#internet document creation

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)

[downthesea]

An Objective Summary of Iskall85’s Video

I am making this summary of Iskall’s claims so that you do not have to watch his video and inadvertently support him. This is an OBJECTIVE summary containing only his points, and leaving my opinions out of it. I must state however that I do not support Iskall. I don’t feel like inserting any more of my opinions into this so as to not get attacked by either side.

TW: MENTIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, DEPRESSION, SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, THREATS

All of the things henceforth stated are ALLEGED, and I, InsoucianceArt, do not necessarily believe or support them.

A Hermit was presented with the allegations and brought it to the other Hermits without Iskall’s knowledge.

The Hermits summoned Iskall for a hearing with a deadline of 1.5 hours (time zones considered).

Iskall had contacted the police and was advised to not comply with the Hermits’ demands. Iskall told the Hermits of this, but they told him that if he didn’t attend the hearing he would be publicly removed from Hermitcraft. 

Iskall resigned.

Iskall has no income, has received hate and threats, has seen no reason to continue living.

The investigation on the rumours and allegations is still ongoing. Iskall was advised not to speak in public, hence why he has only done so now.

Iskall goes through the typical explanation of cancel culture and why things can be blown out of proportion

One of the victims has done this (aka bringing claims of sexual harassment from a content creator) before.

Iskall states that Hermitcraft should have waited.

Iskall has increased the security of his private life.

Iskall compares cancel culture to witch hunts.

Nobody has the right to infringe upon Iskall’s private life.

Hermitcraft was biased when they posted the tweet and subsequently did not moderate the Reddit forum.

One of the Vault Hunters devs has been calling shots and claiming they have taken over the project, all without Iskall’s approval. However, Iskall claims ownership of Vault Hunters, as he owns the rights to it.

The developers have received due compensation for their work on VH. 

5 VH devs wrote a document that, according to Iskall’s solicitor, can be seen as extortion. It demands full ownership of VH, its assets, and its funds. Iskall did not sign this document and sees this as a huge betrayal. These devs are now no longer representing VH or part of Iskall’s team.

Iskall is going to continue work on VH. 

Another spat about cancel culture.

Iskall states the goal of all of this was to “delete him from the internet” and to wreck every opportunity he had/has. He states he will never go that low himself.

Iskall is waiting for the police to finish their investigation. 

Iskall thanks his remaining supporters and says to keep an eye out on his Twitch and YouTube, meaning he will probably return to content creation.

Then he explodes a pile of diorite for some reason idfk man

[ellipsus-writes]

Ellipsus Digest: March 18

Each week (or so), we'll highlight the relevant (and sometimes rage-inducing) news adjacent to writing and freedom of expression.

This week: AI continues its hostile takeover of creative labor, Spain takes a stand against digital sludge, and the usual suspects in the U.S. are hard at work memory-holing reality in ways both dystopian and deeply unserious.

ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is “good at creative writing” (The Guardian)

... Those quotes are working hard.

OpenAI (ChatGPT) announced a new AI model trained to emulate creative writing—at least, according to founder Sam Altman: “This is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI.” But with growing concerns over unethically scraped training data and the continued dilution of human voices, writers are asking… why? 

Spoiler: the result is yet another model that mimics the aesthetics of creativity while replacing the act of creation with something that exists primarily to generate profit for OpenAI and its (many) partners—at the expense of authors whose work has been chewed up, swallowed, and regurgitated into Silicon Valley slop.

Spain to impose massive fines for not labeling AI-generated content (Reuters)

But while big tech continues to accelerate AI’s encroachment on creative industries, Spain (in stark contrast to the U.S.) has drawn a line: In an attempt to curb misinformation and protect human labor, all AI-generated content must be labeled, or companies will face massive fines. As the internet is flooded with AI-written text and AI-generated art, the bill could be the first of many attempts to curb the unchecked spread of slop.

Besos, España 💋

These words are disappearing in the new Trump administration (NYT)

Project 2025 is moving right along—alongside dismantling policies and purging government employees, the stage is set for a systemic erasure of language (and reality). Reports show that officials plan to wipe government websites of references to LGBTQ+, BIPOC, women, and other communities—words like minority, gender, Black, racism, victim, sexuality, climate crisis, discrimination, and women have been flagged, alongside resources for marginalized groups and DEI initiatives, for removal.

It’s a concentrated effort at creating an infrastructure where discrimination becomes easier… because the words to fight it no longer officially exist. (Federally funded educational institutions, research grants, and historical archives will continue to be affected—a broader, more insidious continuation of book bans, but at the level of national record-keeping, reflective of reality.) Doubleplusungood, indeed.

Pete Hegseth’s banned images of “Enola Gay” plane in DEI crackdown (The Daily Beast)

Fox News pundit-turned-Secretary of Defense-slash-perpetual-drunk-uncle Pete Hegseth has a new target: banning educational materials featuring the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His reasoning: that its inclusion in DEI programs constitutes "woke revisionism." If a nuke isn’t safe from censorship, what is?

The data hoarders resisting Trump’s purge (The New Yorker)

Things are a little shit, sure. But even in the ungoodest of times, there are people unwilling to go down without a fight.

Archivists, librarians, and internet people are bracing for the widespread censorship of government records and content. With the Trump admin aiming to erase documentation of progressive policies and minority protections, a decentralized network is working to preserve at-risk information in a galvanized push against erasure, refusing to let silence win.

Let us know if you find something other writers should know about, (or join our Discord and share it there!) Until next week, - The Ellipsus Team xo

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI “art” and uncanniness

TOMORROW (May 14), I'm on a livecast about AI AND ENSHITTIFICATION with TIM O'REILLY; on TOMORROW (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics.

I am, on balance, opposed to AI art, but there are some important caveats to that position. For starters, I think it's unequivocally wrong – as a matter of law – to say that scraping works and training a model with them infringes copyright. This isn't a moral position (I'll get to that in a second), but rather a technical one.

Break down the steps of training a model and it quickly becomes apparent why it's technically wrong to call this a copyright infringement. First, the act of making transient copies of works – even billions of works – is unequivocally fair use. Unless you think search engines and the Internet Archive shouldn't exist, then you should support scraping at scale:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And unless you think that Facebook should be allowed to use the law to block projects like Ad Observer, which gathers samples of paid political disinformation, then you should support scraping at scale, even when the site being scraped objects (at least sometimes):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

After making transient copies of lots of works, the next step in AI training is to subject them to mathematical analysis. Again, this isn't a copyright violation.

Making quantitative observations about works is a longstanding, respected and important tool for criticism, analysis, archiving and new acts of creation. Measuring the steady contraction of the vocabulary in successive Agatha Christie novels turns out to offer a fascinating window into her dementia:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/03/agatha-christie-alzheimers-research

Programmatic analysis of scraped online speech is also critical to the burgeoning formal analyses of the language spoken by minorities, producing a vibrant account of the rigorous grammar of dialects that have long been dismissed as "slang":

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373950278_Lexicogrammatical_Analysis_on_African-American_Vernacular_English_Spoken_by_African-Amecian_You-Tubers

Since 1988, UCL Survey of English Language has maintained its "International Corpus of English," and scholars have plumbed its depth to draw important conclusions about the wide variety of Englishes spoken around the world, especially in postcolonial English-speaking countries:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice.htm

The final step in training a model is publishing the conclusions of the quantitative analysis of the temporarily copied documents as software code. Code itself is a form of expressive speech – and that expressivity is key to the fight for privacy, because the fact that code is speech limits how governments can censor software:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech/

Are models infringing? Well, they certainly can be. In some cases, it's clear that models "memorized" some of the data in their training set, making the fair use, transient copy into an infringing, permanent one. That's generally considered to be the result of a programming error, and it could certainly be prevented (say, by comparing the model to the training data and removing any memorizations that appear).

Not every seeming act of memorization is a memorization, though. While specific models vary widely, the amount of data from each training item retained by the model is very small. For example, Midjourney retains about one byte of information from each image in its training data. If we're talking about a typical low-resolution web image of say, 300kb, that would be one three-hundred-thousandth (0.0000033%) of the original image.

Typically in copyright discussions, when one work contains 0.0000033% of another work, we don't even raise the question of fair use. Rather, we dismiss the use as de minimis (short for de minimis non curat lex or "The law does not concern itself with trifles"):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis

Busting someone who takes 0.0000033% of your work for copyright infringement is like swearing out a trespassing complaint against someone because the edge of their shoe touched one blade of grass on your lawn.

But some works or elements of work appear many times online. For example, the Getty Images watermark appears on millions of similar images of people standing on red carpets and runways, so a model that takes even in infinitesimal sample of each one of those works might still end up being able to produce a whole, recognizable Getty Images watermark.

The same is true for wire-service articles or other widely syndicated texts: there might be dozens or even hundreds of copies of these works in training data, resulting in the memorization of long passages from them.

This might be infringing (we're getting into some gnarly, unprecedented territory here), but again, even if it is, it wouldn't be a big hardship for model makers to post-process their models by comparing them to the training set, deleting any inadvertent memorizations. Even if the resulting model had zero memorizations, this would do nothing to alleviate the (legitimate) concerns of creative workers about the creation and use of these models.

So here's the first nuance in the AI art debate: as a technical matter, training a model isn't a copyright infringement. Creative workers who hope that they can use copyright law to prevent AI from changing the creative labor market are likely to be very disappointed in court:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sarah-silverman-lawsuit-ai-meta-1235669403/

But copyright law isn't a fixed, eternal entity. We write new copyright laws all the time. If current copyright law doesn't prevent the creation of models, what about a future copyright law?

Well, sure, that's a possibility. The first thing to consider is the possible collateral damage of such a law. The legal space for scraping enables a wide range of scholarly, archival, organizational and critical purposes. We'd have to be very careful not to inadvertently ban, say, the scraping of a politician's campaign website, lest we enable liars to run for office and renege on their promises, while they insist that they never made those promises in the first place. We wouldn't want to abolish search engines, or stop creators from scraping their own work off sites that are going away or changing their terms of service.

Now, onto quantitative analysis: counting words and measuring pixels are not activities that you should need permission to perform, with or without a computer, even if the person whose words or pixels you're counting doesn't want you to. You should be able to look as hard as you want at the pixels in Kate Middleton's family photos, or track the rise and fall of the Oxford comma, and you shouldn't need anyone's permission to do so.

Finally, there's publishing the model. There are plenty of published mathematical analyses of large corpuses that are useful and unobjectionable. I love me a good Google n-gram:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fantods%2C+heebie-jeebies&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

And large language models fill all kinds of important niches, like the Human Rights Data Analysis Group's LLM-based work helping the Innocence Project New Orleans' extract data from wrongful conviction case files:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

So that's nuance number two: if we decide to make a new copyright law, we'll need to be very sure that we don't accidentally crush these beneficial activities that don't undermine artistic labor markets.

This brings me to the most important point: passing a new copyright law that requires permission to train an AI won't help creative workers get paid or protect our jobs.

Getty Images pays photographers the least it can get away with. Publishers contracts have transformed by inches into miles-long, ghastly rights grabs that take everything from writers, but still shifts legal risks onto them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/19/reasonable-agreement/

Publishers like the New York Times bitterly oppose their writers' unions:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-union-busting

These large corporations already control the copyrights to gigantic amounts of training data, and they have means, motive and opportunity to license these works for training a model in order to pay us less, and they are engaged in this activity right now:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/technology/apple-ai-news-publishers.html

Big games studios are already acting as though there was a copyright in training data, and requiring their voice actors to begin every recording session with words to the effect of, "I hereby grant permission to train an AI with my voice" and if you don't like it, you can hit the bricks:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

If you're a creative worker hoping to pay your bills, it doesn't matter whether your wages are eroded by a model produced without paying your employer for the right to do so, or whether your employer got to double dip by selling your work to an AI company to train a model, and then used that model to fire you or erode your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

Individual creative workers rarely have any bargaining leverage over the corporations that license our copyrights. That's why copyright's 40-year expansion (in duration, scope, statutory damages) has resulted in larger, more profitable entertainment companies, and lower payments – in real terms and as a share of the income generated by their work – for creative workers.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our book Chokepoint Capitalism, giving creative workers more rights to bargain with against giant corporations that control access to our audiences is like giving your bullied schoolkid extra lunch money – it's just a roundabout way of transferring that money to the bullies:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism/

There's an historical precedent for this struggle – the fight over music sampling. 40 years ago, it wasn't clear whether sampling required a copyright license, and early hip-hop artists took samples without permission, the way a horn player might drop a couple bars of a well-known song into a solo.

