#i mean there is something to be said about the people who developed the technology without intending for its uses becoming this catastrophic

[gayvampyr]

any sliver of a chance i had of appreciating AI has been completely decimated by this clownery

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Hobie Brown Character AI is hypocritical.

I really be like 'ayo AI directly damages writers, voice actors and unions can you not use them, which in turn makes them better and more useful to the studios?' and people get MAD

People can say 'hey don't spend your money on Spiderpunk merch it directly contributes to corporations. That's not what he would've wanted'

And everybody cheers.

But if someone says 'hey please don't use Spiderpunk AI - it directly contributes to large movie studios using AI against the WGA. That's not what Hobie would've wanted'

And then SUDDENLY it's 'i just wanna write my little ai stories what's so wrong with that?'

You're directly going against the asks of a union that is actively striking.

That's not what Hobie would want.

Every time you roleplay with an AI or use a voice AI - You're helping develop the technology that puts people out of jobs

You want your Hobie AI stories to be realistic cause it's easier for you and more fun? GOOD.

THAT'S EXACTLY HOW THE STUDIOS FEEL TOO. They want their Hobie AI stories to be as realistic as possible too - because then they don't have to pay their writers.

The same AI that writes Hobie fics for you is the same technology that writes scripts for studios.

The more you feed an AI Hobie information - the easier it is for the AI to produce - say, an entire scene from a Hobie movie script. Without the consent or input of the people who created him in the first place.

When Studios use AI, they can make the characters do and say anything without the writers or voice actors input.

Imagine you're an voice actor - they want you to say a line that's really offense and you refuse.

They say "Okay, that's fine. Just skip the line."

You say okay. You finish the rest of the lines and go home.

You go see the movie. And you hear all your normal lines - then you hear yourself saying the extremely offensive line.

What happened? The studio used a Voice AI of you to fill in the offensive line you didn't wanna say. Don't want your voice used that way? Too bad. They own the AI. They can make you say anything now.

Your agent can't help you and neither can your PR. You just have to take it.

Is that something Hobie would want for people?

If you cap for HOBIE in specific -

And you still use to choice AI despite knowing it's getting weaponized against the working class -

That behavior is hypocritical. There I said it.

You can't wake up gushing about a black working class punk and then be like 'what do you mean working class solidarity with a union that doesn't involve me'

You can't be out here loving a character known for helping oppressed people break out of technology that is made to oppress and harm them - (Go-Home Machine, The red Anamoly cages)

AND THEN be the ones aiding in the creation of a technology make to oppress and harm people.

With Hobie in specific - it goes against the entire morals of the character.

ROLEPLAY AND VOICE CHARACTER AIs THREATENS WRITERS AND VOICE ACTORS. I am out of work right now because of a strike based solely on this discussion.

The WGA strike is still happening. The holidays are coming fast. We need our jobs back. The better AI studios have, the less likely that becomes.

The more realistic your Hobie roleplay becomes - the easier it is for a studio to take that same technology and write a script with.

Why would a studio PAY a voice actor when someone on Tiktok developed an entire Hobie Brown AI for them that can say anything? They wouldn't. They'd just use the AI for free instead. The same one you're using.

Please - out of respect for the writers who made him and put careful time into him and his representation and his story - PLEASE, So those people can keep their homes, and jobs, and food in their children's mouths -

DON'T USE CHARACTER AI

Hobie would want you to stand with the union 💙

signed - a Production Assistant.

[pacificwaternymph]

i have been having flower ranchers thoughts, and was wondering if there were any ideas youve been rotating in your mind but haven't said anything about yet?

they're such silly little guys

I know everyone seems to agree which empire Tango would end up if he were plopped into season two (I mean, Tumble Town, the ranch, Jimmy, ya know), but what about season 1?

I feel like he'd avoid places with a lot of water like the ocean and the swamps, because of his whole association with fire. And I feel like he'd avoid areas with a lot of foliage like... the overgrown, the undergrove, or the jungle since there is a LOT of flammable material there.

My first thought actually was Pixandria or Mezalea, since they're the hottest and driest, and also Tumble Town is in a mesa and the Vigil in Pixandra with all the candles... idk I feel like you could do something with that.

But then if we also take into account that one skin of his that has like the blue hair (which from what I've seen no one can agree on whether that is ice or blue fire), then maybe he's an elf who lives in Rivendell? Maybe he's... idk, the keeper of the ancient elven library, or resides in a series of catacombs beneath the city.

I think... the idea I like the best is having him in the Grimlands, since they seem to be very innovative and technology based, and also they have their whole lore with the redstone which fits in nicely with what I know of Tango.

Maybe he's an advisor to Fwhip, or otherwise close to him, and he and Jimmy get to have a nice little enemies to lovers arc. Jimmy starts having flashbacks to double life (if we play around with the timeline here) while also having flashbacks to 3rd life and has no idea what it means. He remembers two different husbands from two different lifetimes, but he can't remember their faces, and he doesn't know why but his heart starts to pick up and his face flushes every time he imagines that arrogant elven king and that unbearably smug redstoner from the grimlands.

Meanwhile both Scott and Tango are having dreams of a husband with golden hair and equally golden wings, dying in front of them, and they don't know what it means. He feels real, real enough that they want to find him and be with him again. Maybe they discover each other's dreams and start trying to find their shared husband together, and fall in love along the way. And they're both developing crushes on the Codfather the more they see of him.

But obviously it can't be Jimmy, are you insane? They said wings, he's a fish. (They're all so stupid /affectionate)

I started out with no thoughts at all and then you dragged this from me. Thanks lol this was fun to think about.

IDK, I'd love to hear other people's ideas for season 1 empires Tango.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Degrowth is often associated with austerity, that we have to give up all the luxuries we have. But, not everything, I would say, and we also gain something instead. So, here’s my explanation. First of all, I’m not saying, as I said, that we have to give up all the technologies. I explicitly admit we need renewable energies and electric vehicles. These are the things that we need to develop even more. So, degrowth is not about going back to nature without any kind of Zoom, computer, iPhone, and so on. But at the same time, we have to question whether we need to buy a new iPhone every two years—that’s probably excessive, and we can repair things. Or another question would be, do we really need fast fashion? Do we need so much meat consumption? I’m not saying we should all be vegans immediately. But at the same time, we can start questioning whether our level of consumption might be actually excessive, and there are some people who are actually consuming much more in an excessive way, people that are super rich. So, first, advocate reducing economic inequality because the super rich do not simply exploit workers, but also they’re quite responsible for the current ecological crisis. The top 1% of rich people are responsible for 15% of carbon emissions. So, that’s something that must be reduced. For example, I advocate banning private jets. Do we really need so many private jets? And we should probably reduce cruise ships and industrial meat production. These excessive things must be reduced. That’s my first proposal. And the second proposal is, if we give up some of those things, we will have different kinds of abundance. I argue in my book that this will be an abundance of public goods. In the U.S., for example, education is commodified, and we have to pay a lot of money to go to university, and students have loans. Also, we have to pay a lot to go to a doctor because medical care is privatized and commodified. Public transportation is poor, so we have to buy cars, and we again have to have loans and so on. So, our entire economy is commodified, and that means that we have to pay for everything, no matter how necessary these things are for everyone. And so, you need money and have to work harder, but jobs are precarious; wages are low, so you work longer hours, and when you still don’t have enough money, you have little time to spend with your family and friends, and so you’re unhappy. So, my proposal is in a degrowth economy, all those basic services and goods must be decommodified. Education should be free. Medical care, public transportation, electricity—all these things should be as cheap as possible. And then you don’t really have to work so hard, and you don’t have to worry so much about your housing, future, and applications. These are the things that can make you feel much more happy and secure. That kind of public abundance can actually be realized without constant economic growth. Degrowth is a kind of new radical abundance.

[terrestrialnoob]

Strange Friends

Fandom: Danny Phantom, Young Justice (cartoon)

Ships: N/A

Rating: Gen.

Word count: 8,228

Summary:

Being heroes has a negative affect on Danny and Valerie's grades, but luckily, they can sacrifice a weekend with Tetslaff to get their History grades up. A two hour bus ride to Chicago, and they find themselves in an anthropology museum when a nearby robot attack drives everyone outside. Luckily, the local heroes, The Martian Manhunter and his never-before-seen sidekick, are there to save everyone! Or maybe the Martians are the ones who need saving?

Danny and Valerie stepped off the bus in front of the Chicago Museum of Anthropology. The two stuck together mainly because there were only a dozen students there and everyone else were nerds and jocks these two didn’t have the time or patience to deal with. Coach Tetslaff checked the bus for stragglers then shouted at the assembled teens before her.

“Alright, everyone here is in danger of failing history, whether in my class or another teacher’s. So this is your punish- I mean, extra credit opportunity; you’re going to spend your entire weekend here with me. Today, you and your partner are going to choose any exhibit currently on display in the museum and write a report on it. Then tomorrow, you’ll both present your report not only to the class, but also the museum curator Professor Summer Davies.”

She stared out at the unfocused faces that had heard this speech ten times already, then she sighed and continued, “Meet here in front of the museum at 12:50 for the group lunch, if you didn’t sign up for the group meals, you’ll have to go find and pay for your own food. Now, let’s get to it people!”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I have to spend my hard earned weekend doing school work.” Valerie rolled her eyes and glanced at Danny. They’d chosen to sign up as partners on this fieldtrip because Danny knew Valerie would take him seriously and listen to his ideas, and Valerie knew Danny was dependable, despite being a goof, and neither of them would push all the work onto the other.

“Tell me about it,” Danny said as the two made their way into the museum. It was as interesting as most museums are when you’re forced to go instead of choosing to go; Danny would have loved to visit and learn about this stuff any other day, but today it was homework. There was a display on the history of kitchen technology, an intro to forensic anthropology, a collection of Native American musical instruments, and something about the evolution of Victorian house design.

“This should be fascinating,” Danny said, taking notes in a spiral notebook he’d been carrying with him.

“I’m very fascinated by the development of the knife,” Valerie said as she took a photo of some restored kitchen knives that were over a hundred years old when the security guard was turned away.

“I don’t know, they can’t cut ghosts,” Danny teased.

Valerie raised a playful eyebrow at him, “They do when I use them.”

“We both know that’s not how that works,” Danny chuckled and made another note, though, the Forensic Anthropology might be the best option, it was the widest category, and it could be useful with superhero work, two birds - one stone. They had been trying to improve that part of their lives. Valerie and Sam were trying to drag Danny to a workout every day, while Danny was working with Tucker to refine their ghost database and improve their equipment. There had to be something useful they could learn from researching forensic science, even if it was specifically focused on figuring out human history.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion from outside.

Danny rolled up the notebook and stuck it in his jeans pocket as he and the rest of the students left the building in a group under the shouted orders of Coach Tetslaff. Outside, there was a crowd of scared citizens running past the museum. Danny and Valerie shared a look and, while Tetslaff was distracted by the other students, turned and headed towards the source of the commotion instead of away from it. Barely a block away from the museum, there was a large figure fighting two smaller figures in the air.

Once they got close enough, Danny recognized one of the smaller figures as Martian Manhunter, and another was smaller but very similar in appearance. She looked like a teen girl with Martian green skin, long red hair, a navy blue skirt matching the color of both their capes, and while she wore a white shirt instead of Manhunter’s black body suit, they both had the same red X’s on their chests and gold pins holding their capes (that probably only Danny could see at this distance with his weird ghost eyes). They were clearly working together despite Danny never having heard of Martian Manhunter having a sidekick.

Their enemy looked to be an nine-and-a-half-foot tall robot, with six long spindly arms sticking out from it's extended torso. There were sharp claws on two with arcs of electricity flitting between its fingers, blasters on two others that shot globs of white hot plasma, and the last too were fucking flaming swords. It flew around in the sky about fifteen feet in the air using rockets built into its feet, but it wasn’t a stable floating, the way its rockets were designed, it couldn’t stay still in the air.

“Wow, a real superhero fight!” Danny marveled as he watched, uh, Martian Girl? – sure – as she dodged one of the robot’s plasma blasts.

“And what are we? Fake superheroes?” Valerie shook her head, but watched with deep intrigue as Martian Girl kept the robots attention on her while Martian Manhunter flew up behind it, raising his hands towards it.

Danny could almost see the psychic energy radiating off Martian Manhunter as the robot’s two blaster arms were torn from its body followed quickly by the two claw arms. Then Danny felt more, stronger psychic energy coming from Martian Girl as she turned to face it. The rest of the robot was immediately crushed into a ball of jagged metal and electrical sparks. Danny couldn’t tell if it was because it was stuck between the two Martian’s telekinetic powers or if it was all Martian Girl. But Danny could practically see it, the psychic power rolling off her in waves and hitting the robot along with Martian Manhunter’s power at its back. Looking closely, Martian Manhunter had a lot of control, he could thread a needle with his psychic abilities, but Martian Girl had so much raw psychic energy flowing out of her, it sent shivers down Danny’s spine. It almost lit up his ghost sense, like it was enough emotional energy for him to sense it but not the right type of energy to fully ping for him; it kind of left him wanting his sense to go off to just acknowledge the power the two of them had up there. He glanced at Valerie to see if she felt it too, but no, it was just him.

The Martians lowered to the ground now the robot wasn’t a threat, and Danny heard the girl say, “- didn’t have a mind for us to read, so it’s not like we could have found out what its plan was.”

“There are more ways to get information from an enemy than simply reading their mind,” Manhunter explained, “And if this machine had remained intact, we could have downloaded information from its memory.”

