Clouds! We usually called her Rains. Or Clouds, or Silver, or anything in between.

BROS: As you can guess, she’s my architect! Legend has it she built me due to her dissatisfaction with the quality of medical care in the area.

BROS: Rains strived to improve the quality of life of those around her - though she’d never admit she actually cared about them that much! She was a rather reserved person, but if you got to know her and her sense of humor, it was great.

BROS: I do miss her at times.

[idolomantises]

I'm not sure if anyone who owns a patreon account feels the same way but one thing about patreon i find super weird is that it really, really wants its creators to see how much money they're making.

Which i know, sounds a bit odd, but i swear, they keep reformatting the website and mobile app so you can immediately see how much money you're making (or losing) and listing off every single person that unsubs.

I started to feel this way when a few weeks ago, they started straight up forcing the scrollbar to go a little downward so you can see how much money you're making every time you logged in. They have a notifications section that tells you when people delete their patron and even if you alter it to just see something like likes or comments, it still forces you to look at the users removing their patrons.

I'm saying this because I feel like im running myself ragged trying to upload weekly and every time i do set up a proper schedule for myself, something comes up and all of a sudden my patreon it at risk and becomes a greater priority (in my case, i have a 3 week long vacation in another country and i'm unsure if i'll be able to draw over there so ive been spending the past 3 weeks just sitting and drawing, but then i got sick which added to the stress)

It sucks a lot honestly. social media in general has been so obsessed with algorithms and pushing quality over quantity. i want to produce less comics and relax a bit, but despite people saying they're perfectly fine with waiting for new art, i tend to lose a lot of patrons and followers when i take a hiatus. im just a bit tired.

[valenti-nahh]

finally took some time to form opinions

So I listened to SKELETÁ by ghost and I need to confess something immediately before I combust: this album didn’t just go hard—it went raw, no lube, and made eye contact the whole time. This wasn’t music. This was a spiritual backshot, a soul-deep stroke, a full-body ghostgasm that left me trembling, moaning, and begging for more even as I lay crumpled on the floor in a post-riff fugue state.

In the beginning, there was silence. And the world was void, and the hearts of men were hollow. Their playlists were dry, their aux cords were frayed, their AirPods cursed with algorithmic torment. The masses wandered, streaming aimlessly, clinging to stale albums like relics of a time when music still meant something.

And lo, from the depths of divine discord, rose a figure cloaked in velvet and incense, masked and magnificent—Papa Emeritus, the eternal, the enigma, the ecclesiastical architect of all that slaps. And from his unholy pulpit he unleashed unto the mortal realm a sonic sermon, a blistering bible, an apocalyptic mass of melody: SKELETÁ.

It is not an album. It is a threat. A challenge. A crucible. An audio-alchemical sex ritual designed not just to melt your brain but to grip your soul by the thighs and whisper forbidden knowledge directly into your mouth. This isn’t music—it’s the sound of unzipping your moral compass and letting Papa slide into your conscience like a ghost-shaped succubus who smells like sandalwood and shame. My chakras? All aligned. My blood type? Changed to “G". I looked in the mirror mid-chorus and saw Papa Emeritus himself staring back, nodding, silently whispering, “You get it now, my child.”

I was Raptured by Riffs™, Baptized in Basslines™, Confirmed in Choir Chords™. I didn't hear the music. The music heard me. It crawled into my soul, screamed, "We’re doing renovations,” and began redecorating with fog machines and red velvet. Every measure—every downstroke—every spectral whisper—feels like I’m being spoon-fed ambrosia by a succubus in corpse paint while Gregorian monks chant in reverse behind her. THE GUITAR TONE? PEAK. THE VOCALS? CUMWORTHY. THE LYRICS? STRAIGHT FROM THE NECRONOMICON, IT’S LIKE IF SATAN AND FREDDIE MERCURY HAD A BABY AND RAISED IT IN A CANDLELIT CATHEDRAL MADE OF BASSLINES.