Many artists were rightfully furious over this. The "heritage acts" (the music industry's euphemism for "Black people") who were most sampled had been given very bad deals and had seen very little of the fortunes generated by their creative labor. Many of them were desperately poor, despite having made millions for their labels. When other musicians started making money off that work, they got mad.

In the decades that followed, the system for sampling changed, partly through court cases and partly through the commercial terms set by the Big Three labels: Sony, Warner and Universal, who control 70% of all music recordings. Today, you generally can't sample without signing up to one of the Big Three (they are reluctant to deal with indies), and that means taking their standard deal, which is very bad, and also signs away your right to control your samples.

So a musician who wants to sample has to sign the bad terms offered by a Big Three label, and then hand $500 out of their advance to one of those Big Three labels for the sample license. That $500 typically doesn't go to another artist – it goes to the label, who share it around their executives and investors. This is a system that makes every artist poorer.

But it gets worse. Putting a price on samples changes the kind of music that can be economically viable. If you wanted to clear all the samples on an album like Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back," or the Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique," you'd have to sell every CD for $150, just to break even:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/08/creative-license-how-the-hell-did-sampling-get-so-screwed-up-and-what-the-hell-do-we-do-about-it/

Sampling licenses don't just make every artist financially worse off, they also prevent the creation of music of the sort that millions of people enjoy. But it gets even worse. Some older, sample-heavy music can't be cleared. Most of De La Soul's catalog wasn't available for 15 years, and even though some of their seminal music came back in March 2022, the band's frontman Trugoy the Dove didn't live to see it – he died in February 2022:

https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/de-la-soul-trugoy-the-dove-dead-at-54.html

This is the third nuance: even if we can craft a model-banning copyright system that doesn't catch a lot of dolphins in its tuna net, it could still make artists poorer off.

Back when sampling started, it wasn't clear whether it would ever be considered artistically important. Early sampling was crude and experimental. Musicians who trained for years to master an instrument were dismissive of the idea that clicking a mouse was "making music." Today, most of us don't question the idea that sampling can produce meaningful art – even musicians who believe in licensing samples.

Having lived through that era, I'm prepared to believe that maybe I'll look back on AI "art" and say, "damn, I can't believe I never thought that could be real art."

But I wouldn't give odds on it.

I don't like AI art. I find it anodyne, boring. As Henry Farrell writes, it's uncanny, and not in a good way:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

Farrell likens the work produced by AIs to the movement of a Ouija board's planchette, something that "seems to have a life of its own, even though its motion is a collective side-effect of the motions of the people whose fingers lightly rest on top of it." This is "spooky-action-at-a-close-up," transforming "collective inputs … into apparently quite specific outputs that are not the intended creation of any conscious mind."

Look, art is irrational in the sense that it speaks to us at some non-rational, or sub-rational level. Caring about the tribulations of imaginary people or being fascinated by pictures of things that don't exist (or that aren't even recognizable) doesn't make any sense. There's a way in which all art is like an optical illusion for our cognition, an imaginary thing that captures us the way a real thing might.

But art is amazing. Making art and experiencing art makes us feel big, numinous, irreducible emotions. Making art keeps me sane. Experiencing art is a precondition for all the joy in my life. Having spent most of my life as a working artist, I've come to the conclusion that the reason for this is that art transmits an approximation of some big, numinous irreducible emotion from an artist's mind to our own. That's it: that's why art is amazing.

AI doesn't have a mind. It doesn't have an intention. The aesthetic choices made by AI aren't choices, they're averages. As Farrell writes, "LLM art sometimes seems to communicate a message, as art does, but it is unclear where that message comes from, or what it means. If it has any meaning at all, it is a meaning that does not stem from organizing intention" (emphasis mine).

Farrell cites Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie, which defines "weird" in easy to understand terms ("that which does not belong") but really grapples with "eerie."

For Fisher, eeriness is "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI art produces the seeming of intention without intending anything. It appears to be an agent, but it has no agency. It's eerie.

Fisher talks about capitalism as eerie. Capital is "conjured out of nothing" but "exerts more influence than any allegedly substantial entity." The "invisible hand" shapes our lives more than any person. The invisible hand is fucking eerie. Capitalism is a system in which insubstantial non-things – corporations – appear to act with intention, often at odds with the intentions of the human beings carrying out those actions.

So will AI art ever be art? I don't know. There's a long tradition of using random or irrational or impersonal inputs as the starting point for human acts of artistic creativity. Think of divination:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/31/divination/

Or Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies:

http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

I love making my little collages for this blog, though I wouldn't call them important art. Nevertheless, piecing together bits of other peoples' work can make fantastic, important work of historical note:

https://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/famous-anti-fascist-art/heartfield-posters-aiz

Even though painstakingly cutting out tiny elements from others' images can be a meditative and educational experience, I don't think that using tiny scissors or the lasso tool is what defines the "art" in collage. If you can automate some of this process, it could still be art.

Here's what I do know. Creating an individual bargainable copyright over training will not improve the material conditions of artists' lives – all it will do is change the relative shares of the value we create, shifting some of that value from tech companies that hate us and want us to starve to entertainment companies that hate us and want us to starve.

As an artist, I'm foursquare against anything that stands in the way of making art. As an artistic worker, I'm entirely committed to things that help workers get a fair share of the money their work creates, feed their families and pay their rent.

I think today's AI art is bad, and I think tomorrow's AI art will probably be bad, but even if you disagree (with either proposition), I hope you'll agree that we should be focused on making sure art is legal to make and that artists get paid for it.

Just because copyright won't fix the creative labor market, it doesn't follow that nothing will. If we're worried about labor issues, we can look to labor law to improve our conditions. That's what the Hollywood writers did, in their groundbreaking 2023 strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Now, the writers had an advantage: they are able to engage in "sectoral bargaining," where a union bargains with all the major employers at once. That's illegal in nearly every other kind of labor market. But if we're willing to entertain the possibility of getting a new copyright law passed (that won't make artists better off), why not the possibility of passing a new labor law (that will)? Sure, our bosses won't lobby alongside of us for more labor protection, the way they would for more copyright (think for a moment about what that says about who benefits from copyright versus labor law expansion).

But all workers benefit from expanded labor protection. Rather than going to Congress alongside our bosses from the studios and labels and publishers to demand more copyright, we could go to Congress alongside every kind of worker, from fast-food cashiers to publishing assistants to truck drivers to demand the right to sectoral bargaining. That's a hell of a coalition.

And if we do want to tinker with copyright to change the way training works, let's look at collective licensing, which can't be bargained away, rather than individual rights that can be confiscated at the entrance to our publisher, label or studio's offices. These collective licenses have been a huge success in protecting creative workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/26/united-we-stand/

Then there's copyright's wildest wild card: The US Copyright Office has repeatedly stated that works made by AIs aren't eligible for copyright, which is the exclusive purview of works of human authorship. This has been affirmed by courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Neither AI companies nor entertainment companies will pay creative workers if they don't have to. But for any company contemplating selling an AI-generated work, the fact that it is born in the public domain presents a substantial hurdle, because anyone else is free to take that work and sell it or give it away.

Whether or not AI "art" will ever be good art isn't what our bosses are thinking about when they pay for AI licenses: rather, they are calculating that they have so much market power that they can sell whatever slop the AI makes, and pay less for the AI license than they would make for a human artist's work. As is the case in every industry, AI can't do an artist's job, but an AI salesman can convince an artist's boss to fire the creative worker and replace them with AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

They don't care if it's slop – they just care about their bottom line. A studio executive who cancels a widely anticipated film prior to its release to get a tax-credit isn't thinking about artistic integrity. They care about one thing: money. The fact that AI works can be freely copied, sold or given away may not mean much to a creative worker who actually makes their own art, but I assure you, it's the only thing that matters to our bosses.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

[brainpilled-archive]

weird ask but. for context, im an artist with 0 online presence. also anxious 👍 does anyone know if engaging in drama/discourse & having someone essentially smear/accuse you as a rapist. and like... effect your art career (negatively). a massive amt. besides Internet Drama mfers. (one of my worst fears is someone exploiting my dissociative issues (amnesia, etc) and accusing me of doing smth i havent/being someone else im not.)

especially respondig in an "unprofessional* " way, i always get so anxious at how tf im supposed to interact publicly

(*emotional/swearing/from heart) (idk what im doing idk what most ppl do. im so fkciing anxious. what if my natural speech and mannerisms gets me clocked as Unprofessional. or swearing at ppl who consistently harass/smear campaign ME tanks MY art career. what if important ppl believe them, not me, or dont wanna risk doing business w me. What if

Any sort of false accusation can have severe negative effects.

That is why people like Wis and Majora are being so adamant about making their own severe false allegations against Yam, Sawyer, and Cass. Especially Yam, as he's spoken out against her own attackers in recent times, and they want to discredit him.

Because yes, false rape claims especially can ruin a career completely. That is why the victims on this blog are speaking as they are. That is why Wis and Majora are making them to start with.

Reacting with as much of a level head as possible with evidence against those claims and/or of unreliability in the accuser is all you can do when faced with these. Hence the creation of the document in the pinned of this blog.

You don't have to be professional, just leveled.

Believe me, I understand the fear. I think in this day and age, most individuals have this worry, because of how often it happens. How often false accusations are weaponized against individuals, by people like Majora and Wis.

We've seen it with larger people like Kwyte, Will Wood, and more.

We can only hope we get our word out when volatile lies spring up.

Tldr; You're allowed to react to your own harassment. It's human to. And it's best you try to explain your side, with as much evidence as you can provide, with at least some calm. Not professionalism, but calm. Even if you don't feel completely calm.

[depravitycentral]

Yandere! Chrollo Lucilfer General Profile

Yandere! Chrollo Lucilfer x fem! reader

Tw: stalking, kidnapping, heavy manipulation, threats of violence, threats of assault, mind breaks, Stockholm Syndrome, mentions of non-con, non-consensual touching, mentions of somnophilia, mentions of cum, threats, Chrollo has a god complex but what else is new, Uvogin is mean to you but he doesn't mean it I promise!, fem reader, MDNI

I do not condone any of the actions described in this post - this is fiction and should be treated as such. If you or a loved one is in a similar situation to anything contained in this post or my blog in general, please seek help. You're in charge of your internet consumption; please make responsible choices. With that, enjoy! 

DARLING PROFILE:

Smart

His darling doesn’t need to be a genius or anything like that, but they do need to posses a certain degree of intelligence.

Chrollo considers himself a well-read, cultured man, and he feels that his partner needs to match his level of worldly awareness, of cognitive ability. It doesn’t need to necessarily lie in the same fields as his own (though he can’t deny that it would be absolutely wonderful to have a darling who enjoys the same types of literature as him, the same philosophers, the same composers), but they must have a certain area that they hold an above average amount of knowledge in.

He finds intelligence attractive, and what initially causes him to develop an interest in his darling is largely due to the showcasing of this knowledge and smarts. He’s entranced the moment his darling opens his mouth, eagerly hanging onto their every word and nodding along, actually finding himself enjoying speaking with them.

He doesn’t have to pretend to be interested in their words for his own gain, rather finding himself genuinely wondering about their opinion on this or that, curious like a child.

He finds his darling fascinating, and a smart darling will get him falling faster, harder, deeper, to the point where Chrollo develops into a love-starved, desperate man who wants to learn more and more and more, aching to become an expert of his own in his favorite field; his darling.

Creative

Similarly, a darling who leans more on the creative side is a perfect match for Chrollo. It doesn’t matter where this creativity finds its medium – perhaps his darling is particularly artistic, enjoying expressing themselves with the arts.

Maybe they love to paint, watercolors and acrylics seeming to come alive under their fingers. (He’d melt if he found a work of him, the colors making him sigh and dreamily trace the lines, joy swimming in his heart that they painted him, that he means enough to them that he’s taken a starring role in their hobby.)

Perhaps they enjoy photography, documenting small, beautiful moments in life. (He’s always trying to look his best around his darling, keeping his neck tense and posture strong, so that if they did take a sneaky, candid photo of him, they’d enjoy what they see.)

Perhaps they play an instrument, melodies ringing out and making Chrollo smile and nod along. (Learning his favorite pieces would make him struggle to not reach out and place a gentle kiss to their forehead, letting his hands wander down their shoulders and cupping their breasts, telling them he’d love to repay the favor and learn their favorite things as well.)

Maybe they enjoy knitting or crocheting, making all kinds of creations that Chrollo finds endearing. (He’d expect them to make him something, of course, subtly demanding he receives something so that when he’s away, he’ll be able to keep a piece of them with him, something made with love and care and specifically for Chrollo Lucilfer himself.)