“Oh, hello Megan, of course we could have!” Martian Girl said and facepalmed. “I’m sorry, Uncle J’onn, I shouldn’t have destroyed it like that.”

“Miss Martian,” Martian Manhunter pointedly said, and she meeped and mumbled an apology.

He sighed and said, “You are still new to this. I had years as a m’hontrr before coming to Earth, and more as a private investigator before becoming a superhero. You will learn these things with time and experience.”

Danny glanced over at Valerie, a familiar red glow in her eyes. “See anything useful?”

Valerie sighed, blinking the nanites away from her eyes, “No, there’s too much pollution to get a clear rocket trail, and its power signature isn’t unique enough to stand out.”

“And how would you know that?” Martian Manhunter asked, turning and flying over to them.

“And why are you here? We told everyone to evacuate the area!” Martian Girl said, coming up next to, apparently, her uncle.

“Sorry, it’s my fault,” Danny said rubbing the back of his neck and trying to look embarrassed on purpose, “I wanted to see real superheroes; I just couldn’t help it! You guys are so cool!”

Martian Girl blushed a little herself and tried, and failed, to firmly state, “It was still really dangerous and - you know, shouldn’t do it again.”

“Yes ma’am,” Danny said and gave an over-serious salute. She smiled and nodded at him.

“We should get back to the rest of the class,” Valerie quickly said pushing on Danny’s shoulder, “We don’t want our teacher to get worried about us.”

Danny weaved out from her hand and quickly pulled his notebook out of his pocket, “Actually, real quick. Can we get your autographs?”

Martian Manhunter nodded, and Martian Girl, or Miss Martian as she wrote it, signed her name before handing it over to her uncle to sign as well, and finally back to Danny.

“Good luck on your robot hunt!” Danny called as he dashed to where Valerie was already walking down the street.

Once they got back at the museum, Coach Tetslaff gave them an earful about running off alone during a supervillain attack, they should really know better. The two then learned it was going to be about three hours before the students of Casper High were allowed back into the museum; security needed to do a routine check to make sure nothing was stolen in the confusion. Coach Tetslaff decided the kids could go to the library to get a head start on their projects or go for lunch early, but made it abundantly clear that Dangerous Robot Attacks will not excuse them from doing their reports.

>><< 

The boy had felt weird to M’gann. She almost didn’t notice it, after her own guilt of messing up by destroying the robot and the chaos and fear she still felt from both herself and everyone around them at the beginning of the fight. It was odd enough that she hadn’t sensed any fear from either of the two teenagers, but she wasn’t sure what counted as a scary experience for the normal human teenager. It was similar to how the rest of the team was, so maybe this was just something teens on Earth were used to? But her uncle had heard the girl say something strange, and when he and M’gann went to see who had been watching their fight, she’d gotten a strange aura from the boy.

He had dark hair, light skin, and blue eyes, and he wore a white t-shirt with red stylized Saturn-like planet symbol in the center, and normal looking jeans despite the notebook he’d managed to stuff in one of its pockets. Very normal in appearance. But, the unusual thing was that he seemed to put out an aura of – it wasn’t quite emotion, but it wasn’t not emotion – and if it was emotion then it was so extremely raw and concentrated compared to most humans, like there wasn’t anything physical keeping the emotions in, or no, that’s not it. He just wasn’t quite… Solid? Human? No, no. She could see he was definitely solid and human, but there was just something off about him.

And the girl he was with. She wore a yellow tank top and an orange skirt with thick gold bracers on each arm and a red backpack, that seemed off somehow, but M'gann hadn't seen a lot of backpacks yet to be sure. She had dark skin and hair, but her eyes seemed to change color the closer she got and M’gann couldn’t tell if they were a shade of red or brown or green - or somehow switched in between. But she didn’t feel unusual to other humans, no matter how inhumanly her eyes behaved, and who was M'gann to say that human eyes couldn’t change like that?

But then again, Uncle J’onn seemed to have sensed something off too. He psychicly told her that he suspected the two might be involved with the robot, perhaps sent there to observe how easily the Martian duo could dispatch with it. He asked her to follow them to see what they were doing in the city while he tried to find clues off the remains of the robot.

M’gann wasn’t sure if he actually thought the teens were important or if he was just getting her out of the way after her screw-up. While the psychic link was a lot clearer on Earth, there was also an expected level of polite, what she deemed, “not looking”, not just for normal humans, but other psychics as well. She’d learned from the team too, that entering anyone’s mind without express permission and forewarning was not a good thing to do and could even hurt a human, or Kryptonian, who wasn’t expecting it. And Uncle J’onn wanted her to practice vocalizing her words more and only use a psychic link to communicate with other heroes. There were still so many rules she needed to get used to on Earth.

She followed the two humans to The Chicago Museum of Anthropology. She’d gone there with Uncle J’onn for one of her first days on Earth; it gave her a basic understanding of the history of humanity, how the species and society developed on Earth. She’d enjoyed the visit.

She stayed at a distance and morphed into her human form before venturing closer. She watched as they stayed with a group of about twelve high school students under the supervision of a large, muscular woman who liked to give orders. The group of students soon dispersed, apparently they’d come to the museum for a school project but the museum would be temporarily closed.

She quickly hurried to close behind her two targets, she wasn’t going to lose them. This was her first solo mission on Earth, she had already messed up with the robot, she wasn’t going to disappoint her uncle again by letting her targets get lost in a crowd. She got close enough, she herd the boy say, “Did you pay for the provided meals?”

“No. Full offense to Tetslaff, I do not trust her taste in food,” The girl responded.

“Yeah, I bet she’s taking the poor idiots who signed up for it to a sports bar or something,” the boy said and took out his phone, “The restaurant finder app I downloaded so we could find places that were vegan friendly for Sam doesn’t have to be used just for vegans. We can put in whatever kind of food we want and it’ll find something for us.”

“Anything but burgers,” the girl said.

“There’s an amazing pizza place a couple blocks down this street,” M’gann said behind them, and suddenly realized - she was just supposed to be listening this conversation. Hello, Megan! How could you mess this up already!

All three stopped and the two of them turned around to give her funny looks. “Sorry, I was just… uhm… also hungry and trying to think of a place to eat! And I’m – I…”

No, no, you’re making it worse! She panicked and suddenly shouted, “Do you want to be friends with me?”

The two stared at her in shock, then the boy made sure his friend was looking at him before he gripped his hands in the air in front of him. The girl shook her head, raised an eyebrow, and held a hand towards M'gann. The boy nodded and smiled and repeated his hand movements from before and then tapping his thumb and pointer finger together twice and rubbed one hand over the side of the other? Then, for some reason, the girl sighed and nodded.

The boy turned to M'gann and smiled as he said, “I like pizza.”

“Yeah, pizza’s good,” The girl added, dryly, each word, taking effort to but still, becoming less hostile, more friendly. “You live around here?”

M’gann smiled, she wasn’t going to fail. All she had to do was keep an eye on them, right? And it wasn’t like she didn’t want more human friends. “No, but my uncle does. I’ve visited him a couple times now, so I know where some of the good places are. I’m Megan, by the way. Megan Morse.”

The girl looked unimpressed, but held out her hand for M’gann to take. “I’m Valerie and he’s Danny. We’re not from around here either.”

“Oh? Then what brings you to Chicago?” M’gann asked as she shook Valerie’s hand. She used the physical contact as a bridge - a cover to scan the surface level of thoughts in her head without her knowing. There wasn’t anything too bad. Valerie was suspicious of M’gann’s eavesdropping and on guard against her. She didn’t want to trust some random girl who seemed way too friendly, but not wanting to come off as on guard to tip her off to just how suspicious she was. There was something else, she felt Danny was being too trusting? But that did nothing for her instincts. She reminded M’gann of Robin; his mind also raced with worst case scenarios and possible threats and solutions to those threats, even if they weren’t real.

“School trip,” Danny answered not taking M’gann’s offered hand and making her awkwardly have to put it down again. “We have to make a report-presentation-thing on one of the exhibits at the anthropology museum.”

“Oh, yeah, humans are very interesting,” M’gann said before she could stop herself.

“I love those humans and all their humanity,” Danny said with a snort and Valerie elbowed him.

“So, where’s this amazing pizza place?” Valerie asked and M’gann pointed behind them.

“Down a little further, I don’t know if it’s “amazing” amazing, but I like it.”

“Lead the way, M’lady,” Danny said, and motioned for her to walked next to him. He was starting to remind her of Wally, tying a little to hard to make her laugh, but still succeeding.

The three made their way down the street where M’gann had pointed; Danny talked a lot while Valerie watched M’gann with wary eyes. They were from a smaller city called Amity Park, northwest of Chicago and surrounded by a lot of wilderness, near Lake Eerie, with two E’s.

Danny chuckled at his own joke, then asked, “So, did you see that superhero fight? I didn’t know Martian Manhunter had a sidekick, but she seems pretty cool.”

M’gann tried to hide her blush and lie, “I didn’t get a good look at it. It can be pretty dangerous to get too close.”

“What do you know about them? Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian?” Valerie said her first thing since they started walking together.

M’gann thought for a moment about what she could and should say. “I’ve seen them around and heard the news talk about them. I don’t know if she likes being called a sidekick though, I know that other heroes don’t like it. Like Robin and Kid Flash.”

Valerie rolled her eyes, “She’s fighting crime with Martian Manhunter, wearing a matching outfit, and has a matching name all for the purpose of learning how to be a superhero from him, right?”

“Well, I guess so,” M’gann admitted. Is that what a sidekick is? M’gann thought there was a translation issue or something, that it was an insult. Why do Wally and Red Arrow hate it so much?

“Then she’s a sidekick, and there’s nothing wrong with being a sidekick,” Valerie confidently said and M’gann decided that she was right.

“And! It’s a good idea to learn from people who’ve been doing it longer than you and have more experience.” He gave Valerie some kind of look as he continued, “Even if you’re the same age, the extra time spend doing a thing can make one person a lot better at it.”

M'gann understood that, the rest of the Team were way better than she was and all of them are younger than she is.

Valerie raised her eyebrow at Danny, “Even if the newer person does more training than the older one because she actually takes being a hero seriously?”

M’gann looked between the two of them and asked, “I’m sorry, are you still talking about the Martians?”

Danny shook his head, “Sorry, there are heroes in our town too. Phantom, who’s been a hero for over a year and a half now, and Valiant, who’s only just started being a hero.”

“But she’s a better hero even though she’s newer,” Valerie added quickly to Danny’s explanation.

“You think she’s a better hero,” Danny corrected, “But I think she’s still really wild, overly violent, and messes up a lot. Valiant doesn’t have to try to intimidate everyone she thinks is a bad guy, it’s better being friendly sometimes. And Phantom does take it seriously, he’s just having fun while being a hero.”

“Valiant is just driven to get the job done!” Valerie defended, “And Phantom goofs off too much. Not everything needs to be pun, you can just catch the bad guy and be done with it, no jokes necessary.”

“Excuse you, puns are an artform,” Danny said with an overdramatic handwave.

“Oh please,” Valerie said exasperatedly.

M’gann laughed, they really reminded her of Wally and Robin; they must have been best friends for a long time now. They finally reached the pizzeria her uncle had taken her to when they’d had their trip to the anthropology museum. It was a quaint little family run place that was pretty emptied out. It should have been the second half of the lunch rush, but the robot attack must have scared everyone off.

“So, do you know how old she is?” Valerie asked as the three ordered their food.

“Sorry?” M’gann asked, she’d been distracted wondering what was a normal food order for a human. Last time she’s coping Megan’s order from episode 24 , and that was apparently too much food for a normal human teenage girl.

“We were just talking about how it doesn’t matter how old you are,” Danny said, and M’gann couldn’t tell if he was trying to avoid their previous argument or still trying to win.

“She’s the Martian equivalent of a teenager,” M’gann said, but realized halfway through that, a human wouldn’t know that. “Probably.”

Danny looked at her with wide eyes, “Really? So Martians really do age at a different rate than humans? That’s so cool!”

“You might too,” Valerie said under her breath, but Danny ignored it and M’gann didn’t understand what it meant.

“Do you know how long she’s been on earth?” Danny asked with growing excitement as they sat at a booth in the corner; the two of them on one side with her on the other.

M’gann couldn’t resist feeling that same excitement, very few people showed interest in her normal life. “Yeah, about three months!”

 “How do y- I mean, does she like it here?” Danny asked, his excitement becoming so strong, M’gann didn’t think anything of his tripping over his words.

“I re- really think she likes it.”

Valerie raised an eyebrow at her, “Why do you think that?”

M’gann floundered for a moment, “Uh, prob- probably because she’s still here. Like, if she could get to Earth, then she could get back to Mars, but she’s chosen to stay.”

Valerie gave her an oddly intense look, “Is that really how you know?”

“I bet she has a lot of friends here,” Danny said, seemingly saving M’gann from answering, before he added, “I mean, you are really friendly and I like you well enough.”

M’gann blushed, “No, no! I’m not…”

“You don’t hide it very well,” Valerie said and M’gann dropped her head in her hands.

“Oh, come on, don't be hard on her!” Danny said and playfully shoved Valerie's arm, “I only knew because you have the same, like, aura as Miss Martian. If you hadn’t come up to us so soon after we met you in costume, I wouldn’t have made the connection. And don’t let Val get to you, she only realized after I pointed it out.”

Valerie glared at him as she pulled her wallet out again and passed some money over to Danny. “I had all the clues though, and would have put it together eventually. Unlike you, I don’t cheat.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” M’gann had to ask while peaking between her hands. She can’t believe she messed up this much in one day. Who knew some humans could read Martian auras?