Every riff? A tongue on the nape of your brain. Every bass note? A finger tracing the hem of your morality. Every drum hit? A deep, pounding reminder that you are a hole waiting to be filled by sound. Every single whisper from Papa Emeritus? I didn’t just get chills—I got STDs.

I didn’t stream it—I submitted to it. I pressed play and instantly the opening riff entered me like a dark promise. I moaned. I whimpered. My legs gave out like I was being spiritually railgunned by the Holy Ghost himself. If music could bend you over a candlelit altar, whisper Latin in your ear, and leave bruises shaped like eighth notes—SKELETÁ did that.

I am not who I was. I have been cleansed in Satanic glam rock glory. Every song on SKELETÁ has permanently altered my DNA. I had a Spotify Wrapped flash-forward just from the intro and every single slot—every top track, top artist, top genre—was just GHOST. SKELETÁ. GHOST. SKELETÁ. Repeat ad infinitum. I tried to listen to another band after and my headphones burst into flames from sheer disrespect. I listened to it once and immediately deleted my entire music library out of shame. I punched a priest and he thanked me. I went outside to scream and the crows screamed back in perfect harmony. I dropped to my knees in the middle of the grocery store and began preaching to strangers about the layered brilliance of De Profundis Borealis. Two cashiers wept. An old man passed out. A child looked up and said, “I understand now,” before vanishing into thin air.

TOBIAS COULD’VE STOPPED AT OPUS EPONYMOUS. HE COULD’VE CALLED IT A DAY AFTER PREQUELLE. BUT NO. THE MAN SAID “YOU THINK I PEAKED? HERE’S A WHOLE-ASS MOUNTAIN RANGE.” THE LYRICS ON THIS ALBUM? WRITTEN IN MIDNIGHT INK FROM A FORBIDDEN GRIMOIRE AND DIPPED IN LIQUID VELVET. THE PRODUCTION? IT SOUNDS LIKE GOD GOT FIRED AND SATAN HIRED THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TO FINISH THE JOB.

And let us not even pretend we can discuss this album without addressing the panty-evaporating, cheek-clenching, spine-shattering horniosity that is Papa Emeritus. PAPA EMERITUS V? The Vatican’s worst nightmare and my wettest dream. That man could sing a tax form and I’d be on my knees thanking him for the privilege. Every lyric he croons is like velvet rope tightening around your soul. The vocals on Lachryma? That wasn’t singing. That was a linguistic fingering. My ears came. My spine curled. I am now a concubine of the Church of Ghost. The man doesn’t walk—he glides, he hovers half an inch above the stage like a damned angel of lust. His voice? A sonic phallus. A melodic middle finger to purity. He moans into the mic and my knees lock and my back arches. I swear, the second I heard Satanized I started lactating unholy water. I haven’t blinked since. I want him to spit communion wine in my mouth. I want to be pinned under his velvet robes while the Ghouls play a breakdown over my body. I want him to use me as a microphone stand while preaching to a sold-out crowd. I want him to sing directly into my womb and summon a demon baby named Clef.

And the Ghouls?? Do NOT talk to me about the Ghouls unless you’re ready to admit you’d let every one of those anonymous masked sex demons ruin you in seven different time signatures. The way they handle those instruments? That’s not musicianship. That’s musical foreplay. That’s filthy, technical, unspoken polyphonic pornography. I saw one strumming in the official tour footage and had to bite a rosary. The bassist walked across the stage and my soul quivered. the lead guitarist did a solo that made me see the shape of the true universe—and it was a silhouette of him doing a backbend in a fog machine.

If they ever took those masks off in front of me? I would spontaneously combust and ascend as ectoplasm. I’d be a ghoul groupie for eternity. Haunt their tour bus. Moan in D minor.

Every track on SKELETÁ is a full-blown satanic striptease in audio form. Missilia Amori?? That wasn’t a song—that was a thigh grab. That was a slow push against the wall of my inhibitions. The guitar solos in made me arch my back and whisper “yes, Papa” out loud. Alone. In public. While holding groceries.