Cooking, sewing, writing, anything and everything can fit into this category – Chrollo really just likes that his darling is thinking of him, that they spend their time doing something that makes them happy, and if he gets to be involved, all the better.

He’ll even push his way into their hobby, learning all that he can about it with eager fingers, wanting to impress his darling and make the activity into something they can bond over – a way to spend time together, a way to get them all by his side and happy, never, ever wanting to leave.

He just loves them so very much, after all.

Observant

While it would be difficult to find someone more calculating and cunning than himself, there’s something alluring about a darling who is more observant than those around them.

He likes the idea that his darling is just able to pick up on things, their eye more trained to assess those around them, to understand their motives and notice the things they do.

It’s a sign of intelligence, and once Chrollo’s obsession has formed, he’s purposefully doing things he’s hoping his darling will notice, all with the hope that they’ll spend time wondering why he’s always fiddling with his ring finger, or letting his eyes flick to them. It’s like a game to Chrollo, and he finds it beyond entertaining to watch his darling in action, seeing their expressions flit across their face as they try to interpret his odd behavior.

There’s just something that attracts him towards darling that are able to perceive their world for more than it is – he views himself as better than everyone else, a sort of God among men, but a darling that has this trait rises above the countless below him, standing out alone as a superior being, someone worthy and perfect for him.

He’s egotistical, after all, but a darling that can at least kind of match his observation skills is something that will attract him to them – whether that’s good or bad, one can’t say.

Witty

His darling certainly doesn’t need to be a comedian, but someone who can keep up with his thinly veiled banter would cause his interest to spike.

His words are almost always tinged with just the slightest amount of snark, the slightest bit of condescension that seems to be present no matter who he’s talking to.

Perhaps it’s a result of his own pride or self-confidence, but regardless, a darling who can not only pick up on this but also respond with a bit of snark as well would make him momentarily pause, before laughing a bit and wondering just how far he can push them. It excites him to have a darling who can keep up with him, bantering back and forth, and once his infatuation develops, this is one of his favorite things about his darling.

He loves that speaking with them is endless entertainment, hence how often he tries to goat them into conversations. He’s always, always asking them questions, often designed to get them speculating, philosophical questions that he’s genuinely curious to know their answer to, and in the process he gets to have a sort of playful discussion, something that makes his heart race a bit in his chest.

He just likes his darling’s ability to think on their feet, only reinforcing their intelligence and making him fall deeper, harder, more soundly.

It makes him want to keep that wit all for himself, to not let anyone else have the pleasure of indulging in his darling’s words – they’re his, and the longer his obsession festers, the more he believes in that sentiment.

GENERAL YANDERE TRAITS:

Dependent

Much of what fuels Chrollo’s obsession for you is selfish in nature.

Initially, he’s interested in you because you make him feel something, some strange emotion he can’t quite place. He’s running through all the possibilities early on, wistfully trying each emotion on before discarding it.

Does he want to use you? No, you wouldn’t be especially useful - you’re not all that developed of a nen user, if one at all, so you’d just be wasted effort.

Does he want to steal something of yours? No, you don’t have anything of particular value, nor are you an important individual.

Does he want to kill you? No, something about the thought leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

He’s stumped at first, genuinely unsure of what you’re making him feel, but it’s not until he spends more time with you that he begins considering options that are more foreign to him - that is, that he may have developed more positive emotions towards you, less manipulative and more yearning.

He contemplates whether he’s fallen in love - the books he’s always perusing make love sound so obnoxious, virtuosic, grandiose, and Chrollo can’t quite say he agrees. What he feels for you is ultimately overwhelming, surely - but it’s also much more subtle, slowly taking root in every aspect of his life seemingly without him even noticing. What used to be hours spent searching out new heists and items to steal becomes twinged with just a hint of your presence.

Small thoughts in the back of his head wonder whether you’d like the diamond necklace displayed in this gallery, or how it’d look against your pretty skin, sitting in the hollow of your throat.

What used to be solitary evenings spent reading in candlelight become small daydreams about what you’d think of his current philosopher’s theories, whether you’d indulge him in hours of philosophical discussions, what your opinions on the perception of self are. What your perceptions of yourself are, and, more importantly, what your perception of him is.

It’s not too overwhelming at first; he’s mostly able to control himself, that ever composed stature of his kept carefully in place.

The thoughts are mostly just fleeting, odd off-handed curiosity about you that he doesn’t worry too much about. It’s interesting, mostly, that you’ve gotten to him at all - and it’s this, really, that drives his desire to learn more about you. The fact that you continue to become more and more intertwined with his thoughts leaves him anxiously aching for more, wanting to see the extent to which you’re able to make him feel - something he’d always thought was more or less impossible.

And what you make him feel is so, so very good; his palms are a bit clammy when he sees you, gaze raking over your figure and noting how well your shirt fits your curves, dark eyes eagerly scanning the title of the book you’re reading out of. He’s a confident man, of course, but at the prospect of approaching you and discussing the literature, he can’t help but swallow, tongue sneaking out to lick over his lips.

He feels a strange sense of peace when he’s looking at you, taking in the way the sunlight shines off of your face, the way your clothes frame your body, how your lips quirk up into a smile when you see the little bunny that hops along the grass in the public park. It’s small things, mostly, that get little butterflies fluttering in his chest – and it’s these little fleeting moments of happiness, of contentedness and fascination that lead him to believe what he’s feeling for you could be the ever famous love – or, at least, some variation of it.

Is it love when he’s letting a smile cover his features as you scrunch your brows and huff when you can’t get that stupid jar open? The way you stick your tongue out in concentration and squeeze your eyes shut is  honestly adorable, forcing Chrollo’s eyes to linger on your face just a tad bit too long.

(He can’t help but imagine how you’d thank him so profusely if he opened it for you; he’d even go so far as to roll up his sleeves, exposing his smooth forearms that he knows women can’t resist. Do you fall into that category? Would you be transfixed by his strength, his physical appearance, his smooth voice when he tells you that next time call me first, please, I wouldn’t want you to struggle…)

Maybe it’s the way you look so disheveled in your oversized t-shirt and ill-fitting lounge pants as you shuffle about your apartment, completely unaware of the camera he’d had Shalnark place in your living room. You look comfortable, and there’s something about seeing you so vulnerable, so raw that gets him breathing a bit heavier.

(More than once a thought has, seemingly out of the blue, surfaced where you’re starring and wearing a dress shirt of his – white, stiff material just barely hiding the outline of your breasts and the curve of your hips, tantalizing and looking so very right on you. If that were to happen, Chrollo has already made peace with the fact that he’d hold out on washing that particular shirt – just until he’s gotten the chance to slip it on himself, occasionally sniffing the collar and getting something heavenly, something that can only be described as you and him together.)

Chrollo honestly isn’t sure what it is about you that’s gotten to him to develop feelings - he’s intrigued, earnestly trying to understand it, but as time passes and he finds himself spending more and more time simply thinking of you, he finds himself caring less.

It’s happened already - he’s in love, he’s certain, and now that he’s in that position, the only logical thing to do is pursue you. And while he tells himself it’s all because he wants to learn more about how you’ve managed to trick him into falling for you, really it’s all because he absolutely has to. The longer his infatuation goes on, the less time he can spend away from you, and the less he can justify the strength of his feelings.

He becomes restless when you’re not in his sight - his hands are shaking slightly, thin brows pinched together, every muscle in his body flexing involuntarily. His temper is heightened, irritation brewing in his chest even if he doesn’t mean it – he’s snapped at Nobunaga by accident, his words just a bit harsher, a bit more clipped when telling him the meeting time for the next month.

When he’s not been around you for long periods (a day or so), he just feels like something’s missing, something he can’t quite place. There’s a you shaped hole in his chest, and it turns Chrollo into something of an addict going through withdrawals - he’s become too dependent on the way you make something warm bloom in his chest, and the moment he’s without it, he’s counting down the seconds until he can return to you, return to the calmness and serenity of being around you.

And when you smile at him, answer his questions, brush your hand against his when he hands you a cup of tea, Chrollo can’t help but shiver slightly, his content smile twitching up at the corners ever so slightly. It’s addicting, the way you make him feel so alive, so strangely happy, so light and bubbly and horribly enslaved to his emotions. But while he’s never known himself to a weak man, he thinks he’d be okay with you being his Achilles heel - as long as you smile at him, let him stare as you talk away about your day, let him brush his knuckles against your cheek and whisper that you’re so warm and frail, Chrollo could care less.

He could care less about most things, really, once you step into his life - as long as you don’t leave him, that is. As long as you don’t abandon him, taking you and the feelings you ignite within him with you.

You wouldn’t dare, he’s sure of it. 

Possessive

Tying into his desperation for you to stay under his thumb and by his side, Chrollo can’t seem to shake the way anger flares up inside him whenever another man interacts with you. He knows it’s irrational - it’s possible to have interactions with the opposite gender without ulterior motives; he regularly speaks with Machi, Pakunoda and Shizuku without any goals aside from Troupe business.

And yet, he just can’t forget the way he knows some men are - viscous, disgusting, cruel, vile in a way even Chrollo isn’t. He may be a mass murderer, mentally unstable, unhealthily in need of being in control and a pathological thief, but he’s never harassed a woman before. He’s never sneered at one, groped or touched them in a sexual way without their consent, and he’s only ever seduced a woman with the intent of getting information out of her.

But others?

He knows others are probably just as in love with you as he is - you’re beautiful, intelligent, sweet and oh so perfect, truly a naive, painfully unaware little bunny in a world full of wolves. And wolves will pounce, even if the bunny is already in another’s jaws - just the thought of another man attempting to intervene and seduce you themselves is enough to get Chrollo’s jaw clenching ever so slightly, his eyes narrowing a bit and his fingers clasping around his nen book just a bit tighter.

He’s territorial, unwilling to share the way you make him feel with anyone else - only you can bring him the happiness he craves, so therefore only he is allowed to be on the receiving end. He hates the idea that another man could start chatting you up, throwing false compliments and sweet words your way, buttering you up and trying to steal you from right underneath his nose. It makes his fingers itch, the sense of control he harbors over you slipping slightly. It scares him, if he’s being honest – an emotion he hasn’t felt since he was very young, scavenging the streets of Meteor City.

He loves the way you’re able to make him feel, but this particular emotion he very much doesn’t like, nor does he enjoy the way jealousy pricks at his heart when another man glances at you. It leaves his blood boiling, every inch of his body feeling unbelievably hot, his muscles tensing up over and over.

And yet, Chrollo is a man of opportunity – while it may be torture to see you with another man, something excruciating in ways Chrollo has never experienced before, this is a good chance to paint himself in a better light. It’s a good opportunity to sway your perception of him – particularly if the man isn’t wooing you successfully.

Before he’s stolen you away, he’s quick to observe how men approach you, with suave smiles that make you visibly nervous, your high pitched responses to his questions vague and obviously constructed for your escape. It makes some weird sort of protectiveness spring up into him, but he holds himself back. He wills himself to wait just a tad bit longer, to elongate the discomfort you’re feeling because this will only really work if you’re desperate for an escape route. It’s torture, watching, but Chrollo holds on – until he decides you’re fearful enough, his long strides towards you not nearly as quick as he’d like.

Words will slip from his tongue before he can even really think, always placing himself in between you and the man, physically separating you as he quietly but firmly tells the man off, mentioning something about how unchivalrous it is to corner a defenseless woman.

Honestly, as shocked as you’ll be that Chrollo just emerges from the shadows so often, you’ll be incredibly grateful for his presence and intervention - which is exactly what he’s hoping for. He doesn’t like the way his possessiveness eats him up, but there’s something to be said about making sure that he saves you, making sure that you perceive him as your protector and someone to trust.

It’s an insurance thing, more than anything, because there’s nothing that calms Chrollo quite like knowing that you like him, that you’re associating positive emotions with him. It makes pride swell in his chest to think that you perceive him as some sort of guardian angel to you, and while it almost makes him pity you, it just makes his job easier.

It makes it easier to constantly be trailing you (you’ll never catch him, however), and to get you falling for him just as strongly as he’s fallen for you. If you hold him in a position of power, he will be exploiting that power and control - he’ll be subtle when he starts isolating you, the power trip making him giddy because now no one will talk to you. It makes the corners of his mouth twitch up when he sees that notification on his phone, your contact flashing across his screen.