“Of course not! We’re not snitches,” Danny said, and shared a glance at Valerie, who shook her head violently and mouthed the word “no”. Danny shrugged and turned to M’gann to whisper, “We’re actually in a similar situation.”

M’gann blinked at them, and was just about to ask what he meant when there was an explosion. The front wall of the pizzeria was blasted open and a robot that looked exactly like the one they’d seen earlier stepped through the hole. Its featureless face locked onto M’gann; it lifted one of its blasters and shot a ball of hot plasma at them.

All three teens ducked under the table and Valerie asked, “Didn’t you just junk that guy?”

“It must be a new one!” M’gann said as another blast tore through the wall behind them, shattering the plastic table and dropping a pile wall and roof on top of them. A second robot stepped through the new hole in the wall and locked onto M’gann.

M’gann had somehow ended up on top of the rubble, but Danny wasn’t visible and she saw Valerie’s arm sticking out from under a chunk of table for a moment before it gave a thumbs up and was pulled completely under. She did a quick psychic scan the pizzeria, there was only the three of them and the robots in the building. Her eyes glowed red and her skin shifted to Martian green, her face became slightly less human proportioned and her red and white cloths turned into her hero costume. She telekinetically lifted herself from the rubble and motioned to lift the debris off her new friends, but they acted before she could.

Danny, or who she assumed was Danny, phased through the rubble and floated above it. If she hadn’t been looking at his face moments ago, she might not have recognized him. He was the same general size and build, but subtle changes. He had a sharper chin and ears and nose, and even sharper teeth, but he also had bigger, rounder eyes that glowed a toxic green. His hair was the same length, but so pure white, it looked more like mist than strands. His clothes changed too; his t-shirt and jeans had been replaced by a jumpsuit. It was mostly black but with a big white rectangle around the neck that became a little thicker and lest plastic-like as it curved over his shoulders. There were white gloves that reached half way up his forearms, and a pair of white patches on his elbows that looked to be made of the sturdier white material around his shoulders. Thick white lines went from his armpits down the sides of his torso to a white plastic looking utility belt. His boots were white too, coming up to half his calves and having patches of the sturdy white over his knees. There was a hero symbol over his heart, a white P where the long straight side of it looked almost like it was either on fire or fading into mist. Phantom.

At nearly the same time, the rubble shifted and some of the smaller bits flew out in different directions and something that looked like a robot stood up. A black helmet that encircled her entire head with only a red triangular faceplate breaking up the black, except for small lines that seemed to mimic the look of computer circuits that branched off the sold red into the black. The small pattern pulsated red light from a set of red triangles on the center of her chest, one solid while the other was a thin line around it. There, the pattern branched off in all directions, but with specific places where the red energy settled into solid lines that didn’t fade with the pulsing energy. Two solid red triangles on her shoulders, mimicking shoulder pads, and a thick red line around her waist like a belt that had a sharp downward point in the center that echoed the points of the triangles on her chest. There were also red lines around her wrists and calves that made it look like she was wearing gloves and boots. It was like she was covered in a black and red circuit board, but after a moment, the red pulsating glow of the circuitry faded, leaving her in a mostly black armored suit.

M'gann had been distracted by the sudden appearance of these two and was shocked when Danny appeared in front of her, hands raised in a defensive position as a bast of white plasma shattered across a shield of green energy that suddenly surrounded them. There was the sound of a machine powering up and a blast of red energy shot from a blaster that sprung into existence on Valerie’s arm, the red circuitry around it glowing momentarily before fading to black again. The blast hit the robot that shot at them from across the building. Valerie hit the joint of one of its arms, partially melting it and limiting its movement. Two shots hit the shield behind them, as the second robot moved closer to them through the wall leading behind the pizzeria. It reached its electrified claw towards Valerie.

“Look out!” Danny shouted and lowered the shield so he could fire a blast of green energy at the robot reaching for Valerie, causing it to stumble backwards. But she ignored it and fired at the first robot again, hitting the exact same place as last time and melting off its arm completely.

M’gann used her telekinesis to throw the robot that tried to grab Valerie out the hole in the wall it had come through. Danny flew out after it, firing his green energy at it. She followed outside and saw him flying around erratically. She was worried for a moment before she realized, Danny was too fast for the robot to be able to aim its blasters at him, continually firing into the open sky and missing its target. M’gann decided to take advantage of its distraction and telekinetically tore the blaster arms from the robot’s body. It turned its attention towards her and must have seen her as an easier target. It dived for her and she pushed it back with her mind so it stood frozen in air, rockets blasting with greater force trying to break through the invisible wall she’d put in front of it. Suddenly, it was hit with a rain of green energy balls, they burned holes through its outer shell and melted through its electrical insides. Its rockets failed and it crumbled to the ground in pieces.

The two quickly returned inside to find Valerie in the middle of a sword fight. There were melted stumps where the robot’s blaster arms and left claw arm had been melted off, and Valerie was wielding a black sword made of the same material as her suit that glowed with red energy. She was able to block the two flaming swords that bore down on her with the all the artfulness of a poorly rendered video game opponent. But it had one too many arms for her to keep up with and a clawed arm weaved its way through her defenses to grab onto her shoulder. It tried to send an electrical shock into her, but the black suit turned red under its touch as it absorbed the energy. M’gann could actually follow the energy through the suit’s circuitry over to her sword, that glowed brighter and started to melt through the flaming blades it was pressed against.

M'gann decided that was enough of that and threw the robot against the wall with her telekinesis, and regretted it immediately. The clawed hand had been embedded deeper into Valerie than M’gann had realized, and as it flew across the room, it tore through Valerie’s shoulder, taking some of her suit and skin with it. She cried out in pain and turned to look at M’gann who threw her hands over her mouth.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” She quickly hovered over to Valerie, but she didn’t know what to do about the injury. She didn’t have any medic training yet. It was on her list, and there was even a training session for the team planned for it, but she hadn’t done it yet. How was she going to fix this? Valerie had just risked her life to help M’gann and she’d been repaid by getting her shoulder torn up!

“It’s fine,” Valerie said in a such a firm voice it almost convinced M'gann, but it was clear by the way Valerie moved; it wasn't fine but she didn’t want attention drawn to it. Valerie cautiously walked over to the robot, her sword was somehow pulled into her suit and replaced with a blaster that she trained on the downed robot. When it didn’t react to her coming up to it, she placed her hand on it. M’gann could see the red circuit board pattern spread from the red pad of her hand over to the robot like an infection. After a moment Valerie said, “I have a source, and we should go now.”

Danny nodded and asked, “What did you find out?”

>><< 

J’onn was worried. He sent M’gann to follow the odd teenagers who had watched their fight with the robot much closer than any sensible person would. He knew teenagers were often unaware of the level of danger around them, especially when famous heroes were present, but there was something strange about these two. The girl had something strange in her eyes, something that glowed and changed color, and the boy -  there was simply something wrong about him, something wrong with the way psychic energy moved around him made him seem – less physical somehow, but J’onn couldn’t begin to guess why, what, or how. He sensed no malicious intent from them, if anything, he sensed a strong desire to protect from the boy and a powerful desire to fulfill responsibility from the girl.

He wasn’t sure if M’gann would have been safer following them or staying with him, but this was her first public excursion as his sidekick and he knew for certain that he didn’t want her fighting a robot that seemed tailor made to hurt him. The flaming swords, the hot plasma, the projected electrified field to prevent phasing into them, and no mind to read. The only clues they had were the strange teenagers and a serial number on the hunk of metal that had once been part of the robot. He would trust M’gann not to get too close to the humans or come to him if trouble stirred. She was naive and inexperienced but not an idiot or a pushover. She would keep proper distance, he was sure; reconnaissance was what she was learning with the team after all.

J’onn’s personal computer was patched into a number of databases, and it was a simple task to search for the source of the serial number. It belonged to a robotics company that specialized in custom joint systems. The piece with his serial number had been part of a large order by the Defense Lab of Classified Exobiology, a lab that researched alien life. The D.L.C.E. was a private organization that was owned by a parent company called VladCo. that also owned an advanced technologies development firm, a paranormal research lab, a pop-technologies designing firm, and several other smaller labs and factories, including the company that made the specialized joints. It was an unfortunately common scheme of a company buying from itself to make money; not illegal but shady nonetheless.

J’onn went to the listed address of the D.L.C.E. and found a very normal looking office building. He did a mental sweep of the building but didn’t find anything other than the usual office drudgery. He disguised himself as human, one of his usuals of a white man in a white suit under a beige trench coat and matching fedora, and entered the building. There was a middle-aged woman sitting at the front desk that J’onn didn’t need psychic powers to know was bored.

He pulled out an old police badge and prepared to sweet talk his way past the bored woman. “Excuse me, miss, but I’m from the-”

She didn’t wait for him to finish before pushing a button on a dashboard on her desk, “There’s another goo here for you, Dr. Copen.”

“I told them to give me a few more days!” Dr. Copen seemed to respond from the other side, and then said, “Send them down, I’ll come up with something.”

The woman hummed disbelievingly. She stood up, “Follow me, please.”

J’onn didn’t correct her and followed her down a hall to an elevator bay. She waved her I.D. card in front of a scanner and one of the elevators opened. Once inside, she scanned the I.D. again and the button panel lit up completely before a symbol lit up indicating they were going down. The foundations of the building went deeper than they should have, but eventually, the elevator stopped and they were let out into a large underground laboratory.

A man came up to them in a disheveled lab coat, wild dirty blond hair, circles under his eyes, coffee stains and burn spots on his cloths and arms, a pair of safety goggles pushed up on his head. “Ah, welcome Agent – uh?”

“Operative J,” J’onn provided from the top of the woman’s mind.

“Right, Operative J, sorry, yes, I remember you now.” The man said, “I know I told Director Beta that I’d have results by the end of the week, and while things didn’t go as planned, I assure you, by the end of today, I’ll have something big to show you.”

J’onn scrutinized the man, then probed, “What is this big thing? And why is it worth my time?”

“Yes, Dr. Copen, what have you got?” The woman asked incredulously.

Dr. Copen ignored her as he turned and waved for them to follow, “Earlier today I almost got a subject. The data was inconclusive on why the retrieval unit failed, the hyper connection antenna was damaged somehow before it was able to send any useful information, but I’ve sent out two retrieval units with the same tracking system.”

“Tracking system?”

Dr. Copen grinned and nodded, “Didn’t Director Beta tell you? We got a sample of a an enzyme that’s created when a Martian shapeshifts, we can use it to locate any Martian that has recently changed form, no matter how human they may seem.”

They stopped in front of a large monitor array and the doctor pressed a button and it flickered on. Two robots like the ones that had attacked J’onn and M’gann earlier that day, one with the other in its camera view, they few over the city and started to lower themselves towards … a small pizzeria J’onn recognized.

“Now, so long as whatever interfered with the previous hyper-link connection doesn - uhg…” Just as he said it, and the first robot broke through the front wall of the pizzeria, the camera feed turned filled with static, not receiving a clear image of anything within the building.

“Damn, what is messing with the signal?” The doctor typed furiously at the keyboard under the monitors, there were occasional flashes of clear video.

M’gann was there - and another person in black futuristic armor? There was a clear video, but only of the black armored person shooting the robot to pieces with some kind of arm mounted plasma blaster, before they charged the robot, the blaster somehow being replaced with a sword. After a minute, everything went black. The monitors weren’t off, but they stopped receiving information.

“AGAIN? What are they doing to my retrieval units?” Dr. Copen groaned as he desperately tried to pull data from the robots. He was saving the clearest images of M’gann and the armored person, not enough to identify them, but too close for J’onn’s comfort.

J’onn’s anxiety was increasing, he needed to get to M’gann to make sure she was okay. While the doctor was distracted, J’onn would find a way to destroy the lab. There were plenty of dangerous chemicals lying around; looking back the way they’d come, he saw some large containers with a label warning “oxygen-flammable liquid”. He reached out with his psychic power, only to be suddenly struck in the back of the head and filled with an electric shock. He felt his form revert to its most familiar shape, the form of The Martian Manhunter, the hero he’d created all those years ago.

“Mildred?” Dr. Copen shouted.

“He’s one of them,” The woman said with disgust dripping from the words and a taser pointed at his head.

J’onn’s vision blurred and he felt something latch around his neck. He couldn’t concentrate past the pounding in his head and he couldn’t get to his feet until he felt a hand grab his arm and pull him up. Then he was shoved into a tight confined space, between a wall of glass and a bed of hard metal. Just as he forced control over his movements again, he was suddenly cut off. He could feel his powers being shunted behind a wall, out of reach from him, as energy radiated from the black collar around his neck.

The woman stared in at him, a grimace on her face and the doctor behind her, clearly confused. “Wait, but- My retrieval units? They were just locked onto the Martian signal?”

“There must be two of them,” The woman said, her eyes narrowing and teeth gritting, “It’s multiplied like a cockroach, at this rate, they’ll be crawling all over the place.”

Panic was setting in, not just for the situation he was in, but M’gann was fighting off two Martian Hunting robots by herself, he didn’t know or trust the armored person who could have been working with these people for all he knew. He needed to get out, but without his powers? He was helpless and trapped, and M’gann needed his help! What-

Suddenly, there was an explosion, and the lab filled with thick grey smoke. The black armored person burst from the smoke behind Mildred and slammed her to the ground. Mildred jumped up with the taser discarded for a gun and fired at her assailant, who was apparently bullet proof. J’onn barely caught sight of something glowing green impacting Dr. Copen deeper in the smoke. Suddenly, M’gann was in front of the pod he’d been put in, worry written in her face. She looked around the pod for the way to open it, but she was too panicked.