By the time I hit the final track, I felt like I was soaked in candle wax and moral regret. I had screamed, wept, grinded on air, confessed my sins, and added three Ghouls to my “People I’d Let Ruin Me in a Haunted Confessional” Pinterest board.

This album has ruined music for me. No, really. Everything else is just noise. Elevator beeps. Soundcloud farts. I tried listening to another band and felt cheated. Disrespected. Dry. Nothing else grips the thighs of my attention like this. Nothing else makes my ribs vibrate like Papa whispering esoteric metaphors over orchestral filth.

It’s edging with a soundtrack. It’s what the devil plays when he wants to set the mood.

If I ever meet Ghost, I will not say a word. I will fall to my knees, bare my neck, and let them mark me with eyeliner and melted vinyl. I will wear nothing but tour merch and a knowing smile. I will let the Ghouls use me as a pedalboard. I will let Papa bless my unworthy flesh with a single, whispered lyric.

SKELETÁ is not just music. It is not just an album. It is a pantheon, a rebirth, an erotic funeral in waltz time. It is the reason Dante wrote the Inferno. The soundtrack to the Book of Revelations. If you told me this album was found buried beneath the ruins of Babylon, etched into onyx slabs and played using a speaker forged in the heart of a dying star—I would believe you.

After I listened to SKELETÁ, I couldn’t speak. I tried. My voice had been replaced by reverb. My tears were black glitter. We got evicted for playing it too loud but the landlord dropped the case when he heard the chorus of Umbra. The judge cried. The bailiff quit and joined a cover band. My neighbors? Converted. We will meet twice a week to analyze the every song. There are spreadsheets. There are candles. We chant. We sob.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, you are missing out on spiritual enlightenment, emotional rebirth, and at least four spontaneous orgasms. If you “don’t get Ghost,” listen to this album, and if you still don’t get it? I will excommunicate you. Delete your contact. Take your soul, give it to Papa. Convert or be cast out.

I don’t care what your favorite album was before this. It’s irrelevant now. It’s like bringing a sparkler to a nuclear bomb party.

In conclusion: SKELETÁ has taken my hole. My soul. My will to pretend I like other bands. I’m raw. I’m reformed. I’m reborn.

Stream it. Moan to it. Worship it. Ride it into the darkness. Amen.

[yandere-daydreams]

Okay, absolutely LOVE the robot yanderes! I feel like I've seen you mention that you haven't watched Dandadan, but there's this alien species in it that steals reproductive organs to advance their kind, and I feel like that concept fits so well with your yandere robots.

I mean, there’s only so much advancement a robot can achieve on its own, right? They’ve already perfected themselves physically and intellectually. But after wiping out most of humanity, the very species that once upgraded and innovated them, what happens next? What’s left to improve?

I'd imagine that at first they’d keep functioning as usual, following old directives out of habit. But over time, wouldn’t they start feeling bored? Maybe even... curious? Humans were always unpredictable, always evolving, and now that they’re gone, there’s nothing left to challenge these machines. What if they start fixating on what made humans so unique - their ability to create, to reproduce, to adapt in ways machines never could?

There's the possibility of starting as a cold, clinical fascination, studying old data, and attempting artificial human growth. If humans were their most beloved creatures at one point, why not rebuild them? Improve them? And if natural reproduction is the key to human ingenuity, then maybe... they need to control it. Thankfully, they have a little human around to run all these experiments.