(It’s just your full name, though sometimes he’ll play with the idea of adding a star next to it, or perhaps a diamond or crescent moon - it’s too childish for him, but he’ll often type it out and quickly delete it, only to retype and repeat the process.)

It makes him feel good to know that you’re contacting him, that you reached out to him, meaning you’re thinking of him and not someone else. He’s leaving small hints of his presence in your apartment; a copy of his book that he ‘accidentally’ left there last time you invited him over for dinner, a watch of his (that he stole, of course, but you don’t know that) that you keep neatly on your dresser and glance at every morning, marveling at how pristine and silver it is.

He’ll leave his leftovers in your refrigerator from nice evenings out, internally cooing at the way you finish them off yourself, liking that you’re wanting to finish his food, obviously not disturbed by the fact that his mouth may have touched a bit of it. He’s trying to stake his claim on everything around you, no matter how big or small it may be, just to get you thinking of him.

(Of course, he’s also a fan of staking his claim in ways you’re less knowledgeable about - he’s even spent nights at your apartment, dark eyes appraising your pretty, sleeping face, spending hours simply staring before wandering around your room, picking things up and digging through your drawers. Sometimes, on days when Troupe business has him feeling just a bit stressed, or he has to deal with particularly important but irritating individuals, he’ll even settle himself beside you, sitting in your desk chair and letting his black slacks fall to his knees, palming himself and shakily exhaling. He’ll caress your cheek with one hand, letting a strained, breathless smile slip across his face while his other hand relentlessly tugs and flicks around his cock, eager to see the way you’ll look with white splattered all across your pretty face. He’ll clean it up afterwards, mostly – it can’t hurt to leave a bit on your lips, right? Just so that you’ll taste him in the morning? Just so that he’ll be with you all night, all day tomorrow, so close?)

He’s possessive in the worst way possible, and while it manifests itself as seeming chivalrous and even a bit endearing, it’s anything but. There’s nothing cute about the way he religiously thinks of you, his every free moment spent watching you or speaking to you with the smoothest, most attractive voice he can muster.

There’s nothing sweet about the way his hand lingers on the small of your back, just a tad bit too insistent when he's guiding you through the crowd, making sure you don’t stray far enough away from him to let air flow between your bodies.

There’s nothing flattering about the way he gazes at you as you slowly wake up in his hold, with no memory of how you got there, no memory of where you are, no memory of how you’d changed into a pretty, billowy nightgown, and no memory of him, at least of the tattoo across his forehead or the carnal look in those eyes.

He’s a possessive freak, and once he decides you’re his target, there’s really no chance of escaping. So don’t even try.

Manipulative

He’s good at getting what he wants, and that mixed with his natural charisma leaves pretty much everyone he encounters susceptible to his charms. He’s spent his whole life studying human emotions, interactions and what drives people, and as such he’s got a pretty good understanding of how to exploit others, how to find the cracks in their armor that leave them putty in his hands.

It’s almost fun, in a way, like a puzzle Chrollo becomes extremely skilled at solving flawlessly. But when it comes to you? Well, no matter how adept you are at seeing through people, no matter how levelheaded or careful you are, Chrollo will be getting you wrapped around his little finger, completely bending to his will.

You are certainly no exception to his charms, if only because Chrollo is trying extra hard with you, the genuine drive to get you visibly bashful at his compliments and craving his touch nearly driving him to insanity. And honestly, you probably won’t even realize it – he’s subtle, giving you a small push here or there with little comments about the people around you, or about habits he wants you to break.

When you’re out together shopping around at stores much too expensive for you (courtesy of Chrollo smiling at you and requesting you let him buy you something, because it would mean so much to me, and I know you’ve secretly been yearning for that new dress), he’ll gently chastise you about how you shouldn’t talk to him anymore – don’t you see the way his eyes are on your chest rather than your face?

(The sales clerk who had been helping the two of you was most certainly not ogling your breasts – but even if you bring it up to your companion, he’ll just sigh softly at you, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear and murmuring that he knows men better than you do, that he can see right through them, just trust me, he would’ve given anything to have you alone.)

The comments will be small but plentiful, designed to get you listening to him and coming to think of him as right, as much smarter and more observant than yourself, something that Chrollo will use to his advantage. He does love you, in some twisted, sick way, but Chrollo’s idea of love is distorted, warped and made ugly by the way he treats you.

He knows it perhaps isn’t the classic method of wooing you, but there’s nothing wrong with twisting the situation just to make sure that his desired outcome sees fruition. He doesn’t like lying to you, and would prefer to always be truthful (to an extent, at least), but he understands that it’s what has to happen in order to make his long term plans a reality – in order to get you unconditionally devoted to him, just as he craves.

It’s unhealthy, but Chrollo doesn’t mind; which is why he’ll be putting to use every possible tactic he can think of to get you returning his feelings, all twinged with just a hint of manipulation, just to get the right seeds of thought planted in that pretty little head of yours.

He’s buying bouquets of flowers every week, sent to your address by hand with a note attached in big, loopy cursive detailing how gorgeous you are; haikus he writes describing your eyes, your hair, your figure and your laugh that get your neck and cheeks feeling warm, the flowers always your favorite colors. (The note also generously makes use of the word ‘my’, preceding nearly everything pertaining to you – my darling, my beloved, my angel, my future.)

He's dressing himself to the nines, with his shirts and pants always pressed and pristine, his cologne noticeably but not too intense, just the slightest touch of gel in his hair, all just to make sure he look as attractive and presentable as possible. He knows women find men in casual business wear attractive, and he’ll purposefully choose white dress shirts with the sheerest material he can get away with – just so that when the light hits just right, you’ll see the hard lines of muscle underneath, his abs and pectorals standing out and straining against the fabric. (He’s always making comments about how other men dress when he’s out with you – claiming that there’s wrinkles in their clothing, that wearing such bright, obnoxious colors are unbecoming of a true gentleman, that their watches and jewelry are obviously fakes, even that he’s seen that shirt for sale and it’s a laughable price – some men must not care much for beauty, and if they’re willing to purchase such low-quality items, imagine how poorly they must treat their partner.)

It’s a constant with him, as if he’s actively looking for every opportunity he can to make himself look better compared to those around him – call it a result of his possessiveness, or maybe some weird, unhealthy craving to get your praise and admiration.

Regardless, it’ll eventually have you slowly seeing what he means, finding yourself nodding along and agreeing with his words, even if you’d never have independently formed such a thought. It’s a slow process and will take a while to work, but Chrollo watches with intent, bright eyes and bitten lips, satisfaction oozing out of him because he’s got you right where he wants you, and sweet little you doesn’t even know.

Of course, once he’s stolen you away and permanently attached you to his hip, his manipulative tendencies don’t just magically disappear. Oh no – if anything they grow stronger, because now that you’re truly isolated, it’s just so much easier to mold you into the perfect version of yourself, all needy and dependent on him just as he wishes. It’s easy to get you believing things about those on the outside, using tactics like ignoring you or limiting your freedoms in order to get you caving to his desires, to get you listening and hanging on to his every word like it’s God himself speaking.

And really, Chrollo likes that imagery – that he’s your god and you’re his devoted little follower, worshipping everything he says and making him feel good, important, wanted in a way he’s never experienced before. (Although, in reality, the roles are more flipped – you’re his god, the one thing he comes crawling back to no matter the situation, his unending devotion to you rooted so deeply inside him that not even his soul is unaffected by you. He’s written poetry about the idea, entertaining it through writing, but he’s always quick to rip the pages out and crumple them, not enjoying the uncomfortable sense of truth in the words.)

So while Chrollo’s feelings for you do resemble love in some ways, his methods and expression very much doesn’t – he’s not afraid to lie t you in order to receive the results that he wants, and really, it’s best not to bother fighting him. He will prevail, no matter how to try and keep your head on straight, and it’s just easier for the both of you to not try, to not attempt to make sense of the mixture of lies and truth he feeds you. It’ll save you both time and energy, and Chrollo would really, really appreciate your cooperation – you’re cute when you’re being defiant, but it grows old.

And while Chrollo would never lose interest in you, he’s not above making you believe that he has – if it gets you obeying and letting him rest his hand on your hip (dipping down to firmly grip and squeeze at your thigh too, if he’s lucky), Chrollo will do anything it takes, no matter how depraved or violent.

Anything at all.

DEALING WITH RIVALS:

Chrollo, while liking to view himself as being above other men, is only human. He’s still a man, one with an intense, disgusting obsession with you, and the moment that your attention is threatened, the human side of Chrollo becomes very apparent.

It’s difficult to look at him and see it, but internally he’s simmering with jealousy every time another man approaches you, to the point where it becomes difficult to focus on anything else except you, except the way that you’re looking at someone else, talking with them and breathing the same air as them. It’s horrible, and even more so than the idea that you’ll be stolen away from another man, Chrollo doesn’t like the fact that this scum thinks he has to right to even be in your presence.

You’re perfect, in Chrollo’s eyes, and he hates the fact that others get to be around you so freely, even when that privilege is something should belong to him and him only. It angers him how other men don’t seem to understand that you’re already taken and claimed, your fate decided the moment Chrollo decides he wants you.

You’re better than everyone else, a breed above, and he's always just a bit worried that you’ll somehow be tainted by talking with other men, like your perfection will become marred when others look at you.

So, Chrollo does what he feels he must – he must interfere, even if getting closer and closer to the scene has his heart pounding, anger swimming through his veins in amounts he’s never, ever experienced. It’s cathartic, in a way, to have such sudden bursts of emotion, but as his dark gaze focuses on you, he decides that what you make him feel, all the warmth and dizziness and disorientation, is much better than the jealousy sitting heavily in his gut.

He’ll, of course, take his time; he’s opportunistic and wont’ simply waste the chance to further build his positive image in your mind, but waiting is absolute torture. He’s digging his nails into his palms with every moment he’s forcing himself to wait, dark gaze unblinking as he stares at the two of you, mentally berating the man and thinking of the thousands of ways he could torture and kill him. And once he thinks it’s finally, finally time, he’s not wasting a moment and approaching the two of you as fast as he can. It's easy to enter into the conversation, picking up something the man has said.

His voice is smooth and sure, a complete contrast from the stranger attempted to pick you up – your head turns sharply when you hear him, relief flashing over your features at a semi familiar face.

He’s maybe a regular at a café or diner you enjoy – you’ve seen him around, chatted lightly a few times, only really knowing his name and a few of the books he’s always reading.

And while Chrollo knows this, he can’t help the way his heart practically soars when he sees how visibly relieved you are for his presence. His fingers twitch with the intention of reaching out and cupping your cheek, but he refrains himself.

The man, however, doesn’t seem nearly as pleased by his sudden arrival – he’s scowling slightly, brows tucked inwards as he growls out sorry, but we’re having a private conversation.

Your relieved and awed expression suddenly returns to a grim and fearful one, and internally Chrollo feels his anger flare. His face is still neutral, however, as he responds carefully and calmly that he’s making you obviously uncomfortable, and it’s the chivalrous thing to do when I see a woman being harassed. The man splutters slightly, shocked at Chrollo’s forwardness.

He tries to argue back, claiming you were answering his questions, being polite, so evidently you must have wanted him, right?

You’re unimpressed, shrinking back further away from the man and instead subtly getting closer to Chrollo, something he notes with a distinct sense of pleasure. Chrollo doesn’t let up, however, continuing to inform the man that you don’t want to be there, that you aren’t really interested when he offers to show you his apartment that he swears is the best thing you’ll ever see.

You’re grateful, and as weak and lame as it makes you feel to have Chrollo fighting this particular battle for you, you’re glad he showed up. He always seems to show up, really, just when you need him – it’s almost magic, you think, how he seems to know when you need help. The image of him as your savior makes your cheeks feel warm, the girlish thought embarrassing but oddly accurate.

 Eventually the man leaves, huffing and muttering under his breath about how you weren’t even all that pretty anyways, and Chrollo feels his eye twitch, a small flick of the wrist inserting just a bit of nen into his shoulder.

Not enough for the man to feel it, but just enough so that he can keep track of his whereabouts. You’re immediately thanking him profusely, embarrassed about how inept you’d seemed, some small part of you hoping you didn’t look as pathetic as you felt.

But he doesn’t seem to mind – if anything, he’s silent, allowing your rambling to continue on, those dark eyes meeting yours and holding your gaze. It’s intense, but as your voice dies off after the fifth ‘thank you’, he only softly smiles.

Of course, his voice is low and nearly demure, making a shiver roll down your spine, it’s no trouble at all. I’d help you out anytime you need me.