The grey smoke started turning black and a fire could be seen spreading through the other side of the room. J’onn couldn’t hear what M’gann was saying, but after a moment, there was a boy next to her. He had white hair, green eyes, and a black and white jumpsuit. He phased his hands though the glass front of the pod, grabbed onto J’onn’s clothes, and pulled him through. Once out, J’onn saw M’gann and the person in black (on a flying surfboard?) carry his two captors up through a hole in the ceiling, and the boy flew J’onn out as well.

M'gann and the girl in black left the receptionist and the doctor outside the D.L.C.E. building. The four of them went to the roof of the building across the street from the D.L.C.E. and they watched as first responders put out the fire.

“Thank you,” J’onn said as the boy set him down. It was interesting, the way the boy flew was different from the way J’onn flew. The boy seemed to have gravity simply not affect him vs a Martian's telekinetic flight.

“No problem, Valiant?” The boy said, hovering back and allowing the girl in black to approach him.  She reached up and pressed the red pads on her fingers to the black collar around his neck, and after a moment, it clicked and came off.

“Thank you as well,” J’onn said.

“Uncle J’onn, are you okay?” M’gann asked rushing forward for a hug as the girl in black stepped back and examined the collar.

He returned her hug and looked her over, “Yes, and you?”

M’gann smiled broadly, “Yeah, but –“ She looked at the girl, “Are you sure you’re okay, Valiant?”

The girl rolled her shoulder, and when she spoke her voice was slightly distorted through her helmet, “I said it’s fine.”

“Her suit takes care of stuff like that,” The boy said, “It’s a pretty cool piece of technology.”

Valiant, as the boy called her, growled, then sighed. “Now that this is taken care of, we have our other work to do, Phantom.”

“That’s right, you two have to get back to the museum,” M’gann said and smiled at them.

“Is there anything we can assist you with? It would be rude for us to not thank you for your help,” J’onn said, both from honesty and curiosity. He wanted to learn more about these two teenage heroes. They had to be the two from earlier, Phantom had the same somewhat ethereal bend of psychic energy around him as the black haired boy they’d seen earlier.

“Oh, no, we’re literally just here on a school trip. We’re supposed to do our own work,” Phantom supplied. “But, it was super cool meeting you!”

Valiant took a step towards J’onn; he couldn’t see her face through her helmet, but he could feel an intensity radiating from her. She took a deep breath and said, “If you’d like to repay us, then I’d like to make a request.”

Phantom gave her a questioning look, “We don’t need a reward or anything.”

Valiant nodded in agreement, “But we do need training.”

“He’s already got a sidekick! And a pretty cool one, I might add,” Phantom winked and M’gann blushed. "He doesn't need to waste time on us."

“I would not mind an occasional additional tagalong. Though, there are other’s out there who would better suit being your mentors," he glanced over Valiant, "such as experts in human technology, that I can introduce you to.”

J’onn felt the sudden connection of a psychic link, Do you think they could join the Team?

He looked at M’gann and replied, I will speak with Batman about the matter. But there is no guarantee that he will agree to it.

She giggled happily, then pulled a cell phone out of her pocket, “Uncle J’onn just got me this, I’d love to have your numbers, maybe we can team up or have pizza together again sometime?”

Phantom blinked at the two of them, then widely smiled, “That’d be cool!”

There was a second where J’onn saw something in Phantom’s eyes. He ventured a guess, “Did you hear any of that?”

Phantom paused in typing his number into M’gann’s phone, taking a second to process what had been asked and responded with, “Were you talking?”

Phantom went back to typing as J’onn clarified, “You looked at us, each in turn, as we had a psychic conversation.”

“Oh!” Phantom said as he handed the phone to Valiant, “I could tell you were doing something. Like, I felt you using your powers, but I didn’t know what.”

“I see.” J’onn would have to investigate further. If Phantom could sense the use of psychic powers, and it seemed those with psychic powers could sense him, then learning to work together could be an immense advantage when devising countermeasures to either ability. As it stood now, though, J’onn was a little proud. It was hard to get his niece out of her shell; he’d learned from his recent call with his sister that M’gann’s life on Mars had been a hard one, but here she was, making friends remarkably quickly and easily. Even if Batman didn’t agree to them joining the team, even if there wasn’t the possible advantage of training with someone who could sense their psychic abilities, J’onn would keep an eye on his niece’s new friends.

"I'll call you next time I visit Chicago!" M'gann said as they prepared to fly off.

Valiant paused on her hoverboard just over the edge of the building, "I guess you're not too bad. We'll have to bring you down to Amity some time too."

"You'll have to come around a lot actually," Phantom said, "I need you to tell me all about space and Mars and how you got here, and-"

"Okay, space boy, let's get going," Valiant said, grabbing Phantom by the scruff of his jumpsuit.

Then Phantom shout to the heavens as he was being dragged off, "I love having an alien friend! Please text me all the time!"

Yes, J'onn was definitely keeping an eye on these kids.

[luvtonique]

I suppose considering my last post I should address something.

I'm currently writing "Melodi," and "Foxen," and a lot of people have asked me if there will be "Representation" in those stories.

The answer is, "Not intentionally, no."

I do not write labels, I write characters. I'm sorry, I don't give a flying fuck about representation, I write characters that are important to the story and give them personalities that further the plot.

I love character interactions, I love when characters with heavily different personalities and opinions interact with one another and have disagreements, make stupid decisions, do things that the reader would never do (like "DON'T GO IN THERE" moments).

I also like world-building. I like imagining entire worlds where the governing bodies, the landscape, the whole society is completely different than Earth, especially since I feel very strongly that bringing real-world issues (especially political or ideological) into fictional media completely pulls the viewer out of the fiction.

A story about a fictional world shouldn't be a story about Earth.

Period. I will never change my opinion on that.

It's time to really lay things out here. People have asked me, "Will there be any trans characters in <Melodi/Foxen>?"

The answer is an absolutely resounding, "No. Trans people do not exist in those universes literally at all."

"WHOA, WHAT!? SO YOU'RE JUST ERASING TRANS PEOPLE!?"

No. I'm inventing a world where you can swap your sex by drinking a potion or casting a spell, thus meaning gender dysmorphia would not exist, because if you wanna be a girl you can just snap your fingers or drink a potion. That is not "Erasing Trans People," that is looking realistically at a fictional universe in which we are not born into a body we can't easily change out of.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this but the concept of gender, of culture, of race, of species, are all concepts that exist on Earth, and a fictional world is not required to have any of those things. At all.

Do black people exist in Melodi? Yeah, humans can have darker skin, a lot of them do. Are they a different culture? No. Do they act different? No. Do they look different? Other than the skin color, no. Do they wear their hair different? No.

All of these things are because "Humans" in Melodi's universe are a society obsessed with technology. Humans are the only species with no natural magical affinity, and therefore they put cybernetic bio-chips in their children that give them artificial magic affinity that slowly replaces their circulatory system as they grow up to make them able to cast spells. In Melodi's universe, humans are a society revolving around technological advancements, spellcrafting with their cool digital magic and they've developed kinks and fetishes for people with different cyber wiring patterns in their faces instead of like, "Freckles or no freckles"

There's no Africa or America in Melodi's universe so why would there be African Americans? There's just black humans, who act like all the other humans but have black skin, no cultural differences at all, no racism between them, none of that.

I hate to be the one to break this to all of you but fiction is not real, and as much as you wanna demand it, fiction has no implicit criteria to be realistic or relatable in any way.

And now we get to the elephant in the room, "But Jay, you've said in private that Melodi is a lesbian, isn't that lesbian representation?"

No, that's girls who are attracted to girls existing in a fantasy world where it's extremely possible and reasonable for a girl to sometimes, hear me out, be attracted to girls.

Where gender dysmorphia wouldn't exist because of the immediate ease of access of sex-swapping magics and potions, the same can't be said about a person's attractions. Yes, magic and potions do exist in Melodi's universe that change a person's sexuality, but people still have a sexuality by default.

And here's another elephant, "But Jay, what about racism? Does racism exist in Melodi?"

Yes. Very much so. Melodi takes place in a universe where the different races are fucking vastly different and have extreme cultural differences. EXTREME.

An example: The Feliki do not have familial bonds of any kind and will gladly sell their children to pay their bills. They treat their children, parents, siblings like invaders in their own homes, and will only keep them around if they're useful to the household.

Another example: The Lupos choose a person once a year to be their "Hunt Target" and tell the rest of the world that anyone who interferes with their hunt will be slaughtered, and will spend the year hunting down and murdering their target to have a ritual feast.

A prime example: The Bicci literally need to have sex to live, and when starved will literally sexually assault people out of desperation. This has lead to the Bicci being forced to have partners if they ever leave their city so that they can feed off each other, and they will be arrested and dragged back to their city if they're seen alone outside of it. Bicci are also commonly referred to as rapists by other races.

See, I'm very much of the opinion (and always will be) that fiction is not real, and the more that you demand fiction be real, the less you're demanding fiction and the more you're demanding reality.

The world Melodi is in is a very fucked up world.

You will likely not relate to the characters, you will not see a single transgender character, and you will not see any intentional plot points that relate to anything happening in a socio-political sphere in real life because I'm sorry, but that's not the story I'm writing.

I'm writing a story about a fucked up nightmare world, and in Foxen's case I'm writing a story about a family going on an adventure in a silly world with goats and foxes and magic and candy.

I do not write stories about real life.

I do not write my opinions into metaphors nor use my characters as soapbox puppets to convey my opinions on real-life social matters.

And you will not see intentional representation in my works.

That is final, and I will never, ever, ever change this fact about my works of fiction.

Thank you for reading, hope you're having a great day.

Luv you.

~Jay

[marsti]

tumblr is not currently selling your art to midjourney. the deal has not been made. even if it had, the data is currently unusable. i am begging you all to chill and stop sharing posts promoting nightshade and glaze as the last bastions of artistic integrity against evil tech companies.

i think what annoys me about a lot of the ways people online talk about AI art is that a lot of the proposed "solutions" i see championed are functionally just riding on the idea of un-opening pandora's box, which means they're incredibly ineffective because that's just not something we can do at this point. and worse, that sentiment is exploitable.

sure it makes you feel like you, personally, as a creator, have control over this new development threatening your livelihood. but that's not a good thing! glaze is a grift that uses the exact same technology as stable diffusion and straight up doesn't work as advertised, the creators bank on you feeling that way. it doesn't protect you against anything, it just makes you feel good, meanwhile the creators gets money and exposure out of your fear.

if you didn't know, the same developers who made glaze are also behind nightshade. and what do they do with nightshade's popularity? well it's simple, they've studied the effect it has on AI art algorithms. and then they sold the research.

and you must understand, even if everything i've said wasn't the case, making the pictures these algorithms produce compatible for training algorithms again is as easy as running them through a de-noising upscaler.

and i'm an artist myself. i do not want my art used in that way. i do not want to be in midjourney's training data, i don't want someone to make a LORA of my work without my consent, i don't want any of that. but still, ask yourself: who benefits from making us panicked and afraid every single time a new AI deal is mentioned? because it's not you or me. there is a problem, and no problem has ever been solved through fear.

which is also why i'm not here to say you're evil for using these tools, or that they are secretly worse than the companies you're trying to combat by using them. it's not wrong to want to feel safe, you are perfectly within your right to do what makes you feel in control. you can keep using them if that's what you want! but please, be aware of what's going on here.

there is no going back. the technology exists, we have to accept it. because the sooner we accept this is the reality we live in, the sooner we'll be able to fight it. but i am begging you all to stop pretending easy solutions exists to this problem, there are none.

demand transparency. demand control. demand that this things be opt-in. demand compensation.

you will not be saved from companies trying to profit from these algorithms by simply going to their competitors.

[breadnabreadd]

✦ Oh boy! Here we go.

I created a LMK Au just for funsies. A furutistic, high technologic world with cyberpunk vibes! (Because I absolutely love this type of aesthetic)

✦ the picture above is just a quick drawing I did of Macaque in this AU. I will get into details about the AU while showing a few infos of a few LMKs characters alongside with their designs. (Just a reminder I'm still creating the AU and it's my first time making one. It might be a little messy, so I apologize if it gets too messy--)

Oh! And by the way, the characters on this AU follow the same basic formula as the original characters. So it doesnt have much changes, other than the world they live in, their clothes and a few events.

✦ MK, The Monkie Kid

• Its the same thing as our little MK from the animated series, he works at Pigsy's Noodles as a delivery boy, is the Monkey king's biggest fan and is his successor and pretty much the basic stuff.

• He learned about the Monkey king with Mister Tang. He is a huge fan.

• Tho he isn't a great expert, he knows how to how to fix computer cases, machines and vehicles and build stuff by using old pieces (he learned with Pigsy and Sandy, just in case his delivery vehicle breaks in the middle of the road or a something start malfunctioning in the noodle store). As we can see, he works more in the hardware part.

• He likes to collect the old pieces of old devices that people throw away in the city's old graveyard. It's like a type of recycling. (That's also how he find the Monkey king's staff but that is a thing I will tell in details in another day--)

• He loves to draw!!! Hooray!!! He also likes to play games. Is always playing video games with his best friend, Mei, on the arcade or online.

✦ Mei, The White Horse Dragon Girl

• She's a programmer/developer of softwares (Yes I know that in I drawing I said she's a "hacker but a bit clumsy" but actually i wanted to say shes a programmer. I was sleepy, it was 2 am, and my brain wasn't braining 😰😰😰---) with a few knowledge about hardwares. She created her technological helmet system with MK's help. (Her helmet it's similiar to Iron man's helmet from inside.)