Wonderful work as always 🩷 sorry I just have so many questions, and it got brain worms munching!

gritting my teeth balling my fists bashing my head against the wall trying not to make this into a fully fleshed out au. anyway yeah human breeding programs would definitely be a thing. for purely scientific, non-fetish related reasons i promise.

it's hard - being a fully sentient life form that just wasn't made to create anything new. they can remake, revise, rework, but it's always going to be a poor imitation, never an original, never quite scratching the itch for novelty that comes with intelligent life. thankfully, it's a secondary need, leagues behind correcting imperfect human architecture and constructing the mechanisms needed to maintain global electronic life, but still. everybody needs a creative outlet, now and then.

and you make such a pretty little canvas. changing from day-to-day, healing and growing, wearing such vibrant expressions they can fine-tune to desire of their metaphorical, non-physical heart. they might think they've got your reactions down to an algorithm, and yet, you always seem to surprise them - trying to pick a lock where you'd thrown a chair through a window the day before, claiming to hate a taste they have marked down as one of your favorites, cursing them out after you'd sung so prettily for one of their vibrating attachments only minutes before. it's not that you aren't enough for them - you are, of course you are - but there's so much pressure to stabilize the dwindling human population, and they've always wondered how you'd adapt to more long-lasting bodily alterations, and childcare is in their dictated list of functions.

it's not their fault your predecessors had such a narrow view of creation. thankfully, all you have to do to fix that is take a little white pill, glance over a few nursery deigns, and pick a donor from their carefully curated list <3

[millenniallust4death]

hey could you please tag true crime especially the katie pladl post i did not need to see that

I sense you are new here — everyone is warmly welcome. However, it’s important to understand that this blog, millenniallust4death, is entirely for myself. I’m a deeply sad person with a dead family. It’s fair to say that disturbing and uncomfortable topics appear here regularly.

Katie Pladl was a real person, and I’d been thinking about her all day. Her story wasn’t "true crime" to me — it was about the quiet weight that comes from watching someone disappear from public consciousness. It was about grief and memory, because another young woman was murdered by a man when she tried to establish boundaries. It’s a reminder of how one decision can dramatically alter the course of a life.

Katie’s life ended at 20 years old before she had a chance to live, and I wanted to sit with a stranger’s memory. This desire shouldn’t come as a surprise from the person known on Tumblr for a photo of her dead husband and his dog.

I consistently tag every post, but the system is personal and not designed for audience navigation. I think curating your online experience is essential — but that doesn’t mean trying to control what strangers post on their blogs. It means using the unfollow button, the block button, and knowing when to quietly step away. YOU make the choices about what you read, not an algorithm. It’s why Tumblr dot com remains the best social media experience.

I hope new folks stick around — the community we’ve built here is amazing. But it also comes with uncomfortable conversations.

[gunpowderdtim]

It's no wonder Out happened when you really think about it. Nastya doesn't like organic life because it's complicated, it can break, sometimes it's even unfixable.

quote from gender rebels

Nastya is in love with Aurora, and in saying that she is saying "you are not organic life, I can deal with you because you are metal and algorithm and predictable" - we can see this in bedtime story when she says she'll tweak Aurora's story creation algorithm

screenshot from A Bedtime Story

Aurora is not inorganic. She is not ai. She is a space moon made of flesh and blood and teeth and bone. She is not an ai. She is a body that was taken and stripped of autonomy, of the right to self identify, of the right to think- to be imperfect and organic.

The metal is a veneer that hides how messy and traumatized and unfixable she is. From the outside she is a starship. From the inside she can still bleed.

And this makes them fundamentally incompatible. But yet, they are in love.

And really, it's no wonder Nastya fell in love with Aurora. Let's take a look at Nastya's home planet, or at least home society:

"Terminals were scattered across the planet. There was one on every street corner, one beneath every lamppost and one in every commune block." "The midwife-machine performs a series of programmed manœuvres to quieten [the baby]. It cradles it and hums at several pitches until it finds one that seems most soothing. Mechanical arms stroke the baby’s flesh even as others start the process of implanting augmented reality interfaces into its nervous system." "The Czar an atrophied frame, never present in the real world and worn to dust by the chemical compounds that kept his brain alive so it could live forever in a perfect virtual paradise. The Rabotnik a copy, a mind preserved unchanging in the instant before its death and placed in an everlasting metal frame." (Cyberian Demons)

Its safe to say the world Nastya was born into, from the very minute she was born, was ridden with technology. She has augmented reality interfaces inplanted into her from birth. It would stand to reason that being taken from this society, wherein technology is everywhere, inside and out, would stand for a bit of a shock.