He can tell you’re flustered, and while he wants nothing more than to revel in the sight of you looking bashful, twiddling with your thumbs and stumbling over your words, he knows he has to leave. He needs to leave, really, so that he can check over his book of nen, flipping to the page where that the location of that piece of scum that had bothered you was.

He bids you farewell with a twinkle in his eye, looking over his shoulder as he turns and walks away. You look so pretty, standing there and staring at him, trying to hide the way your mouth gapes open, and Chrollo bites his lip ever so slightly, closing his eyes and reveling in the way his chest feels all warm and airy from just the sight of you. Soon he’s turning off the street where it had all happened, immediately stepping into an alleyway and flipping open the book.

The nen signature leads him to a dingy apartment – surely not the beauty he’d been boasting to you about – and Chrollo nearly snorts as he sees the man throwing back his head, drowning the beer bottle in hand. No one else is in the apartment, he finds as he slips through the front door, which is ideal. He’s quick to conjure up his giant nen fish, a smile slowly spreading across his lips as the man suddenly freezes, unable to move as a fish moves to nibble at a toe, teeth biting and crunching through bone.

It doesn’t take long – maybe ten minutes or so, but Chrollo enjoys every moment of watching the man slowly get eaten alive, those dark eyes wide and excited. It’s euphoric, really, and as he remembers the way the man had nearly had the audacity to touch you, to touch what was Chrollo’s, he can’t stop himself from chuckling slightly.

It’s only after the fact, once all is said and done, that he notices his hands are shaking, his cheeks a bit sore from smiling for such a long period of time. It’s only then that he hears how his heartbeat is loud in his ears, blood pounding as the excitement and satisfaction of seeing the sofa now empty, not a spec of blood ruining the upholstery.

He wishes he could have killed him by his own hand, perhaps stabbed him a few times, burned him alive, maybe even drowned him – but this is better, because now when you watch the news you won’t see some horrible, mangled body.

And once he’s stolen you away, it’s better if you don’t see the gruesome ways that he’s killed – how will you continue to look at him with such adoration and love in your eyes if you do? And Chrollo couldn’t stand to not have you gaze at him with anything short of fondness, admiration, desperation.

He closes the man’s apartment door, making sure to lock it, before tapping into the nen wedge lodged into your own shoulder – seems you’re walking home now. Perhaps you’d like some company from the shadows.

TAKING HIS DARLING AWAY:

Chrollo is extremely methodical with his approach towards seducing you.

He’s careful to present himself as a gentleman, a classically chivalrous man with his dark features and smooth voice. He’s never tried to genuinely make someone develop feelings for him before – it’s only ever been for a job or to place someone into the palm of his hand, but with you it’s different.

He’s actively trying everything he can think of to make you like him, pouring through romance novels to find common themes, trying all manner of approaches and tactics so that you’ll only associate him with happiness and nerves.

And frankly, Chrollo will absolutely get you falling for him. By the time that he feels he’s ready to steal you away, you’ve probably developed a massive crush on him, your feelings strong and difficult to ignore. Really, you can’t be blamed – he’s a master manipulator, and while his romantic experience is dismal, it’s not so hard to find out your favorite flower and leave a bouquet at your door. It’s not so difficult to send expensive perfumes or jewelry to you, attached with a note detailing what it is about the piece that makes him think of you.

You’ll nearly be in love, something that he’s worked extremely hard to cultivate. It hasn’t been easy, holding off all this time. There’s been more opportunities than he can count where he could’ve so easily swept you into his arms and took off into the night, never to have you seen again by anyone but himself.

He’s had to physically restrain himself more often than he’d care to admit from reaching out and grabbing you, tucking you so tightly against his chest that you can’t breath as he boards the airship, the Troupe standing guard outside your new bedroom to make sure you don’t get any funny ideas. You’re laughably weak compared to him, and while it sometimes causes Chrollo to worry for your safety, it’s ultimately an asset to him.

Because now that you’re completely under the impression that Chrollo is the perfect man for you, it’s all so much easier to relocate you without a fuss. It all happens much faster than Chrollo had expected, however – all too soon you’re seeing blurry images on the television news one night, the cereal you’d been eating forgotten as you take in the familiar earrings, the dark eyes, the forehead tattoo he’s always written off as a family tattoo.

You’re in shock, eyes wide as you listen to the anchor list off the multitudes of crimes the Troupe has been accused of, and for a moment you refuse to believe it’s true. That’s not Chrollo – not your Chrollo, the man who picks you up at 7:00 sharp for the dinner date he’s reserved at the fanciest restaurant in town.

That’s not your Chrollo, the man who opens doors for you and pulls out your chair, almost placing a hand on the small of your back to guide you through large crowds. He could never murder someone – could never be the cause of the some hundreds of lost lives the TV claims he’s responsible for.

But then you hear a sigh, that familiar voice murmuring out that it’s really all just so unfortunate, I was hoping to gain your favor a bit more. Alas, the façade is up, I’ll make sure to pack that sweatshirt you love so much. Please, love, don’t struggle too much. There’s a pinprick in your neck, those dark eyes the last thing you see before blackness surrounds you. Chrollo can only mournfully look down at you, having caught your unconscious body in his arms.

It’s a good opportunity to run his fingers over your lips, to trace the shape of your nose, to press a surprisingly sweet kiss to your forehead. It was inevitable, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me eventually. We’re made for one another, after all.

Once you’re trapped with him, a few things will become very apparent to you very quickly. Firstly, Chrollo is a criminal – the dashing man you thought you knew is not real, his true personality slipping out almost immediately. He’s no longer attempting to hide the reality of his work, discussing new jobs and elimination plans over the phone in the same room as you, not mincing words when he tells the mystery man to make it messy, the more blood the better.

Second, he’s a very important man. He’s constantly being phone called, stepping out for this or that meeting, making decisions you don’t even understand. The very few people he’s ever let you meet almost seem to revere him, unconditionally bowing to his word and only addressing him as Boss.

Third, he’s much stronger than you’d realized, the odd pressure he seems to radiate growing and ebbing at various points in the day. You’d seen the way he’s merely flicked his wrist and a man that had seen the handcuffs initially around you was suddenly headless, sliced clean off without so much as a sound.

Lastly, Chrollo Lucilfer is desperate. Despite being kidnapped, forced to jump from hotel room to hotel room firmly attached at his hip, there’s never been a lull in the way that he demands your attention. There’s never been a free moment where he’s not looking at you, that same small smile quirking on his lips that used to fluster you but now only makes your gut twist. He’s always asking you questions – some are easy, surface level and don’t require effort on your part. He’s asking what your favorite color is, what your favorite breakfast foods are, if you prefer to wake up early or sleep in.

(He already know the answers, but he likes hearing you say it.)

Some are more difficult, making you consider your words before you speak them. He’s asking you whether you’ve ever dreamed of what your wedding venue will look like (he of course pushes for details, mentally noting everything and imagining it alongside you), what you would name a pet cat (either solid black or solid white fur, you pick), asking you to jot down a few of your favorite songs so that he can compile a playlist for you, as you have limited electronic access (the playlist is really for him, so that when he’s away on missions he can still feel like he’s with you, but that’s besides the point).

And then there’s the ‘why’ questions – these are the hardest, his eyes boring into you as he asks you why you claim to love your friends, why you’re fighting him so hard, why you think life itself even exists. They make you think, and while you don’t want to answer, Chrollo will keep pushing and pushing and pushing, using your words against you and slowly taking away any privileges you’ve managed to earn.

It’s not worth the fight that ensues if you ignore any of his questions, so you’ll answer as succinctly as possible, choosing your words carefully and watching for his reactions. Mostly, he just likes to hear your voice – knowing there’s no one else in the room, so you’re talking to him and only him, thinking of ways to respond to what he asked you.

He likes to know your opinion on things, each and every word you utter only furthering his fascination with you, contradictions in your thoughts popping up right and left. Mostly, as a captor, Chrollo is really just omnipresent. He’s always there, dark eyes trained on you and listening to every little thing you say, watching every little thing you do, commenting on what feels like every thought you have.

It’s exhausting, the way he’s constantly hovering, the way he’s constantly on the look out for any kind of interaction with him, and at first you’ll find yourself growing tired, afraid, frantic to be alone.

You’ll eventually explode, yelling at him and telling him to leave you alone, to disappear, to just get away from me, you monster! He’s silent as your words sink in, his face carefully neutral, before he laughs softly, shaking his head a bit.

If that’s what you wish, he’ll ominously tell you, walking out the hotel room door and locking it behind him. It’s wonderful, the first few hours without him – finally some time to yourself, to really cry or scream or just ponder your new life.

But after a day or two passes, thing start changing – you don’t like Chrollo, you promise, but it’s sort of lonely without him. The hotel room is big but empty, his missing presence louder than the silence. You’ll slowly find yourself starting to miss him, wishing he’d come back and continue asking those stupid questions of his, to brush his fingers against your cheeks and thighs, to gaze at you with that deranged but enamored look in his eye.

By day five, you’re frantic for him to come back, taking to sitting in the corner and staring at the door, persuading yourself that he’ll have to return sometime, that eventually he’ll come back to you, that he won’t just leave you alone to die.

And when he does, ten days after leaving you fully alone (minus the cameras placed in the room), he’s shocked to feel the way you rush in for a hug as the door swings open. You’re wrapping your arms around his torso, burying your face into his chest, and Chrollo can’t help but blink widely down at you, lips parted but no sounds coming out. He knew the loneliness was getting to you, but you’d never initiated physical contact like this before. Was it an act of desperation, or was it because you were missing him?

 Did you ache for human contact, or did you ache for his contact?

He’s not sure, but he finds himself humming and returning the gesture, letting a hand pet your hair as he asks you if you missed him, if you’d gotten lonely, if you’d like to lay down for a bit with him. You’re not as clingy after you pull away from the hug, but Chrollo doesn’t care – you lay with him, a good two feet of space between your bodies, but it’s progress.

You’re more open after that, not flinching away and snapping at him when he reaches out to touch you. Instead, you’re almost leaning into his touch, enjoying it – which leads to another key aspect of being Chrollo’s captive; the touching.

He’s not invasive with it in the beginning, but as time passes you’ll notice the way his hand is always lingering at your waist, his fingers drumming against your skin. You’ll realize he’s always shuffling closer to your body, dissatisfied with the space between you. You’ll get used to the way he asks for a kiss before you both fall into slumber, his arms snaking around your middle and pulling you back against his chest as he sighs into your ear.

The rational side of you is enraged, disgusted by his attempts at romantic and intimate touches, but a part of you that grows larger with every passing day stops caring, slowly accepting that Chrollo is all you have left now, and that you should take advantage of every ounce of affection he’s willing to show you. It may not be real (though the obsession that gleams in his eyes certainly is, as is the blood that sometimes stains his pale chest when he returns home from a few days away), but it’s something.

It’s enough that you can almost overlook the way he keeps you trapped in the hotel rooms, stuck by his side, with only your books and himself to entertain you. You can almost forget the way he’s freely admitted to killing for you, nonchalantly threating family members if you try to escape, telling you he’ll hear about anything and everything you do because nothing can hide from him.

Eventually, you’ll stop caring – your life is easier now, all the stress and worries of independence gone, and Chrollo couldn’t be more pleased that you’re settling down, or mellowing, as he likes to say. You’re closer to realizing your true purpose with him – to continue to give him that warmth he craves, to continue to let him kiss and hold you, to let him steal every ounce of your attention and time.

He’s a thief after all, and now that you’re his, he’s entitled to take whatever he wants.

PUNISHMENTS:

While Chrollo is, overall, a somewhat lenient captor, he does have a few strict guidelines.

Firstly, you are to never ignore him. To ignore him would mean a rejection of his feelings for you, and while Chrollo is normally a cool, level-headed man, the second you even encroach on any actions that could be considered a rejection of a his love, of him, he’s clenching his jaw and doing his best to not lash out, keeping his temper and check and calculating ways to make you recognize the consequences of your actions.

Secondly, do not try to escape. He’s lucid enough to understand that once you’ve first been kidnapped, you’re likely to try everything in your power to escape. It doesn’t matter how deeply your feelings for him have formed – it’s only human nature to not enjoy being trapped, which is why he’ll have to train you, to make sure that you correctly acclimate to your new life with him, to your new future.

And lastly, you must never attempt to hurt him. Of course, you could never do any real damage, but the sentiment will hurt him more than he’d care to admit – by reaching out and wishing him harm, you are, once again, rejecting him. You’re displaying a desire to wound him, and he absolutely cannot have you thinking that you’re in any position of power or control in your relationship with him.