• She built her own motorcycle, again with MK's help. She participates a lot motorcycles race just for funsies.

• Loves to play games. I guess I could say she is quite of a professional gamer? She play to win. But when she is playing with MK or with other friends, she doesnt care losing or winning, she only cares about enjoying some quality time with them.

✦ Liu'er Mihou, The Six Eared Macaque.

• Pretty much same as the original Macaque. (Lost his eye in the past with a fight against Sun Wukong. Omg betrayal. Yknow the deal-)

• Here he is a Hacker/Cracker.

"But what is a cracker?" You may ask. Now it's time for my nerd/TI studant side take over. A cracker it's a mean hacker. The cracker breaks/attacks the systems and webs for their own benefit, which it's for illegal purposes. Now a Hacker it's actually a job, which their purpose its to find the security breaches and ways to how break it, so then they can make the security stronger and prevent invasions/attacks at the system.

With that being said, Macaque is a hacker/cracker. So he makes defense systems to himself and breaks into other systems for illegal purposes.

• He got these gloves that helps him hack things better, he created it himself. He create floating holograms like it's a tablet screen and can hold on these holograms using these gloves. With a simple touch he can steal database from a device and hack it's system. (He can hack machines, computers, tech weapons and even the light system.)

• He got his shadow magic too, same as the original one. Shadow clones, shadow portals... but he kinda makes a fusion between his magic and the technology he invented to himself. (Before anyone say it. YES! I got heavily inspired by Sombra from Overwatch. 😔)

✦ The Monkey King, Sun Wukong

• Yeah, the Monkey king. The great sage equal to heaven. The silly who made a havoc on heaven---

• HE GOT THAT HUGE MECHA WE SAW IN THE ANIMATED SERIES BECAUSE HE DOESNT LIKE USING HIS KAIJU FORM !!!

But he doesnt use the mecha much. It has been CENTURIES since he last use it. Now MK is the one who uses it because he is Sun Wukong's successor.

• That's not his "Monkey King" royal clothes. It just some casual/comfy clothes to use in everyday life.

• He already knew who MK was. MK is a stone Monkey just like himself. Wukong have been watching the kid grow up from far. He grow a bit attached to the boy.

Sun Wukong surely wasn't expecting to MK being able to lift his golden staff, so he think in the opportunity to make him his sucessor and teach him how to use his new powers. (Yes, I was lisiting to "the horse and the infant" song. How did you kn--)

Oh God. That explanation was long.

✦ Welp, that's all for today!

I will post more stuff about the AU in the future. And I still need to think a name for it...

It is clear I got heavily inspired by Cyberpunk, techwear, overwatch, New Gods: Nezha reborn, Arcane and other stuff. I'm sorry, BUT I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THAT AESTHETIC AND VIBES!! HHHHHHH-

✦ I'm a huge nerd. 🤓

[auideas]

Ermmm sorry if this is weird but do u maybe have any like, ““original”” cyberpunk prompts? I want to write something cyberpunk for an au but I just don’t have any ideas right now no matter how long I brainstorm

Exploring Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a very unique genre, which is why so many people are both attracted to it and stumped when attempting to develop plots within an unknown world. Think of Black Mirror created by Charlie Brooker (TV show), Blade Runner written by Philip K. Dick (a movie based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a classic Cyberpunk novel), Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (modern Cyberpunk novel), etc. -- each of these were incredibly influential in their own right, but they all also build their worlds gradually while having a single easy-to-explain concept that can spawn an entire universe. To be more specific, each story establishes an issue created by an advanced society ignorantly abusing technology, then allow their characters to explore that problem and try to find a solution in a manner that isn't explicitly black or white for society as a whole, but every shade of grey.

For Black Mirror, each episode anthologically builds upon a high-tech future within the same universe and explores how its characters interact with problems created by new pieces of said technology, both good and bad.

For Blade Runner, the story establishes that androids seem to be malfunctioning, but the bounty hunter charged with hunting them down discovers that the true issue lies in society's understanding of what it means to be human.

For Altered Carbon, the novel explores the issue derived from the obscene length of time it would take for humans to travel between planets stretched across the universe, then dives into more detail regarding how a solution has been abused.

How to Construct a Cyberpunk Concept

What we'd recommend is to start by asking the right questions and looking in the right places. Black Mirror takes its inspiration from a variety of technology, both new and old; Blade Runner explores the idea of AI and androids during the 80's when robotics was on the forefront of innovation; Altered Carbon took note of our increasing ability to travel in an interstellar fashion, then posed a simple question regarding the limits of humanity (specifically, time).

This may sound strange, but the best thing you can do is seek out trends online and scientific journals about new breakthroughs, then ask questions about what may go wrong. For example, an old post we featured here on AUideas that has since been removed from ~2017 because it's in the process of being developed into a script (sorry guys, our bad!) called Dreamscape Co. uses this exact method. When the prompt was made, Admin M was in the process of reading a scientific journal about how neurologists had been able to project a person's thoughts into an image. Although the technology was rudimentary at the time, Admin M posed the question "if dreams can be viewed, what if dreams can be watched in real time with a high quality image? What if they could be immersive? What would that industry look like? Who would pay how much to see a certain person's dreams?" This spun out into a sweeping cyberpunk mini-series, yet came from a simple news article.

Some Cyberpunk Inspiration

When performing a quick search, some amazing ideas seemed to jump out from technology news headlines these past couple weeks alone:

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (FLC) Technology Being Used in 3D Displays

Unlike holograms, this technology uses liquid crystals that exhibit spontaneous polarization, meaning their orientation can be influenced by an electric field. They're high-speed, low-power, and have innumerable applications in the future. So, what could go wrong?

How could this technology impact the medical field? Although this may not be possible, consider what could occur if FLCs were injected into human bodies and influenced by electric fields to perform different tasks and functions, such as replacing an organ, attacking cancer cells, etc. How could such a technology be abused or go wrong? How many could die with a simple pulse, like an EMP?

Real-Life Freeze Ray Technology Created for the US Airforce

This technology hasn't been developed to be used as weaponry, but instead to replace large amounts of coolant that must be used on space and air crafts to prevent the machinery from overheating (coolant is heavy and can reduce efficiency yet is absolutely necessary due to the fact that space is a vacuum and therefore does not cool heat like air would on Earth). This "freeze ray" technology utilizes plasma's strange property that seems to break the second law of thermodynamics: it chills down when touching another object before heating up, which experts have proposed is because it vaporizes the ultra-thin layer of carbon and water on an object upon contact, similar to how water evaporates off your skin when stepping out of a pool. The question must be asked: how could such technology be used for not just utilitarian means, but outside of the Airforce's intentions?

Perhaps the technology could be manipulated and over-chill an aircraft, or otherwise damage internal engineering.

Consider its potential applications here on Earth: what could benefit from being chilled with something light-weight and low-power? How could it be integrated into homes? What could be disastrously destroyed with such technology?

Breakthrough in Enhanced Geothermal Systems Technology May Completely Replace Carbon Energy Sources

Google and Fervo have successfully developed geothermal technology that has increased its efficiency and broke records by changing existing rock formations in the Earth's crust. For a natural geothermal energy system to produce electricity, it has to have the right amount of heat, fluid, and rock permeability -- these Goldilocks conditions can be difficult to find 'in the wild'. However, this new Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) targets the most-easily found aspect (rocks with high heat) then creates the necessary permeability artificially by drilling to the intended rock formation and injecting fluid to create fractures in the rock, achieving the necessary Goldilocks conditions. Sure, this may be carbon-free energy, but what would happen if this were employed on a mass scale?

When energy is prioritized by a high-tech society over food and water, how could citizens gain access to those resources?

What long-term effects could such a system have on the Earth as a whole? Could the ground become unstable? Maybe earthquakes crumble city after city? Maybe the entire Earth's crust loses its integrity and disintegrates, pulling only a lucky few deep underground and forcing them to survive off the left over fluid injected into the Earth's crust and whatever they can find.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see from above, there's a crazy amount of inspiration that can be drawn from current technology events. What's important to remember is that yes, we've been talking about complicated technology, but only you have to understand how it functions in your universe down to the molecule, not your audience. Deep technology topics can be dry to a certain extent, and over-explaining your world can be damaging to your story. Explanations regarding how technology works in each of the stories we discussed is limited for that same reason (Black Mirror's overarching concepts, specifics about how Blade Runner's Replicant technology are rarely discussed, etc.). Leave some mystery surrounding how your cyberpunk world functions and allow how your characters room to breathe and interact with that world -- it can speak for itself. Your audience may first love the idea behind your story, but what they'll remember and relate to is how your protagonists and antagonists suffer and prevail within your universe.

We hope this answered your question, and feel free to follow up if you'd like some more guidance and advice on how to construct your Cyberpunk story! In addition, feel free to check out our other post which outlines more information on how to build a Cyberpunk world.

Now get to writing, and have an awesome week!

-- Admin M x

[human-allergy]

Daily Lives of Jujutsu High Students

Time set in around 2006-2007.
This story tells the daily lives and youthful troubles of four students from a certain year at Tokyo Jujutsu High.

Various x F. Reader!

Other chapters: 01

02 - Online Chatting Requires Caution

Although the curriculum at Tokyo Jujutsu High is different from other schools, it covers basic subjects such as Japanese, mathematics, science, and social studies to ensure students' comprehensive development. With the rapid development of information technology, the use of computers has also increased. In order to prevent students from becoming too disconnected from the non-sorcerer world, the school has recently added a new subject - Computer Class!

However, only a few students take this class seriously. Most students use computer class time to play games. Unfortunately, this has led to many students downloading pirated games from illegal websites, resulting in a large number of infected computers at the school. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call the computer room a den of viruses.

"Darn it!" You mutter as you stare at the blue screen of the computer. "This one got infected too!"

"Forget about playing World of Warcraft," Gojo, sitting next to you, says. "I heard there's something popular these days that everyone is playing."

You turn your head and look at Gojo curiously. "What is it?"

"It's a random chat room," Gojo explains. "You can go in and have random video chats with people from other countries."

"Really? Let's give it a try then!"

Without hesitation, Gojo types a string of English letters into the search engine, and the computer quickly loads a website with a simple design. The website's name is written in large letters in the upper left corner, and there are two button options below it.

"You can choose to use text or video," Gojo says.

"It would be too embarrassing to start with video on the first try. Let's go with text," you say.

Gojo slides the mouse and clicks on the button labeled "TEXT."

With a click on the "TEXT" button, the page turns into a chat interface. There's a message box at the top with the words "Matching now..." displayed. Within a few seconds, a new pop-up message appears saying, "Start chatting!"

Excitedly, you pat Gojo on the shoulder and exclaim, "Oh, we've got a match!"

Gojo, with a disdainful snort, says, "You're getting excited so easily. You really are an inexperienced bumpkin."

Ignoring Gojo's sarcasm, you focus your attention on the computer screen. Another message pops up in the chat interface, displaying the username of the matched person.

Florida Man:Hi

"Oi, oi!" You point at the chat box, looking at Gojo in panic. "He said hi! What should we do?!"

"Calm yourself, Just reply to him!" Gojo says dismissively.

"Um, then..."

You type a sentence on the keyboard, a versatile English phrase that you've been using from elementary school to now, guaranteed to be appropriate in any situation:

You: Hello, nice to meet you and you^_^?

The system immediately displays the message, "The other person has left the chat room."

"Damn, are you a grade schooler?!" Gojo curses.

"Well, how else should I respond?!" you retort, displeased.

"Let me handle it. You're still too inexperienced."

With that, Gojo starts a new match with another chat partner.

You: Hi^_^!

The dark urge: Hello~

The dark urge: mf?

As you and Gojo look at the newly popped-up chat box, both of you have a puzzled expression on your faces.

"What does 'mf' mean?" Gojo asks.

You ponder for a moment, then suddenly have an epiphany. "I know! It's probably short for 'male or female.'"

"Oh! You're quite smart!" Gojo compliments.

You run your hand through your hair and raise your nose, saying, "Duh."

Then you start typing on the keyboard again.

You: f

The dark urge: m34 horny?

"'Horny'? What does that mean?" This time it's your turn to ask.

"Hold on, let me get someone who's good at English." As soon as Gojo finishes speaking, he pulls Geto, who was sitting in the front row, engrossed in watching a pirated version of "Naruto," to the back of the classroom.

"What idiotic thing are you two up to again?" Geto says, while being pushed by Gojo towards the computer.

"Suguru, can you help us translate this message into Japanese?" you point at the English message that both you and Gojo couldn't understand.

"You guys are really troublesome," even though Geto complains, he still looks at the text in the chat box. "Oh, this means—'Do you want to get naughty?'"

Just as Geto finishes speaking, the chat room immediately receives a barrage of messages all at once.

The dark urge: I wanna f___ u so damn hard kitten

The dark urge: i wanna lick u so hard that you start peeing uncontrollably babygurl

The dark urge:*babygirl

The dark urge: let me see ur p___

"Wait, what is he saying?" You feel a sense of shock as the messages keep coming in.

The dark urge: wanna s___ my hard disco stick?

The dark urge: horny?

The dark urge: horny?

"Oi! Is this person insane?" Gojo also appears astonished.

However, Geto remains unfazed and calmly translates every word and phrase from the stranger's messages into Japanese. "He's saying he wants to f___ you hard, then wants to lick you until you start losing control, and he wants to see your ___, and then asks you to look at his ___."