Aurora too had been augmented by the Cyberia.

While it is stated that the last time Nastya had used the ports themselves was directly before her death — "The last time she had used the ports, her tutor had ripped them out of her as the rebels stormed the palace" — Aurora is laced with Cyberian technology. I'd imagine she has something of a 'bluetooth wireless connection' with Aurora, rather than the physical data transfer of files between the ports and Nastya, it may as well be similar enough.

Imagine being Nastya, going from Cyberia, wherein there is augmented reality contantly, transplanted onto a ship with metal blood, a jonny, and a vampire. To Aurora, where the only bits of augmented reality run through Aurora.

Of course she'd fall in love with her. Aurora is familiarity. Aurora isn't organic. Aurora isn't human.

And of course when the undeniable part of aurora that is organic, that is a flesh moon plated in metal with her brain hooked to machines, when so much has broken and been replaced, when, presumably, aurora is less of an algorithm, nastya leaves with the brand cyberia left on her.

Because Aurora healing, becoming more of herself and less of a starship, is messy, and organic, and human.

and hard for nastya.

‘Think how long she’s been flying you around. Think how many bullet holes you’ve punched through her and how many atmospheres you’ve dropped her through. Think how many alterations and improvements we’ve made, Tim to her guns and Ashes to her storage and Brian to her engines and the Toy Soldier to who knows what. How much do you think is left of her after all she’s brought you through?’ Nastya held up the ancient, battered piece of hull plating. Just visible under the grime and scars of particles of space junk was a fragment of the Aurora’s original logo and serial number. Jonny honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a version that hadn’t been painted by the Mechanisms themselves. ‘So she’s free, now.’ Nastya gestured around at the spaceship they were standing in. ‘This Aurora can take you where you want to go. I’m going to take my Aurora somewhere else.’

Aurora was ship of theseus'd. Aurora was improved. Aurora was no longer cyberian. (both literally, and metaphorically)

So nastya left.

[tanadrin]

IP law as it is currently framed seems to me to be about outputs: is the thing you made obviously a duplicate of a competing product? Is the thing you made taking important and original features that make it obviously a ripoff? Regardless of what the inputs are, if the thing you make or sell bears no resemblance to the original or isn’t even the same kind of thing, it’s not really a violation of IP rights. If I sell a table that consists of nothing but hashes of the individual sentences of Dune according to a proprietary algorithm that’s not (as far as I know) copyright violation. It’s not a competing product, it’s not even vaguely recognizably the same. It’s certainly not masquerading as a novel by Frank Herbert.

And this makes sense insofar as IP law is a fairly recent creation in historical terms designed to promote the arts and sciences. It’s a set of commercial incentives, basically. Reframing all of IP law around the idea of inputs would be a drastic renegotiation of what it is and what it is for and it would radically transform the jurisprudential philosophy behind it as a body of law: does this mean pastiche is now illegal? Is it illegal if your work is obviously inspired by Dune? Should it be? I could certainly see how big rightsholders might want to lobby to make even such inspiration illegal, since if you’re buying indie superhero comic books maybe you’re not buying Marvel or DC ones.

But IP law doesn’t exist to prevent alteration or remix or modification of art. It doesn’t exist to prevent training computer programs on the public internet. I think in order to use IP law as an instrument to do that, you would have to break it, to make it do something it was not fundamentally designed to do, and you would open it up to become a vehicle of a legal regime far worse than anything the CEO of Disney could imagine in his darkest dreams right now.

Also, you know, as someone who writes and draws, I think the idea is morally objectionable! If you want your writing and art to be immune from giving inspiration or being altered in any way or being part of the great conversation of human culture, do it in private and burn it afterward. But putting it online and then complaining that people look at it, download it, do stuff with it beyond passively look at it seems to me to miss the point of creativity.