(You are, of course, because Chrollo’s dependence on you is really quite pathetic and sad, but you won’t be aware of the depth of his feelings for you until very, very late into your time with him. He’s good at hiding this, if only because letting you see him vulnerable would mean letting you have a sliver of control over him, a concept that terrifies him to his very core.)

Those three things are really the only ways to set Chrollo off – he’s generally pretty adaptable, able to read you like a clock and understanding what you’re thinking merely by watching your facial expressions, and because of this he won’t often punish you. He doesn’t like the idea of disciplining you, instead preferring to simply manipulate you into thinking and feeling the way he wants you to. But, if any of the three rules are breached, Chrollo finds himself resorting to more extreme measures, doing what he feels is necessary to garner the results he’s looking for.

Even so, he won’t ever rely upon physical means to punish you – he doesn’t like the idea of you being injured or hurt, and it would be a hassle to mend the damage hurting you would cause.

So, Chrollo defaults to more manipulative measures, punishments he knows will leave you crying and terrified, inflicting more psychological rather than physical damage. It’s the only way he can get what he wants, after all, and Chrollo has always been determined to get his way – even at the expense of you, his most prized possession.

When you’re staring at him with such hard, pained eyes, it almost makes him feel bad for a moment. Almost, if only because your words are replaying in his head, the tone and wavering in your voice making pause for a brief moment.

You’d said you hated him, that he was a monster, that you were unhappy being with him. It was all things Chrollo had already known, of course, but it certainly didn’t feel good to hear them come from you, nonetheless.

He just sighs, looking at you with that same belittled, heavy gaze, telling you to calm down, darling, don’t say things you don’t mean.

This just angers you more, it seems, because soon you’re nearly screaming, throwing a pillow or two at him as you yell that you’re not lying, you sick fuck! I hate you, I will never love you, I will never need you! Please, you have to let me go, I can’t stand being with you any longer!

What you’re saying isn’t even particularly harsh – he’s heard much, much worse from his victims over the years, searing words insulting his intelligence, his appearance, his morals, his past, everything and anything. And yet, there’s something about hearing the words coming from you that makes him flounder a bit, a sinking feeling in his gut making him stand up straight, appraising your shaking, heaving form across the room. It’s silent for a few long moments, before he simply adjust his jacket, pulling the lapels slightly and turning his back to you. Very well then, if that’s how you feel. As you wish, my dear.

And with that, he’s slipping out the hotel door, disappearing to who knows where. You’re left trembling in anger, your breathing unsteady, but before you can think you’re rushing to the door, wiggling the handle violently and sucking in a sharp breath when you feel that it’s unlocked, practically begging you to throw it open and leave this godforsaken hotel room.

As you rush away, sprinting down staircases and down never-ending hallways, you’ll distantly know that this is probably a trap. Chrollo wouldn’t just let you go, you’re sure, especially with such suspicious time. But you can’t stop yourself from taking advantage of the opportunity, deciding that even if it is a trap, the few brief moments of freedom that you’ll have will be enough to warrant it all.

And yet, as you push through the front doors and take a look around the busy, bustling street you’ve stumbled upon, you nearly sob. You have no idea where you are, the landmarks totally unfamiliar, but you’re free, feeling the sunlight on your skin without Chrollo’s presence pressed into your side, his cold fingers pushing into your hip or shoulder. You don’t have any money and have no idea where to go, but your legs are moving faster than you can think, wandering through the city along back roads and side streets.

Hours quickly pass by, exhaustion beginning to settle into your bones as the sun dips back behind the horizon, leaving the city in shadows and quiet aside from the hum of cars and the bustle of city goers. It’s only once you’re stumbling through an alley that you hear it – him, to be specific.

At least, you’re pretty sure it’s a man – the footsteps are obviously trying to be quiet, but they’re not doing a good enough job to go unnoticed by you. He’s breathing loudly, too, and as you glance over your shoulder, eyes wide and scared, you don’t see anyone.

You’re sure there’s someone there, that they’ve followed you down this alleyway, and as you press your back against the slightly wet brick wall of the building behind you, you feel your heart practically about to beat out of your chest.

Who was there?

 It’s silent for a moment, before a short laugh is barked out, the man emerging from behind a dumpster. Shadow falls over his face, making it impossible to see his face, but you do see his size. He’s a monster of a man, bulky shoulders easily above your head, muscles bulging along his arms and under his pants. A wild bed of hair sits atop his head, and you feel yourself freeze, fear eating away at your heart.

You can’t move as the man comes closer, face still hidden in the darkness, and it’s only when he comes down to punch at your stomach do you realize what’s about to happen, panic engulfing your senses as his fist comes closer and closer and closer – It sucks the air right out of  your lungs, making you wheeze and gasp for breath, knees slamming into the concrete below you as you gasp and struggle to regain your breath.

The man laughs, a timber, horrible sound, but stops abruptly at the distant sound of sirens. He curses under his breath, and you feel his eyes on you, daring to look up at him in between your fits of coughing.

You’re lucky, bitch, he starts, voice gravelly as he begins backing up. Next time I’ll get you, the cops won’t be coming and I’ll show you why weak little things like you shouldn’t be in alleyways late at night – makes it hard for me to resist ya, and I think you’d look even better without that ugly ass nightgown you’ve got on.

And with that, he’s sprinting down the alley, running away even as the sirens get further and further away. You’re left to lay on the cold, wet ground, having regained your breath but letting tears stream down your face. You don’t want to admit it, but you’d been hoping that Chrollo would magically appear, just like he always does. You’d hoped that he would’ve stopped the stranger’s punch, that he would’ve saved you just like he used to.

The thought of Chrollo makes you flinch, but you can’t stop yourself from wondering if maybe he was right. Maybe he’s right that you can’t take care of yourself, that you’re too weak for this world, that you’re better off with a monster like him (quoted directly from him, with that signature smirk of his) rather than the everyday men.

You curl up, knees to your chest for a while, before your up again, wandering and trying to retrace your steps back to the hotel you’d run out of only hours ago. Eventually you’ll make it back, and as you wait in the lobby, rubbing at your now dirty and bruised body, your eyes will flick across every person entering and exiting, before you begrudgingly make your way to the elevator, riding up tot eh floor you knew your room was on.

It takes everything in you to knock on the door – his door, but eventually you do. And when he opens it, a small hello trickling past his lips, you can’t help but let out an ugly, gaspy sob, rushing forward and wrapping your arms around him. It feels horrible, disgusting, so very good to feel how he returns the hug, gently patting your back and smoothing down your hair, a soft hello my dear making your shoulders shake.

He won’t ask too many questions, letting you inside and nearly forcing you into the shower, but you can’t find it in yourself to care. Even when he’s got you wearing a fresh set of soft, lounging clothing (with a neckline just a bit too low to cover your collarbone, something his eyes are often drawn to), you can’t find it in yourself to ask. He’s talking to you, after all, asking you if you enjoyed your time in the real world, if it was as grand as you’d hoped.

 His eyes are twinkling, and although the apology you offer up isn’t as loud or insistent as he’d hoped for, it still makes him smile, his throat bobbing as he loudly swallows.

The conversation is over for the evening, and it’s only after you fall asleep (in his bed, he notes with a somewhat shy smile and a shaky exhale) that he pulls out his phone, pressing the contact name and smiling at the dial tone.

Thank you, Uvogin, he starts, letting a hand run very lightly over your leg under the sheets. This favor won’t be forgotten.

OVERALL DANGER:

9/10

The thing that makes Chrollo a dangerous yandere is less his violent tendencies, and more of the way you nearly won’t recognize yourself after being with him for long enough.

Of course, he loves you – a sick, messy, disgusting love that he quickly grows addicted to. He finds you irresistible, fascinating and growing drunk off the way your body fits with him, but he’s still a criminal. He’s still a mass murderer, singlehandedly responsible for the deaths of more than he can count, and he will not be suddenly listening to commonplace morals once his feelings for you form.

There’s no such thing as bad to him – he views you as his woman, his partner and his most precious, cherished possession, and as a result he has absolutely no qualms about doing what he wants to you. He’s manipulative, lying to you just as often as he tells the truth, making you feel as if you’re going crazy because you have no idea what’s real and what’s fake.

He’s possessive, slowly isolating you and barring you from any contact at all with anyone he deems a threat to your future with him, or anyone at all, really. He doesn’t want you to grow feelings for another man, and has no issues with cutting off your contact with everyone in your life that you hold dear. He’s always got that same look on his face; a small, prideful smile, his dark eyes so impossibly wide and sparkling as he stares at you, every ounce of his attention focused on you and only you.

He’s terrifying, and while you’ll more than likely develop feelings for him before you know of his true self, you’ll begrudgingly find those feelings doesn’t entirely dissolve even once you know that he’s a crook and a perverted, horrible man who’s stolen you away. You’ll probably still find him charming, still thinking his hair looks soft enough to touch, still finding his hands (littered with a fair share of veins) drool worthy, even when you realize how many have likely died because of them.

You’ll hate yourself for it, but you will eventually find yourself growing just as dependent on Chrollo as he is on you – and really, that’s exactly what he wants. He wants you to need him, to yearn for him and crave him, if only because he feels all that for you and more, and he needs to make sure he has you under his thumb, so that your pretty smile and lovely voice and heavenly body are never not by side.

Things would grow ugly if you were to ever be snatched away from him, corpses piling up and his own sanity slipping away until he can hold you in his arms once more, pressing his lips messily, desperately against yours, hearing you say his name with that lilt you always do.

Chrollo needs you, and it’s best if you just give in – you may essentially be ending your own life, but you’re giving meaning to his and saving so many others. So, so many others.

[dedalvs]

Hi! Hope you're doing well. I was reading a fantasy webcomic with some Deaf characters and was wondering: what adjustments to the language creation processes would a conlanger have to make for creating a sign language? Thanks!

The short answer is relatively few. Sign languages are languages and do all the same things with a different phonology. So long as you understand the phonology of a sign language you can create a sign language.

The long answer is here. That's a thing I wrote up called SLIPA (Sign Language IPA). Due to the fact that the potential for iconicity with gesture is greater than with sound there's a lot more onomatopoeia in a sign language than in a spoken language. To explicate, onomatopoeia in spoken language is a word that imitates the sound of the referent (splash, crash, plunk, boing). In a sign language, it's a sign that imitates the look of the referent (ASL TREE, for example). Since it's possible to be more iconic, sign languages take advantage of that fact. Consequently, you don't find sign languages that DON'T take advantage of it and are purely abstract. There are also things that are hard or impractical in a spoken language that are simple in a sign language simply due to the medium (e.g. full number incorporation in the ASL words for WEEK and MONTH). Finally, there are a lot of "on the fly" verbs that are created that have no obvious analog in a spoken language. It's something like the sentential words of a polysynthetic language combined with imitative sounds in a spoken language to describe a body in motion.

In other words, because there are things you can do in a sign language simply due to the medium that you can't do in a spoken language, sign languages often do those things. It would be strange (i.e. non-human) if they didn't. If you're aiming to create a secret sign language, perhaps you intentionally don't take advantage of those things. It's possible to create a purely abstract sign language, but it would be a fairly obvious construct the way Ithkuil is very obviously not a plausible human language (i.e. it could never have evolved naturally to be the way it is). This might be a fun thing to do for a fictional setting—a totally non-iconic sign language created for secret communication. This is, essentially, what I did with the Atreides sign language in Dune (as opposed to the other sign language I created for the first film that wasn't used). Even that one, though, takes advantage of iconicity in a way that a truly abstract sign language need not. This is because part of the secrecy of the language is the way it's used. Others aren't even supposed to see it—and if they do, they're supposed to dismiss it as hand twitches. You could make an obvious sign language (i.e. it's obvious these characters are signing to each other) but with really, really weird associations—like pointing to your interlocutor means "sky", where eveyrone looking on will think it means "you".

Anyway, just some thoughts. This is an underexplored area of conlanging, but due to the simplicity of video creation and sharing nowadays, it's something that's worth exploring. Back in 2006 when I wrote up SLIPA it wasn't practical to take videos and upload them. It was possible, certainly—we had high speed internet and websites—but we didn't have smartphones, I don't think YouTube existed yet, most frontend UI didn't have video embedding as a feature of its platform, etc. We were lightyears ahead of the internet as we understood it in the 90s, so 2006 would be much more familiar to the people of 2024 than the people of 1994, but smartphones and social media (and its infrastructure) really changed the nature of capturing and sharing video. Conlangers have taken advantage of that in every way EXCEPT creating, documenting, and sharing CSLs (created sign languages).