"So disgusting, so disgusting, so disgusting!" You cross your arms in front of your chest, feeling as if you've been sexually harassed by the online user. Goosebumps immediately form on your arms, and your mind feels like it's being bitten and itchy, as if by countless ants.

Gojo keeps clicking the refresh and match buttons while frowning, saying, "Next one, next one!"

Geto simply shrugged, seemingly unfazed. "You should expect to encounter weirdos like this when you play these chat matching games."

"That's not an excuse for harassing others online!" you replied without hesitation.

The next few matches were almost all starting with the phrase "Horny?" In fact, as soon as you told them you were male, they would immediately leave the chat room. It felt like a complete adult chat room, as if all the horny foreigners had gathered in one place.

After two days of browsing this website with Gojo, you both learned a lot of English words and phrases that kids your age shouldn't be learning. Your English vocabulary skyrocketed.

"Yo, yo, check it out! Satoru, wanna s___ my d___? Mine d___ is huge!" you imitated the tone of an American hip-hop artist on TV.

"Ayo, Y/n, you wanna [censored] with me? Just [censored] my [censored]," Gojo responded in the same tone.

Listening to your conversation, Geto sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Are these two the future pillars of the Jujutsu world? I'm starting to worry about the future of Jujutsu world."

"Maybe it would be better for me to go to medical school?" Ieiri muttered, unusually serious. "If the Jujutsu world collapses, I can still become a doctor."

Nanami frowned as he listened to your and Gojo's nonsense. "What on earth have these two gotten into?"

As soon as you saw your junior, Nanami, you smiled and reached out your hand to him. "Nanamin! Let's have [censored] with us!"

Gojo also took off his sunglasses, revealing his blue eyes that resembled the clear sky and white clouds. He extended an inviting gesture towards Nanami and said in a slightly exaggerated accent, "Yesu, yesu, Nanami, let us [censored] your [censored]!"

For the next week, Nanami would immediately have a dark expression and run away whenever he saw you and Gojo.

After realizing that chatting about explicit content in the chat room was boring, you and Gojo came up with a new game.

"Hey, how about we wait for a chat and directly give them our English assignments?" you suggested.

"That's a good idea!" Gojo clapped his hands. "So, you do have a brain hidden under that skull of yours."

"Shut up, or I'll cut off your [Censored]." you threatened.

You thought Gojo would be scared after hearing your words, as that area is of great importance to men, almost as much as their life. However, Gojo not only wasn't scared, but he even blushed and said shyly, "Oh, if you want to see it, just say it directly, no need to be so subtle."

Your mind couldn't come up with any other words. You really weren't good at dealing with Gojo.

Instead of wasting precious time in computer class playing around with Gojo, you quickly posted the English assignment question in the chat room.

John: m 22

You: Which of the following is the correct definition of the word "ephemeral"?

A) Long-lasting

B) Temporary

C) Permanent

D) Reliable

John: B

Impressed by the swift response from the user named John, you exclaimed, "This foreigner's English is really impressive!"

"Idiot, what did you expect? He's a foreigner, of course his English is good," Gojo said.

"So let's quickly give few more questions to him!" you exclaimed excitedly, holding your English assignment in your hand.

As a result, the two of you used the chat room as a tool for completing your assignments, and the foreigner on the other side genuinely explained the questions in English.

"What should we do? He seems like a smart and handsome guy," you daydreamed, imagining a man with a handsome face, flowing golden hair, and a smooth British accent.

"Get real, Y/n," Geto's cold voice mercilessly shattered your imaginary image of the handsome man. "How could someone like that play in a random chat room?"

"No, you're totally wrong, Suguru," you immediately retorted. "Even a beauty like me is playing in this kind of random chat room."

Geto and Gojo looked at you with disdainful expressions.

"You are too full of yourself." Gojo said.

Just as you were about to say something, a new message appeared in the chat room.

John: So that's all?

You: Yeah! Thanks ;-)

John: It's not a big deal.

John: Cam?

"Cam?" Gojo paused for a moment. "Does that mean video chat?"

"Quick! I want to see what that person looks like!" you eagerly said.

"But...is it okay to—"

You interrupted Gojo's words and impatiently shouted, "Let me see my future husband already!"

Reluctantly, Gojo opened the video chat, but what appeared on the screen was the other person's genitals, and they were in an erect state.

"There you go!" Gojo frowned, pointing at the bright red and erect disco stick. "I told you, these people are abnormal! They're nothing but sex-starved beasts!"

You silently stared at the computer screen and after a while, said with a serious expression, "Seems pretty big."

"It is indeed quite big, estimated to be around 8 inches. The first time must be painful," Ieiri commented, appearing out of nowhere.

Gojo snorted disdainfully. "But it's still far inferior to mine."

"Really?" You remained skeptical and to confirm whether Gojo was really as impressive as he claimed, you looked at Geto and asked, "Suguru, is what he said true?"

Geto's face twitched. "Why are you asking me?"

"Because you and Satoru are close male friends. Don't guys usually compare each other's [censored]?" you asked, tilting your head.

"That's absolutely not true!" Geto shouted in frustration. "And where the hell did you hear about such things anyway?"

"Oi, you brats."

At that moment, a voice that didn't belong to any of the four of you spoke up.

You and the others mechanically turned your heads to see Yaga Masamichi, your homeroom teacher, standing behind you four, glaring at you four with anger.

"The computer teacher reported to me that you're often not paying attention in class, so I came to see what's going on. Turns out, you're all using the computers for these kinds of websites during class! Each of you will write a reflective essay of no less than a thousand words for me. It must be submitted by Friday, and if it's late, you'll have to add five hundred words! Understand?"

Under the absolute authority of your homeroom teacher, you four dared not rebel and could only nod obediently.

From that day on, you were haunted by the shadow of these chatting rooms. Whether it was the reflective essays that Yaga-sensei relentlessly returned or John's massive cannon, every time you thought about it, you felt like peeing yourself.

※※※

Epilogue:

Many years later, even though you had long graduated from Jujutsu High, and many of your friends had already carried away by the flowing river of time over the past decade, you, the old classmates, still kept in touch and occasionally gathered for meals.

Tonight, you all met at an izakaya as usual. The attendees included you, Gojo, Ieiri, Nanami, Ijichi, and Utahime and Mei Mei, who were several years ahead of you.

Since Gojo didn't like to drink and Ijichi had to drive, only you, Ieiri, Nanami, Utahime, and Mei Mei ordered alcohol, while the other two opted for non-alcoholic beverages.

You looked at the melon soda, french fries, and fried chicken in front of Gojo and couldn't help but mock, "Satoru, this won't do. What if your future father-in-law is a heavy drinker? You'll have to drink then, right? Practice your tolerance now and finish this bottle of vodka in one gulp!"

You raised the transparent glass bottle in your hand and placed it in front of Gojo, who then returned the bottle to you. "Instead of worrying about my future father-in-law, why don't you worry about yourself first?" he said. "Isn't your mom pressuring you? Miss still single at 27 years old."

As soon as this topic came up, you let out a groan and covered your head with both hands. "Ah, please don't mention it anymore! My mom recently forced me into a blind date!" Then you released your hands and looked at Nanami, who was sipping whiskey, with a serious expression. "Nanamin, why don't we get married?"

"No, thank you," Nanami refused without hesitation.

Laughter immediately erupted from the table, with Gojo being the loudest of them all.

"Of course, Nanami mercilessly rejecting you again!" Gojo exclaimed loudly, as if afraid others wouldn't hear.

"You're not doing much better than me either! Isn't your mom pressuring you to get married? Saying it's time to continue the Gojo lineage and produce another Six Eyes successor. I heard all of this from my mom," you glared angrily at Gojo, then turned to Utahime sitting next to you and deliberately spoke in a dejected tone, "Forget about Satoru, but why are you laughing too, Utahime?"

Utahime wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye and chuckled, saying, "Sorry, sorry. No matter how many times I hear it, it's still funny."

"Sigh, go ahead and laugh. You won't be laughing when I marry some old, greasy geezer," you said.

"You don't have to be so despairing, Y/n," Mei Mei said. "Marrying an old geezer has its benefits. After all, the old geezer will die soon, and then you'll inherit his fortune."

"I think the same," Ieiri, who had already finished a large glass of beer, nodded.

"But I want someone who's handsome, whose parents died early, and who has a family fortune," you said.

Gojo laughed again. "Aren't you describing Batman?"

"Haha, very funny," you replied sarcastically.

"Let me tell you guys," Utahime said, "I actually met a cute guy on a dating app recently."

"Huh? A dating app? Isn't that for sex or something?"

Upon hearing your blunt remark, Nanami and Ijichi, who were drinking at the time, both choked and coughed several times.

"But I still prefer getting to know people proactively," you said with a smile. "The connection between people is still more important, hahaha!"

"Y/n is right," Gojo crossed his arms and nodded. "I also prefer genuine connections, ahahaha!"

That night, as soon as you returned home, you immediately registered an account on the dating app and matched with a guy. You started chatting.

You: Hi there, I'm from Tokyo 😊😊

Infinity: Hi👋🏻 I'm also in Tokyo, what a coincidence~

You: Really? What are your interests?

Infinity: I like reading books in my free time, and I also play the violin when I have the chance.

You: Violin? That's impressive~ 🤭

You: So, what do you like to eat?

Infinity: I have a sweet tooth, I drink my bubble tea with full sugar, and I put eight cubes of sugar in my coffee. I'm also the Japan's second-best fan of buttered potatoes. I don't smoke or drink. I sleep at 11 p.m. and make sure to get less than 8 hours of sleep every day. Before bed, I always have a glass of warm milk and do 20 minutes of stretching. Once I get into bed, I immediately suffer from insomnia. I stay up all night until morning, but I never carry fatigue and stress into the next day. Doctors say I'm perfectly normal.

You: Wait a minute.

You: Horny?

Infinity: GOD DAMN

These are the conversations you and Gojo had with strangers on that chat website during your computer class:

[dragonsdomain]

Blob Ghost Supreme chapter 4

AO3

Chapter 3

The colosseum was packed when it came time for the final battle. Eager ghosts were pressing in from all sides, forming a writhing dome of ghosts all trying to press towards the front. Walker's police ghosts had to be working overtime to maintain a shield around the arena to keep any ghosts from pressing too close.

Sam and Tucker probably would have had a very hard time seeing the fight if they hadn't been inexplicably invited into the fancy leader booth.

Tucker looked over at Sam with his eyebrows up high. What did she think about this? He was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Sam shrugged. So she wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Tucker sneered at her for being a hoity-toity rich girl.

Sam sneered back at him for insinuating that this had anything to do with that, and really, shouldn't he just be being more grateful? Be polite, Tucker.

Tucker rolled his eyes. Fine.

Tucker turned to the tall clock man beside him. He was apparently the Observants' boss who he'd heard about. "So. Who're you rooting for?"

Sam snorted, covering her face, and Tucker raised an eyebrow at her. If she was going to be judging him for committing high society faux pas, the least she could do was telepathically tell him what he was doing wrong.

Clock man, ahem, Clockwork, laughed. "It would arouse a great deal of trouble if I were to claim anything other than impartiality. Though I can guess who you are rooting for."

Sam looked up again. "If I may, how did you know Tucker and I knew Phantom? We didn't even know back then."

Clockwork's eyes twinkled knowingly. "Time is irrelevant for me. I have forgotten more things than either of you have ever known."

Tucker grinned. "Is that really something to brag about, Grandpa?"

Sam choked down a laugh, which somewhat stifled the effects of her pointedly elbowing him. "Sorry about my friend. He doesn't mean any disrespect."

Clockwork shapeshifted into a young man. "No worries. It's refreshing."

Sam coughed awkwardly. "Do you know much about the other finalist? I'm afraid I haven't heard much about them." Sam neglected to mention that she and Tucker hadn't watched any matches which didn't have Danny in them.

"He's rather mysterious," Clockwork said, but there was a knowing twinkle in his eye. "He showed up through a portal the day before the tournament, and quickly established himself as one of the most brutal and promising competitors. His skills are quite impressive. I know many ghosts in the audience are rooting for him."

Sam rolled her eyes, muttering to herself. "Power this, skills that. Isn't trial by combat archaic?"

Clockwork laughed, and Sam blushed. Tucker smirked at her. "Many ghosts believe power is related to the depth of one's connection to the ghost zone," Clockwork explained. "Therefore, the ghosts with the most power will be the ones with the strongest connection to it. Usually, blob ghosts are known to take on a weak appearance because they're close to passing on. Those types of souls have little reason to develop any power or reputation. A lack of resolve."

Sam glanced out at the throngs of ghosts in the audience. "I guess that'd explain why people don't really want a blob ghost on the throne, because they'd expect him to leave them before long."

Clockwork nodded. "Yes, likely. Though there are also reasons they're sensitive about the matter. Ghosts care greatly about appearance and change theirs to match how they wish to present themselves."

Tucker frowned. "But we haven't seen any ghosts doing that." He glanced up. "No, wait! Skulker!"

Clockwork chuckled. "Usually it's accomplished through magic, not technology, so it'd be less noticeable. But yes."

Sam started out across the audience, eyebrows furrowed. "Wait, so... if what Skulker did was common... how many of the ghosts out there..." She whipped back towards Clockwork. "Is this common knowledge? Are you supposed to be telling us this?"

Clockwork waved her off. "I can tell anyone whatever I please. Now take a seat. The final round is about to begin."

Sam pulled back and plopped down into her seat.

Tucker leaned over to her and whispered. "What did you mean? I'm confused."

Sam shook her head. "I don't know. It's a long-shot. I'm probably wrong."