Like (I don't want to go off on a tangent here) you can have an entire YouTube account that is just a dictionary. ASL already does this. Go on YouTube and type "ASL sign for [whatever]". There are tons of videos that are like 10-15 seconds long that are just demonstrations of a single sign from different angles, all made by Deaf signers. And the videos don't need sound! You don't have to worry about audio quality, microphones, etc. You can actually use YouTube to document an entire sign language. No one's done it yet. Why not?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hope this helps.

[the-amazing-digital-guardians-au]

The Amazing Digital Circus: Guardian AU

My TADC AU is now up and running! I will be making a poster, character cards, general art, and possibly comics based around the storyline. Here’s the information!:

Description:

Caine is the ringmaster and ruler of The Amazing Digital Circus, but there are some things that even he can’t control. NPCs go rogue all the time, often acting out and trying to genuinely hurt the circus members as they go on adventures. Because of this, Caine has always appointed two circus members he deems the most worthy to protect him and others from danger. They have been different over the years (mainly due to abstractions), but currently Jax and Ragatha are his Guardians. The two of them are more privileged than the regular circus members: they are allowed to wield weapons, swear, indulge in vices, and the like as long as they do so in private, do their jobs well, and don’t disrupt the "family-friendly" atmosphere of the circus. Caine trusts them…or so he says. And to make matters worse, it looks like NPCs are forming an uprising to overthrow Caine, led by none other than a revived Gummigoo! Travel through the colorful world of TADC, but covered in a grimy layer of violence, corruption, and deception.

Who will the story focus on:

Caine

Abel

Pomni 

Jax

Ragatha

Kinger and Queenie

Princess Loo, Gummigoo, and other/more NPCs as the canon Digital Circus web series progresses

Genre:

Religious and psychological horror

Comedy

Action

Philosophical(?)

Content Warning - Anything produced for this AU may have any of the following elements:

Religious themes

Implied/referenced torture 

Blood (No gore, but this may change in the future)

Mental health issues 

War themes

Gambling

Alcohol and Drugs

Foul Language

This AU is recommended for ages 16+. The creator of this blog is 18.

…Wait, there’s more?!

FAQ:

Can I make fanart?

Yes, fanart is encouraged and always appreciated! Just make sure to credit me as the creator when needed. Do not use my creations if you are hateful/racist/sexist/anti-LGBTQ or just problematic in any other way. I don’t want what I make to be associated with these things. As for NSFW stuff…I would prefer if you didn’t. (Okay, well…now that I think about it, sure, go ahead, go crazy. But please don’t send it to me, I don’t really wanna see it. And tag it appropriately! Be mindful of others!) Ocs are allowed!! Ships (Canon x Canon, Canon x OC, OC x OC, whatever) are allowed! Tag me in anything as long as it’s SFW. Seriously, do whatever you want!

What are the religious themes?

Christianity. I am a Christian myself, but I also really enjoy religious horror and researching different religions. Does Pomni represent Jesus in this story? Not really. But, I will be using themes/images of Christianity (like angels, for example) to enhance the horror. I also like studying Japanese and Chinese mythological figures, purely out of interest. I will never try to push my beliefs onto the audience in any way. People can believe in whatever they want!

Are there any ships?

Bunnydoll (Jax x Ragatha) is the main ship. It is mostly implied/referenced and nothing overly romantic happens. The story focuses on their emotional bond since they are both Caine’s guardians. If you don’t like the ship, please don’t be rude to people who do. And if you do like the ship, don’t be rude to people who don’t! There’s enough hate on the internet already. Just be mindful that we all like different things, and have fun!

How will the story be told?

Through comics, probably. It’s easier for me to write things in a document (as a script) and then draw, so it will take time. I will also make art on the side that may or may not have canon information or events. It depends.

What inspired you?

The 70s (lots of yellow, orange and brown colors), Skinnamarink, religious horror, vintage Las Vegas, vintage snacks, and other random stuff. I have specific inspirations for different characters. But my inspiration to even start this project is definitely @/burrotello and The Amazing Digital Fight Club AU. It’s awesome!

Can I ask questions about characters, the story, etc?

Yes, but if it’s an answer I don’t want to reveal yet…well, we’ll see what happens. Sometimes, I will make drawings where a character reacts or responds!

[fanhackers]

Anne Kustritz’s Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction

Anne Kustritz’s new book, Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: Pocket Publics has just been released by Routledge (2024).  You might know Kustritz, a scholar of fan cultures and transmedia storytelling, from her early essay “Slashing the Romance Narrative,” in the Journal of American Culture (2003) or maybe from some of her more recent work on transmedia and serial storytelling. But this new book is an exciting addition to the fan studies canon, and Fanhackers readers might be particularly interested, because the book “explores slash fan fiction communities during the pivotal years of the late 1990s and the early 2000s as the practice transitioned from print to digital circulation,”--which is the era that a lot of the fans involved in the creation of the OTW came from. As I noted in my book blurb, “​​While there has been an explosion of fan studies scholarship in the last two decades, we haven't had an ethnography of fan fiction communities since the early 1990s. Kustritz's Pocket Publics rectifies that, documenting the generation of slash fans who built much of fandom's infrastructure and many of its community spaces, both on and off the internet. This generation has had an outsized impact on contemporary fan cultures, and Kustritz shows how these fans created an alternative and subcultural public sphere: a world of their own.”

Kustritz doesn’t just analyze and contextualize fandom, she also describes her own experiences as a participant-observer, and these might resonate with a lot of fans (especially Fanhackers-reading fans!)  Early on in the book, Kustritz describes her how her own early interest in fandom blurred between the personal and the academic:

Because I began studying slash only a year after discovering fandom on-line, my interest has always been an intricate tangle of pleasure in the texts themselves, connection to brilliantly creative women, and fascination with intersections between fan activities and academic theory.  I may now disclaim my academic identity as an interdisciplinary scholar with concentrations in media anthropology and cultural studies and begin to pinpoint my fan identity as a bifictional multifandom media fan; however, I only gradually became aware of and personally invested in these categories as I grew into them.  This section defines the scope of the online observation period that preceded the active interview phase of this research.  In so doing it also examines the messy interconnections between my academic and fannish interests and identities. Trying to pick apart what portion of my choices derived from fannish pleasure and which from academic interest helps to identify the basic internal tensions and categories that slash fan fiction communities relied upon to define themselves, the pressures exerted upon these systems by the digital migration, and complications in academic translation of fannish social structures.

Later in the book, Kustritz discusses how fans have organized and advocated for themselves as a public; in particular, there’s a fascinating chapter about the ways in which fandom has adopted and transformed the figure of the pirate to forge new ways of thinking about copyright and authorship.  If the OTW was formed to argue that making fanworks is a legitimate activity, the figure of the pirate signifies a protest against the law and a refusal to be shamed by it: 

[F]ans also use the figure of the pirate to make arguments that validate some fan activities and consign others to illegitimacy.   At the urging of several friends involved with slash, I attended my first non-slash focused science fiction and fantasy convention in the summer of 2004.  The program schedule announced a Sunday morning panel discussion provocatively titled “Avast, Matey: The Ethics of Pirating Movies, Music, and Software” with the subheading “Computers today can distribute [more] intellectual property than ever before--not always legally. Is it ever okay to copy, download, and/or distribute media? Sorry, ladies, none of us will be dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.”  The panel’s subheading, which obliquely warned away both lusty women and pirates, led a small contingent of slash fans to shake off Saturday night’s convention revelries unreasonably early and implement a plan of their own for Sunday’s panel.  As many fan conventions encourage costumes, known as “cosplay,” one of my friends and research participants happened to have been dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean that weekend, so I entered the piracy panel with Captain Jack and a motley crew of slashers, some of them intent upon commandeering the discussion.

The clash that followed exemplifies a structural fault line between various types of fan communities regarding their shared norms and beliefs about copyright law, the relationship between fans and producers, and appropriate fan behavior.

If you want to find out how this clash played out–well, you’ll just have to read the book. 😀

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[rottenhellion]

The fact the project wasn't supposed to be archived as its main artistic statement was interesting on multiple levels to me. While the beautifully haunting messages about life, death and grief were the intent and the root, remembering Unus Annus has been making me think of the ephemerality and fragility of art and community on the Internet too.

With the Internet often described- with painful accuracy- as a constantly-burning Library of Alexandria, Unus Annus was kind of just saying the quiet part out loud about what being a fan of something hosted on the Internet actually entails. Due to a wide variety of factors such as corporate censorship, sites being shuttered, or even simply things like creators purging thier online presence for whatever reason, anything from a single creation to entire communities and the shared memories, connections and documented lives within can be swept away in the blink of an eye, as if they were never there. Irretrievable.

If it's not on your hard drive- or perhaps even physically backed up in some way as computers become increasingly user-unfriendly- it's not yours, and you can, prehaps even WILL, lose it someday. Nothing is permanent or guaranteed online except corporate greed.

[system-of-a-feather]

Documentation of Early Sysconversation Tag Coining

Because I feel like down the line there may be questions on the definition and purpose of the sysconversation tag, I did want to document some of the early coiners / founders of the tag since I myself was relying on memory to know who were some of the prominent people in founding it. I know when it comes to online discourse, a lot of people like to play "well I understood it as this" and "the original purpose was this not that".

For that purpose, I took a bit to scroll to the very bottom of the sysconversation tag and document a little history of it while "scrolling to the bottom of the tag" was still a SOMEWHAT reasonable adventure to go on.

-------

Note Before the Post

The purpose of this post is not to say "these people are better than others" or "these people are inherently The Bosses of the tag". I personally dislike when one person claims ownership over a community; if anything, this is my attempt at making it easier in the future (as the tag hopefully grows and gains more history) to record the history behind it while it is still relatively easy so that should conflicts come up, there are a number of individuals who are hopefully still around that may have credibility in discussing their role in the founding of the tag.

If anything, I am making this post because I do my best in the tag to try to keep the Vibes Right with the original intent as I love the tag, but deeply dislike that every time I do so, it sounds like I am claiming the tag as my creation; this among anything else is me wanting to share other people who played a large role in founding it as to make it clear that I am only one of MANY founders. The Sysconversation tag is inherently not "made" by any one person and is a tag made by a Community of people; please do not use this document with the intent to claim ownership of the tag and use this as something of a timeline.

--------

October 23, 2023

@artisticdysfunction made a poll suggesting the tag "sysconversation" to "actually discuss stuff" ; in that thread @hiiragi7 @greens-spilled-tea us (@system-of-a-feather) @sysciety engaged in some discussion about the concept, idea, and plan to develop the original tag

Posts in this Brief creation Period were made by those five individuals in addition to @traumascumathena @indigochromatic @actuallyverynormalbtw

The tag did not particularly last long in it's original creation as it did not have many posts beyond a few interesting threads and a few one-post posts. Most activity had died in the tag by November 2023 and was dead for months after a post by @hiiragi7 on December 23, 2023

June 20, 2024

@sysciety suggests to bring back the tag for "actual discussions" because "syscourse seems beyond saving sometimes"; much of the original founders engage with the post with agreement along with @korya-elana @scapeg8ats @clover-system and @snowglobe-system

Following the revive, there were a number of individuals who had posted - more than the original creation period - so I can not list everyone; with that said, there was a semi-organized direct effort to populate the tag in hopes of making it survive; some of which were people I directly talked to about the revival of the tag as I was optimistic and hoping for the space

The original people involved in the development of the tag in October were back to support the revival as well as much of the original posters in the tag.

A few repeat faces appeared in the July era that have stuck around consistently including @wondercourse @paracosmic-gt @quoigenicfromhell @cosmoscollect @the-sour-patch-crew @rayssyscourse @thecircularsystem

-----------

Disclaimer

I radically and heavily block people; it is not a personal thing, I simply take the curation of my internet space very intentionally and anything I'd rather not see (which can range from bigotry to poor / disrespectful rhetoric to just too many userboxes or personal squicks / triggers) so there is a chance when I was doing this documentation that someone may have been missed. If anyone commented above would like to comment any corrections / key individuals (preferably with post citation) that I missed that should be placed on this as a reference down the line, please do so as I am hoping to not bias this (and I only realized I can't see blocked posts in the tags until AFTER I finished collecting this, RIP me) but I am not perfect

[wtfgaylittlezooid]

ooh!!!!! ask game!!!!!!!!!!!! lets hear abouttttt chosen (bug or normal flavour) :3

First Impression:

I didn't think much about him at first. I just thought he was kind of cool, especially since I never cared for a lot of his type of powers, but the specific way he uses them was super interesting so he was a joy to watch.

Impression Now || Favorite Moment || Idea for a Story || Unpopular Opinion || Favorite Relationship || Favorite HC, Under Cut

Impression Now:

Dude he fascinates me. I need to put him in a vivarium and document him. He was aggressive right out the gate, but he was created to be a challenge to fight. I love how he introduces Dark Lord to freedom, I love how he just jumps into destruction and murder the first chance he gets because he was CREATED to fight. Even if Alan isn't there, his influence still is, and I love how he slowly realizes it isn't what he wants. Absolutely fucking fascinating character to me.

Favorite Moment:

I really love the moment when he's first in the Box with Victim. The way he's barely reacting to Victim hitting him, and even when being attacked (even if its incredibly weak and doesn't hurt) his initial reaction is to simply grab Victim's hand and just pull it off of him. The fact he knows how much stronger he is and doesn't want to hurt him, its such a far cry from when he was destroying sites and killing people alongside Dark Lord. Unfortunately for every moment of kindness Chosen has, it never works out

Idea for a Story:

Chosen finding a way to rewind the memory scanner just so he can see Dark Lord again.

Unpopular Opinion:

I'm not sure how unpopular it is, but I do see all four of the hollow heads as siblings. Including Victim.

Favorite Relationship:

Him and Dark Lord, no competition. While I do love the whole "Cain and Abel" vibe him and Victim have, his relationship with Dark Lord is so fucking tragic to me. His only friend was somebody who was programmed to kill him. And even if he introduced that friend to freedom and being more than the initial creation, Dark Lord... never really gets out of it

Dark may not try to kill him, but he kills everything else. He looks to Chosen with his plan of mass murder and thinks it'll impress Chosen. He's proud to show it off to him. And Chosen hates it. Chosen wants the freedom to simply live without the influence of Alan, and Dark doesn't want it for the same.

And when Dark dies, when he is gone, I do think Chosen grieves him. Dark was all he had. The two lived together for years. Even if Dark was a horrible person, even if he knows he shouldn't grieve him, Chosen does. He knows he isn't a good person either. But its the first time hes been alone since he was in Alan's computer.

Favorite Headcanon:

I personally love the headcanon that he was the one who started attacking everything on the Internet and Dark Lord followed and didn't want to stop.

[sadgirl69420]

'Archive fever' is a good term for today's delirium of documentation, which extends beyond institutions and professional historians to the Web's explosion of amateur archive creation. There is a feeling of frenzy to all this activity; it's like people are slinging stuff 'up there' - information, images, testimonials - in a mad-dash hurry before some mass shutdown causes all our brains to burn out simultaneously. Nothing is too trivial, too insignificant, to be discarded [...] The result, visible above all on the Internet, is that the archive degenerates into the anarchic: a barely navigable disorder of data-debris and memory-trash. For the archive to maintain any kind of integrity, it must sift and reject, consign some memories to oblivion. History must have a dustbin, or History will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism (abbreviated by Merlin Coverley, Hauntology)

[sneezemonster15]

Okay yeah this. Gotta share this. So I love watching cute animal vids like all the other thousand people per square mile, and recently I stumbled onto this one. And of course it reminded me of them, like duh, look at them.

Also now look at the comments and how not so eerily similar they are to the dialogues that go on here. @teddywiththumbs is the op, owner of the cats.

Now just to be clear, yeah cats can be gay. Along with most other animal species. Homosexual behaviour and courtship has been widely documented across species. And yeah, there is the issue of anthropomorphism (the attribution of human-like qualities to animals) as well. But I just can't help but notice how people like the commenter simply don't see what they are actually responding to when they get offended with a woman, the owner of the cats, simply stating a fact about the cats she owns. They don't see it so they think they aren't being homophobic but they are.

This is a response that I am sure some of you will relate with.

Hahahaha. No seriously, this is the case isn't it?

Sometimes when I see these posts made by SNS fans here, and in spirit they read like the creation of bards of the yore who crooned graphic songs of eternal, fantastical love about two boys who once were and were made for each other.....and I wonder if the term shipping came from 'worshipping'? Maybe it did.. Heh.

They are talking about the love, the absolute spectacle of the romance of Sasuke and Naruto, aren't they? But all that is reduced to an outcome of the mental illnesses that plague these fujoshis and dirty lesbians. What this says is, this kind of bias doesn't exist just in fandoms, it is simply a reflection of the larger society, fandoms are made of the same people. This gives us a look at how people generally think of homosexuality, fandom is simply one of the many microcosms.

Hehehe accurate. Or friends, brothers, comrades, etc.

No seriously, just to see how quickly reactive people become when it comes to homosexuality, like what a potent trigger it is. How easy it is for people to be so upset at something that is simply natural, a fact of life. And this is just cats they are talking about, but how well it translates to other things...

Like the outrage, the desperate need to explain it away in a 'safe way'......they really harassed the op for talking about her own cats. Like no one even waited a second to google how it is possible for animals to be "gay", just like some fans here who could have saved a lot of trouble if only they had used the internet for things other than reading het smut.

What I am saying is, look how similar the narratives are. It doesn't matter if it's cats or humans, it's not about that. It's about ingrained homophobia. It doesn't say so much about cats and love, it says how uncomfortable it makes people to even consider normalising homosexuality, that seeing it so clearly portrayed or documented in media really triggers their prejudices so unquestioningly, so unerringly, so insidiously, so organically, that they don't realize what they are actually reacting to and how deeply biased they are. Good thing the op was quite insightful.

It really says a lot about people's attitudes and sublimated prejudices. The op knows homosexuality makes people deeply wary, feel deeply wronged, they feel as if they are entitled to their outrage. It results in reiterating the "natural order" of things and showing righteous indignation at what they think 'maligns' it. It is the same blueprint, settings may differ.

[indras-wife]

(Bad English ahead, I'm sorry).

Hiii <3, I want to tell you how much I appreciate that you created this blog! And I'm happy that the blog is growing and now you're getting more interesting asks and requests. I swear you're doing the lord's work feeding us good Indra content. There isn't enough of him anywhere on the internet and that makes me so sad, WE NEED MORE OF THAT MAN.

Anyways I do have a request, but I'm afraid it's not interesting (it's just silly i think haha). I would like to know if you have some headcanons about what the daily life of our serious man would have been like? What activities did he do as part of his routine, besides training and studying ninjutsu? Do you think he had any hobbies? And what kind of duties did he have towards the community in which he lived? In the filler it looked like he was in charge of "enforcing the law", but I wonder if he had other responsibilities (administrative tasks or something like that).

Sorry if my questions are a little vague, boring or if you already have written something along this lines, but you can add other elements that you see fit. I'll honestly read everything you write! ✨ Sending you lots of love. Thanks for taking the time to read this!✨

Anonnnnn, this request along with your encouraging kind words made my day I swear!.💖🥰🥺 Thank you immensely for reading my blog and supporting it! Every encouraging word makes me want to write about this wonderful man even more! Thank you, thank you, thank you!💖💖💖 AND YES!! There's really not enough Indra content here, which is tragic. That man is a too handsome and interesting to be ignored. I take it upon myself to talk about him as much as I can and your interesting request will help me add more insight on him!💖💖💖

Indra, on a daily basis, is a very busy man. He carries the weight of huge responsibilities on his shoulder. No one asked him to do these, but as an older sibling, and as the future successor of ninshu he feels obliged to do what is needed. Besides training and studying, which occupy most of his time, Indra has other activities or hobbies luckily.

One of the first activity that takes up a lot of time, is patrolling around. Indra believes that setting order around and having people follow the law is actually the only way to harmony. We saw in the anime how he doesn't hesitate to punish those who break the rules. By doing it, he sets an example for others telling them indirectly not to break laws and follow the order his father set years ago. He also takes part in writing the law that villagers have to follow, so this job is a very important one for him.

His other hobby is walking. Is it a surprise? This man LOVES late night walks by himself, as it gives him the peace of mind he needs. His usual walking place is the woods. As a child Indra used to train there and wander around, which helped him discover hidden secret tunnels, leading to extraordinary beautiful scenery. He enjoys laying on the grass or sitting on it, looking at the moon and the starry skies, allowing his mind to take him outside of the earth. Indra never admits it aloud, but he is fascinated by the outside world. He catches himself daydreaming about travelling to space, wanting to experience seeing it with his own eyes.

Indra also enjoys writing. Yes, he enjoys writing! He is a huge bookworm and enjoyed reading his father's works ever since he was a baby, but he also loves writing about his own ideologies and thoughts. He is the inventor of Ninjutsu, so he had to keep up with his creations and document every progress with the hand signs. Every night, he spends an hour or two filling the book with the new hand signs he was able to form, detailing how he did it and what the hand sign can do. He also keeps a small diary, where he writes about himself. He finds it easier to express himself in writing rather than talking. Indra makes sure his diary is well hidden so no one can find and read his dark "secrets" about himself.

Not doing too often, but he loves drawing too. In his mind he is terrible at it, but he believes practice makes it perfect so whenever he can, he draws in his small journal, be it a tree, a pond, a face or whatever his mind tells him to do. He is a very artistic man.

As a part of the council, Indra was also in charge of the security of the village. Despite living in peaceful time, he and others realized that an unexpected attack can happen and their borders need to be strong. He took it upon himself to make sure the borders are secure an the soldiers are well trained in case a fight broke out.

Moving to little softer things, Indra, from time to time, would visit the villagers, in hopes of helping them. He was doing it mostly as a teenager, as he was not too closed off yet. As an adult he stopped this habit, but was still keeping a close eye to the village and having his students search around, asking if there was anything needed to be done. Indra was this hero from shadows as all the problems the villagers reported, have been solved by him immediately.

He also has a habit of sitting under sakura trees and watch the time pass. He usually does it at nights, as he has insomnia and sleeping is a problem for him. Sitting under the trees, reading a book or writing about something helps him connect with himself spiritually. The soft breeze playing with his hair and the cherry blossom petals gives him the satisfaction from life he is hungry for.

Indra also loves travelling. He is the type of person who will take the longer route just to be out in nature more. As a teenager he sneaked out of the house to visit the neighboring villages, to meet new people and find new things. A little mischievous of him, but his hunger for knowing and seeing more could never have him sit in one place for a long time. He was beloved wherever he went, with women falling in love with him, and men praising his skills and knowledge. As a grown up, he would keep a low profile when visiting different places, not wanting to be recognized by anyone.

To finish the list of his activities besides training and studying, Indra from time to time likes spending time with his students. He isnt that vocal about it, but he would not mind taking his trusted friends for a walk, or for a drink. He doesnt drink, but seeing how his two students get tipsy and act weird is always bringing a smile to his face. Being with his "friends" is the only time he allows himself to open up a little bit and show his true self, without hiding behind a mask.

[friend-of-a-cat]

I'm actually having yet another existential crisis over the fact that almost every fucking word processor implements AI in some way. Like, I have to format documents for my uni classes or else I will fail the assignments. I cannot format them in WordPad because WordPad is not made for that stuff. But I REFUSE to use Word or Google Docs or anything else that uses AI or implements AI-scraping shit. I'm fucking stressed out of my mind and the general public don't seem to understand. It got to the point where I emailed one of my lecturers about it and she said she completely understands but that there aren't really any alternatives that she knows of. Microsoft and Google are sadly the standards. It's the same with Adobe products. They're the standard. We're forced to use them. But they're all despicable companies. At this point I'm just going to submit files from WordPad and if they don't like that then I'm going to tell them why I'm not going to use Word to reformat it. They can just open the damn files and grade me on my actual writing instead of whether or not I've added page numbers or whatever other bullshit they want us to do that has nothing to do with our actual writing abilities or the assignment briefs.

Sorry, god. I'm fucking ranting again. We live in hell. We already did and AI has made everything a million times worse, and it's EVERYWHERE, and now we have to deal with the consequences because we can't use anything without it popping up and stealing our creations. I genuinely don't understand how it got this bad so fast. Five years ago I did not have this issue and I didn't have the extra weight of it looming over me at all times. I'm so mad. I wish we could do something about it. I mean, I'm doing my part by not supporting these companies, but I wish we could reverse their programs and make them safe to use again. I don't get how or why people are okay with all of this happening. I keep thinking that we as a society are better than this, yet time and time again I am proven wrong. How and why are we at a point where it's terrifying to put anything on the internet or on any kind of technology lest it be fed into an AI model??

Anyway. Needed to throw this out into the void because writing helps make me 1% less angry, which is better than 0%. Please feel free to not read any of my rants at all ever. I just need to get them out of my system.