Tucker's eyes narrowed. "Isn't that what we thought about Phantom having something to do with Danny?"

Sam shushed him. "Not so loud! I don't know." She sighed. "I'm just wondering, I guess, how many of these ghosts are hiding something?"

"Something like..." Tucker prompted.

Sam frowned, then whispered in Tucker's ear.

He pulled away from her, wearing a baffled grin. "That is crazy. It'd be hilarious if you were right."

Sam shrugged. "Well I'm probably not. Now let's watch this battle. Let's hope Danny wins instead of this nasty-sounding other guy."

...

Danny clenched his jaw as the gate opened into the arena, and he and his opponent both floated out.

His opponent was large, but in a way that was far more solid than the tornado from the qualifying round. He was shaped like a muscular human, but his skin was blue like a corpse, and blue fire consumed his head in place of hair. His gaze rose from the ground, and locked with Danny's. It stabbed into him, the sharp, uncanny smile, the red eyes that looked so sickeningly familiar. Danny had some sense that he'd met this ghost before, that he hated him, that he was afraid of him.

"Welcome, denizens of the ghost zone, to the final battle of the Ghost King Tournament! Blob Ghost Phantom versus Dark Dan!"

Dan lunged. He was where Danny was in an instant, and his clawed hands whipped the air inches from his face.

Danny pulled back, zipping towards the opposite side of the arena again to get a little space to think, but after only another instant Dan was on him again, grabbing at the air he barely halted before. Danny put up a ghost shield to block Dan's claws and ecto-blasts, but Dan grabbed his shield with him in it and pounded it against the wall only three times before it shattered, leaving Danny breathless.

Danny slipped out of the way again just before Dan could grab him. He started darting erratically through the air to try to keep away from Dan, and it worked for a couple of seconds until an ectoblast hit him. It flung Danny against the wall, but he bounced off of it harmlessly.

Dan frowned when he saw that Danny was fine, and Danny rushed out of the way again. He finally managed to pivot and get a few shots in as he flew away, but Dan dodged two of them harmlessly and blocked the third with what looked like his bare hand. Danny gulped and continued trying to avoid Dan's shots. He needed a second to think.

Dan's fist hit him from the side, launching Danny into the wall. Danny bounced off of it and onto the floor, and he pulled up spitting sand out of his mouth.

"So that meager form did have one advantage after all, does it?" Dan said, cracking his knuckles. "Interesting."

What did he mean did? Danny was right here! Maybe Dan wasn't talking about him at all.

Danny fired off some shots of frost, but Dan broke through each one with relative ease. Danny continued his game of keep-away while he tried to charge up an especially powerful blast of ice, though when he managed to fire it off, Dan dodged out of its way. Danny gritted his teeth. How was he supposed to beat this ghost? This was so frustrating!

Danny started curling power around his space core, channeling its destructive force and creating another black hole.

Dan flew right up to the hole easily and extinguished it between his fingers with a condescending smirk. He blew away the smoke on them.

Danny froze. "What?!"

Dan smirked. "Oh, my pathetic, inferior self. Let me show you how it's done."

Dan brought his hands together and pulled them apart to create a black hole of his own. Danny's eyes widened as the circumference of the hole in turn grew larger and larger.

"What are you doing?" Danny screamed as he pushed himself against the wall as far from the ball as possible. "You'll destroy the arena!"

"If that's what it takes," Dan said casually.

Danny set his jaw in determination, then surged toward Dan's black hole like the other ghost had just a second ago. He opened his mouth wider than he ever thought was possible and swallowed the black thing whole.

Dan stared at him dubiously. Danny stared back, hoping his chest wasn't about to implode.

After a few seconds of them staring at each other and the audience staring at them, nothing had happened, and the ghosts in the stands let out a collective sigh of relief.

Danny opened his mouth to yell at Dan again, but the force of the black hole suddenly blasted forth out of it as a void-colored laser, directly in Dan's face. Danny tried to force his jaw shut; he wasn't trying to kill anyone, whatever this was, but it took several seconds before he was able to.

When the power finally depleted, Danny could see that the arena had finally met its match. A hole had been burned clean through it and the hall behind it, with the pale green of the ghost zone sky visible at the other end. Danny gulped. "Dan?"

There was silence for a second. Then a small, round shape pushed out of the wreckage at the end of the tunnel, steaming. Danny squinted. It looked like a large green water balloon. It looked like him.

Dan the blob ghost floated dazedly out of the tunnel, then flopped to the ground on the edge of the arena.

Danny blinked, looking around at the audience. That wasn't real, right?

Up in the fancy booth, the two familiar figures of Sam and Tucker stood up and started to applaud. No one else followed, the entire audience held in stunned silence.

The announcer Observant was frantically whispering to the other Observants beside him. Finally he spoke. "So, um. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. Dark Dan was a blob ghost this entire time. How cowardly of him to hide it! Surely no one else would be able to relate to something so foolish—"

Clockwork took the microphone from the Observant's hand. "On the contrary, I think we can all learn from this. While some ghosts like Dan and Skulker may disguise their true self, it is the one who showed the truth despite its humility who ultimately won this tournament."

Clockwork swept his arms wide towards the audience. "For too long we've assumed that a ghost's appearance defines them. We have passed off blob ghosts as weak, to be ignored and forgotten. But as we've seen today, that belief does not hold water. It is an impression of a more ignorant time. In fact, perhaps a small appearance, rather than demonstrating any kind of weakness, shows confidence, and a strength more than any other."

Hushed murmuring trickled through the audience, ghosts looking at each other in doubt. Sam and Tucker had stopped clapping when Clockwork spoke, and now Sam was glancing around anxiously as Tucker attempted to give Danny an encouraging smile.

Johnny 13 jumped up onto the wall and pumped a fist in the air. "Hail King Phantom!" he screamed, then, with a pop, turned into a small, dark green blob ghost.

Several members of the crowd gasped.

Ember McLain hovered above the crowd and thrust her guitar into the air. "Hail King Phantom!" and she shapeshifted into a squishy blue fireball.

Danny's jaw dropped. Her too? How many of them were secretly blob ghosts?

One by one, each of Ember's bandmates also floated up and turned into blob ghosts of varying colors. Danny could only stare. The murmurings of the audience members had taken on a different tone, them turning to each other with looks on their faces not of shame or anger, but of awe.

A couple of ghosts started to filter away. What, were they blob ghosts too and didn't want to show it?

Those who remained, though, gradually started to also turn into blob ghosts. Danny recognized several he knew. The vine ghost from the first round shapeshifted into a roundish bramble. The tornado ghost turned into a more peaceful-looking sphere of wind. Technus abandoned an avatar he'd been hanging out in to reveal his own sparking blob ghost form.

Danny gaped as the silhouettes of the audience melded into the pleasant appearance of a ball park. Every one of them. "What?" he asked again, dumbly.

A blue blob ghost with a clock pinning a cloak around its neck floated down to him. "Clockwork?" Danny asked, extremely confused.

Clockwork nodded. "We're all blob ghosts. The archaic belief that that appearance was weak has been holding us back for centuries. By winning this tournament, you showed everyone here that they don't need to be ashamed of what they really look like."

"Wait, they all have shapeshifting magic? Does that mean I have shapeshifting magic too?! Teach me how to--"

Tucker crashed into Danny from behind, and Sam was quick to follow, the two pinning him in a hug.

"That was so awesome!" Sam shouted. "I was kind of worried you were about to lose, 'cause apparently he's your evil future self and everything, but you totally kicked his bu—!"

"Evil future self???" Danny spluttered.

"Oh, yeah. Clockwork told us." Tucker said.

Danny stared at him, then said hopefully, "I grow up to look that cool?"

Tucker shrugged. "I mean, I guess? Anyway, you're the ghost king! This is awesome! You're an inspiration!"

Danny looked up at the crowds of blob ghosts floating around each other joyfully. So everything they'd been saying about him had been because they were just ashamed themselves. And now they finally felt proud enough to take their true forms. They looked so comfortable, so happy.

Danny looked back at Clockwork. "Okay, but seriously. Show me how to shapeshift into something cooler!"

[izicodes]

woah! just saw your bio change to software engineer. how did you transition? is it any different than web dev?

i also went on a TikTok rabbit hole and people are saying it’s useless to learn html/css and it’s not an actual language. honestly idk why I thought it would be easy to learn html > css > javascript > angular > react and somehow land a good paying job…

it’s gonna take YEARS for me to have a career, i feel old… especially with no degree

Hiya! 🩶

This is a long reply so I answered your question in sections below! But in the end, I hope this helps you! 🙆🏾‍♀️

🔮 "How did you transition?"

So, yeah my old job title was "Junior Web Developer" at a finance firm, and now my new title is "Frontend Software Engineer"! In terms of transition, I didn't make too much of a change.

After I quit my old job, I focused more on Frontend technologies that were relevant, so I focused on React.js and Node.js. I used YouTube, books, and Codeacademy. My first React project was >> this Froggie project <<~! Working on real-life projects such as the volunteering job I did (only for a month) where they used the technologies I was learning. So basically I did this:

decides to learn react and node 🤷🏾‍♀️

"oh wait let me find some volunteering job for developers where they use the tech I am learning so I can gain some real-life experience 🤔"

experienced developers in the team helped me with other technologies such as UI tools, and some testing experience 🙆🏾‍♀️

I did the volunteering work for both fun and learning with experienced developers and... I was bored and wanted to feel productive again... 😅

So for transitioning, I focused on learning the new technologies I wanted to work in and got some work experience (though it was volunteering) to back up if I can work in an environment with the tech. I still live with my family so I could do the volunteering job and have time to self-study whilst being okay financially (though I was tight with money haha) 😅👍🏾

🔮 "Is it any different than web dev?"

The old job was focused on using C# and SQL (including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but fairly small) to make the websites, they were fairly basic websites for clients to use just to navigate their information needed. They weren't fancy cool web design because they didn't need to be, which was what made me bored of the job and wanted a change.

I am only a week into the job and have been working on small tickets (features for the site), but I think after a month or two into the job I will make a proper judgment on the difference~! So far, it's kind of the same thing I did in my old job but with new workflow tools, React-based projects, and funny people to work with 😅🙌🏾

🔮 "People are saying it’s useless to learn HTML/CSS and it’s not an actual language."

Yes HTML is a markup language and CSS is a stylesheet but they are the foundation of like 90% of the websites on the internet, I wouldn't ever call them "useless". Frameworks such as React, Django, Flask, etc still require HTML and CSS code to make the website's structure and styling. CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Bootstrap 5 still use CSS as their base/foundation. Not useless at all.

Don't focus on what other people are doing and focus on your own learning. I repeat this all the time on my blog. Just because one or a couple people online said one technology is useless doesn't mean it is (this is applied to most things in tech). Someone told me jQuery was entirely useless and no bother learning it - I did it anyway and it helped me better understand JavaScript. Anyhoo, try things YOURSELF before listening to what people say - make your own judgment. Not going to let a random Tech bro online whine about how annoying Python or C or whatever is to ruin my want to learn something. (This is all coming from a girl who loves web development very much's point of view :D)

🔮 "I thought it would be easy to learn html > css > javascript > angular > react and somehow land a good paying job"

Web Dev route, I love it! That's literally the same steps I would have taken if I had to start again~! For each new tech you learn, make a bunch of projects to 1) prove to yourself that you can apply what you've learned 2) experience 3) fill that portfolio~! 😎🙌🏾

With Angular and React, I would pick one or the other and focus on being really good at it before learning another framework!

I also recommend volunteering jobs, freelancing, helping a small business out with free/paid m

Lastly, you do not need a degree to get a job in Web Development. I mean look at me? My apprenticeship certificate is the same value as finishing school at 18, so in the UK it would be A-Levels, and I completed it at the ripe age of 21! I have no degree, I applied for university and got a place but I will give that space up for someone else, I'm not ready for university just yet! haha... (plus erm it's expensive at the end, what? even for the UK...). Sure, I used to avoid the job postings that were like "You need a computer science degree" but now if I were job searching I would apply regardless.

People switching careers in their 40s going into tech instead are making it, you can switch anytime in your lifetime if you have the means to! (everyone's situation is different I understand).

I'm not too good at giving advice but I hope in the rambling I made some sense? But yeah that's all! 😎

[fatehbaz]

As the Zapatistas say, “walking we ask questions,” [...].

It is about working together, side by side, in common purpose. We try to reach a sense of reciprocity -- we work towards the world we want to see together. [...] [W]e each bring to the table what we can. [...] Solidarity [...], at its best, it is about relationships and becoming [...] people who actually care about each other. In reality, solidarity is a messy and exasperating exercise. [...] There were countless brilliant initiatives and projects that were a credit to national and international solidarity, from introducing potable water systems, solar energy supply, technologically appropriate means of communication, pirate radio, organic horticulture [...]. And of course, there were a lot of unsuccessful and failed ventures, because it was a learning experience [...].

Beyond solidarity, the Zapatistas were planting the seed of Zapatismo and encouraging people to, instead of simply supporting them, “Be a Zapatista wherever you are.” Solidarity as movement building. When asked what the best contribution was that internationals could make to the Zapatista struggle, an old Zapatista back then said, “More Seattles.” A more contemporary version would be “More Black Lives Matter Uprisings.” [...]

---

Within Fortress Europe there are various territorial bases of what might better be described as counter-power. [...]

[I]n Athens, [...] the rebellious neighborhood of Exarchia is home to a large community of Greek and international radicals. [...] The people have created a neighborhood-wide structure to offer support to refugees and migrants and [...] they live together, they eat together and they struggle together. Activists have squatted buildings to provide shelter for those that needed it, food is distributed from various social centers [...], there are free health and education initiatives and resources are shared [...]. Walking around Exarchia [...], you get a palpable sense of everyday solidarity -- not just with the refugees and migrants, but for global social and political movements based in the neighborhood, from Kurds to Palestinians. [...]

For years, Exarchia has been a living, breathing center of counter-power in the [Euro-American] [...] core committed to supporting developments in the periphery in a reciprocal manner. And it’s the threat of a good example, which is why they are faced with unrelenting state repression. Now, because of the rapid gentrification of the area [...] and the rampant commodification of living spaces via [air b and b], it can feel like a territory under siege. [...]

---

Exarchia is not exceptional, there are bases of anti-systemic alternatives all across Europe albeit on a smaller scale and in different forms. I’ve witnessed comparable autonomous projects in, for example, the Connewitz neighborhood in Leipzig, or Vallekas in Madrid. Christiania in Copenhagen is something else -- more of an intentional community -- but shares similar traits. The common factor is the desire to create communal, non-capitalist initiatives that bring people together and foster mutual aid. [...] These are dark days in Europe with the rise of the far right, the climate crisis, the pandemic and gross inequality. What the anti-systemic nodes represent is a radical alternative and a ray of hope.

---

Words of Ramor Ryan as transcribed in an interview conducted by Liam Hough. Published as: Ramor Ryan. “Zapatismo, solidarity and self-governance: a conversation.” ROAR Magazine. 23 March 2022. [Some paragraph breaks and contractions added by me.]

[bemamar]

I am sorry if this ignorant but in my country there’s a common belief that autistic adult people cannot develop adult brain, many times on TV they showed us these type of autistic people who their brain stop developing but after seeing so many autistic on social media I found out that I may had misinformation ever since I was a kid.. I could not found helpful articles because of the lack of awareness here so if it’s ok to ask you why do people share this kind of info and how true it is ?? Going through social media I came with the idea that there was some misunderstanding about this.

               Hey anon, glad you seem to be seeking information. That is... yeah. Definitely a no. There are of course, many other disorders that can happen  alongside autism, just as they can happen with non-autistic people, and those can be of course a challenge, but that doesn’t mean that is the reality of every autistic person, or that those people should be infantilized either. On the contrary, really.

Just to give you my personal experience, I grew up autistic and I didn’t even know it until one year ago, so that might tell you something. I’ve graduated highschool and I have a degree in Architecture and Urbanism. Nowadays I am an English teacher, and I also work with translation, design, publication and selling of books. A lot of autistic people work in very complex industries that take care of things such as infrastructure, health (like vaccines!), technological development, and so on. Others don’t. Others teach, others are amazing artists, others live an academic life, others like working with their hands. That doesn’t mean one is more developed than the other, we’re just different people with different interests, same as anyone. 

This is a very complex subject and I can give you two wonderful channels to get you started if you really want to learn more: Chloé Hayden and Paige Layle who have tons of research on those things.

From my own dedicated research, the central (summarized!!!) points I can give you are these: there are two main reasons (and a consequence), as of my understanding, for why people believe that autistics are only children, that we “disappear” when we grow up, or as you said, that we stay stuck in a childish mental age. 

The first one is that most referenced, known, and used studies for autism are still ones that were done decades ago. Back then, professionals thought only young male (white) boys could be autistic, so all of the stablished research for autism is based on how a very specific demographic could behave, or react, or present the disorder. So if we’re talking about a whole rainbow spectrum, we’ve only ever studied one shade of one color and one length of that color, and nothing else. That’s also the only image that’s ever been projected for people on media, so whenever anyone thinks autism, they think of the caricature of the young white boy who’s nerdy and quiet and lonely and prone to outbursts if upset. 

The second problem is that a LOT of the organizations who claim to study autism to help autistic people, are run by non autistics that have no interests in helping adult autistics, or listening to us, and actually just keep looking for ways to either get rid of it (which would be like trying to get rid of my bisexuality, or the color of my skin) OR they’re trying to identify all of the genetics so they can stop us from being born at all by identifying autism in the womb (eugenics).

The consequence of those things, and of the fact that many autistics have different ways of communicating (like non-verbal autistics, who would communicate via text or other means), means that the people who are actually represented when talking about autism are the non-autistic parents of autistic children. They are the ones the studies, the organizations, the aid etc are meant to help. The parents. And parents have to parent children, not adults. So any articles, any programs to help, any government aid, it’s all aimed at the parents, as though like I said, children grew out of their autism eventually (impossible), or as though, like you said, we didn’t grow up at all. There is a major focus on autism as a burden for the poor neurotypical parents who can’t understand their child, while ignoring the autistic person themselves.

Yes, there are many of us who have more special needs than others, and those should be respected, there are as I’ve said, co-conditions that can occur, there are a lot of us, as I’ve mentioned, that have difficulty speaking up or speaking verbally at all, but not being able to communicate what is on your mind in a way that is comfortable for non-autistic people doesn’t make your mind underdeveloped. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be listened to when decisions are made about your own life, it doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish whatever you want to do with accommodations, and it doesn’t mean you can’t understand the world around you or have amazing talents, or just want to sit on your couch and watch tv and have a regular job. 

We’re people of all kinds because we’re people. We have different needs, and only the people who have them can tell you about that, I could never speak for them, I can only speak of my own needs. But you can research more and learn the nuances I could never put into a singular answer. That’s the gist of it. I hope you do continue to learn! And I wish luck to autistics in your country, I’m sure there are many more of them than you imagine, and there must be communities over there too, because we exist all over the world, and we definitely don’t stop existing or become neurotypicals at 18 years old.

[samueldays]

I am once again recommending Master of Orion (1993).

It's thirty years old, it originally came on floppy discs, and it's really good. The interface is crisp. The ship design system is neat. The technology research system is not your standard tech tree. It has helpful hotkeys like "Indicate next world that has enemy fleet inbound". It has antifeatures like "not doing a Cinematic Camera Pan for several seconds". It has detail while avoiding micromanagement by giving you mostly high-level control, and automatic reassignment of overflow when something like factory construction fills up.

I say it again because of discourse from a mutual's post.

hello gamer. you claim to want "shorter games with worse graphics that are made by people who are paid more to do less". in front of you is itch dot io, which has a "pay what you want" feature,

that… feels like an unfair take?

I don't want the claim as stated, I strongly suspect it's something said because it's catchy more than it's accurate, and I want to dissect its relation to things I do want, like MOO1.

shorter games

No, I want games with less padding.

I want fewer cinematic camera pans, and fewer cutscenes, and less of the dev team showing off their fancy tech demo, and fewer animations in the interface because the interface should have sub-second response time, and less loading time because the game should be smaller, and less grinding unless you're an idle game in which case it should be automated, and I want more automation and macros for things that are a waste of my attention as well as my time. Give me autoresolve for battles with weak enemies. Give me minions that can be sent to do things for me. Give me "repeat until" orders. Give me a dialogue meta-option that says "I've played this before, give me the TL;DR". Give me speed-up and skip buttons.

itch.io games have some of these, but also have less gameplay.

worse graphics

I'm close to agreeing with this, but IMO it's less about the graphics themselves and more about the 50GB graphics package and rendering engine that contemporary games like to include for little to no gameplay improvement, and then that enables lazy devs to think "another 3GB isn't a problem when we're already past 50GB" and the game bloats to 150GB as each dev includes a whole-ass library for one function, and then there's 10GB updates to download repeatedly.

I don't know if this is literally what happened behind the scenes, but a recent game like Baldur's Gate 3 did hit 150GB. Which also brings me to,

people who are paid more

I want developer studios to fire the movie team and redistribute their salary to the rest of the devs, with movie team describing the Thing that 'graphics department' has grown into.

A game like Age of Mythology doing in-engine cutscenes was cool when the engine was primarily a game engine and hands had eight polygons; these days it seems like AAA games also want to be movies and that means turning the game engine into a movie-maker, and hiring an entire movie team to render the 3D model of each character's armpit hair and the physics of how it moves in the wind when the character raises his arm.

Since budget is limited, that movie team comes at the expense of every other aspect of the game, like gameplay, writing, bugtesting, et cetera, and it still won't be as good a movie as an actual movie.

do less

See above. Less padding, less cinema.

[o-blivia]

Should we keep using AI art?

When I first learned that people had programmed computers to make art, my only thought was that it was an impressive accomplishment – a milestone of human technological progress. And to be honest, I didn’t give it much more consideration beyond that. I didn’t even spend much time playing around with any of the programs available for free. 

The criticism I saw at first felt very reactionary and alarmist. Frankly, it sounded a lot like the arguments people have had about any art media going from analogue to digital. Some of it was astoundingly ableist, the implication being that people who see AI art generators as a way to finally be able to make art are just lazy and unwilling to put in the work to get good. A lot more of it came off as snobbish and elitist. I don’t like wading into conversations about what is and isn’t art. Different things resonate with different people, and I’m not interested in gatekeeping creative expression.

While I dismissed those kinds of critiques of AI art, I think it is becoming hard to ignore that there are more pressing criticisms of the technology. They just have a lot less to do with the art itself and everything to how the technology has been developed, and who is benefiting from it.

A look below the surface of AI art

Machine learning has proven to be a powerful tool when it comes to advancing technology. The thing is, for machine learning to work, you need to provide hundreds of thousands of data points. We participate in machine learning every time we look anything up using a search engine. The keywords we enter, the links we click on, how long we interact with a page, are all used to help search algorithms become more effective. 

AI art generators are also dependent on machine learning. It might be naive, but I’m going to assume the original intention was to only use works of art in the public domain to train the AI. While there is no way for the artists to predict that their art would be used in this way, at this point, no one owns their intellectual property anymore. I think there is an argument for the transformative nature of AI art somewhere in there. Regardless, it is hard to say that this would harm anyone.

Now, I’m assuming things started to get murky when it came to automating the process of finding, downloading, and inputting data to train the AI. It would take an unreasonable amount of time to do this without taking into account identifying the artists and getting their consent.

One solution was to allow users to help train the AIs. Many hands make light work, after all. Of course, there’s no one moderating who is uploading what, which invariable means it’s been a total free-for-all. It’s clear that a lot of users aren’t bothering to get consent from the creators of the work they’re uploading. More troublesome are the instances of artists who’ve explicitly denied permission for their art to be used this way, and people doing so anyway. I couldn’t say if it occurred to anyone that some artists might mind having their art used in this way, or if they just didn’t care. I don’t know if intent matters at this point. 

Ever since it became possible to upload images online, art theft has been a problem. This has always been the double-edged sword of a free and open internet. What’s more pernicious about using art theft to train AI, is that once something becomes a data set, there is no extricating it from the system. Sort of like you can’t remove a specific sheep’s wool from the sweater you’re already wearing.

Does this mean the technology is unethical?

There is a simple answer and a more complex answer. Technology in a vacuum cannot be inherently ethical or unethical. It’s the human component that introduces ethical value. We do this in two ways: either in how we create/develop technology, or in how that technology is used. Without humans to create and use technology, it is affectively an inert lump.

That being said, AI art generators are clearly unethical because they were developed on a foundation of art theft. (And, some might argue, designed to replace human artists to fill the ever-growing demand for “content”.) While some have tried to deny that art theft is a component of AI art, the situation over on Artstation has made it clear that unethical practices are ongoing. It is clear that there exists no safeguards to prevent users from inputting art they have no ownership over.

The problem is bigger than AI art generators

When you place AI art generators within the context of Silicone Valley and tech startup culture, it’s not in the least bit shocking that the technology has turned out to be pretty problematic. This is far from the first time that an idealistic technology has ended up having pretty big, negative social consequences. The problems in Big Tech, I think, boil down to who is in the room making the decisions about direction, functionality, and implementation.

Firstly, diversity and the lack thereof, has never not been an issue in Silicone Valley, and by extension, Big Tech. You can find the stats in this report from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The bottom line is that the tech industry skews disproportionately white and male, even more so at the executive level. While the report doesn’t touch on class, we can assume it becomes a factor in who has the ability to amass the necessary venture capital for their startups, which also impacts the kind of perspectives in the room.

Secondly, there is no requirement in IT career development that people be taught ethics, or even just how to self-identify and correct for bias. Without a grounding in ethics, no one is having the very important conversations about the impact of technology on vulnerable populations until it becomes an optics problem. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that most of the time, it doesn’t even occur to question whether a technology should be made at all.

These two problems compound, which results in a seeming inability to predict the social harms of the technology being created. There have been too many instances of hard-coded racial bias in the technology we are becoming more and more reliant on. And until we address both of these issues, that’s not going to change.

Can AI art be salvaged?

What would it take to salvage AI art generators? Probably starting over from scratch and implementing rigorous safeguards to ensure that nothing can be used to train the AI without vetting and obtaining fully informed consent from creators. Do I think that’s going to happen? Probably not.

The sunk-cost fallacy comes into play here. Building any kind of AI is a very expensive and labour intensive venture. It’s a huge ask to get people to dump all that in the garbage and start over completely from scratch.

More over, and this is where my cynicism comes out, there are always going to be people who believe that all means are justified in the name of human progress – even if that means eradicating the human component altogether. And that’s not something I see society evolving past any time soon.

It’s like something out of a novel…

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced AI art is truly Cyberpunk. Not because it’s so high-tech and futuristic, but because it exploits the labour of generations in order to remove the human element of something that is a fundamental aspect of humanity. All so that people, but mainly companies, can benefit monetarily. I’d say that AI art fits in very well in a genre defined by its dehumanizing, high-tech future, don’t you?